On the Road Again
Live Reviews:

Iggy Pop
October 30, 1999
The Warehouse, Toronto

Iggy Pop

With the dominance of the modern-day punk/rap artists combined with light-hearted pop mass-marketed to teeny-boppers among today's charts and live tours, there is little, if any, room for true rock 'n' roll. Having said that, there is an even smaller chance of being able to see a quality rock 'n' roll show, perhaps due to the fact that there aren't too many high-calibre acts around today compared to the climate of rock music 20 years ago. Enter James Osterberg, a.k.a Iggy Pop, an artist who has managed to stay true to himself and the music he has and continues to create for the past 30 years.

On this Devil's Night, Iggy treated his fans old and new to an earful of real, raw, rock 'n' roll. Iggy has always been an uncompromising artist and he can be credited as being responsible for single-handedly creating and influencing a whole new genre and attitude in popular music — the punk rock ethic. His show tonight was testimony to his staying power, appeal and vitality and after watching him perform this energetic set, one could be hard-pressed to come to terms with the fact that this is a 52-year-old man.

Forward to 10:45 p.m. Saturday night and the in-house techno DJ has just finished his opening set, on comes Iggy wearing nothing but tight pants, scrawny body and long brown hair. He crouches onstage and launches into "No S*#T," the spoken-word opening track from his latest release, Avenue B followed by another new tune, "Nazi Girlfriend." This was quite a subdued opening, but within a few minutes this quiet had been shattered and from that moment on, there was a non-stop blistering assault of the most pure, raw, aggressive rock noise spewing from the man who calls himself The Idiot. As to be expected, Iggy completely let loose, flailing his arms, jumping and bouncing everywhere and running all over the stage, climbing up and down the speaker columns, making sure that he effectively covered his territory. Wind him up and watch him go (and you had better hope that you have enough energy to bear witness).

This set was a greatest-hits/career retrospective with a couple of new tunes interspersed among the old and there was nothing too fancy. From time to time, Iggy would assume his widely copied classic stance of leaning the mic stand into his body or he would pull out certain dance moves which we all have seen copied many times. You could see where Bowie and Jagger sourced some of their on-stage charisma.

Iggy lead his band of two guitars, drums and bass through true-to-form versions of such classics as "Raw Power," "Search & Destroy," a rendition of "Shaking All Over" and a new track, "Corruption." He then took a moment to talk about how he feels that there is a "force of evil from the streets" before ripping into "Real Wild Child." "I Wanna Be A Dog" gave Iggy an opportunity to a better view of the Warehouse by climbing high atop the speaker columns during an extended guitar solo and then he mellowed out a bit to tell "a cautionary tale of dysfunctional love" in the spoken-word type song, "I Felt The Luxury." It seemed as though most in attendance weren't too familiar with the new tunes, but once recognizable songs like "Home" or "Lust For Life" were played, energy had been infused into the fans. When it came time to perform "The Passenger," the band were rocking out at first and then Iggy brought it all down for the verses and towards the end of the song, Iggy was calling out to the audience to "WAKE UP!" and to "GET F@#KING REAL!" This eventually led Iggy to invite his fans onstage with him to sing and dance and within a few minutes, the entire stage was inundated with lunatic freaks singing and dancing with the biggest freak of them all.

"Cold Metal" ended the set and for the encore Iggy came out with an acoustic guitar, gave the audience the finger and proceeded to play another new and mellow song, "Miss Argentina." Once again the quietness was destroyed by a chilling scream, a couple more fingers to the audience, more dancing and climbing about for the set's punk-rock finale of "TV Eye," "No Fun," "I Got A Right" and then the rock 'n' roll classics "Johnny B. Goode" and "Louie Louie." By the end of it all, there was a wash of feedback and Iggy managed to swing his microphone around his body until it effectively strangled him, he spit a couple of times and showed some more fingers. Old habits apparently do die hard especially when it comes to an old punk like this.

Nothing like a good ol' rock show to scare the devil back into you after being force-fed cheap imitations for far too long. Leave it up to Iggy Pop to set the record straight once again and thanks to Iggy Pop for reclaiming the rock.