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Rating: An artist in today's rock world is like a clown.
They powder their cheeks, put on a wig, and off they go, on stage.
If the act is liked, they will receive smiles and laughs of approval from the audience; otherwise, they will only hear the sound of their own breathing, wondering "why?" something didn't work out.
Today, Iggy Pop falls into this category. A man in his sixties, exhausted, overexploited.
The more one tries to dig into those immortal facial muscles that adorn his gaze, the more one wonders if at any point in his existence he ever had the opportunity to appear less tense, less animalistic with himself and his image.
The incarnation of a neurotic balance grotesquely projected from face to face, with the progress of the iconoclastic generations we well know.
Not a human being. Not a "rock star".
A colorless image.
Made of multiple non-existences counterbalanced by its hypothetical "charisma".
A mummy. That's what.
A relic celebrated at the base of putrid Hollywood festivals where plastic (and silicone) becomes the queen of carefully muted and constructed smiles.
Morgue parties where career-driven managers, with a bottle of Crystal in hand, study new concepts on exploiting museum pieces like him, toasting to the release of autobiographies related to him, praying he does not rediscover a passion for heroin.
No, no, no. Iggy Pop is not this.
Perhaps now that he is sixty it may seem so, because he has artistically resigned, leaving everything in the hands of a son who tells him how he should dress (applies only to pants, naturally).
But there was a time when he decided to challenge himself, to take risks. At the risk of losing everything he had already lost in the Stooges. Himself.
The opportunity is called "The Idiot".
In 1977, tired of people, money, and consumerist America, Iggy heads to Europe: destination Berlin.
Awaiting him is an old friend named David Bowie, who cares deeply about Iggy.
Berlin is not New York, nor Pasadena or San Diego, and Iggy notices this from the color of the sky and the smell of snow enveloping the Brandenburg city, but the atmosphere is just what he needs. Something an ocean away from the Stooges and the damn slobbery rock & roll. Days pass, one after another, and with the snow come ideas.
Having asked for and obtained Bowie's collaboration and that of some "colleagues" of the latter, Iggy locks himself in the sparse and chilly recording "bunker" owned by the Thin White Duke, blows his bleeding nose from the cold and nicotine, and begins.
It's difficult to express how he manages to vomit it all out, all the slop dragged from America, yet his aim is achieved.
The vocal line emerges right away from its personal catacomb in "Sister Midnight", and you already begin to understand how hard it is to accept the end of something that leaves you alone, accompanied by only the "midnight sister", but even more you understand that what he is singing is Iggy Pop, not his image, just him.
The influence of Bowie in the album's production becomes clear listening to "Nightclubbing," a track that manages to be subversive and drunk with decay from the introduction, giving the voice a frightening depth, accompanied by a piano-bar more than appropriate for the title. A prelude. Indeed, the prelude to "Funtime," an electronic, disciplined, icy ballad, ending in a delirious finale where Iggy's overdubbed screams scrape against each other to show that the time for fun is dead.
From here, the discovery is singular.
I listen to "Baby" and am astonished by the surprising emphasis with which the instrumental melodies blend with the vocal ones, resulting in a seriously baffling outcome.
The next "China Girl" is designed to deceive listening. A seductive voice is propelled by a sound that shifts from oriental to glam within a minute and a half, then mutates again, with a visceralness that sends chills, into a lament destined to progressively die.
In "Dum Dum Boys," you perceive the maturity of the previous pieces, a result in perfect new wave harmony. The low tone achieved here by Mr. Pop is more than enviable, driven by notes of spiritual blues.
The Blues evolution arrives and then merges with "Tiny Girls": a pseudo-waltz where the voice clumsily alternates with a semi-baritone sax.
Here we stop.
The echo of certainty is barely perceptible at first due to the silence. The record is dying.
Track no. 8.
"Mass Production".
A painfully slow ballad celebrating unconscious self-destruction makes its way through the thousand thoughts that question its motivation. Self-annulment. Burial. Deprivation of happiness. All fragments of indecisions, struck by seraphic synthesizers, which in about eight minutes seem to remind that the cycle never ends. The journey inside a tunnel. Steps broken by the sound of shoes in the snow. A journey mortally wounded. The echo fades more and more.
The record is dead.
The metallic smell of its blood on the snow is the only thing I can still feel.
No more chances.
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 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.”
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.
