Ego, Superego, and Ig

Eric Carr's review of the Iggy and the Stooges masterpiece Raw Power contained the following brilliance: "Iggy might not have died for our sins, but he did the next best thing-- he rolled around in peanut butter for rock and roll." But it was the little picture of the album cover that really got me thinking. It was 1995 and Raw Power had just been reissued on vinyl. I knew of Iggy's music, but had never really heard anything other than "Candy," his great, unlikely goof-off duet with Kate Pierson of the B-52s. A renewed interest in Lester Bangs brought me to the record, but it was the cover that made me want the damned thing. And I do mean damned. Rail-thin, smeared with makeup, and looking like he's about to fuck the microphone stand to death, Iggy stares into space with a mixture of menace and glee, challenging some unseen audience to a knife fight in hell. When the impossible guitar mayhem of "Search and Destroy" screamed off that platter, I was changed forever. The Cramps were no longer the most dangerous band I could think of. I had never heard a song that was loud and blood-curdling no matter how low the volume dial was turned.

A few weeks later and without the then-unheard-of benefit of internet research, I picked up a used French double-album package of The Idiot and Lust for Life (only now do I fully realize the value, both spiritual and monetary, of my find). I was excited to hear The Idiot because I had heard that when Ian Curtis's body was found hanging in his kitchen, the record was playing on an old repeating player, over and over. Needless to say, I didn't realize that I had moved in the wrong direction. It would be several years before I was able to appreciate the depth and brilliance of those Bowie-Berlin albums. I was in college, and I needed the petulant danger of "T.V. Eye," "1969," and "I Wanna Be Your Dog." I needed music that made me wanna kill people, that made me a street-walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm, a runaway son of the nuclear A-Bomb.

Anyway, it's funny how that album cover, that threatening pose, could bring back such a wave of memory... the taste of Newcastle Brown Ale, playing endless games of dominoes, skateboarding to Amoeba to spend food money on records, the hollowed-out rush and mania of crystal meth... strange and powerful stuff for a cubicle-bound, almost-30 Thursday morning.