And Now I'm Gonna Be Your Dawg!
Iggy
Originally uploaded by inkognitoh Wow, just wow. Last night I was one of the lucky people who got to experience the Iggy & the Stooges performance at Royal Festival Hall, part of Jarvis Cocker's Meltdown festival. All the rumours and cliches about Iggy Pop are true. He is wild, crazy, unpredictable, unstoppable and choc full of punk rock credibility. I have no idea how he maintains his erratic and energetic stage show at his age, let alone how he did it at any point earlier in his career.
Frenetic, electric, and engaged in his trademark writhing and jiggling from the outset, there was an actual and recognisable moment in the performance where he slipped into the zone and suddenly it became a little more exciting. He was followed, aided and mopped up after by an aging manager/minder type person who had probably been there from the start and knew how quickly things could disintegrate into total anarchy and chaos. You have no idea how thrilling it is when you are watching something that has that edge of 'anything could happen' about it. Performance without safety nets.
Chaotic moments occured when Iggy threw himself into the front row of the audience to be hauled back by his pissed off looking minder, not once, not twice but thrice before getting bored with that and hurling his mike stand at the crowd. It bounced off a light rig on the front of the stage and I wonder if it wasn't aimed accurately to do so, giving only the hint of danger and not the reality of it? Inviting the audience to rush the stage at one point saw the security staff nearly bust veins in their necks with the frustratingly out-of-their-control situation and the brilliant anarchic 'smashing of beer bottle on mike stand' was pure vintage punk rock and much appreciated by me at least :)
Jarvis Cocker, in his talk earlier that evening, with the unfocussed and even more erratic Don Letts - punk rock film Director and all round culture vulture - asked whether he was breaking the rules by putting punk rockers on stage of Royal Festival Hall. Was it somehow wrong of him? If I could answer that question in hindsight, I would tell Jarvis that it was indeed breaking all sorts of rules and in no way was it wrong.
Old man Pop proved almost impossible to photograph as you can imagine he doesn't stay still which was something he had in common with Don Letts who randomly jumped up and paced around the stage while 'in conversation with' Jarvis. You get the idea that while Pop is the complete and utter wild child, Letts is merely suffering from some sort of Attention Deficit Disorder. Both demanded alcohol at salient points in their performance, Pop choosing beer and Letts wanting a JD and coke. I don't know if this suggests that aging punk performers all have similar needs and wants or just a coincidence :)
As for my beloved Southbank redevelopment: "I love it, I want to kiss it, I want to marry it, I really like it..."