"As interesting an underground career Mackay has lead, what's he's doing now with the Radon Ensemble is the most mindblowing...they exude a future blowing energy such fringe-genre music can readily use...Tripping and metascoping sax jowl action..."
-from Bull Tounge by Thurston Moore and Byron Coley

"I'm so glad they brought him aboard. Steve's a great guy and 'hoots and honks' like a motherfucker!"
-Mike Watt on the Stooges reunion line-up

from Creative Loafing-Atlanta, GA:
Michigan and Arcturus cd
Saxophone player Steve MacKay has played a crucial role in the secret history of American underground music. Listen to Funhouse by the Stooges and his manic skronk and wail is there with blistering resonance. The Violent Femmes, Mike Watt and J. Mascis all have called upon his stormy lungs. Rather than rest on his laurels, MacKay’s ever-mutating Radon Ensemble traverses gut-punching swells of jazz, noise and improvisation. Michigan and Arcturus cycles through nearly a dozen players, capturing turbulent and baroque instability. Fuzzed-out recording qualities add grit to an already visceral drive in “The Moment Is Sinking, pt. 1” and “Oirt Rewop,” illustrating the real-time spontaneity summoned during these sessions. Sound levels in “Los Altos Blues” shred the red line into ribbons, trying desperately to contain a brutal balance of drone and melody. It’s the imperfections that make these songs perfect.
4 Stars

Terrascope Mackay interview
http://www.terrascope.co.uk/MyBackPages/Steve%20Mackay.pdf
Extenisve interview with Tony Sanders for the famed UK magazine Ptolemic Terrascope

From The Washington Post:
There are people out there -- trust me, I'm friends with them -- who claim that "Fun House," the second album by protopunks the Stooges (Iggy Pop's first band), is the greatest album ever. Hey, Jack White has even said as much on more than one occasion. One of the record's most distinctive features was the blasts of saxophone provided by Steve Mackay which helped make it more than just a garage rock record, adding to the claustrophic intensity of the music. After a few years with the Stooges in the early '70s, Mackay collaborated with a cross-section of performers, including vintage alt-rockers Violent Femmes, country rocker Commander Cody and raunchy R&B singer Andre Williams. He'll perform with noise madmen the Radon Ensemble tonight at DC9, with improv/psych locals Kohoutek opening.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/29/AR2006032901956.html
By David Malitzwashingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Thursday, March 30, 2006

Wikipedia Encyclopedia profile of Mackay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_MacKay

"MACKAY RETURNS FROM THE DEAD, TWICE, SORT OF..."
By Steve Wildsmith
of The Daily Times Staff
The first time Steve Mackay heard he was dead was when a friend alerted him to Mick Rock's biography of seminal punk band The Stooges, for whom MacKay had played tenor sax on the influential 1970 album ``Fun House.''
Rock listed Mackay's death from a drug overdose as taking place in 1975, and apparently, the rumor became gospel -- VH1, MTV, Rolling Stone and even the producer for the ``Fun House'' sessions all claimed MacKay was dead.
``Apparently, he mixed me up with Zeke (Zettner), the bass player, because we were both blond, even though Zeke was a foot taller than me,'' Mackay told The Daily Times this week. ``I said, `S---, that's why the phone hasn't been ringing for so long.
``I heard that rumor quite a while ago. There was an article in Mix magazine in 2000 where they did an interview with the producer of `Fun House,' and it was glowing -- but then at the end, he says, `Too bad Steve's dead.'''
Although Mackay's tenure with the Stooges, led by the legendary Iggy Pop, was short-lived, his body of work isn't limited to just that band. He's also known for his work with the Violent Femmes, a post-punk outfit known for the catchy singles ``Blister in the Sun'' and ``Add It Up.'' Which brought the second rumor of his own demise to Mackay's attention about the same time.
``Apparently, some fans of the Femmes in Ann Arbor, Mich., who saw me perform with them in 1984 or '85 decided to Google me, and they found another gentleman who lived in San Francisco [the city MacKay calls home] with the exact same name as mine -- only he was a gay black marathon runner with AIDS,'' MacKay recalled with a chuckle. ``So then the rumor started going around that Steve Mackay had died of AIDS. Well, he did, but not this Steve Mackay.
``The next time I played Ann Arbor, I had all these people saying, `We raised a glass to your memory! At least we know you're alive now!'''
MacKay can laugh about the gruesome rumors, especially now that he's back in the fold as a member of The Stooges as well as a performer with the Violent Femmes. As a tenor saxophone player in the Detroit music scene, he was recruited by Stooges singer Iggy Pop two days before The Stooges left Motor City for Los Angeles to record their landmark ``Fun House'' album.
MacKay stood out from other musicians in that he fused free jazz with rock, having performed with the Detroit avant-rock group Carnal Kitchen. He toured with The Stooges throughout 1970 and 1971 but parted company with the group when it broke up briefly. After the band got back together in 1972, MacKay had moved on and would perform over the years with such groups as the Violent Femmes, Commander Cody and The Moonlighters.
As the 1980s waned, however, he found it harder and harder to make a living as a musician and went to work as an electrician in San Francisco, essentially retiring from performing.
``I needed a day job, and I knew that unless you're going to be in some schlocky cover band, you've got to be in three or four different bands to make a living,'' MacKay said. ``During that time, I was taking the money I made from my day job and putting it into recording. It wasn't much, and it didn't make it outside of San Francisco obviously, but I was still making music.''
As it turned out, the Radon Collective -- a group of performers that had gathered to form their own label and swap members for various projects -- stumbled onto Mackay, quite literally. A friend of Mackay's hooked him up with the Radon band Liquorball, which was, as Mackay puts it, ``rock instruments plus a synthesizer with a big stack of knobs.''
After the gig, MacKay was packing up to go home when he noticed that the next band on the bill -- another Radon project -- included a saxophone player. Mackay asked to sit in, and Mackay suddenly found himself with a new group of touring musicians with whom he could perform.
Thanks to Radon's assistance, Mackay found himself back in the public eye -- much to the surprise of fans and fellow musicians who thought he had died years earlier. In 2003, Pop asked Mackay to join The Stooges for the band's first show in 29 years. Punk godfather Mike Watt sat in on bass, and along with Watt, Mackay has been a touring member of The Stooges ever since.
Needless to say, between his work with the revived Stooges, the Violent Femmes and his various Radon projects, MacKay keeps himself busy.
``With the Stooges, I don't come on until the second half of the set, but when I get on stage I stay, even for the encore when we do `I Wanna Be Your Dog' with a saxophone,'' he said. ``I got to go to South Africa with the Violent Femmes and play with African musicians, I get to do a blues thing with Dick Deluxe, I've been to Portugal -- and I just let them do their thing. I don't try to direct them; I just tell them, `Look, do what you want to do and play what you want to play, and I'll play along with it.'''
This summer, he'll be touring with Radon, sitting in with the Femmes and hitting Iceland, Norway, France, Finland and the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland with The Stooges.
``What an honor for me to play sax there at the jazz festival, huh?'' he said. ``I feel really, really blessed with what's happening right now. I just have to keep this old body in shape so I can make all these gigs that everyone is putting together for me.''
http://www.thedailytimes.com/sited/story/html/234080
***
So here's a man who's been playing music for over 30 years with rock legends and well as underground upstarts. His playing has earned praise from the press and from other musicians like Mike Watt and Thurston Moore. Hell, even Marilyn Manson is an avowed fan who claims to be influenced by Mackay.
I mentioned it must be great to have the best of both worlds...There was a second of silence as he seemed to take it all in. "Oh man, I'm blessed," he said. "I'm truly blessed."
The Focus- Interview by Joe Sample
***
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/entertainment/14228768.htm

REVIEW FROM KNAC:
"As if all that wasn't enough, the band pulled a major ace out of their sleeves in the form of Funhouse sax player Steven Mackay, who sauntered out and blared through the triple threat finale of "1970" into "Funhouse" into "L.A.
Blues." The band became a wall of sound at this point, the sonic equivalent to an out of control Mack truck on the rampage as they barreled through the last third of the set. McKay honked noise, Scott and Watt pounded out
furious jazz-inspired metallic beats as Ron proved to every guitar hero on the bill who invented this shit, and Iggy simply out-danced, out-rocked, out-sang and outshined every act on the bill. Boy, for a bunch of guys in their 50s, The
Stooges sure seemed alive, vital and, dare I say, fucking important here in 2003. We need a band like to return from the dead and prove to these pussy-ass, lily-white crumb-snatchers what real rock n' roll sounds like, what real danger is all about, what a real BAND sounds like.

REVIEW FROM CREEM MAGAZINE:
"Near the end of the hour-long set, the Stooges were joined by Steven Mackay blowing free jazz tenor sax as they launched into "1970." The sax drove the band into frenzy, creating a wailing cacophony of celebration
and self-abandonment that would make John Coltrane and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan smile down from heaven. But it was during the climactic "Fun House" that the band really began to travel the spaceways. Iggy sang "Let me in." Over and over he sang it: "Let me in." Was it some sort of James Brown-esque command to the band? Something along the lines of "Can we take it to the bridge?" Or was it something more? Maybe it really was the latter. Later on, Iggy sang "We're feeling separated." Finally, at the end of the song, he
sang "I am you." He repeated: "I am you. I am you.
"So if Iggy is us, and we're feeling separated, doesn't it make sense that we should let him in? C'mon in, Iggy, bring the brothers and Watt and Steve, too.

BILLBOARD MAGAZINE:

"This show, however, got its musical oomph from his compatriots -- not only Stooges co-founder Ron Asheton's fierce and unpredictable guitar soloing but also his brother Scott's sinewy, propulsive drumming and new Stooge
Mike Watt's ability to weave his bass between the band's other forces of nature. "Fun House" saxophonist Steve MacKay, who played on six of the night's 14 songs, added some extra colors to the dynamic spiral."
--- Gary Graff
http://www.billboard.com/bb/livereviews/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1963703

DETROIT FREE PRESS:

"The tempo was raced -- nerves can do that -- and a show that had been scheduled for 13 songs in 80 minutes turned into 14 songs in just an hour. But not before the Ashetons and a kinetic Iggy, joined by bassist Mike Watt and sax man Steve McKay, had laid out sonic destruction: the primal crunch of "1969," the ecstatic rumble of "Dirt," the pungent bite of "T.V. Eye." With all but one song drawn from the Stooges' first two albums, the show's energy continued to mount as it moved forward -- menacing, dark, noisy and loud."
---Brian Mccollum

http://www.freep.com/entertainment/music/iggy26_20030826.htm

CONCERT WIRE LIVE REVIEW:

"This wasn't music for the weary, weak or timid, but rather rock 'n' roll in all of its purest, most explosive, aggressive, unapologetic glory. This was the reunion of the most influential punk band of all time, Iggy Pop and The Stooges (featuring original members Ron Asheton (guitar), Scott Asheton (drummer) and Steve MacKay (sax), along with Mike Watt (bass); a
reunion that many fans have been eagerly awaiting ever since the band self-destructed thirty years ago from drugs, bad management moves and inner turmoil between members. This was also the first time since 1973 that
The Stooges would all grace the same stage in their hometown of Detroit

http://www.concertlivewire.com/stooges4.htm