Statement from the Stooges camp:

“We are shocked and shaken by the news of Ron’s death. He was a great friend, brother, musician, trooper. Irreplaceable. He will be missed. For all that knew him behind the facade of Mr Cool & Quirky, he was a kind-hearted, genuine, warm person who always believed that people meant well even if they did not.

“As a musician Ron was The Guitar God, an idol to follow and inspire others. That is how he will be remembered by people who had a great pleasure to work with him, learn from him and share good and bad times with him. Iggy, Scott, Steve, Mike and Crew.”

Iggy Pop added a personal statement, saying: “I am in shock. He was my best friend.”

From the Ann Arbor News …

Stooges’ guitarist Ron Asheton found dead in his Ann Arbor home
by Art Aisner | The Ann Arbor News
Tuesday January 06, 2009, 8:28 AM

Famed rock-and-roll guitarist and longtime Ann Arbor resident Ronald “Ron” Asheton was found dead in his home on the city’s west side this morning, police said.

His personal assistant contacted police late Monday night after being unable to reach Asheton for days, Detective Bill Stanford said.

Officers went to the home on Highlake Avenue at around midnight and discovered Asheton’s body on a living-room couch. He appeared to have been dead for at least several days, Stanford said.

Detective Sgt. Jim Stephenson said the cause of death is undetermined but investigators do not suspect foul play. Autopsy and toxicology results are pending.

From Arthur No. 6 (August 2003):

The Two Stooges
RON & SCOTT ASHETON on their past, present and future.
by Jay Babcock

Following the second (and final) split of the Stooges in 1974, Ron and Scott “Rock Action” Asheton’s next joint effort was to form New Order, who released a single eponymous LP that gained little critical or commercial notice. Scott did some work with ex-MC5 Fred “Sonic” Smith’s band, Sonic Rendezvous, while Ron went on to work briefly with the second, post-Mike Kelley/Jim Shaw version of Destroy All Monsters, a sort-of Detroit supergroup, before forming The New Race with Stooges acolytes Deniz Tek and Rob Younger of the Australian power rock group Radio Birdman. The New Race released a single quasi-live album, in 1981, and then was no more. In the ‘90s, between taking roles in his beloved low-budge horror films (his filmography includes Hellmaster [‘92], Legion of the Night [‘95], Mosquito [‘95] and, of course, Frostbiter: Wrath of the Wendigo [‘96]), Ron recorded with a group called the Empty Set, and performed and recorded with singer/Destroy All Monsters alum Niagara in a new group called Dark Carnival.

Ron’s participation in the Wylde Ratttz sessions in ‘98 eventually led to an invitation by J Mascis & the Fog to play songs live dates with his band, then featuring ex-minuteman Mike Watt on bass. Watt, who had been playing the Stooges songs for years was the singer on the Stooges songs the band performed each night for the numbers when the group wasn’t being joined by guest vocalists, which was often. These shows attracted enough heat for Sonic Youth, curators of the 2002 All Tomorrow’s Parties, to ask Asheton, Mascis and Watt to do an all-Stooges set at the UCLA festival, with secret guest vocalists.

At this point, Scott “Rock Action” Asheton was coaxed back into the spotlight. Working on a piece for the LAWeekly to coincide with that ATP show, I caught up with Scotty down in Florida to ask him what he‘d been up to. “I’ve been playing with various musicians and bands, did some touring, did some recording with Capt. Sensible from the Damned and Sonny Vincent,” he said. “But I’ve got a daughter now, and mostly I’m just busy being a dad.”

Although Scotty had kept in contact with Iggy, his dreams of some sort of reunion of the Stooges hadn’t come to pass. “I used to call up his management and kinda bug ‘em about if there’s a chance we could get together, him and myself and my brother and do an album. He used to tell me ‘Well he’s not opposed to the idea but he’s just really busy.’ I think the people would like it, I think it would be cool if me, my brother and Iggy do some things… You know, there’s a lot of good memories and a lot of bad memories. It’s too bad that the band had to fall apart when we did, but it was due to things that were out of our control. Me and James [Williamson, the band’s second guitarist] and Iggy were having some problems, and as a result the band fell apart. I always felt bad for my brother because he kinda got the raw end of the deal. It really wasn’t his fault that things went the way they did.”

Although he was aware that the Stooges’ records had continued to win the band fans three decades after their initial release, Scotty had obviously long lost interest in contemporary rock. As I read off the names of the people he’d soon be performing with, he said, “To tell you the truth, I don’t know anything about ‘em. I was asking other people, and they were saying Well [J Mascis] is from Dinosaur Jr. And I’m going Well, sorry again, then. Never heard of them. But if Ron likes them, they gotta be good.”

They were good–it was a lineup of singers that included Watt, Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, Eddie Vedder and Queens of the Stone Age’s Joshua Homme–but, in the end, none of them, of course, was Iggy. (By the same token, as good as his solo work has been, Iggy has never had a band that approached the utterly primordial, shamanic genius that was the Stooges, either.)

After several months of tantalizing rumors, in February 2003 the Ashetons reunited with Iggy Pop to record some new Stooges songs for Iggy’s new solo album. The sessions, produced by Iggy at a studio near his Miami home, yielded four songs and a tentative interest in performing live as the Stooges again. I caught up with Ron–Scotty remained elusive–to find out how this all went down. The following Q & A is culled from two phone conversations with Ron–one took place just prior to the 2002 ATP show, and the other, less than a week before this issue of Arthur went to press in late July. — Jay Babcock
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Aaaand if you’re interested in harshing whatever mellow you may have fostered with the Perro Tapes, we would like to direct your attention to the absolutely bananas day-glo ecstasy of Dan Deacon‘s “Get Older,” from his upcoming Bromst album, due March 24, 2009 from Carpark.

Get Older – Dan Deacon

David Crosby’s first solo album, If Only I Could Remember My Name? (1971) is one of the most beautifully wasted documents from one of the most determinedly psychedelic representatives of ’60s and ’70s counterculture. For most of us, that means it’s totally awesome: Crosby is jamming on high in fluid country-folk mode with most of the Grateful Dead plus Joni Mitchell, the rest of his band (SNY) and Grace Slick. A bunch of people hated it though (Christgau suggested rechristening Crosby as Rocky Muzak, Roger Crosby or Vaughan Monroe) and it’s been in and out of print over the last 30 years.

The Wilco fetishists at LA-based roots music blog Aquarium Drunkard have posted the outtakes from those sessions — known as The Perro Tapes or P.E.R.R.O. ruffs — which are even more disorienting and hazy than the finished album, natch, which by our measure is a great thing, especially on a chilly Southern California morning such as this one. In addition to sketches of songs from If Only I Could Remember My Name?, there’s also snips from other solo CSNY projects plus a couple mellow and airy takes on “Loser,” a Dead standard from Garcia’s first solo record. Go get the tunes here. For more on the music, head over to … uh … “The Phil Zone” and you’ll find a cluster of Deadheads offering song-by-song annotations that are actually pretty fascinating.

from His Lordship’s myspace blog…

Mothership Update from the Road
Current mood: creative

Yes it’s true, the last two out of three gigs for the new years had some secret weapons. Sly Stone and Mary Griffin along with P Funk as we prepare to do some songs from the new cd, we tore up the House of Blues in Las Vegas last night, Sly did four songs plus a poem that he wrote, (we’ll get the words to the poem for you). All the girls were great last night, Belita Woods, (Swing Down)Kendra (Bounce to This)Foster, Kim Manning, (Red Hot Mama) Sativa (Something stank, Hard as Steel)

Also on hand were three generations of Clintons, Treylewd’s sons and 2 grandchildren were in the house, I had three grandkids and 2 great grandkids, Everyone was on stage, with exception of the infants. Barbarella was there too.

Shiela E was in LA, she escorted Sly on the stage, Sheila E is on GONE COUNTRY with me, Sly is in good spirits and talkative and he’ll be back, no firm plans but he’s showing up,like he do, we’re also doing songs for his album and music in general.

We’re working on Mary Griffin’s album, and waiting on tracks from Bootsy and Foley.

…

Come to San Diego tomorrow (tuesday 1/6) if you’re in the area or any show you can make it to up to and including the Inaugural Ball in Washington DC on the 20th when we Paint the White House Black…
GC

You know how it’s really frustrating in one of those Tom Clancy-branded squad-based first-person shooters when there’s a part you can’t get past because all your guys keep getting pwnd by Chechen cyborg snipers or something? These new Army video games will be like that but instead of regenerating you’ll wake up in heaven to spend eternity with these dudes. Uh oh. From The New York Times:

At the Franklin Mills mall here, past the Gap Outlet and the China Buddha Express, is a $13 million video arcade that the Army hopes will become a model for recruitment in urban areas, where the armed services typically have a hard time attracting recruits.

The Army Experience Center is a fitting counterpart to the retail experience: 14,500 square feet of mostly shoot-’em-up video games and three full-scale simulators, including an AH-64 Apache Longbow helicopter, an armed Humvee and a Black Hawk copter with M4 carbine assault rifles. For those who want to take the experience deeper, the center has 22 recruiters. Or for more immediate full-contact mayhem, there are the outlet stores.

The facility, which opened in August, is the first of its kind. It replaces five smaller recruitment stations in the Philadelphia area, at about the same annual operating cost, not counting the initial expenses, said Maj. Larry Dillard, the program manager. Philadelphia has been a particularly difficult area for recruitment.

Screw that. We’re gonna go lazer taggin’ with the Black Keys guys instead.

Strange Times

VERSUS

You know how all the haters are always saying Arthur only has love for so-called New Weird American Freak Folk or whatever, despite the fact that Delia & Gavin, Spiritualized, Sunn O))) and MIA (and Sparks, Diamanda Galas and Wino while we’re on the topic – ed.)have graced our covers and we also write tons of stuff about everything from Flying Lotus to classic country to contemporary African blues nomads?

Well as a matter of weird fact your humble contributing editor was once the editor of a rap magazine, and so respected a critic of electronic music as to be quoted by the Wikipedia on the subject of minimal techno’s links to classical minimalism*. If you have even a passing fancy for minimal techno, ambient electronic music or classical minimalist composition (or if you’re curious about some of those German names that keep popping up in the liner notes of Animal Collective albums), we would like to direct your attention to two timely items of interest.

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The dude taught George Harrsion how to play slide guitar, wrote the song “Superstar”–made famous by the Carpenters (and later covered by Sonic Youth) — and created some of the warmest “Sunday mornin’ comin’ down”-music with his then-wife Bonnie Bramley and a chorus of pals that included Rita Coolidge, Gram Parsons and Duane and Greg Allman. Delaney died in Los Angeles on December 27. Here’s the New York Times obituary. And here’s a Delaney mixtape tribute from our pal Jody over at When You Awake.

The first few minutes of “The Coconut Revolution” documentary…

This is an incredible modern-day story of a native people’s victory over Western globalization. Sick of seeing their environment ruined and their people exploited by the Panguna Mine, the Pacific island of Bougainville rose up against the giant mining corporation, Rio Tinto Zinc. The newly formed Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) began fighting with bows and arrows and sticks and stones against a heavily armed adversary. In an attempt to put down the rebellion the Papua New Guinean Army swiftly established a gunboat blockade around the island, backed by Australian Military personnel and equipment. With no shipments allowed in or out of the island, the People of Bougainville learned to become self-dependent and self-sustained.

The 52-minute documentary is viewable here:
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=9073157933630784238