My cousin got us free tickets to the Iggy Pop and the Stooges concert in Tel Aviv last night. I haven't been to a rock concert in twenty years, if you don't count a few local small shows and a John Cale acoustic set in 1993 (and no, I don't count that as a rock concert by any means).
Iggy truly is the energetic performer he's hyped to be but the act left me unsatisfied. I'm glad the other Stooges are finally seeing a good payday after forty years but what's the idea of turning the one-time psycho bomb of Funhouse into a vulgar, narcisstic muscle fest? Here's an idea, Iggy: the more you use the F word, the less it actually means.
Maybe I'm just selfish. It really is okay if James Ostenberg no longer wants to cut himself up onstage and whirl his ding-dong for the girls and boys. I don't pretend it's still 1969 and I could care less since I wasn't there in the first place. And it's fine by me if he's making lots of money and taking care of his buddies on the way. He also made a statement of sorts that I appreciate by not playing any songs from his long solo career and especially not playing anything from the Raw Power album, technically a Stooges album but one with little creative input from the original Stooges.
But while it's selfish to want an Iggy that would never have survived, artistically and physically, had he not evolved, I don't think it's selfish to at least want an Iggy that is till up to making art or at least statements. I prefer - personally, personally - an Iggy Pop that acknowledges that the past is truly the past without parodying it.
At the end of day, who cares? I really to the show for Mike Watt of the Minutemen (subbing for the late Dave Alexander on bass), a band that still means more to me than the Stooges ever did.
Iggy truly is the energetic performer he's hyped to be but the act left me unsatisfied. I'm glad the other Stooges are finally seeing a good payday after forty years but what's the idea of turning the one-time psycho bomb of Funhouse into a vulgar, narcisstic muscle fest? Here's an idea, Iggy: the more you use the F word, the less it actually means.
Maybe I'm just selfish. It really is okay if James Ostenberg no longer wants to cut himself up onstage and whirl his ding-dong for the girls and boys. I don't pretend it's still 1969 and I could care less since I wasn't there in the first place. And it's fine by me if he's making lots of money and taking care of his buddies on the way. He also made a statement of sorts that I appreciate by not playing any songs from his long solo career and especially not playing anything from the Raw Power album, technically a Stooges album but one with little creative input from the original Stooges.
But while it's selfish to want an Iggy that would never have survived, artistically and physically, had he not evolved, I don't think it's selfish to at least want an Iggy that is till up to making art or at least statements. I prefer - personally, personally - an Iggy Pop that acknowledges that the past is truly the past without parodying it.
At the end of day, who cares? I really to the show for Mike Watt of the Minutemen (subbing for the late Dave Alexander on bass), a band that still means more to me than the Stooges ever did.
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