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Rating: I went for a stroll at the mall and thought "wait, let me go to the record store and see if I find something nice... I already have a half idea..." I head to the "I" section and look for Iggy Pop, Lust For Life. I don't know why, but that album has always held a certain interest for me even though I didn't know what was inside besides Lust For Life and The Passenger (which are reasons enough). Maybe it's Iggy's big face on the cover in a yearbook-style photo that inspires sympathy (just missing a dedication from a best friend "to my best with love xxx"). I find it. But only in a double disc edition with The Idiot. €7.90. 2 discs. Oh well, let's go for it.
I go home and put Lust For Life in the player. Cool. I change the disc and put on The Idiot. It starts with a slow rhythm from a determined bass and cutting guitars. It reminds me of another artist in terms of sound. David Bowie, in the 70s, more precisely in Low, the first of the Berlin trilogy. I look at the album booklet for a moment, and David Bowie's name goes hand in hand with Iggy Pop in all the songs.
Meanwhile, the second track, "Nightclubbing," starts, and it really feels like going nightclubbing with the White Duke and the Iguana, surrounded by the fumes of alcohol and drugs in a decadent red-light district of a European city.
I go to learn more about the album I know nothing about, and I find confirmations to my hypotheses. The album is from 1977 (the same as Low) and was practically written four-handed by Iggy Pop and Bowie. In that year, they "fled" America for Europe to detox from their deep drug dependencies, residing first in a castle in France (where most of The Idiot was recorded) and then moving to Berlin where Bowie would start on Low.
The third track "Funtime" has electronic sounds and simple, sharp, and direct guitar hits. You can hear Bowie in the choruses "Aaaall aboooooard for fuuuntiiiime!" One of the best songs on the album.
Bowie is the producer, arranger, and takes care of the recording. A "homemade" album by Pop and him, basically.
"Baby" has a distorted bass line with a ghostly sound that follows the vocal line while in the chorus there's a little organ from a house of horrors. Is this horror rock?!
It is also discovered that during that period Bowie was playing the piano in Iggy Pop's live shows. Gives you goosebumps.
And here is the biggest (personal) surprise of the album: "China Girl". Used to hearing David Bowie's version, I thought it was his, but the Duke's is actually a cover (even though you can't really call it a cover since he also wrote it). The version on The Idiot is different, it's more oriental and garage. Bowie will later keep the vocal melodic line, but the rest clearly feels like it's from the 80s.
"Dum Dum Boys" has a slow and decadent rhythm, probably a child of the toxic and confused times of previous years. Iggy had locked himself up in a mental hygiene institute to try to clean up. Ziggy Stardust then convinced him to go to Europe with him and take the reins of life and career again.
"Tiny Girls" is a serenade with a sax, and the final track "Mass Production" continues the slow and heavy rhythms of an industry working under gravity twice the normal and a worker named Iggy Pop complains. Perhaps these were the last screams heard by Ian Curtis before he died: when he was found dead, The Idiot was spinning on the turntable.
I didn't expect anything from The Idiot, I didn't know anything, and I didn't want anything. Yet it struck me. It may be Bowie's influence. It may be the fact that it allowed me to better understand that period that I like so much of those artists I like so much. It may be the fixation of the moment.
It is not a listen for everyone, I am aware of that. Most of you, at the minute 0:43 after 30 seconds of doubtful and disgusted faces, will say, "what the hell is this crap?!?!". I know. It's inevitable. It's Iggy Pop. But I highly recommend it to those who like Berlinese Bowie or simply don't know any other Iggy Pop besides Raw Power and the albums with The Stooges.
Peace
Tracklist Lyrics 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 Blackdog
"'The Idiot' is an absolute, epochal album. Irritating in its modernity."
"James Newell Osterberg, aka Iggy Pop, had already understood that the risk was a dialogue between replicants."
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.”
