Iggy and the Stooges (or just the Stooges, if you prefer) were one of the driving forces behind the proto-punk era. Aside from The Who and The Velvet Underground, I don't think there's a single band that did more for the creation of bands like the Ramones, the Clash, and the Sex Pistols.

Iggy Pop is now 59 going on 90, so naturally the Stooges are re-uniting for a new album (with the Minutemen's awesome bassist Mike Watt joining them). Judging from one of the new songs, "Free & Freaky," the album will suck. But let's focus on the positive. I want to talk about what made the Stooges great in the first place: the band's seminal self-titled album, released in 1969.

The signature of the Stooges was Iggy Pop. He wasn't the only great thing about them, but he was the MVP of the band. He defined the punk frontman aesthetic that guys like Joey Ramone and Johnny Rotten strived to embody. You might say that Mick Jagger already defined that aesthetic with the early Rolling Stones records, but Iggy took that attitude to a new level. His growl on "I Wanna Be Your Dog" and his screams on "No Fun" were unheard of to that point.

The band nicks a lot of its style from the Velvets, of course, but while Lou Reed's style matched the DIY attitude that punk rockers would take to heart, his music lacked the visceral anger that Iggy and the Stooges provided. Going back to "I Wanna Be Your Dog," I don't think there was a song that sinister ever recorded to that point. I don't even know if there's been one since. The riff is heavier than anything Led Zeppelin ever did, but the bleak staccato piano in the background combines to make it sound just plain evil. And the jingle bells! There are jingle bells!

The Stooges were undoubtedly one of the most influential rock bands of all time. They've been nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame six times, including this year, but still have yet to make it in. Ironically enough, if the new album flops, it might wipe them off the Hall's radar for a while. But seeing as the Ramones, the Clash, and the Sex Pistols are all Hall of Famers now, it's a headscratcher as to why the Stooges are still out in the cold. I'm sure they'll make it in someday, but hopefully that day comes before Iggy Pop's skin falls off his skeleton.

--Kevin A. Doran

First off, as a newcomer to this blog, let me introduce myself. My name is Adam. Though I may be the shortest tenured and perhaps least heralded of the Collegian's senior music reporters, I'm a feisty up-and-comer looking to prove my mettle.

Last week, I read on Pitchfork that more of Elliott Smith's music would be released by Kill Rock Stars, the label that released Elliott Smith and Either/Or. The label plans to put out a two-disc collection of some of his unreleased songs, recorded between 1994 and 1997, the same time he was making the two albums that KRS released.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this.

I'm a huge Elliott Smith fan, so I won't even hesitate to listen to all of it (and I'll probably really like the music), but I can't help but wonder what it will do to how I feel about him as an artist.

I often ask myself the question, "What if?" when it comes to a lot of bands and musicians. What if this rock band was still together, or what if that singer-songwriter never killed himself--what would they have done? Sometimes, like in the case of At the Drive-In members forming the Mars Volta, one great band can spawn another one, but this is a rarity in the grand scheme of things. More often than not, I find myself feeling bitter and wondering about what could have been.

It happens in the sports world, too: What if Barry Sanders hadn't quit in his prime, if Bo Jackson hadn't divided his focus between football and baseball or if Shawn Kemp had never discovered the effects that copious amounts of cocaine have on the human body. But with music, it's a little different.

With an athlete, the player inevitably retires, and as legendary as he may be, he will always be confined by the context in which he succeeded. You can watch highlights of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and recognize he was a dominant player, but when you see his short little shorts and his ridiculous goggles, you know he was from a different time. While you can't see most bands from the 1960's play live anymore, you can still listen to them in the same capacity that fans from nearly half a century ago listened to them. As a result, truly great music carries with it a certain unequivocal timelessness that makes it continue to matter on the same level. For example, the Beatles are as relevant now, decades after they broke up, as they were when they were actually together--if not more so.

Sometimes a band breaks up, or a musician dies, or sometimes they simply can't bring themselves to make music anymore. In all these cases, though, it reminds us just how taxing--emotionally and creatively--it is to be an artist in the spotlight. It's something I take for granted when actually listening to something like Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea or Jeff Buckley's Grace, but at the same time, it's something that lends a certain mystique to these kinds of albums without which they just wouldn't be the same, and it's something that sometimes makes me feel like crying when the music stops.

There's a line in a Neil Young song ("Hey Hey, My My") that says "It's better to burn out/Than to fade away." More than 25 years later, Young has ignored his own wisdom and continues to make music.

In 1994, Kurt Cobain ended his suicide note (and, obviously, his musical career) with the same lyric. While Young is thought of as one of the most influential artists of the last 50 years, Cobain (along with Nirvana and Nevermind) is iconic, and it has everything to do with the fact that only one of the two is still alive.

I'm not saying Neil Young should have killed himself--he's made some great music, and he's probably a pretty decent guy who deserves to live. What I'm saying is that if he had killed himself, or if he had found some other tragic way to end his musical career and had abruptly stopped playing while he was still at his peak, his music would be looked at in a profoundly different way.

If the Beatles hadn't broken up, or if Jeff Mangum hadn't had a nervous breakdown, or if Elliott Smith were still alive, maybe they'd all still be making more incredible music. Or maybe they wouldn't. There's absolutely no way of knowing--and this can be extremely frustrating--but it's this very uncertainty that comes from wondering about the music they could have or would have made that makes listening to the music they actually did make an engaging, reverent and wholly powerful experience.

--Adam Clair

More times than I care to count, I've heard "indie" used as a genre label or even sometimes as a put-down, as though "indie" music is automatically inferior to mainstream music.

The truth is that neither of these things are true. In recent years, "indie" has become a genre like rock or hip-hop or pop. In reality, "indie" doesn't really mean anything anymore. I blame this on The O.C., but that's another blog for another time. Radiohead and The Flaming Lips could be called indie rock, but both are signed to major labels and therefore, by definition, not indie. Lil' Jon is signed to TVT Records, an indie label, but I doubt you'd ever hear anyone call the King of Crunk "indie."

Since everyone has a different definition of "indie," here's mine: placing the artistic integrity of music at a higher priority than the commercial result. A band like the Foo Fighters is what it is at face value: a high-energy "alternative" (another label that no longer means anything) rock band that makes a ton of money. But to survive, they have to keep pumping out hits. To keep pumping out hits, they're going to have to do things that might sacrifice their artistic integrity.

On the other hand, you have an "indie" band like The Decemberists who comes out with a modern progressive pop concept album based on a Japanese folk tale, all while signed to Capitol Records, a major label.

I don't mean to come off as biased against the mainstream. I don't hate the player, I hate the game. I wonder why some bands like TV on the Radio and The Decemberists can sign to major labels and still put out albums that work artistically. I wonder why a band like the Foo Fighters can go from making near-perfect albums like The Colour and the Shape to making bloated, overwrought albums like In Your Honor. I guess it's all about the Benjamins.

--Kevin A. Doran

Sometimes I just don't understand the winds of change.

All the VH-1 shows in the world couldn't make me understand why the '80s were such a weird time for music. Boy George was a superstar. Robert Smith of The Cure made it socially acceptable for sad teenagers to wear make-up. And Prince was an icon.

Growing up, I never understood the mystique of Prince. I wondered who this weirdo with the symbol for a name was, and how he ever got to be famous. When I actually listened to his music, I wondered how he had so many hit songs. But I guess the '80s was just a weird time to be alive.

In recent years, I've warmed up to Prince. He's still weird, but he writes some awesome pop songs and he's one of the best guitar players since Jimi Hendrix. But it seems like my peers, many of whom genuinely enjoy plenty of '80s music, give Prince mixed reviews. Immediately after the Super Bowl Halftime Show, I got a few texts that demonstrated this perfectly:

"This is such a train wreck."
"Someone should tell him he's not a pop star anymore."
"That was awesome...They have no taste or appreciation."
I can understand why people would doubt Prince's relevance at this point, since he hasn't had a hit in what seems like forever. But for me, the proof is in the pudding. Two of his singles from 3121, his most recent album, are fantastic. "Black Sweat" is the 48-year-old Prince beating J-Tim at his own game, and on "Fury," Prince plays guitar better than most of his contemporaries could dream of. In the halftime show, he did things the Foo Fighters wish they were capable of doing on his cover of "Best of You."

It's a shame, really. If Prince had done this show 20 years ago, it would've gone down as one of the best ever. But now his star has faded, and much like Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones in the past couple years, he's seemed over-the-hill to younger generations. To me, though, he showed he can still shred like a beast.

--Kevin A. Doran

Hey there, this is Dustin Pangonis. If you read our local arts blog, you might recognize me. If you do read it and were glad to see a music blog without my name attached, sorry to disappoint you, but I'll be posting on this on now and again, too.

My column this week focuses on a bit of surprise: the Shins' third album, Wincing the Night Away, will debut as the second-best selling album in the country this week. In an era of weak album sales, this only took 118,00 units, but it's still the second biggest in the country, and still a bit of a surprise.

It's the best chart position ever for indie label Sub Pop records, which has released only one platinum album (Nirvana's Bleach) and one gold album (The Postal Service's Give Up.) But in an era when the lines between indie and major label are being blurred further and further, how much of a surprise is it?

While the Shins do well for themselves, they're certainly not pop stars. Yeah, they've got the O.C./Garden State thing going for them, but they don't have any hit singles or pop star image. In fact, I defy anyone but huge fans to tell me what the guys look like or pick them out of a sea of clean cut indie guys in t-shirts and jeans.

And for a genre that used to be defined by inaccessibility and quirkiness, that's a huge change. The Shins are indie mainly by virtue of their label; their music is fairly accessible, catchy guitar pop, and that's just gotten more straightforward on the new release. Their success isn't as bizarre as that of a group like Modest Mouse, but it's not as much of a no-brainer as an emo-skirting group like Death Cab, either.

I guess it worries me that a pretty average album (given a flat "C" by the other author of his blog, Kevin Doran) is becoming one of Sub Pop's greatest successes. It's safe to say the Shins won't go on to rock the music world like Nirvana. They don't have that unique charm of the Postal Service, or of countless other Sub Pop bands.

So how does something like this happen? For awhile, I was kind of excited by the growing interest in indie bands, but I think my interest in the style made me blind to the obvious: as with any type of music, the blander and less challenging you get, the more chance you'll have of mainstream success. The new record doesn't have anything on the first two, but it will sell tons, and they'll move to a major and probably water it down some more. When a band on Sub Pop sounds fine on the radio inbetween Coldplay singles, no wonder the term "indie" is losing all meaning.

--Dustin Pangonis