Iggy Pop's Post-Seventies Output

Soldier: yes. BBB: no.

worthless

i owned the album brick by brick on cassette tape

I like a few songs each from Soldier, Party, Instinct, American Caesar and Beat 'Em Up. Everything else is pretty much worthless.

Soldier (his last real good one) wins this by a mile, though I always liked "Pumpin' For Jill" off Party, and I for some reason gave Instinct a decent review in the Voice when it came out.

Could you even make a solid single album from these? I've only heard a few and they were pretty crap.

Soldier's good, Party and Zombie Birdhouse slightly less so (but I'd recommend all three). BBB is a thing in and of itself, but if you've heard the singles you know what you're getting into. Instinct is a disaster that Brick by Brick mostly redeems, then American Caesar sort of rides the post-Nirvana wave.

I have no recollection of listening to/liking any of the albums after that.

BxB contains a song titled 'Butt Town.'

and "I Won't Crap Out"!

BBB got much acclaim at the time (Don Was production, etc). It's less than a buck on Amazon. I figured I'd ask.

Is Skull Ring the one where he did a song with Sum 41 dudes? That was so awful it came damn close to retroactively ruining all of his music for me (and I actually have a medium tolerance for Sum 41!)

I've honestly only heard two of these all the way through, but American Caesar was, oddly enough, my introduction to solo Iggy back in college. I remember liking it at the time.

Don't mind Zombie Birdhouse, Soldier & Party in roughly that order.

Either don't like or haven't heard the rest - although I thought Skull Ring was kinda fun the one time I listened to it, I don't feel compelled to listen to it again really.

soldier, party and birdhouse all pretty fun in places.
everything after i can take or leave and will generally leave

Of these, Blah Blah Blah was the first I heard as a 14 year old Bowie fan who thought "Real Wild Child" sounded really cool. Can't remember much from that album, probably have the tape I made from the library vinyl somewhere. Then Instinct came out and I thought the really metallic guitar sound on some of the tracks was weird/awesome (I hadn't heard any metal by then I think). Steve Jones. That year Iggy came to a town very close to mine - my first concert I went to without a parent! With my cousin. We were standing with our stomachs pressed against the stage, mightily impressed by the huge stack of speakers. The band came out, started playing and we fled to the back of the hall - it was so fucking loud I couldn't believe it haha
Bought a T-shirt that had lots of classmates and teachers looking at me funny. On the front the cover image of Instinct and covering the entire back the words

RAW
FUCKING
POWER

Loved it. The following year the local recordstore finally called me to tell me they'd received the Stooges cd I'd ordered the year before. Haven't played Instinct since then. Just checked some youtube's and it's dated badly.

Okay, back on topic: Soldier and Party both have a few good tracks, they're definately not as good as New Values though. Opening track of Zombie Birdhouse is cool too. Peculiar album, Iggy's not really good on it, but the music's this weird amalgam of new wave/industrial popsongs. Liked Brick by Brick quite a lot at the time. Haven't heard any albums he's released since then. Maybe you're better of getting this comp to cover 79-81.

Did the 2cd Anthology pick the best bits of these?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVzcs9Ygb5Q

holy god that video. he's like some ben stiller parody of himself. HOW

No.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I love this guy and the stooges show I was in 2007 was incredibly great and even tho I gave a couple of em good reviews upon release...these albums are useless.

Is Skull Ring the one where he did a song with Sum 41 dudes? That was so awful it came damn close to retroactively ruining all of his music for me

Bear in mind it was doing this track that made Ig go "hang on, I know cooler dudes than these" and reform The Stooges.

I *like* Brick By Brick. It had Don Was producing and Guns N Roses members on the disc and "Candy," his biggest hit, which is sappy but sweet and a pleasant surprise when it comes on the radio anymore.

Maybe it's the time and the fact that I backed into Iggy and The Stooges from a metal background as opposed to the other way around...

Only one I ever bought was Brick By Brick cos it has a fantastic cover.

Party has "Pumpin' for Jill," "Bang Bang," the outstanding "Eggs on Plate," and "Pleasure" - all solid Iggy tunes. It also makes me giggle really hard when he says "Oh, vo-dee-oh-dee" in "Happy Man." Zombie Birdhouse leads off with completely awesome "Run Like A Villain" and has the pretty good "Eat or Be Eaten" and I just looked at the track listing and straight up cannot remember a single thing about any of the other songs on it. By 1986 I am listening to other kinds of music than this and all my friends who're into Iggy are starting to show signs that by 2006 the music they will care about most will still be whatever Iggy's up to, so at that point am backing away from Iggy but wishing him well, and I haven't heard any of the albums that follow.

I remember when "Brick by Brick" came out, the review went "Grout to Lunch"

Dunno why I remember that one....

Opening track of Zombie Birdhouse is cool too. Peculiar album, Iggy's not really good on it, but the music's this weird amalgam of new wave/industrial popsongs

^ this, it's a weird one

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

brick by brick is pretty much where i got off the ig bus, but beat 'em up ( i think it's that one) has the *awesome* "pussy walk". party is about half very good and i think is much more fun/solid than brick and ceasar

Where to put this ...

http://www.gigwise.com/news/95155/read-iggy-pops-incredible-john-peel-lecture

thanking u

Avenue B is a seriously WTF album

I'd imagine the hardest part of Iggy Pop's solo career has been finding musicians that can turn his song ideas into music. Iggy never really had a regular group and his backing musicians changed project to project through his solo career.

Still wondering why the David Bowie produced/played/related 70s stuff hasn't had a remaster in 20 odd years.
& don't really remember what's on the later lps. Do remember tv appearances from around Blah Blah Blah and him wearing clear plastic jeans on some Channel 4 music show. Saw him mid 80s which may be Brick by Brick era?
But love the Stooges muchly.
That Anarchy in Manchester has his performance from the horse tail era on this week.
&wonder what chance there is on a memoir from the guy. It's been 30 odd years since his last one I think.

you can listen to the lecture here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04lcj6z

or watch it here if you're in the UK
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04m9q6v

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/when-iggy-pop-cant-live-off-his-art-what-chance-do-the-rest-have/article21154663/

So, how much money does Iggy Pop really make?

If he claims he can't live on what he makes, well, god only knows what it costs to live like Iggy Pop.

Really, though, if you're talking royalties, I can't imagine it's huge. But if you're talking payouts from cruise ships, and festivals, and other peripherals, I'm sure Iggy makes more than most of us. Probably worth many millions. But that includes property and other investments, which don't really pay the bills. And who knows, I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't own the rights to stuff like "Lust for Life" anymore.

Maybe the new millennial generation isn't taking Iggy's bait like previous generations did.

Someone needs to do note-for-note reproduction of Funhouse

They played "Down in the Street" on the tv show Gotham last week. I wonder how much he didn't get paid for that.

Of course he can't live on record royalties. He's barely sold any! His chart career is nearly non-existent.

Publishing, live and random whatnot income on the other hand... dude has some cake, I'm sure.

He doesn't make anything for all the movies that "Lust For Life" appears in? Not to mention recent "TV Eye."

Seems weird to assume iggy owns his publishing

Yeah, that's what I was saying. Doesn't he more or less say he had to sell all his rights as leverage to get deals? "As I learned when I hit 30 +, and realized I was penniless, and almost unable to get my music released, music had become an industrial art and it was the people who excelled at the industry who got to make the art. I had to sell most of my future rights to keep making records to keep going." I guess he's talking about future rights, which implies new material, but the fact that "The Idiot" and "Lust for Life" have not been reissued/remastered/expanded, etc. implies some rights ownership clusterfuck.

i really love "shades" from blah blah blah. been reading the pushing ahead of the dame pieces on the bowie collabs on the record while listening https://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/category/blah-blah-blah-1986/

BBB is a terrific album fro the most part, and "Shades" the best song Bowie had a hand in writing in the late '80s. col otm

I have for no reason at all apart from masochism listened to all of Iggy Pop's post-70s solo albums

From this experience I feel I am entitled to impart that the following were underrated:

(...everything up to Zombie Birdhouse is good in some way...)

Instinct - this album is actually pretty good
American Caesar - surprised me the most tbh. compared to the rest of the 90s stuff anyway
Blah Blah Blah - dated 80s production etc but it's OK
Skull Ring - is bad but not as bad as people say it is

Proper bad:

Avenue B
Beat 'Em Up - I quite like Drink New Blood but the rest of it's mostly shit
Naughty Little Doggie - OK this isn't actually that bad but wtf "Pussy Walk" how can I scrub that from my ears

Where's Brick by Brick?

Not over or underrated! It's pretty good. It came joint first

I ranked all of Iggy's albums for Stereogum back in 2016. (I included Stooges albums, which some people viewed as cheating, but whatever.)

Haha I just finished listening to Apres and you ranked it correctly.

Blah Blah Blah at 6 and Avenue B at 10 are the wtf ones.

Ready To Die is better than I thought it would be but it has a Pussy Walk on it in the form of DD's

I don't get what makes BBB more dated than those seventies albums?

Maybe it's just a personal adversion due to the time period I grew up but the late 80s sounds more "dated" to me in a lot of ways than any earlier period

the late 80s sounds more "dated" to me in a lot of ways than any earlier period

I think there were particular production techniques and sounds (specific drum machines, synth patches, etc.) that tie songs and albums to that era more strongly than other songs and albums are tied to their era, particularly because those sounds have not really continued to be imitated in the way that late '60s psychedelia and/or slick pop, or early '70s bare-bones hard rock production styles have continued to be emulated by later artists. Singer-songwriters are still trying to sound like Joni Mitchell's and James Taylor's and Carole King's early '70s work; rock bands are still trying to sound like Led Zeppelin's first four albums; but nobody's really consciously setting out to make an album that sounds like, for example, Robert Plant's Shaken 'n' Stirred.

'Real Wild Child' is a cool track, but Blah Blah Blah sounds very much of its particular time, production wise very 80s. It's not very Iggy. It's got that 80s too clean sheen.

Instinct turns up the guitars but it's cut in a weird 80s studio built up way I think with a drum machine or built up click. It doesn't groove and would have sounded better recorded more live.

I'd say these two albums were cut in the age of the click track built track by track, not really a live band ever played it all together. It sounds stiff, but not in a good way.

xp I think that's it - the choices of synths, drum machines etc from that period just didn't stick, and I often (not always!) dislike those sounds when I hear them again now, whereas synths and drum machines from the early 80s or earlier still sound good, and from 1990-ish onwards technology meant that dated-ness for want of a better word mostly went away. I dunno, that's my perspective as someone who was a teenager in the early 90s. Maybe everyone feels like this about the period just before they were paying attention to music.

I asked the following on another Iggy/stooges thread, it was not answered, and so perhaps Grawlix, Scott S or someone knowledgeable will oipine…

so last year, there was a double album version of 2005's Heavy Liq…not 25 takes of "I got a right" but presumably the best take of that, and a bunch of other songs that they played live but ain't on Raw power.

https://www.discogs.com/The-Stooges-Heavy-Liquid/release/10175378

I listened to it on Spotify, but I am curious if Scott S or someone who is more knowledgeable about the Williamson era considers this the closest thing to a followup to Raw Power as exists (not including Metallic KO and gods knows how many shitty live recordings all over the place). I think I wanna get a voy-null copy but this came out limited edition and is slightly more expensive than I would like…if Scott or someone can advise that this is like Raw power part II or the closest to it, or not, I'd be much obliged.

I quite like Kill City, but that's obviously Williamson saying "look we can do a stones-ish record, let's try to be slightly conventional and maybe we'll make it big." My admiration for Williamson has increased lately: he's the american Jimmy page to me and I'm sorry that he didn't do more— or perhaps I should be happy that he appeared to have had a good post-heroin life and career and is healthy. He sounded pretty good when he came back after Ron died, but it was a bit of a shock to see that he was this fairly rotund gray-hair after last seeing him look so fucking amazing in those '72-'75 photos.

I think there were particular production techniques and sounds (specific drum machines, synth patches, etc.) that tie songs and albums to that era more strongly than other songs and albums are tied to their era, particularly because those sounds have not really continued to be imitated in the way that late '60s psychedelia and/or slick pop, or early '70s bare-bones hard rock production styles have continued to be emulated by later artists. Singer-songwriters are still trying to sound like Joni Mitchell's and James Taylor's and Carole King's early '70s work; rock bands are still trying to sound like Led Zeppelin's first four albums; but nobody's really consciously setting out to make an album that sounds like, for example, Robert Plant's Shaken 'n' Stirred.

― grawlix (unperson), Friday, March 2, 2018

I get this, but when I hear late '70s Doobie Brothers or Kenny Loggins or Player I think "Oh, it's 1978" or whatever yet I don't see many people going EW IT'S DATED.

I'm using the thread as an excuse to say, again, that "dated" is not pejorative; it's value-free. A song recorded in January 2015 is dated. A song recorded yesterday is dated.

x post: uh, bizarrely, that shit was posted before I was done… 2005's Heavy Liquid is a box very much like the Rhino Funhouse sessions, comprised of probly every studio take of the songs they did 72-74 that they did live but was not on Raw power…

Great article here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/02/the-survival-of-iggy-pop

I haven't heard anything since "Skull Ring", is there really greatness is Iggy's last decade or so of material?

Greatness, no, but a few good songs here and there.

I gotta say I was really disappointed in the live album from the Post Pop Depression tour, for one big reason: they were playing "Repo Man" on that tour, but didn't include it on the album.

New album in January. The new song has a very Floodland vibe. I don't hate it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbQHlQ-tubY

Listening to Zombie Birdhouse for the first time ever. What an absolutely bonkers record.

Damn you weren't kidding about the Sisters vibe.

I was going to say I kinda hear Red Lorry Yellow Lorry but yeah

[Listening to Zombie Birdhouse for the first time ever

i just heard it for the first time a couple of years back and it blew me away. i'm not sure why it isn't way more praised.

on a different tangent, i posted this a while back on another iggy thread but i still can't get over how good this live version of neu!'s hero, fearuring michael rother is - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTB0lpDFbkY

New one out today.... Thoughts?

Ah, that’s why he has a recent NY Times interview

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/01/02/magazine/iggy-pop-interview.html

Haven’t heard new one yet

Oh, he’s got a new one out, has he?

The song I posted above is the only one I really like. It's kind of Brick By Brick-ish in its (to my ear) craven present-day alt-rock melodicism, and the lyrics are some of the worst of his career, down there with American Caesar and The Weirdness. I'll probably never listen to it again.

Sounds bad.