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Rating: MASS PRODUCTION #?
Jimmy had that rubbed look of stray days, wandering hungry for nothing in the city's dirt, wearing the slightly grubby second-hand jacket and bruised eyes. The ragged man sitting at the corner raised his rusty hand, asked for a coin worth a few cents, and understood, understood that the one with such a hole in his chest was Jimmy, not him. But James looked straight, walking at the bottom of the desirous beast that tormented his nights of dust and suicidal adrenaline. With a sleepwalking step, he followed Sister Midnight, seeking her defeated. She could sometimes answer you acidly.
"What is the pain you're feeling, what damn pill did you forget?"
Sister Midnight could soothe wounds that had been bleeding for a decade. Just invoke her, and she would find a roof, a shelter for the idle despair of two shipwrecked souls. In the long night of rain and distant lights, David picked up the Michigan hitchhiker from the road, a filthy son of the night flood that stained the white veil of post '68 utopias with mud. He loaded him into the car, destination France. Chateau D'Herouville, then the cold Berlin winter of the Hansa Studios. The caged tiger of "L.A. Blues" no longer roared, left to die with bones picked clean, and the boy seemed just another poor idiot lost to rot between extravagances and enormous insecurities.
"Calling Sister Midnight, can you hear me call...Can you hear me well, can you hear me at all...Calling Sister Midnight, I'm an idiot for you..."
"The Idiot" is an absolute, epochal album. Irritating in its modernity. A post-punk prototype in the cradle of the "No Future" revolution, 1977. Cybernetic and humanistic, anxious in dark clothes and glasses, fragile yet brash: Zelig Bowie's production is a sharp spit in the face of conservatives and presumed rock anarchists. The vaudeville with industrial intoxication, the Central European existentialism evoked by a paranoid crooner, on the stage of a retro-futuristic nightclub. Ladies and gentlemen, the Idiot of our times hides behind the red curtain. And sings like a seasoned dandy of the synthetic moans of "Baby", and of decadent "Dum Dum Boys" while the rhythm section of brothers Tony and Hunt Sales, on bass and drums, digs squarely into Jimmy's words with Carlos Alomar's deviant electric guitar.
"People said that we were negative, we could take without needing to give...I just wanted to make a little noise with the Dum Dum boys, and sing a drawn-out da-da-da..."
The beam of light illuminates the bony silhouette of the Idiot in the dust, and soft sax notes color the neon ballad of "Tiny Girls". The icy heartbeat of "Nightclubbing" is now the robotic signal from a near future of "unknown pleasures", an electroshock with the fumes of Alomar's guitar in acid. Like zombies after the nuclear bomb, we cross the desolate streets, narcotized by the present. We are passengers of the night learning new dances and ancient rites. Having fun is a mechanical gesture, "Funtime" (the Duke on backing vocals and synth keyboards) is a bright wave blade penetrating the diseased flesh of '77. "China Girl" has a turgid and unforgettable pop/new-wave melody (so perfect that we know well which scrupulous use the crafty producer will make of it, years later). "Mass Production" is the rhythm always identical to itself, of barcodes on the neck, of the depersonalization of the System that scrutinizes, selects, impoverishes, makes lazy. Mass thinking has buried instinct and human relationships. James Newell Osterberg, aka Iggy Pop, had already understood that the risk was a dialogue between replicants. Tired holograms in front of a switched-off television. Identical. Same expression. Similar dreams. Same nightmares.
"I'm buried deep in mass production, you're not nothing new. I like to drive along the freeways, see the smokestacks belching. Breasts turn brown, so warm and so brown..."
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
01 Sister Midnight (04:19)
Calling Sister Midnight
You've got me reaching for the moon
Calling Sister Midnight
You've got me playing the fool
Calling Sister Midnight
Calling Sister Midnight
Can you hear me call
Can you hear me well
Can you hear me at all
Calling Sister Midnight
I'm an idiot for you
Calling Sister Midnight
I'm a breakage inside
Calling Sister Midnight
Calling Sister Midnight
You know I had a dream last night
Mother was in my bed
And I made love to her
Father he gunned for me
Hunted me with his six gun
Calling Sister Midnight
What can I do about my dreams
Listen to me Sister Midnight
You put a beggar in my heart
Calling Sister Midnight
You've got me walking in rags
Hey where are you Sister Midnight
Can you hear me call
Can you hear me well
Can you hear me at all
02 Nightclubbing (04:14)
Nightclubbing we're nightclubbing
We're what's happening
Nightclubbing we're nightclubbing
We're an ice machine
We see people brand new people
They're something to see
When we're nightclubbing
Bright-white clubbing
Oh isn't it wild?
Nightclubbing we're nightclubbing
We're walking through town
Nightclubbing we're nightclubbing
We walk like a ghost
We learn dances brand new dances
Like the nuclear bomb
When we're nightclubbing
Bright white clubbing
Oh isn't it wild...
03 Funtime (02:54)
Fun
Hey baby we like your lips
Fun
Hey baby we like your pants
All aboard for funtime
Fun
Hey, I feel lucky tonight
Fun
I'm gonna get stoned and run around
All aboard for funtime
Fun
Last night I was down in the lab
Fun
Talkin' to Dracula and his crew
All aboard for funtime
Fun
I don't need no heavy trips
Fun
I just do what I want to do
All aboard for funtime
Fun
Baby baby we like your lips
Fun
Baby baby we like your pants
All aboard for funtime
Fun
Everybody we want in
Fun
We want some we want some
All aboard for funtime
Fun
Baby baby we like your lips
Fun
Baby baby we like your pants
All aboard for funtime
05 China Girl (05:08)
I couldn't escape this feeling with my China Girl
I'm just a wreck without my little China Girl
I hear her heart beating loud as thunder
Saw the stars crashing
I'm a mess without my China Girl
Wake up mornings, where's my little China Girl
I hear hearts beating loud as thunder
I see stars crashing down
I feel tragic like I was Marlon Brando
When I look at my China Girl
I could pretend that nothing really meant too much
When I look at my China Girl
I stumble into town just like a sacred cow
Visions of swastikas in my head
And plans for everyone
It's in the white of my eyes
My little China Girl, you shouldn't mess with me
I'll ruin everything you are
I'll give you television, I'll give you eyes of blue
I'll give you men who want to rule the world
And when I get excited
My little China Girl says
Oh baby, just you shut your mouth
She says shhhh
08 Mass Production (08:24)
Before you go Do me a favour Give me a number Of a girl almost like you With legs almost like you I'm buried deep in mass production You're not nothing new I like to drive along the freeways See the smokestacks belching Breasts turn brown So warm and so brown Though I try to die You put me back on the line Oh damn it to hell Back on the line--hell Back on the line Again and again I'm back on the line Again and again And I see my face here And it's there in the mirror And it's up in the air And I'm down on the ground By the way I'm going for cigarettes And since you've gotta go Won't you do me that favour Won't you give me that number Won't you get me that girl Yeah, she's almost like you Yes, she's almost like you And I'm almost like him Yes, I'm almost like him Yes, I'm almost like him Yeah, I'm almost like him
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Other reviews
By Mr.Moustache
The vocal line emerges right away from its personal catacomb in 'Sister Midnight,' and you already begin to understand that what he is singing is Iggy Pop, not his image, just him.
'Mass Production' is a painfully slow ballad celebrating unconscious self-destruction, a journey mortally wounded.
By Blackdog
The cold heartbeat of Nightclubbing is an electroshock with the fumes of Alomar’s acid guitar: prelude to post-punk, a signal from a near future of 'unknown pleasures'.
Calling Sister Midnight, I’m an idiot for you.. A roof, a shelter for two shipwrecked souls hostage to an executioner’s fate.
By Bowie_mangione
"The Idiot, the little dog, the guinea pig of his magnificence David who worse than Faust sold his Stoogesian soul for Uncle David’s experiments."
“Iggy is so subservient to his deity Bowie that he sells his soul and face just to produce an album that has nothing to do with the stage beast he has always been since the days of the Stooges.”
By DonCallisto
It starts with a slow rhythm from a determined bass and cutting guitars... reminds me of David Bowie in Low, the first of the Berlin trilogy.
Most of you, at the minute 0:43 after 30 seconds of doubtful and disgusted faces, will say, 'what the hell is this crap?!?!'... But I highly recommend it to those who like Berlinese Bowie.
