Iggy Pop, Roadkill Rising . . . The Bootleg Collection: 1977 – 2009

By Less Lee Moore

Who is the target audience for Roadkill Rising, Shout! Factory‘s four-disc “official” Iggy Pop bootleg collection? Fans get excited about concert albums; diehards and lifers hoard bootlegs like those suffering from OCD. Certainly the latter will be thrilled by the improved quality of these remastered bootlegs.

However, trying to determine if Roadkill Rising will appeal to non-Iggy Pop fans is an exercise in futility. I can’t imagine not being a fan of Iggy Pop so I am incapable of thinking like one.

I will admit to considerable gaps in my Iggy Pop knowledge, such as albums I don’t have or have barely heard. What I know, though, I know well and love fiercely.

And while I may not be the most qualified Iggy Pop fan out there, at least I have the good sense not to begin my review saying, “I’ve never understood the cult of Iggy.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

There have always been and will always be Iggy devotees and haters, those who beg him to “return to form” or complain that he hasn’t “evolved;” the ones who can’t see the Iggy Pop for the Stooges and those who welcome his often-unexpected changes in sound and style; the ones who resent David Bowie’s influence or consider him a savior.

Back in the day, in the song “Raw Power,” Iggy sang, Everybody’s always tryin’ to tell me what to do/Don’t you try to tell me what to do. This is, perhaps shockingly, still completely true and valid. His sincerity and passion often transform into nihilism, cynicism, and self-loathing. He goes to the dark places that we see in ourselves, perhaps so we don’t have to, as we live vicariously through him.

Yet Iggy Pop is not a one-size-fits-all kind of guy: he’s a punk, a self-destroyer, a charmer, a seducer, a goofball, a crooner, a pervert and a pretty boy. . . One thing he isn’t is stupid; after all, who would alter the lyrics of “Louie Louie” to describe being “as bent as Dostoevsky”?

And that is why he is still essential after four decades. It’s why Roadkill Rising is essential for the fans, the diehards, the lifers, and everyone in between.

Each disc of Roadkill Rising revisits a different decade. Disc One opens with incredible renditions of “Raw Power,” “1969,” and “Funtime,” featuring David Bowie on vocals and guitar. There is also a version of “I Need Somebody” so revelatory it’s like hearing it for the first time. All the ’77 selections are bolstered by Hunt Sales’ amazing prowess on bass.

When touring for Lust For Life and The Idiot (both released in 1977), Iggy was playing venues with capacities between three- and four-thousand; by 1979’s New Values tour, some venues, like the Old Waldorf in San Francisco, held only 600.

Still, let’s not judge a man by his venues. There are astoundingly good performances here. The impeccable triumvirate of “Turn Blue,” “Gimme Danger,” and “Tonight” (which far exceeds Bowie’s 1984 rendition) is followed by a more sonically-challenging set of three songs from San Diego State University, but hearing “Gloria” and the remarkable “Rock Action” (like “Gimme Danger, Part Two”) makes up for it in a huge way.

By1979, Iggy Pop’s touring band consisted of such impressive names as Ivan Kral (Patti Smith), Glen Matlock (Sex Pistols), Brian James (The Damned), and drummer Klaus Kruger. Consequently, the tracks from 1980’s Soldier album—”Knocking ‘Em Down In The City” and “Play It Safe”—sound fantastic, some glorious hybrid between the ’77 albums and 1979’s more New Wave New Values. There’s a nervous energy to the performance of “Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell” and a marvelously screwy cover of The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me,” at the end of which Iggy quips:

“Thank you. It helps. You don’t get no freak show tonight. You get the real thing, like you can’t hear on the radio. That rock and roll on the radio, that’s just like, Polish bar mitzvah or something.”

Disc Two also starts off strong, with “Nightclubbing”, the first of Iggy’s many attempts throughout Roadkill Rising to encourage audience participation. After the non-album track “Puppet World,” he must then dissuade such “participation.”

He attempts a cover of the 1943 song “One For My Baby (And One For The Road)” (covered famously by Sinatra in the ’50s). I say, “attempts” because he has to start over no less than three times due to the insanely annoying audience who are talking, shouting, screaming, and heckling, including yelling out Stooges song titles. (Later, during “Take Care Of Me,” people start chanting, “Iggy Sucks!” so anyone who bemoans the rude concert etiquette of modern fans can bear witness that this kind of behavior has been around a while.)

Iggy “shhhs” the crowd and asks them nicely not only to please let him sing but also to ease back so that no one gets hurt. Eventually, his patience snaps and out flies a genuinely pissed, “Damn it! I told you to shut up!” His vocals sound like he’s resorted to physically approaching the offenders and begging them to be quiet.

The performance, by the way, is among the best on the entire four-disc set, proving that Iggy Pop can really and truly sing.

There’s a considerable gap between the subsequent bizarre performances of the Batman theme and “Louie Louie”/”Hang On Sloopy” in 1981 (Toronto) and the 1987 set from New York’s (now-defunct) Club 1018. So what happened?

It’s no accident that the 1983 North American tour was called “The Breaking Point;” during these few years Iggy’s addictions and erratic behavior were out of control. Between 1984 and the release of 1986’s Blah Blah Blah, he was dealing with said addictions, enjoying married life (to Suchi Asano, in 1985), and working on the aforementioned album.

The history of such behavior could be responsible for the also-erratic venues on this disc, ranging from the 300 capacity Bay Street (in Sag Harbor, NY) to The Channel’s 1,700 (Boston, MA).

Furthermore, Blah Blah Blah is still a fairly controversial album in Iggy Pop’s career. Though it achieved considerable commercial success, it’s often decried as being more “pop” than Iggy; Popshifter writer Emily Carney refers to it as Iggy’s “Girl, I love you” phase.

This could be why older tracks like “I Wanna Be Your Dog” and “Loose” sound good, but feature somewhat-anemic lead guitar from Kevin Armstrong. Yet, “Sister Midnight” and “Some Weird Sin” fit nicely among contemporary album tracks like the title song, “Winners and Losers,” and “Shades,” all of which actually sound better in this live setting. “Shades” in particular stands out, proving that Iggy’s sincerity and passion go a long way towards ameliorating any confusion caused by lyrics about expensive sunglasses, especially when they point to his considerable self-esteem issues.

More insight comes by way of the confessional “High On You,” not surprising given the fact that Iggy Pop had just kicked drugs and alcohol (again) and passed the milestone age of forty.

By the ’90s, represented in Disc Three, Iggy seemed to have recovered some of his credibility. He received quite a bit of exposure due to the Top 40 success of “Candy” (performed on this disc without Kate Pierson of The B-52s). Playing a mix of festivals and small-to-mid-capacity clubs like the Neue Welt in Berlin and the Agora Theatre in France, these songs provide plenty of the trademark Iggy Pop fire.

Included are great versions of “Home” (from Brick By Brick), plus older songs like “Lust For Life,” “TV Eye” (during which he berates someone with, “Come on, you bastard! Rock!), and “The Passenger.” He goes even further back into rock and roll history with a version of Little Richard’s “Rip It Up” (which seems tailor made for him) as well as a revamped version of “Louie Louie,” during which he gives us a bit of a soliloquy, intoning, “. . . in the dark . . . I can tell the fuckin’ truth . . . unto death I swear, in this moment . . . I will do what the fuck I wanna do, I will say what the fuck I wanna say . . . and I’ll never be cool, I’ll never never never be fuckin’ cool.”

There are several selections from 1993’s American Caesar, an album for which Iggy toured extensively and which also provided me with my first opportunity to see him perform (March 16, 1994 at Tipitina’s in New Orleans), my introduction into the nihilistic self-loathing I mentioned earlier. Amazon reviewer Eric E. Weinraub had a similar reaction to mine, saying, “I saw Iggy on this tour at the Warfield [Theater, San Francisco]. His energy and self-abuse never cease to amaze me. Very few artists actually live the torture they sing about. It’s why Iggy continues to be so vital.”

American Caesar is, like every Iggy Pop album, a polarizing one. How anyone with a soul could not be moved by “Fucking Alone” and “Hate,” both delivered with perfection here, is beyond my comprehension. In his intro to the former, Iggy gets rather dark, describing what it’s like when you’re “alone in your room” and “there’s nobody to go, ‘Hey, man! Yeah! Great rock and roll!’ then you know the truth about yourself.” What’s even more amazing is how the audience sings the chorus along with him.

Disc Three ends with Iggy shouting out, “I’m so fucking crazy!” before “No Fun,” which is, ironically, all kinds of fun.

The last disc of Roadkill Rising, comprises the ’00s (or the Aughties, take your pick), starting right after Iggy turned fifty and released yet another polemic album, the quasi-spoken word, jazz-influenced Avenue B, in 1999. Yet, only the first track, “Corruption,” represents this album, although it is killer. Surely I can’t be the only one who has pointed out the remarkable similarity between its main guitar riff and the one from Judas Priest’s “You’ve Got Another Thing Coming.” Regardless, it’s a great riff and “Corruption” is a great song.

Similarly, I don’t understand the hatred from critics and fans for 2001’s Beat ‘Em Up. “Howl,” “Lost,” and “Drink New Blood” are wonderful, but “The Jerk” sounds better here than in the original, with the sarcastic “Oh man, you’re killin’ me” matched perfectly with the great rhythm section of Alex and Whitey Kirst (a.k.a “The Trolls,” along with Pete Marshall and Lloyd “Mooseman” Roberts, who had been murdered in a drive-by shooting in February of that year).

By 2003, Iggy had begun touring with original Stooges Ron and Scott Asheton and sax player Steve Mackay, plus former Mintuemen/fIREHOSE bassist Mike Watt. As such the introduction to “Dirt” seems appropriate: “Well, fuckin’ hello. Bon-fuckin-soir.” It doesn’t hurt that “Dirt” is possibly my favorite Stooges song, so perfect that I don’t know if it’s even possible to ruin it. Here it is sublime.

The 2007 performance of “Down On The Street” is incendiary. Iggy had just turned sixty (!). You can hear the crowd cheering during the instrumental breaks and if you know anything about Iggy Pop, you know he was probably writhing around like a madman.

All of the Stooges songs here—”Real Cool Time,” “Funhouse,” and “Not Right”—sound awesome and seem perfectly at home next to “Skull Ring” (from Iggy’s 2003 solo album of the same name) and “My Idea Of Fun,” from The Weirdness, the 2007 Stooges album with the Ashetons, Mackay, and Watt. Whoever can’t relate to the line, “My idea of fun is killing everyone,” especially when delivered with such faux-dumb wit by Iggy Pop, probably shouldn’t be listening to Iggy or The Stooges . . . or reading this review. (Or Popshifter for that matter.)

There’s a huge shift in tone in the next and final batch of songs from 2009, performed at a French radio station. Ron Asheton died unexpectedly in January 2009 and though Iggy had apparently been thinking of doing the jazzy, cabaret-style tunes from that year’s Préliminaires release before Asheton’s death, the lyrics must have certainly resonated with him on a profoundly personal level.

I certainly never thought I’d hear Iggy Pop perform “Les Feuilles Mortes” (a.k.a. “Autumn Leaves”) a song I love thanks to a haunting, instrumental version from the ’60s or ’70s. And I never thought I’d hear him perform anything with orchestral instruments. Nevertheless, these songs are undeniably compelling, with Iggy’s ragged, world-weary voice wringing every drop of humor and heartache out them.”King Of The Dogs” and “Spanish Coast” are both beautifully performed originals, while “Willow Weep For Me” is a jazz standard.

True to his passionate, provocative nature, the set ends with a somewhat unhinged performance of “Shotgun” where Iggy invites everyone to come up and dance.

Although next year Iggy Pop (or rather James Newell Osterberg, Jr.) is eligible for Medicare, he shows no signs of aging gracefully, of that we can be sure. And for that, we can be grateful.

Roadkill Rising was released by Shout! Factory on May 17. If you order directly from them, you will received a gift with purchase: Iggy Pop – Live At The Old Waldorf: San Francisco – November 27, 1979, a previously unreleased concert CD not available anywhere else (limited to 400 numbered copies).

Sources

Dirt’s Iggy Pop Tradelist
Wikipedia, “Iggy Pop discography”
Paul Trynka, Iggy Pop: Open Up And Bleed (Broadway Books, 2007).