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Iggy Pop began as a bad joke that couldn’t last and ended up being the lasting truth-teller that couldn’t be silenced. There aren’t too many ways of accurately describing Iggy’s music that don’t require the use of industrial adjectives like – corrosive, grating, insistent, driving, unabated, and of course, uncompromising. Iggy looks like a guy who would bang a can on his head to hear the sound it made. Far from it. He is a musical genius who can create a symphony out of the noises you normally silence with a pillow over the head. The sounds of the machine age resound in his song, “Cold Metal,” where he nails the brave new world of industrial strength in driving chords that alarm with the same force as a submarine loudspeaker blaring “dive!”
Iggy has an ability to get musicians to bring sounds out of their instruments that they normally do not produce. Take Slash, for example, of Guns & Roses former fame. The cuts he played on Iggy’s “Brick by Brick” album are better than anything he did with G&R.
Iggy’s albums were probably released in small pressings over the years, but as time has gone by, they have continued to be available. It’s a good policy to buy all the Iggy CDs you come across, because then you can share. Some of my favorite songs are on “Tell Me A Story” and “Zombie Birdhouse,” two completely different albums. Tell Me A Story is easy listening by comparison to Zombie, which has long monotonal interludes, with Iggy chanting poetry in a flat tone. But ultimately, you discover all of the gemlike elements of both albums, and love them equally. Because they all carry that essential Iggy spirit.
The essential Iggy spirit is perhaps laid out most plainly in the very commercial and high-toned, but also very deep and genuine “Brick By Brick” album. The album has a powerful populist theme expressed in lines like “people oughta get respect in front, people oughta live where they want, people oughta get along pretty much o-kay.” (Brick-By-Brick, title track.) In “Main Street Eyes,” Iggy urges us to “keep your Main Street eyes, trying to do what’s decent with our lives.” He unpacks our modern pain in a brief soliloquy: “Sometimes, I’m goin’ around, I feel a tension under the surface, like people are just about ready to explode. My head keeps trying to sell me ambition, but in my heart, I want self-respect. There’s a conflict.” He makes us feel all right about being who we are.
But just so you won’t think that’s a boring mission, Iggy will play the clown and reach into his bag of tricks to make you laugh. He won’t let you take it seriously, because that would take all the fun out of it. Listen to Iggy and train to be spontaneous.
Iggy Pop Discography
Album
2005 Penetration
2004 Ultimate Live
2004 Avenue B [Bonus CD]
2003 Skull Ring [Bonus Tracks]
2003 From the Front Row: Live
2003 Skull Ring
2003 Zombie Birdhouse [Bonus CD]
2003 Skull Ring [Clean]
2002 Power & Freedom
2001 Beat Em Up
2000 Live in NYC
2000 Live
2000 New Values [Bonus Tracks]
1999 Sister Midnight
1999 Avenue B
1999 Avenue B [Japan Bonus Tracks]
1998 Party [Bonus Tracks]
1998 Hippodrome - Paris 77
1997 King Biscuit Flower Hour
1997 Heroin Hates You
1996 Naughty Little Doggie
1995 We Are Not Talking About Commercial Shit!
1995 Live at the Channel, Boston MA 1988
1995 Wake Up Suckers
1995 Live at the Ritz NYC (1986)
1993 American Caesar
1990 Brick by Brick
1988 Instinct
1988 Conversation
1986 Blah Blah Blah
1984 Choice Cuts
1982 Zombie Birdhouse
1981 Party
1980 Soldier
1979 New Values
1978 TV Eye (1977 Live)
1977 The Idiot
1977 Lust for Life
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