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Iggy Pop (USA)
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October 19, 20:00
Adrenaline Stadium 
 James Newell Osterberg, Jr. (born April 21, 1947), better known as Iggy Pop, is an American rock singer, songwriter, and occasional actor. Iggy Pop is considered to be one of the most important innovators of punk and related styles. He is sometimes referred to by the nicknames "the Godfather of Punk" and "the Rock Iguana", and is widely acknowledged as one of the most dynamic stage performers of rock. Iggy Pop was the lead singer of The Stooges, a late 1960s/early 1970s garage rock band who were influential in the development of the nascent heavy metal and punk rock. The band’s history’s is as complicated as Iggy’s own – they had worked together, they worked apart, and they work together again touring to support their new album The Weirdness (released in March 2007). Iggy Pop began his music career as a drummer in different high school bands in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Eventually he dropped out of the University of Michigan and moved to Chicago to learn more about blues. Inspired by Chicago blues as well as bands like The Sonics and The MC5, he formed the psychedelic Stooges and called himself Iggy Pop. He got the name Pop because he once shaved his eyebrows for a show, after which he looked like a friend with the last name Popp who had recently undergone chemotherapy and had no eyebrows himself. One year after their debut, and now dubbed the Stooges, were signed to Elektra Records in 1968. The Stooges' first two albums, The Stooges, was sold poorly. Shortly after the new members have joined, the group disbanded because of Iggy Pop's growing heroin addiction. He nearly replaced the deceased Jim Morrison in The Doors and even dyed his hair black in preparation, but the remaining trio decided against adding a new lead vocalist. David Bowie salvaged Iggy Pop's career by producing an album with him in England. However, since neither Pop nor Bowie were satisfied with any players in England, they decided to re-unite The Stooges. But it would not be a true reunion. The recording sessions were produced by punk rock landmark Raw Power, in 1973. After its release Scott Thurston was added to the band on keyboards/electric piano and Bowie continued his support, but Iggy Pop's drug problem persisted. Drug addiction put his career on hold for a couple of years. After the second breakup of the Stooges, Iggy Pop made some recordings with James Williamson, but these weren't released until 1977 (as Kill City, credited jointly to Iggy Pop and Williamson). Iggy was unable to control his various drug habits, however, and went to a mental institution to clean up. Bowie and Iggy Pop relocated to West Berlin to fight their addictions. Iggy Pop signed with RCA and Bowie helped to write and produce The Idiot and Lust for Life (both 1977), Pop's two most acclaimed albums as a solo artist, the latter with another team of brothers, Hunt and Tony Sales. In 1982, Iggy Pop released what would be his final album for some time, Zombie Birdhouse, on Chris Stein's Animal label, with Stein himself producing. After the release of Zombie Birdhouse, Pop took some time off, reappearing four years later with the Bowie-produced Blah-Blah-Blah; the record became his highest-charting album since The Idiot. He followed it in 1989 with Instinct, another return to basic hard rock. Released the following year on Virgin Records, the Don Was-produced Brick By Brick was his most accessible and commercially successful album, producing his first Top 40 hit, "Candy." Pop began an acting career during the next few years, appearing in John Waters' Cry Baby. Pop's first album since Brick By Brick was American Caesar (1993), which was yet another return to punky hard rock. American Caesar sold relatively well, but it wasn't a hit. Neither was Naughty Little Doggy, which disappeared upon its spring 1996 release. Another decade was again motley like a patchwork blanket. Pop supplied vocals for the 1999 Death in Vegas UK Top 10 hit single Aisha. He also supplied vocals on the song "Rolodex Propaganda" by At the Drive-In in 2000. In 2003 he released collaborations with Sum 41, Green Day, Peaches, and The Trolls, as well as the Asheton brothers, reuniting the two surviving fouding members of Stooges for the first time since 1974.
Having enjoyed working with Ron and Scott Asheton on Skull Ring, Pop reformed the Stooges with bassist Mike Watt and saxophonist Steve MacKay rejoining the lineup. They have been touring regularly since 2004. He opened Madonna's Reinvention World Tour in Dublin, played at Bam Margera's wedding, played in Australia and New Zealand for the Big Day Out, performed at the Lowlands pop festival in the Netherlands, Hodokvas in Slovakia and in the Sziget festival in Budapest… Well, it’s easier to say what he didn’t do – he never stopped. "25 years I been sittin' in my bedroom, thinkin' stuff up, and thinkin' how I feel. You tell how you really feel, you get burned. I'm ready to go down in flames, but I don't want to. In normal life I bottle things up and smile. Only in this world, the music world, can I deliver something worth living for to my life” – Iggy says. And it’s impossible not to believe.
Fate has a way of putting things into an interesting context. When it was announced that Iggy Pop would be collaborating with Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age, the music press buzzed with anticipation about the project. What would the proto-punk icon and the snarky hard rock smart guy come up with? The surprise answer is, in many respects, 2016's Post Pop Depression, an unwitting but loving tribute to Pop's friend and collaborator David Bowie. Post Pop Depression arrived two months after Bowie's death, and was completed before his health problems became common knowledge. More than anything, though, this music evokes the sound and feel of Pop's first two solo albums. 1977's The Idiot and Lust for Life were cut with Bowie in Germany as Pop struggled to make sense of his life and career after the Stooges collapsed. With the reunited Stooges gone following the deaths of Ron and Scott Asheton, Post Pop Depression finds Pop returning to the work he made in 1977, in ways that count the most. Post Pop Depression is smart and thoughtful, intelligent without being pretentious, and full of bold but introspective thinking. While Josh Homme is certainly no David Bowie, he's a skilled musician who challenges Pop in a way many of his previous producers have not. The sound of Post Pop Depression occasionally gestures to Bowie's work, with and without Pop, but Homme has given this music a personality of its own. Dark and richly textured, Post Pop Depression puts Pop's craggy but authoritative voice and intelligent tirades front and center. Homme and his rhythm section of Dean Fertita and Matt Helders have created strong, muscular backdrops for Pop's lyrics that add to their power. They counter his thoughtful anger with sounds that are rich, cleanly designed, and a successful compliment for the star's work. Pop has suggested that Post Pop Depression may be his last album, and if that's true, it wraps up his career with a strong and atypical work. It tips its hat to Bowie, but also to the freedom and creative possibilities Pop discovered in their collaborative work. It confirms that Pop has never lost the ability to surprise and upend expectations. In the bitter rant that closes "Paraguay," Pop declares he wants to run away and live as "your basic clod." It's an ironic thought, closing an album that once again proves Pop never was and never will be an ordinary guy.
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