Pop Goes the Weasel

To widen the market and to narrow the competition is always the interest of the dealers.

Adam Smith (1723 - 1790)

The Wealth of Nations
Book I Chapter XI

8/29/2006


I am currently reading a book aptly titled Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. The book tells the story of the Punk Era through a series of interviews with the performers, managers, producers, roadies and fans who were actually there. The portrait that is painted is both depraved and beautiful, and since it is a testimonial, wildly subjective…which makes it a must read if you have any interest in the history of Rock and Roll. I don’t really want to get into the whole thing right now because my thoughts and comments on the over 400 pages of direct quotes probably deserves a post of its own. Let me just say that I think it is really good.

The only reason why I mention it is because I was tad surprised, if that’s the right word, to find out how central a figure Iggy Pop was to that whole scene. I, of course, have heard of him before but I only really knew two of his songs off the top of my head, “Lust for Life” which was in Trainspotting and “Candy” a duet with Kate Pierson of the B52s in the 1980s which was well after the time period in question. (I also was aware he wrote “China Girl” which was a smash hit for David Bowie in 1983) I also knew that he was pretty much a junkie and he would roll around on glass. Other than that, I didn’t know much about him.

Oh yeah. I also remember seeing a porno magazine back in the day (Maybe Playboy or Penthouse) which had a black and white photo of him standing on a stage singing into a mike with his draws down and some fan’s hand reaching up out of the crowd and grabbing his cock.

Anyway, in the book, several of “the witnesses” continuously refer to the Iggy and the Stooges album Raw Power (1973) as an extremely important disc for both its intensity and its influence. As I turned the pages, and the more this LP was mentioned, the more embarrassed I became because I never even heard of it. So the other day at lunch, I decided to take a trip down to the local CD shop and pick up a copy, if anything, just to see what the hell these people all went ga-ga over.

Unfortunately, J&R didn’t have it. They had a bunch of other Iggy Pop CDs so I decided to pick one and give it a try. As I scanned the titles, I became apprehensive. I wanted to buy a record from the early seventies and a lot of the cases had copyrights in the 1990s and, at this point, I didn’t want anything, relatively, newer. Since I had no idea about his discography except for that one album name I decided to play it safe and get some kind of compilation because I wasn’t going to leave there empty-handed.

At that point I found one called “Iggy Pop – The Hits.” Confusing, because I didn’t think he had any, so I took a quick look at the songs and didn’t recognize a one except for “Lust for Life.” The price was seven bucks so I figured I had nothing to lose and bought it. Besides I thought the cover looked pretty cool:

The Front Cover

So I get back to my cube and break open the goodies. Since I was interested in the recording and release dates of each individual song and what albums they originally appeared, I immediately turned to the liner notes. Most compilations have that information. But as soon as I opened the case a card falls out, obviously an advertisement from the manufacturer which, in this case, is BMG. It is one of those, “since you bought this maybe you would like to buy these other things we’re selling,” type of come-ons. I was just about to throw it in the trash when something on it caught my eye:

Homogeneous Society

Then I turn this flimsy little card over and I see that there is more...

"Coming Soon...Dolly Parton"
Ridiculous

Rick Astley? Rick Springfield? Evelyn “Champagne” King?

Ace of fucking Base?

Is BMG kidding? Do they think anyone buying an Iggy Pop record would be remotely interested in purchasing a “greatest hits” collection from any of these “artists”? Who knows, maybe someone would, diversity is a good thing. But, in a larger sense, the two types of music seem to me completely incompatible.

Now I am not defending Iggy because, as I mentioned before, I don’t really know much of his music. I did listen to the album and thought there were some good things on it. The one thing that did come through in my preliminary listening was the passion. The songs sound like there is an attempt to express something. They do not feel contrived. So I will definitely buy Raw Power to further clarify my thoughts on the subject. In other words, the jury is still out.

The same can not be said about Henry Mancini or Neil Sedaka. Now, you may like “Theme from Peter Gunn” or “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” but, really, we are talking about two completely different experiences and, I find, if you are happy with the one type, for the most part, you are totally turned off by the other.

The Back Cover
"I saw the sign..."

At my place of employment we are allowed headphones so it gives me a chance to play CDs all day. I remember one time listening to the original Broadway cast recording of Evita (1979) followed directly by Lou Reed’s Transformer (1972). One was perfectly fine. It had catchy tunes, bouncy at times, dramatic at others. But the other one was actually moving.

Interested by my emotional reactions to these discs, I turned to my partner in filing and made, what I thought, was a very interesting observation:

Me: You know, Mandy Patinkin (Che) has a really great technical voice. He can hit all the notes in any range, any tone, any octave and seems to have total control of his voice. Lou Reed, on the other hand, has extremely limited vocal ability yet is one thousand times more effective.

Him: Hey, that’s not fair. You’re comparing apples and oranges.

Me: Yeah, I know. But it’s just that I find the oranges so much more satisfying.

I would put Steve Perry from Journey in the Patinkin category as well.

And before you say “lighten up” or anything in that vein, I want to set you straight pal. I’m going to give you a piece of my mind right now. All I’m going to say is…

Woh...wait a damn second! Hold the phone!

Sorry...I got to go.

Dan Fogelberg just came on my radio.

"Longer than...
There've been fishes in the ocean"

Make war no more.
Larry