James Newell Osterberg, aka Iggy Pop was born this day in 1947.
The first time I heard Iggy Pop was in high school.
I picked up the newest Hit Parader (I think Motley Crue were on the cover), and in it, they had a list of the 100 greatest hard rock/metal/punk albums of all time, and I saw this name "Iggy Pop". I thought Hmmm. Being a unabashed Metal freak at the time, I vowed to get as many of these records as I could.
Later on, I read in an interview W. Axl Rose talking about The Stooges and Iggy, and he mentioned The Stooges first record. You see, being 12 or 13 in Southeastern Indiana meant anything that could not be bought at KMART could not be bought.
Finally, on a trip to the now long gone black light poster long haired cigarette clouded back patch babylon known as Globe Records in the Western Hills Plaza (where my Dad bought his records and, where, incidentally, I saw my first blue mohican-wwwwooowww), I struck paydirt-Sort of. I bought "Appetite for Destruction", I am proud to say, 6 days after its release. Also, I think, I bought "Peace Sells, But Who's Buying", but that's for another time... Up until that point, I had only read about GNR and their furious reputation in, well Hit Parader, and RIP, when I could lay my hands on a copy. What a revelation. So unbelievably real and dirty, taking the best part of the Stones and kicking it up to 11. I loved it so much, I wore out the tape in 2 months.
My thinking went something like this: "If these guys kick so much ass, and they are telling me that these other dudes kick ass...I GOTTA get my hands on that shit post haste". So everytime a member of Guns N Roses namechecked someone in an interview, I'd go find the tape-usually at Globe, but sometimes at a little skate shop in Harrison that also sold tapes. Alice Cooper...check. Aerosmith...Check. Rolling Stones...my dad and uncle were big fans, so I had that already...but Iggy was hard to come by. I grabbed "Instinct" on one of these excursions, and liked the song "Cold Metal", but wondered what the hubbub was all about.
Then I saw Iggy on Letterman, and thought "What the...".
Finally, I had reached an age where I knew folks who were old enough to drive, and weren't ashamed to be seen with my geek ass in public, and we found our way to Wizard's on the corner of Vine and Daniels (where I saw alot more Mohicans). Jackpot. First two Stooges records, on tape, no less. $12 -the best I ever spent. I got them home, closed my bedroom door, and sat in my sanctum of Iron Maiden posters, KISS in Makeup pictures (I used to buy magazines just for KISS in makeup pics) and I think, a Samantha Fox poster, and put the tape in the deck. The wah wah in the opening of "1969" oozed out of the speakers...
BOOM! Hiroshima...
My geneology of GNR came to an abrupt end-these fuckers were realer than GNR, realer than Metal: More deranged, dangerous, out of control. Revelation is the nearest word I can use to describe it, but that doesn't even come close. My mind exploded, and when it was reconstituted, I was a different person-very close to the acid revelations that would come a couple of years later. The world was different, endless possibility. Metal was despair, but despair that, with the exception of Sabbath and a few others, I really didn't relate to. I didn't know anything about foreign policy, aside from thermonuclear anxiety, and, in Indiana, politics constituted whether you were for Reagan or really for Reagan. Nor did I know anything about having a good time or being a rich rock star fucking everything that moved and hoovering up large amounts of chemical enhancements. Couldn't relate one bit-didn't know how to have a goodtime, and drugs and booze? Rrriiighhttt. Shit, I had just really given up on D &D.
Nooow, The Stooges and Iggy were about alienation, which I did know: Used and abused, debased and defaced, I just wanna get laid but I can't talk to anyone long enough to fuck 'em. Ahh, yeah, I knew that.
Previous to this, I had sort of tried to fit in: Yeah I had my Iron Maiden shirt or whatever, and a mullet, because that's as close as Mom would let me get to hair, but I said fuck all that, grew my hair, and gave up trying to fit in, because I never would anyway. Iggy played constantly in my 87 red escort, which ran on 2 cylinders, the other two pumping altenately water or 35%. Driving around my dirty old town, "Ann" or "Loose" blaring from factory speakers...yeah. FUCK YEAH. The geneology of this began. I turned some other folks on, who, in turn, turned me on to other earth shattering things: My brother turned my on to The Velvet Underground, Dan from Mallory turned me on to Bowie and Sonic Youth, etc. etc. etc.
In my Punk years, I searched for the most obnoxious shit I could find, but Iggy and the Stooges never left me. I dreamed of seeing Iggy, but never got to.
Fast Forward 14 years.
I made two trips to Detroit to see the reunited Stooges at the venue formerly known as Pine Knob: The first was defeat: En route, while listening to CD's, we were unaware that we were driving into the largest blackout in US history, and that the show was cancelled. We did, however, say "Hello" to Thurston Moore in the Holiday Inn Parking Lot, as we disembarked for Flint in such of electricity and Cold Beer.
The Second, two weeks later, we made it. Boom-Hiroshima all over again. Two songs in, as I stood, unblinking and fixed, watching him do his thing, vibrating all over like the first time I did acid. I was wearing a Detroit Sucks T Shirt we had made after our iniatial defeat... I ripped the shirt from my body, threw it into the crowd, and stood there, shaking, like I was gonna come. Stone sober. All over again.
Later that year, after a Bengal's game, my girlfriend hooked us up, with her considerable charms, with passes to see Iggy at Jillian's. Amazing.
It's funny, really. Everytime I see the movie SLC PUNK!, I laugh. At the end, when Stevo flashes back to the genesis of his punk identity, we see a kid listening to Rush, D&D books scattered around, talking about getting beaten up at parties, and I know that kid. When Bob puts the punk tape in the deck, I know that feeling. It was the same for me...except, if it were portrayed on film, my head would've exploded.
Anyway, Happy Birthday, Iggy. Keep it coming.
Read Lester Bang's take here.
Nice piece of writing - Thompsonesque.
ReplyDeleteprior comment mine... blogger's cgi doesn't like my smartphone.
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I wonder if we ever bumped into each other at Wizards way back when.
ReplyDeleteI used to go there all the time. My brother came once and was stunned at the effort everyone put into the "homogenous alternative/punk look". A hell of a lot more blue mohawks, indeed.
ReplyDeleteNow that I think about it, where's the REAL alternative dress now? Surely there's a craving for it.
ReplyDelete"Punk" is just a uniform now that everyone has tattoos and most have exotic piercings. No mere hairstyle is original or unique.
It would have been interesting to be part of that scene in the 60's when it was a shock, or the 70's before the punk uniform had been commercialized. I wasn't alive until the last year of the 60's, and was aware of punk in the 70's only because my older sister was into the scene, but she was more into glam-punk than homeless chic.
By the time I was going to punk shows at the Jockey Club and Sudsy's in the mid-80's, it was already commodified and branded.
Real individuality would look like a stroll through the Burning Man festival, or like Bowie's early years. Why aren't we seeing more of that? I'd love to be out at a bar and see someone come through looking like Blue Man Group, but seldom do. I'd like to see a wave of real alternative style spring up, and am perplexed as to why it doesn't happen anywhere but in the candy-raver subculture and science fiction conventions.
Coolhunting makes youth movements impossible. They market everything.
ReplyDeleteThat's the truth. When everything's been commodified, nothing can be genuine.
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