Don't ask me how he did it, but Iggy got through it.
And for all of the battle scars he has rightfully earned, he still looks and sounds pretty damned good on this DVD — ass hanging out all over the place notwithstanding (but of course, that's part of the deal with Iggy anyway, right?).
That most essential part of any great Iggy show — that sort of unhinged sense that things could come completely unglued and fall apart at any minute, even for a guy who has gotta be pushing sixty — still exists here. God bless Iggy for keeping it real even at this stage of the game.
That's the good news. I'll get to the bad soon enough, though. First, I've gotta set things up.
I've seen Iggy a total of three times.
The first was when he toured with David Bowie as part of his backing band. To be honest I went mainly to see Bowie. The thing is, no less than fifteen minutes into it, Iggy was such a commanding presence I completely forgot Bowie was even there. Iggy was simply all over the place. You simply couldn't take your eyes off the guy, in the sort of 'trainwreck about to happen any second' sense. It was amazing.
The second time I saw Iggy he didn't have Bowie with him, but that didn't stop him from nearly inciting a riot at the Showbox in Seattle when he invited the audience up onstage, and they proceeded to knock over the P.A. system, injuring several people, and earning Iggy the distinction of being banned from playing Seattle for several years.
Those were some great concerts. I was witnessing history, I knew it, and I was instantly hooked.
In between the two shows I saw, I also caught up on Iggy's back catalog, making particular note of his live recordings. The common thread I found there was, again, that sort of unhinged, coming apart at the seams quality.
From the raw, yet urgent, bootleg sort of quality I found on TV Eye Live (the document of his tour with Bowie), to the out and out chaos of Metallic K.O. (where you can actually hear people tossing bottles at the stage), the common thread of Iggy's live performances is that they are exactly that. Performances. Where anything can happen, and often does.
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