2009 gets off to a crappy start with the discovery of Ron Asheton, dead in his home on Jan. 6th. If you’ve come across this entry from a google search, then you’re already aware of Ron’s importance in the world of rock-n-roll. If you’ve stumbled across this post & are not familiar with Ron Asheton – I’ll keep it brief.

Ron Asheton had a style & tone that challenged the established guitar world in the late 60′s. He created a sound that would bore through you and electrify your senses. It was down dirty & huge … and it probably frightened a fair amount of the general public.

Iggy gets most of the attention when The Stooges are referred to, but without Ron’s monstrous guitar & his brother Scott’s thundering drums, as well as Dave Alexander’s driving bass … The Stooges would have been just another garage band.

Although too young to see them in the late 60′s/70′s, I’ve seen 2 of the shows with Mike Watt on bass … and I’m saddened that I won’t be seeing any more.

Between the Stooges demise & the re-union, Ron was in Destroy All Monsters & Dark Carnival (both w/ Niagara), The New Order (no not the Blue Monday one), New Race (w/ Radio Birdman & MC5 members) and The Empty Set. And in the mid-90′s he was in a wonderfully “B” horror movie called Mosquito (w/ Gunnar “Leatherface” Hansen from The Texasa Chainsaw Massacre).

Here’s one of my favorite Stooges clips, from the television broadcast of The Cincinnati Pop Festival in 1970.