|
Iggy Pop has a lot to answer for -- punk rock, the garage revival, those Carnival Cruise ads and, most recently, the tremendous surge in rock band reunions. Yes, you can now see bands that originally took inspiration from the Stooges, themselves greying and balding, flailing away at their greatest hits again. And it's at least partly Iggy's doing, no doubt about it.
Still, when we count up the pluses and minuses in some hipster approximation of St. Peter's calculation, we're going to have to wave Mr. Ostertag through. Three great Stooges albums, Lust for Life, even last year's Skull Ring count for a lot. Heck, we'd probably let him into heaven on the basis of "I Wanna Be Your Dog" alone. So the fact that Iggy and the Stooges just happened to play one of the best concerts of last year -- the post-blackout, Motor City at the DTE Energy Music Theater -- is just gravy. You're cool, man, go get a harp.
Iggy & the Stooges Live in Detroit, shot on grainy video from handheld cameras with no additional lighting, captures the intensity of the Stooges' hometown reunion show. It's not a slick production. Any time Iggy ventures out into the crowd, we lose him in shadows. We see band members from one angle only, and for a long, slightly scary interval during "No Fun" (more about this later), we don't see them at all. Still, if you never thought you'd hear the Stooges tear through "Loose" or "1969" or, especially, "I Wanna Be Your Dog" again, if you thought no one over 40 could possibly perform these songs without embarrassing himself, if you missed the handful of shows and are still kicking yourself, you need this DVD.
Three of the four young men on the cover of 1969's The Stooges are back together here, plus Mike Watt on bass. They're all a bit weathered -- Scott Asheton monolithic and expressionless on the drums, Ron heavier but still coaxing the wail out of "1969", and Iggy, craggy but incredibly fit, humping the amps, surfing the crowd, pants remaining on but only by a millimeter, and Mackaye, out in the second half of the show, piling on the sax riffs from Funhouse. They're all recognizably middle-aged or more, and yet there is never a moment when the show devolves into self-parody. Iggy is exactly who he is, a magnetic and primal force of nature, as much now at 56 as he was at "22 with nothing to do."
There's a lot of talk about how "dangerous" rock -- and particularly punk rock -- can be, and mostly it's just that, talk. I once saw a Ramones show where stage divers were wrestled off the stage by Harley types and were never seen again, but that's rare. At one point during "No Fun", a heavy, dark-haired guy who lumbers up on stage seems destined for the same type of treatment. The bouncers are looming, about to take the guy out, but Iggy, who seems to need crowd reaction the way that you or I need oxygen, says, "Let him dance." Soon there's a whole scrum of people up there with him, dancing, trying to shake his hand, attempting to engage the laconic Ron Asheton in conversation (he's still playing at the time). It's mostly a positive thing, but with an undercurrent of menace. You can see it going from a love-fest to a riot in about 60 seconds. There's genuine fear in the security people's eyes when Iggy falls to his knees, disappearing into the crowd, and as for Asheton, he takes one uneasy glance at the whole thing and steps way back. You don't see him again until the crowd clears.
The main course here is the concert footage -- sometimes annoying technically, but still conveying the show's energy. There's some other good stuff, too, like Mike Watt's blow-by-blow description of the show, set to photos. An in-store appearance in NYC delivers the same set in a more stripped down version -- Watt's not there, and Scott Asheton drums on an empty suitcase. You can't see much in this section, though, shot from the extreme right hand side of the makeshift stage and above people's heads. Still, the banter is pretty entertaining, especially where Iggy explains that "Down on the Street" was inspired by an acid trip and "Loose" has something to do with Beowulf.
This DVD is obviously no substitute for seeing The Stooges, and the production values are almost non-existent. Still, for a taste of the most elemental kind of punk rock, undiminished by age and uninflected with irony, you could do far worse than Iggy and the Stooges Live in Detroit.
-- Jennifer Kelly
|
