Honestly? I'm not sure there's a contest here if we're basing the reward off of musical offerings. The Stooges win hands down. The Mc5 have a couple of great songs but the majority of tracks from their first two albums remind me of Van Morrison's later years. They just don't hold up to the ferocity of Kick Out the Jams or Teenage Lust. The Stooges on the other hand have three magical albums and a crazy ammount of amazing bonus tracks floating around in comps and, at least in my encounters, have inspired a great deal more musicians. Fun House as a whole is one of my favorite albums ever and spans a little-traversed gap between hallucinatory dreamscapes and fucking crazed sonic attack. Cool factor? While releasing one of the first popularish rock albums to contain the word Motherfucker is certainly cool, it doesn't beat lacerating yourself with a broken bottle on stage or smearing yourself with peanut butter an audience member happens to give you after you've jumped offstage and fought through bouncers. While I certainly enjoy the MC5 and I have nothing against those who might believe strongly in the opposite side of this argument, in my world there is no contest that the Stooges come out on top. To quote Ty Segall, "The Stooges are fucking mysterious!" As far as a fight goes though? That one goes to the MC5 - there's more of them, they're beefier, and The Stooges were constantly fucked up on heroin.
