Sunday 31 March 2013

28 March 2013 (Day 87) – The Soothing Sounds Of Iggy Pop

A new day dawns with no euphoric release of a Springsteen or Stooges gig to come.  The period around Easter is arguably the busiest time of the concert year with many acts bound for the Byron Bay Festival and others getting ready for the Northern Hemisphere summer passing through town.  Melbourne easily copes with this influx due to its massive range of venues; although I doubt it, I read somewhere a couple of years back of a claim that only Austin Texas surpasses it.  But music is just about the furthest thing from my mind as “M” and I have a medical appointment which has us both on edge.

At work I do everything I can to keep my mind busy, a hard enough thing to do when you’re on the cusp of a four day break.  Making things worse is that Jack has already started a short break and I’m all alone in my office.  I bury myself in work, attend a couple of meetings and otherwise do everything possible to avoid thinking about our situation.  
Instead of a tea break, I check in with my colleagues who attended last night’s Springsteen gig; they have the same sense of shock and awe. The set list turns out to be an incredibly diverse one but I still think I got the best night.  I check also with another colleague who attended the Stooges gig.  She was in the mosh pit and reported that the first thing on her mind on returning home was a shower.  As she’s in a happy but tired state, I interpret this as a reference to last night’s hot and steamy conditions rather than ironic commentary regarding Iggy’s state or the lyrical content.

And it is to Iggy that the task of keeping me company falls.   I decide on not playing Raw Power as I heard most of that last night and dive into what I can only describe as the soothing side of the Iggy solo catalogue and select his first live album:
(245) Iggy Pop - TV Eye Live 1977

….or, as most people refer to it, “The live album of the tour where David Bowie played keyboards in his backing band”.  It’s a mixture of Stooges and solo material and the defining feature is the existence of the keyboards, especially on the Stooges tracks.  They have such a distinctive feel that anyone with a basic knowledge of Bowie’s output in this period would automatically recognise it as his work. Naturally it’s the tracks that Bowie produced with Pop which work best, Funtime and Nightclubbing in particular.  How you react to the Stooges material will depend on how sacrosanct you regard the originals. 
(246) Iggy Pop – The Idiot

Just about the only serious statement Iggy made on his legendary Countdown appearance (just type in Iggy Pop and Countdown into YouTube and you’ll be spoilt for choice) was that David Bowie taught him “to compromise” musically.  Compared to The Stooges, Iggy’s first solo album The Idiot, is not merely a compromise but a near total conversion into what was to become Bowie’s Berlin period.  Although Iggy contributed to writing of all tracks, it is sometimes difficult to avoid the sense that Bowie was using the process to test ideas for his eventual trilogy.  Despite this, it is a fine album with Iggy’s voice providing a fine counterpoint to the simmering synth lines.  The entire original side 1 of the original vinyl release -  Sister Midnight/Nightclubbing/Funtime/Baby - and the original version of China Girl –passes so effortlessly that it sounds almost like a suite.
My mind works in mysterious ways.  I’ve never been able to subscribe to the notion of “mood music”. If anything, everything works in reverse; chill out music makes me want to scream; quiet meditative stuff makes me feel anxious; I can’t sleep in silence and extremely loud music makes me relax.  I could just as easily play Sun 0))) or Boris on a Sunday morning as I would a gospel or acoustic number and the last time I was getting ready for a Saturday night on the town, I played Neu!  Although I thought, as I wrote earlier this year, that I’d like to start my work day with something not too loud or demanding, this blog provides more than enough evidence to the contrary. 

Yet, by the time I’ve finished these Iggy albums, my ability to concentrate on anything, let alone work, has become almost impossible.   My Manager, who I’ve briefed about my situation, checks in on me and graciously allows me to go for the day and I get to the late lunctime appointment.  “M” joins me shortly afterwards.  The word from the specialist is extremely encouraging and is enough to ensure we’ll have a reasonably happy holiday period.  We do some shopping, go home, turn on the television and see the dreadful news of a wall collapse at a construction site that looks to have claimed the lives of a couple of people who happen to be walking by.  It makes us appreciate our situation all the more and spend the rest of the evening close to each other.

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