Iggy Pop: Best Rock Star Ever.

Funny, blindingly smart, deeply flawed, funnier than shit, able to rock tall buildings in a single bound.

Iggy is no pussy. Iggy is as at home with Brecht, Porter and Lotte Lenya as he is with th' Stooges and MC5 and all them. I think Iggy and the Stooges' first tour was opening for the Mothers but I could be wrong. Iggy conceived of The Stooges and his own persona in the library at the U of Mich. The shirtless thing comes from reading about ancient Egypt and seeing pictures of the pharaohs who are always shirtless. He was like "I can do that".

It always seems as if our most left-field fucked-up awesome entertainers aren't left-field by design. It's just what comes out. A lot of the time these guys are just trying to write a good pop song but have the ability to let their nuttiness come through.

Iggy and Nico were banging for a while there in the early 70's and she lived with him at the Stooges house in Ann Arbor or Detroit or wherever it was for like a month. How would that be for a reality show? Iggy and Nico. Whoever does an eightball of molassas-ey brown heroin first gets voted off the planet.

Stuff like that happened back then.

I love how Iggy moves on stage. There's some great Who footage (Live At Leeds?) where Townshend is doing these huge windmills but with an exaggerated ass-shaking kind of thing that is fuckin' hilarious. Iggy reminds me of that. He always moves like he's going to go down any second, as if he's fucking with gravity. The feet-together-both-hands-on-the-mic thing. Is he doing that in the picture? i can't remember. i'll get one of him like that if he isn't. It's actually that kind of iconic image of him. When he dies they'll embalm him like that and have him at the Hard Rock in Hollywood.

Anyway, what a funny guy and a great protopunk. You can almost forgive him for selling "Lust For Life" to the Bangkok Sex Getaway Cruise Line but christ, you know those guys sold those songs hook line and sinker for rent and smack money in 1971. That's how it works.

When I was in San Diego and LA it was classic because the running joke was the god damn Sony Publishing Deal. Every band that could get a Tuesday night at Spaceland had a publishing deal with Sony, where they gave them 5 G's and put them on the shelf. Their thinking obviously was that if they had every band in LA in their pocket, eventually someone or another would make a quick mil for them and they'd recoup.

Fucking guys.

I was at a studio in Redondo Beach once in 98 when Snoop was there doing a guest thing for our label mate Silk-E Fyne. Oooh, yeah. Guy was fucking terrifying. He wanted NOTHING to do with my ass or my time. And the weed smoke was like a Cheech and Chong movie. Unreal. Of course, our label head was totally intolerant of any kind of behavior like that on our part but hey, we ain't the Dizzog. Silk-E-Fyne, hee hee.

You notice how Mr. Fyne has dominated the hip hop and now neo-soul charts for the last several years.

(For those of you who don't watch the charts that's sarcasm).

Remember in like '97-'98 where every hip hop label had like an official white rock band? Like them awful Danzig bands. That's what we were. Fucking classic. But they tried to market us like hip hop and That's When I Knew It Was Over. What a bad move anyone could tell you that would be. Man, this shit made Spinal Tap look like The Last fucking Waltz. Oh, gracious and good arsenic. Oh, my aching Nibelungen. Oh, my large, crestfallen Wheatie processor.

Oh, Christ. Look, can we just get up tomorrow and go about our business and just try to remember that Iggy Pop is in the world and there's still hope? Look, I know it seems bleak but we've still got Iggy and we've still got Bowie and Townshend kind of, and we've got Mike Kennealy and them. Still got that Patti Smith. She's as good as ever, fuck sake. Talk Talk is reuniting in the wake of the No Doubt smash version of "It's My Life" (just kidding- fuck Talk Talk. Those guys are flamers. Those guys are like the Priscilla Queen of The Desert version of rock and roll.

Those guys would go on tour and sob every night for home. Fucking Talk Talk. Jesus. What a mistake THAT shit was. That shit would bring out the homophobe in ANYBODY. Fuckin' A.

Ha ha ha ha. I'm just kidding. Talk Talk was fine. The economy of music is not such that I can afford to ridicule an essentially deserving-to-exist band. I liked the record with all the stuff on it, too. And that they disintegrated in the studio from stress and drugs trying to record their magnum opus. That's tits right there. yes, sir.

That's how a band is supposed to come apart. Like th' Black Crowes.

Speaking of which- Christ. We've gotta get some of our people in there. We've gotta get ourselves deployed. Oh, sweet mary sister of Terence. We've gotta bring it up the god damn beach, people. Just a few more feet. Get that Bagalor up here, I'm blowing the god damn fence. Oh, Criminy. Uhhh glub blug. I have a herniated hernia. Oh, my god damn crispospiliac hurts. Booo hoo. Truly time to make a stand you first. Aaalll my shrapnel scars from Anzio are fucking with me. Bleeeargh. Oh, it's the fuckin' humidity. Settles into my bayonet wound from An-Teat-Am. God damn. Spare the rod and spoil the ammunition, my cuntrymaen. Ah, that ball I took at Lexington is aching me something unreal. Oh, my god damn damn it sona bitch poop. Oh, heck. Heck.

TIME/WARNER

DISNEYLAND

IGGY POP APPEARS COURTESTY OF SOME GOD DAMN RECORDS OR OTHER

STARBUCKS.