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Iggy and the Stooges - Live in Detroit | |
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Man, I tell ya…well, DVDs didn’t
exist back then, but if you woulda handed a live Stooges video over
to me and my lunatic teen Sleaze friends 20 years ago, we woulda
fought over it like mangy curs to a scrap of beef. For most of us, the
Stooges were but a legend, really. We had the rekkids, we saw the
pictures, listened to our buddy’s cool drug-uncle wax nostalgically about
seeing them in the flesh, but fuck, by the time I saw Ig
live, he was dragging Steve Jones and Andy McCoy around,
and playing flash metal. Which was boss
and all, but it wasn’t the goddamn STOOGES. |
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| Amazingly, it
took ‘til 2003 before they had the brilliant idea to actually start
playing together again, even tho people have been requesting such an event
from Iggy since about 6 hours after they initially broke up in
1974, or '75, or whenever it was. But here’s the thing, man. Every beloved
band that are no more get badgered about ‘getting back together’ all the
time, but what people REALLY want is not a reunion of formerly taut
young badasses gone bald and flabby and slow, they want the OLD
(i.e. YOUNG) band back. Which is, of course, impossible,
unless you have a time machine, which you do not. And although Ig
himself is exactly the same ball of fire and flame and skin and bones he
ever was, only wrinkly, his old band- the ones that actually made it to
the party- aren’t quite as preserved as ol’ Ig. So, ya know,
prepare yourself for the reality of the situation- the Stooges in
2003 are a buncha creaky cats in their 50’s. Significantly, this DVD was
released by Creem magazine, another buncha creaky cats (in their
30’s, which, just ask ME, is still pretty old for rock n’ roll),
who are also eyeing the elusive comeback. So, ya know, it’s a real
situation we’ve got on our hands. Can our former heroes- both literary and
supersonic- live up to our idealized visions of what they once were?
Of course they can, man. C’mon, it’s Iggy fuckin’ Pop! The meat o’ the DVD is from a hometown show in Detroit. The Asheton bros are both on deck- Ron looking cheeseburger-y but happy, Rock Action lookin’ like he’s got shoulders fulla arthritis and someplace to be in an hour, but fuck, it’s them! It’s the Asheton brothers! Dave Alexander is either dead or disinterested, cuz he’s not onstage- filling in on bass is almost-as-legendary punk rocker Mike Watt (Minutemen/firehose), and there’s some other cat who skronks the sax on “1970” and the ‘new’ Stooges tune “Skull Ring” (which sounds like an American Caesar out-take, but whatever). The band, the fuckin’ Stooges rip through the aforementioned, plus plenty of other classics- “Dog”, “Loose”, “1969”, and a mayhem-baiting “No Fun”, where half the audience is onstage with the band! There’s like, 45 year old rock n’ roll burnouts pig-piling on Ig, and some freaky hippy dude trying to have a fucking conversation with Ron while he’s trying to play. It’s crazy. Anyway, it’s a pretty bitchin’ performance, even if the brothers don’t move ONCE the whole time (Scott manages to smoke and drum at the same time, tho, which is pretty cool), and if you close your eyes, it doesn’t even sound like they’re playing songs that they wrote before I was even born. The Stooges are goddamn timeless, man. Elsewhere on the DVD, there’s a live in-store show from Tower Records (I think) in NYC, where Scott plays cardboard boxes ‘cuz he got no drums, but even though it’s cool to hear Ig rap about growing up Stooge and all, it really does sound AWFUL. That might be charming to you, I dunno, but it’s an unholy racket to me. They also have a bit where they sub-title the songs so you can sing along, although I don’t think I even know anybody who doesn’t know the words already, ‘cept maybe for my mom, and even she could pick up “I Feel Alright!” without visual aids. Oh, and there's a slide-show with Creem covers featuring Iggy and/or the Stooges. I know, I know… “No vintage footage?!” Nope. But that shit is scarce, daddy-o. Yer lucky ya got what ya got- and keep in mind, this is no Iron Maiden kinda production, either- there’s a cuppla cameras, but both operators seem to have frequent lapses in judgment, as they veer off into darkness or blur or bleed red every few minutes. Doesn’t matter, tho. All that matters is that this is a Stooges DVD, and ya gotta have it. And if you have kids, or like, a girlfriend/wife that don't know "Funhouse" from "No Fun", you gotta make THEM watch it too. Rock and Roll used to be REAL, and raw, and bloody, and true. This is what it sounded like. | |
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The 2,456,978th sexiest man in rock n' roll. |
No Fun? Looks like fun to me, Jack. |
| -Sleazegrinder _________________________________________________________________________ | |
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