Shit Gigs My Boss Makes Me Go To: Iggy Pop

I work in the more mainstream edges of the music industry. My boss makes me to go to shit gigs, all the time.

Here I review them, anonymously. I would definitely be fired otherwise.

Next up: Iggy Pop.

Guys, I have news for you. Put down your smart phones and your selfie sticks and any other go to devices the over 60 Iggy Pop fans name to stereotype an entire generation for I have news for you. You know music? That thing you hear that isn’t road works, the sound of a kettle boiling or Nigel Farage high five-ing himself in the mirror, it’s music. And guess what? It’s not as good as it used to be, or at least I’m to believe after heading along to Iggy Pop’s Royal Albert Hall performance. 

It was here I realised that the Kendrick Lamar album I really liked would have been even better 30 years ago when the drugs were stronger, the Falklands more recent and the chances of Bullseye becoming a catalyst for social reform much greater. True to form as a ‘millennial’ I’ve admittedly never taken the time to listen to an Iggy Pop album and I only really know the hits. ‘Lust For Life’ was something I grew out of in my early-teens alongside The Killers, G-Star and fingering. ‘The Passenger’ never struck a chord with me in the same way it did for ‘trying to show they once had great music taste’ BBQ Dads, and ‘Now I Wanna Be Your Dog’ was just something that I thought should be on the FIFA 2005 load screen. 

People who like Iggy Pop aren’t satisfied unless their musical heroes died in their twenties in a storm of drugs and vomit, denying the fact that their icons would probably be duetting with Dizzee Rascal to gain some form of relevance right now. As the old saying goes ‘you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the face of a bran-based cereal.’ Take Phil Collins for example. If he had been taken from us in the 80s in, oh, for arguments sake let’s just say a freak fisting accident he would become a martyr for the homeless, the chronically bald and those who like to add ‘Su’ to the beginning of existing words then write a song about it. Now in life he’s become a man who’s lost his way, tormented, broken, trapped in a downward spiral of cover albums and doomed to spend all eternity bungled into the back of a car by his manager and discarded at the feet of Tim Lovejoy for a guest slot on Sunday Brunch.

Iggy, someone who based his style on a mix between an ageing porn star and your ‘quirky’ aunt, is a rare exception to that rule as he remains a great performer. Iggy’s USP in 2016 is that he’s still alive and functioning relatively well after years of abuse in the name of public adoration, kinda like when a rescued dancing bear is showing positive signs after being released into the wild or if everything sort of works out OK for Kerry Katona in the end.

‘Shit gigs’ seems to be giving this show an injustice as in this instance I actually enjoyed it and quite frankly, it was somewhat refreshing to see a 69 year old shouting about something that wasn’t racist. His voice remains as powerful as ever, comfortably masking the sound of 5,000 middle-aged music industry types slapping each other’s backs for 90 minutes with ease. His body, shirtless, witnessed through squinted eyes as his flaccid nipples glided like a Vaseline drenched gazelle across the faces of adoring fans as he surfs the crowd. 

Performing his latest (and potentially last) LP in ‘Post Pop Depression’ the show had some genuinely great moments, however I left feeling with the impression that Iggy could have easily slapped his thighs together to the tune of the Crystal Maze theme tune and every single one of the 5000 there would have still described it as a ‘sonic experience.’