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- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
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B
Hello again everybody and welcome into another edition of Political Beats, a presentation of National Review. Find us on X at Political Underscore Beats. We're also over on Facebook as well. Subscribe to our feed for new episodes given through Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your shows. Plus National Review.com click on the podcast tab, find all the episodes there and the Find NR Audio Listen. Leave reviews where possible, help others find the show and also we invite you to join us over@patreon.com Politicalbeats support us and help the show stay ad free as it has been. We have entry level for your support and some voting privileges here and there, mid level for early access to our shows and at a higher audio quality and our upper level best friends early access, higher audio quality, monthly exclusive content shows, radio remastered episodes, playlists and more. All of that can be found at patreon.com politicalbeats now the part of the program where we say thank you specifically to some of our Patreon supporters, including our new supporters like Andrew Meyerson, also Russ Ertelt, John Bolden, Jeff Defore, once and perhaps future guest on the program, Mark Leach, Britt, Jonathan Saban, Dennis Charles, Stephen P. Rob and Thomas Knapp. Thank you for supporting us over@patreon.com politicalbeats we couldn't do it without you. My name is Scott Bertram. You can find me on X at Scott Bertram, my tag team partner standing by as always, Jeff Blair. Jeff, how are you?
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C
I'm doing great, Scott. I'm standing here stripped to the waist, got my leather pants on. I got a bottle of strobes in my hand, sweating profusely. I don't know where this blood came from. I guess the only question is whether I drink this beer or smash the bottle over my head.
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B
I think it is very odd that you have peanut butter smeared on your chest, but we can talk about that a little bit later on in the program.
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C
It's hard to explain. Yeah.
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B
Jeff is on X at Esoteric ct and our guest for today's program is a returning guest and he's a historian, writes for the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Examiner. He used to be a jazz musician, too. He returns for a second time after a fantastic episode on the Jam. He's Dominic Green. Dominic, thanks so much for joining us.
- [02:38]
D
Thanks so much. And I just want to add that I'm wearing a tweed coat, but my mind is fully attuned to the subject of today's recording.
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B
And the subject, oh my boohoo. The subject. We'll get to in a moment. But Dominic, first I'll give you the floo for a minute or two to tell people about you, your writing and where they can find you.
- [03:00]
D
Well, thank you. As you're saying, I've written history books. I write on a weekly basis for the Wall Street Journal and Washington examiner. And I'm also on a certain app@drdominicgreen.com and that's not because I am one of those people that takes great pride in being a doctor. I'm not a medical doctor, but I'm willing to write a prescription if you need one. I did that only because there was another Dominic Green on X and he, funnily enough, is a musician as well. So you can see the confusion. And one day I hope to gather all these impersonators together in, in one room. Meanwhile, as you said, I came. I come from a family of musicians and I worked as a professional musician. I didn't start writing until I was in my 30s. And although I, I played a lot of jazz and soul and blues and so on, Iggy Pop and the Stooges have been a kind of passion of mine since I first heard their music. To me it sits perfectly with that is some of the greatest American music ever made. So let's have it.
- [04:05]
B
And Dominic, as you mentioned, the Stooges and Iggy Pop are featured artists. Today we turn back to you to give us an insight into why you love Iggy Pop and the Stooges, how you got into them and why everybody else should care about this music.
- [04:23]
D
Right. Iggy and the Stooges are real rock and roll. They're up there with Elvis, more there than the Beatles. They're the real thing.
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A
And then it's number one in kind of ride a move no matter what he say Honey, I got a ride Ride and move Any time any old time Honey I got ride, ride and move Any time I won.
- [05:22]
D
They're a serious loud blues band with the emphasis on loud. And as I said, I come out of playing jazz. And to me what they do is very close to jazz. And without going into the technicalities, there's a kind of open endedness and a drive to it which you know you have when you're listening to jazz as well. You never know quite where it's going to go. It's very bluesy, it's very live. And in the center of it is this incredible baritone voice of Iggy Pop who is really, you know, the Jim Morrison of punk in some ways and is a tremendous performer, presence, a character and as I said, this combination of pop with these thundering drums and these insane guitars, to me, I mean, you know, I, I. People say, I mean, jazz often is complicated music, but I believe the best of music is simple. If you want complicated music, there are other things you can listen to. If you want rock and roll, it should be done simply. And you know, Iggy and the Stooges play it louder, harder and more simple than, than anyone ever did. And when they call them, you know, the inventors of punk, I think there's a lot to be said for that.
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A
I feel alright.
- [07:10]
D
That alone is one reason why anybody who likes rock and roll or rock music or punk or whatever we call it. If you like the sound of loud guitars, you will love the Stooges. If you like performance, you know, on the stage, you'll, you'll love Iggy. The whole thing is just a unpredictable explosion of kind of musical force. And, and to me, you know, as I said, I've played lots of different music and I, you know, even done different things and I don't play music any day, every day anymore. I'm never far from Iggy and, and I listen to it all the time, even when I'm writing. So, you know, if I was, if you were to dump me on a desert island and say, you know, you can only take a few records with you, I think the Stooges would be there.
- [07:54]
C
I can first of all agree with everything that Dominic said. And I guess I'll place it my own. Like, how did I find Iggy? How did I get into the Stooges? It's kind of boring because it's very much a music historian, kids version of it. I think chronologically. I got first into the Velvet Underground, which is like when you're, when you're exploring the 60s, you know, you, you're going into that kind of what's, what's beyond the Beatles and the Stones and the who and all the poppy stuff. Then you go into the weird drug dirges. And I loved the vu. I just got the full box set. Learned their complete works right off the bat. Then I moved to David Bowie. It was actually David Bowie who I next got into. This would be late high school, early college. And it was only after David Bowie, after absorbing his work and through his work, that I found my way to Iggy Pop and the Stooges. And that is telling, I think for me probably colors in some ways the way I've been view Iggy's music because a lot of his weird late 70s sort of robotic solo work that he did with David Bowie. That is really. You know, Bowie writes most of the music on that, on those records. That was where I found Iggy first, right? I didn't get the Greatest Hits. I got the Idiot. All right? I was just. I wanted. I loved this album Station to Station. I love this album Low. And somebody like one of my fellow music nerd friends in high school said, well, you need to check this one out. This is. This is actually where that song China Girl actually comes from. And then I discovered eggy pop and changed everything for me. So I didn't grow up with Stooges. I only got to them later, third in that sequence of events. And all of those groups, these people are all going to have to be mentioned together. For reasons that will become clear. I came to the Stooges last, but, boy, I loved them. And in fact, what I first heard when I first heard those first two Stooges albums, Raw Power, Working Debate, that mix, we're going to get there. But the first two albums before they had their breakup, the sound of the guitar work on those records, the sheer uncontrolled chaos, the madness, the attitude, the true snot and punk. I thought to myself, and I heard these. Maybe I was 21 at this point. I thought, well, this is really what punk music was. So would people actually mention the Stooges as the foundation of punk rock? You need them, understand, they're not kidding. It wasn't the vu. It wasn't any. It wasn't even the Sex Pistols. And this is the point that I will make most. Because that's what came to mind. I had heard Nevermind the Bollocks at this point, in fact, was one of the first, quote unquote, punk albums that I've gotten. And I'm not gonna lie, I've always been a little bit disappointed with it. It's sludgy, it's slow. It didn't really capture some of the excitement, which I know was transgressive, because I know the history of Britain during the late 70s. But when I put on the Stooges and I hear Search and Destroy or Give me Danger or I to be your dog, that's crazy. I hear I want to be your dog and I've heard nothing as insane as that came out of Britain in the late 70s. That was recorded in 1969.
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A
So messed up. I want you here now in my room I want you here now we're gonna be face to face and I'll lay right down in my favorite place and now I wanna be your Now I wanna be a dog but now I wanna.
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C
The Stooges are where punk begins. And in a lot of ways, punk has always just been trying to return to the basic elements that Iggy put forth there and, and, well, and Ron Ashton and then eventually James Williamson. Beyond that, this man also had a fascinating solo career, which extended all the way, I think was a lot of good music all the way through the. Even the dodgy 80s, it's a story, at least that's very interesting. The 70s are really, really important. And hip hop was there off on the side making music that didn't sell. But that to me still sounds like the heart of rock and roll. And it sounds as live and like, vibrant as it ever did back then when no one was listening.
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A
Ocean and I've been hurting Sometime Yes I'm go love but dance like hypnotizing chickens well, I'm just a My guy Love for life the lustful line the.
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B
Dodgy 80s is probably where I first encountered Iggy Pop. And for a long time I knew Lust for Life, the song I knew Real Wild Child and that duet with Kate Pearson, Candy. That's what I knew about Iggy Pop.
- [14:18]
C
That's a full vision of the Iggy Pop experience right there.
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B
That's not a great representation of what this man brings to the table. And I wouldn't say that was. Was shaped by this in any way, but when I worked for the college radio station, so it probably would have been 2,000 or so, he had an album out called Beat Em up in his solo career, and it's really terrible. And so I, I, you know, I wasn't necessarily predisposed to head back and say, oh, I love this. I might as well go back and hear some of the older stuff. But I do remember at one point someone shoved a copy of Raw Power in my hands and said, well, you should hear this. And which mix?
- [14:59]
C
I must ask. Bowie mix or the Iggy Mix Much later?
- [15:03]
B
The Bowie mix. So is the good. The original mix? Yes. And so then bits and pieces. This, I will say this is the first time I think I've gone through and listened to each of these albums in their entirety, front to back. Though I've heard portions of all of them at various points over the years for obvious reasons. Many times, if you watch movies, you've.
- [15:24]
C
Heard a lot of these.
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B
Yeah. And many times it's someone saying, as you guys both have alluded to, sort of, oh, you like this? Well, this is where that came from. You can Hear exactly where the reference is from this song from the Stooges. So that's, that's a lot of what I heard over the years. Into Dominic's point earlier, the thing that struck me is yes, it is a loud blues band at core, especially in the early years and how they reinterpret the blues music. And at various times you hear portions of it coming out. And also a love for like 50s era rock and roll too. Late 50s, early 60s era garage rock, thrash. We wouldn't call it thrash back then, but sort of, you know, the very looseness involved with.
- [16:10]
C
They have their predecessors, they didn't just spring completely out of nowhere. Yeah.
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B
And they certainly influenced a ton of bands as, as well as Jeff mentioned, we talked a bit about Iggy Pop previously on the David Bowie episode. But I am looking forward to having a deeper dive into the Idiot and Bowie's influence. And I think we were talking about this before we started, you know, Pop is always searching for that person seemingly to help him bring out his best. The person to sort of bring that energy to life in song. And he's found a lot of good co conspirators along the way and I'm thrilled to jump into it with all of us.
- [17:31]
C
All right, well, I mean, I guess I'll start with a brief background. I don't want to get, you know, too much into the weeds here on who, you know, who young James Newell Osterberg, otherwise known as Iggy Pop was or where the studios came together. But I think maybe the most important thing to notice how sort of middle class it was. I mean, Iggy again James at that point in fact, yes, it's actually funnier to think of him as like nice young Jimmy.
- [17:55]
D
Liked being Iggy. Apparently he doesn't like being called it and never really, you know, like the idea of being overtaken by this character.
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C
Right. Yeah. Because in the funniest thing about the man is that he was like a really like a nice young middle class kid. Iggy will tell you this himself by the way. I reflect on the fact that my David Bowie has gone. Iggy Pop is somehow met miraculously still alive. I don't know if his didn't his genetics are just made out of lizard DNA or something like that. I don't have men managed to survive this. But when he was a young kid he grew up in like with nice middle class parents in Ann Arbor, Michigan and he went to the University of Michigan, you know. And he has said is like, you know, my parents were wonderful. I had a Great family upbringing. They loved me. They invested in me. They like, let me get a drum set and play that. And I played like a mad little madman back when I was young. It's funn. He's really not much of it. We don't think of him as an instrumentalist. But if he has anything you'll notice about his. His songs is that there's a really great percussive attack on all of them. That's probably something he pays a lot of interest to. And then he starts a band like little kids do back in that. I think this bank was called the Iguanas. And so that's where he got his nickname of Iggy Iggy and the Iguanas. And then that band breaks up and he finds his way to the Detroit music scene. You know, putters around there. And then. And then he falls win with the Ashton Brothers. And these are the. These are the guys who are going to form the original basis of the Stooges. It's Ron Ashton, who is their lead guitarist and their backing vocalist, and Scott Ashton, who's their drummer. Then they find a guy called Dave Alexander to play bass guitar for him for them. And that is this band. Now, this band is a garage band. It's young kids in the scene with no tutoring, no, like, reputation. They're just getting together and finding what kind of music they can make for themselves. But what distinguished the Stooges from, like, almost every other garage band on the planet is that they started off with, like, a conceit. An almost bizarrely defined brutalist conceit. They wanted to play, like, hard rock, R and B, blues, whatever. But they wanted to play it with, like, more gut simplicity. More almost, you know, caveman, like, rage, than anybody ever done before. Absolutely. I'm setting this up.
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D
I just like to say this question of the conceit is very interesting because we think of garage bands as this huge wave after the British invasion of if you know, spotty teenagers practicing in garages and artlessly just copying the music they're hearing. The Stooges were never like that. They have a sense of themselves as a performance, as, in other words, as making art.
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A
Can I come over tonight? What do you think I wanna do? That's right. Can I come tonight? I said we will have a real cool time tonight I said we will have a real cool time tonight I said we will have a real cool.
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D
Time and it goes back to this thing again of how they understand the blues. Because if you listen to the blues in its commercially packaged form, you're hearing a 12 bar going round and round again. But if you get into it technically as an art form, you're hearing what is effectively a modal, open ended form of music that has lots of more in common with African and Asian styles of playing than it actually does with the commercial 45s you might have bought on Chess Records. And the Stooges have that. And there are lots of sources for that going on. Like in the mid-1960s, as we know, you've got this very, as I said, sort of naive garageband thing going on. But you've also got the beginnings of a kind of self consciousness and a reaching for other influences. So the Stooges obviously are printed with the Sonics, who are the Great Detroit, you know, garage band. The loudest of all the garage band is the Sonics, I think, from Chicago.
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A
Are they?
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C
Perhaps.
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D
But also there's stuff like Sun Ra, there's a lot of jazz and kind of high conceptual influences coming.
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C
We're going to hear a lot more of that on the second record too, right?
- [22:12]
D
Exactly. And so the Stooges have got a hinterland and they've got an awareness of themselves. And so this character Iggy Pop, as you say, is called Iggy from Iggy Wanderers. And apparently in Ann Arbor there's like a local head case who's called Pop, Jim Pop, who after Iggy had shaved his eyebrows off, was told he looked like. I don't know what Jim Pop looked like, but apparently they said, oh, you look like Pop. And so he becomes Iggy Pop. In other words, there is a high concept thing, a conceit going on. And Pop says, you know, the thing that really gave him the idea was seeing Jim Morri, University of Michigan and again, Jim Morrison is very influenced by, you know, French poetry and European performance art and all these things, which are not your straightforward garage band thing.
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A
But I don't know your little doll But I don't know you little doll Come on, shake, come on, shake, come on, shake your little down.
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C
I might point out, because, you know, Scott is notoriously not a big fan of the Doors. Well, here's something. Here's a positive influence you can attribute to Jim.
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B
I've got a note right here not to jump ahead, but I, you know, the story is that the band saw the Doors play and thought, you know, we could do this. Let's do it like that. Let's go over the top. Let's be like the Doors. And I'm like, that's a flashing red light for me. But thankfully they overcame that hurdle early.
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C
On, well, you know, there was a certain. There's a certain more blunt attack, of course, that Iggy and the Stooges were getting at. They didn't have time for a lot of the sort of fairy. Maybe the keyboard pretentiousness. I think, underlying the Doors. There's always Ray Manzarek there, who keeps things a little bit too frou frou. And of course, Robbie Krieger can't help but be a meanwhile Ashton. This is what I love about the Stooges is just, again, I think of caveman. What was the line? I think it was David Bowie once said, like, you know, you guys are so primitive. Your drummer should sound like he's beating a log. Or Ron Ashton sounds, you know, in an earlier era, like he's literally just hitting open strings in a fury. And it somehow. It sounds musical. There's something so unmediatedly fierce about this record that it almost. It betrays its artistic origins because you can't sound like that by accident. You. If nothing else, you'd fall in with some kind of producer who would try to tame your sound.
- [24:45]
D
Yeah, this is very true. You have to deliberately make a series of choices to not come finessed in that way of, say, the Doors.
- [24:53]
C
Exactly. And this is really important because the story of who their producer was for this first album, the way they got their record contract, I think they had the three songs on the first album or first side of the album, the ones that are actually songs like no fun and I want to be your dog. In 1969, they took them to Electra Records, which of course signed the Doors. They were very much into, like, these avant garde, kind of edgy rock sounds. And they said, okay, well, I'm impressed. You got anything else? You got a second side of the record. And they were like, yeah, we do. And then they wrote it, like, five days later. But in the meantime, what matters?
- [25:24]
D
The second side. Can I just say, the second side has got no fun on it. Which is, like, one of the best songs ever that anyone has written.
- [25:32]
C
But what matters the most is that something very fortuitous happened at the same time, which is that John Cale got his ass fired from the Velvet Underground. This is really happens in May 1968. John Cale and Lou Reed, they're just not getting along anymore. And Lou Read is like, well, guess who writes the songs? It's me. So you're out. And then he gets Doug Ewell. And the Velvet Underground goes on to actually a fantastic second act. But Kale decides to become a Record producer. Instead of, like, trying to, like, strike out on his own as a solo artist, he'll do that later. For now, he's producing some of these, like, you know, bands because he has. He has a relationship with Jack Coltzman over at Elektra, and he is the man who gets paired with the Stooges. And I actually don't really rate John Cale greatly as a producer. He's done a lot of different work. He also produced Nico, but he produced.
- [26:20]
D
The first Happy Mondays album of all things.
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C
Right. Isn't this quite strange? Yeah, he's worked with a lot of strange pairings. And I think what. The reason people hire him is that he has this generosity of spirit. He's interested in weirdness. So when he got this primitive band from Ypsilanti, Michigan, instead of trying to, like, make them sound like they could get played on the radio, he said, no, I'm gonna make you guys sound as terrifying as possible.
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A
All right? This is 1969, okay? All across the USA it was another year for me and you Another year with nothing to do it's another year for me and you Not a year with nothing to do.
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D
They do. They do sound absolutely terrifying.
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C
And this brings us to the Stooges. And this is like, a hell of a debut.
- [27:38]
D
The one thing that Kale brings in, I've got to say is on I want to be your dog is the repetitive high piano piano. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
- [27:48]
B
Very.
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C
I want to be your mayor. I'm waiting for the man. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Underground.
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D
And that connects them to this whole high concept, New York art world, minimalist weirdo meditation music that's as far away from garage bands as you get, except with the rest of them playing. As you're saying is it's kind of people going berserk on garage materials. A single, you know, riff over and over again.
- [28:12]
C
Scott, we. We've talked over you for the. For a lot of time here. What do you think about this? This monument to madness, the Stooge's debut.
- [28:19]
B
Stooges debut. I feel that it's. It's something that I don't. I don't. I. I think the progression from the sec. From first to second, second to third is clear. And this is one that I. I like and I understand the importance of. And how it was different and how it. How it sort of paved the way, but I still have problems with it. And part of it. Part of it is those three songs they wrote in five days to sort of. To sort of clean things up.
- [28:51]
C
Look I like some of those songs, to be honest.
- [28:54]
B
I would imagine you, like, maybe, like, We Will Fail.
- [28:57]
A
That's it.
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C
That's the one we will follow the long drone, the Velvet Underground kill drone. So of course we'll get into that.
- [29:02]
B
Not my favorite thing in the world. 10 minutes of sort of this droning, chanting dirge.
- [29:08]
A
And.
- [29:09]
D
Come on, Scott.
- [29:10]
C
Where, where, where are your robes? It's like we're all hooded monks singing a horrible Gregorian chant.
- [29:16]
B
Yeah, I'm not so sure about that. But, but so, so let me say the, the stuff, I mean, from, from the beginning to Dominic's point, too, 1969 is this brutally efficient Bo Diddly blues beat with a wa wa guitar. And, you know, I, I, I love these 60s albums that are mixed to the point where you have the guitar in one, the other channel. Everything's so clear, you can identify exactly who's playing what. I love that. And in 69, you have the guitar on one side and Iggy Pops on the other side. And it's just, it's this song about another year. Another year for me, another year for you. Nothing to do. Last year I was 21. Now I'm going to be 22. And something you have to understand, I.
- [29:59]
C
Think Abbey Road, right. In terms of albums from 1969, something.
- [30:04]
B
You have to understand early about, about the Stooges and Iggy Pop's lyrics, at least I would say, is that they're not really about anything. You're not really trying to sort of capture a relationship. You're not really trying to tell a story. But they are still about something. They're about a feeling, an emotion, a need, an attitude, a desire. And everything about the song points back toward that one thing. So it's not a narrative necessarily, but it's still telling you something very important.
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A
69, baby.
- [31:18]
B
You have to understand that as you get into this, we're not going to tell. You're not going to. We're not rhapsodizing about, you know, Iggy Pop's, you know, literature skills and his writing ability, necessarily.
- [31:29]
C
But even then, like, the themes are important. Like nightclubbing doesn't tell a story about nightclubbing, but it's about the horrible dirgy, joyless experience. Right, I like that.
- [31:38]
B
So I'll say something nice about a dirge later the show, but not necessarily here on this one. Dominic's right about no Fun, right? That, that is such a fantastic song, that tightly coiled rift that just bludgeons you until you submit to its power. And, you know, with no Fun and Real cool time, you know, no fun. Especially sort of has the hand claps, the sort of garage rock accoutrements you might expect from a song like that. Maybe we'll go out, maybe we'll stay home maybe call mama on the phone and you get this sort of pent up post teenage.
- [32:15]
D
See, that could be the Ramones. That lyric I could say, you know what I mean, in terms of being a vacant teenager. That is very much Dominic.
- [32:23]
B
There are so many places that I am reminded of the Ramones throughout the early Stooges. Both in attitude, you know, lyrical writing, musicianship. There's a lot of places throughout this early Stooges era that point directly towards the Ramones. But while the Stooges are sort of based in this blues, the Ramones are more in the pop world. That's sort of what they're twisting on as opposed to the blues world the Stooges are working on. So that's the main difference I see between.
- [32:53]
C
There's nothing snappy about this, okay? The Ramones are snappy, right? You think of them as Green Day. Like that's the lineage there. Whereas there's nothing snappy about the Stooges.
- [33:02]
A
Maybe go out or maybe stay at home or maybe call mom on the telephone Come on, we'll come on we'll come on we'll come on we'll come on we'll come out we'll come on we'll come out for no fun for two Be all alone for no fun for two we'll be all alone Hang out down.
- [33:47]
B
This is the thing.
- [33:48]
D
At the time you were expected to be suddenly instead of playing like three minute pop tunes, you're expected to be able to improvise. You know, there's that moment in the Abbey Road sessions in the recent, you know, Get Back movie where you hear, you know, the, the Beatles talking about, you know, having to expand on their tunes. And if they go back out on the road, they'll be expected to jam long versions. And George Harrison looks very uncomfort says.
- [34:14]
C
Oh, you know, that's jazz.
- [34:15]
D
In other words, he can't do it. And. And the Stooges in their kind of cack handed, ham fisted way, were a jam band. Of course, the Ramones are not.
- [34:28]
C
I mean, that's probably.
- [34:29]
D
The Velvet's an amazing jam and when.
- [34:31]
C
You listen, they're better live than they've ever been in the studio. Right, exactly right.
- [34:35]
D
And I think the scene that the Stooges grew up playing in, in Ann Arbor in particular, was very much like the one that the Velvets were in in New York, and not so much like, say that the Doors are in. In la. This was. This was a jam, live thing where you're expected to play for hours. And they have it. And they. They have this kind of density which. Which sustains them even though they're not doing anything very clever. It's got its own incredible momentum.
- [35:03]
C
Well, okay. As for this album itself, I think it's fair enough to say side knees, probably a little less. Like, those are the ones you can tell were mostly written quickly. And you know what? They're kind of fun. And my suspicion, although I haven't confirmed this, is that that's where you can really hear Robin Ashton taking the lead. The one coming up with those riffs and chords. And Iggy is just doing his attitude thing.
- [35:22]
D
Yeah, they're garage tunes. They are, actually. So the garage vibe, right? Yeah.
- [35:25]
C
They're actually kind of fun, though. I mean, like, there's nothing. There's going to offend you. Speaking of the one song that might offend you, I will. I mean, Scott already predicted this. I'm gonna stand up for the weird Gregorian chant of we will fall.
- [35:37]
B
All right.
- [35:37]
C
We will fall is 10 minutes long. It's clearly written as time filler, but, man, I mean, because they got John Kell doing this for them, he's on board with this. He clearly recognizes it as a sort of Quasi Venus, you know, Velvet Undergroundy kind of a thing. It sounds kind of fun. I. I find myself falling into the mix. I would never call that one up on, you know, on purpose, but as part of the first Stooges record, it's just fine, Ton.
- [36:17]
A
I hold myself tight.
- [36:32]
C
And I guess maybe it has to be some sort of long drone because it comes right after I want to be your dog, which I do want to say something about. I already mentioned how, like, I first heard this song. I was like, well, that's insane. That's one of the most insane guitar sounds I've ever heard. The feral nature of, like, what do you sing? I want to be our dog. That's all he wants to do. He just wants to be a dog. Like, he's. He's totally, like, driven out of his mind with lust. Like, a lust that is so, like, insensate that he can't even put it into words. The guitar is all that we really need to know to explain how he feels on that song. It's halfway like a. Like a sexual. But also sort of like almost an abasement. And I think that's the way I. I feel like I feel. I first heard that of all things, maybe in train spotting. Was it that another one of those late 90s films. I don't know if it was train spotting or not, but where it was played in the context of a really horrible ass or drug trip, you know, a really intense and unpleasant situation. And that to me is always how I've thought of that song. It's like there's something about that. Yeah, maybe he's just saying I love you. Ooh baby, want to make love. But no, there's something way darker and way like more self abnegating about the tone of that. That's the most striking thing on the record and really the signature song from this album.
- [37:52]
A
And now I'm ready to feel your hand and lose my heart on the burning sand. Cause now I wanna be a dog but now I want.
- [38:17]
B
I guess what I would conclude, saying is at times when you hear this debut, to me it's not quite. It's not as powerful as the band would become. Sometimes I want to say it sounds just more like a heavy psychedelic blues. And not that there's anything wrong with that, but they had not sort of. There's still. This album still has the 60s residual on it. It still has that 60s vibe that sort of remains layered on some of these songs inside the writing and performance. And they would really throw virtually all of that off one year later with album two.
- [38:55]
D
Yeah, I've got to say, in terms of pop origin stories, if we can go back in time when I was 15, you know, which is in the mid-80s and a lot of original punks were still around and people had elder brothers and sisters who had all the music, you know, from then. And. And I was 15 and a friend mine, you know, in some. In the attic of some unheated attic of some old Victorian house in North London, knew that I'd heard the first album by the Damned, which has got the COVID of 1970 on it. And he said, oh, you want to hear the original? And he played that to me. And that was the moment which of pop revelation for me. And. And you know, after that I was just hooked. And in fact I had a terror, you know, as everybody did a garage band and we were running through no fun, you know, the first time that we met after that. Because that second album you write this, Scott, is just. It's a whole different thing. It's the leap forward and it's funny.
- [39:54]
C
That brings us really to 1970s funhouse. And this is the one I Think. I think we'll all agree on this is the one that just knocked me out of my socks. The irony of this is that they departed from John Cale as producer, nice and arty, but I. You know, maybe he wasn't. He wasn't doing what they wanted. They didn't sell, obviously. So Jack Halt pairs them up with, of all people, the keyboard is from the Kingsman, you know, Louie Louie. Right. This is their producer guy by the name of Don Gallici. Right. This. You might think this is a disaster. I don't know how this happened. I don't know all the backstory. I haven't read it all. All I have. And in fact, the way I really love Funhouse, I like to think of it as just this sort of document in isolation. This record is insane. Every second of it is insane. Every second of it is perfect. Very few of these songs really qualify as songs pretty per se. I think there's. There is an entire half of this record that might not quite be a song.
- [40:49]
A
Yeah.
- [40:49]
D
But this is a point at which we should discuss that Stooges as a jazz group, rather.
- [40:54]
C
And it'll. It'll all come into the discussion here with Funhouse, an album that is as off the hook as early 70s rock, any kind of music ever got. I mean, they broke up after this record, then they reunited. We'll get to that. But in a lot of ways, Funhouse is a unique document. I've never heard a record that sounds quite like this. And when I think of, like, the birth of punk, I think of this one even more, actually than I think of the original Stooges debut album. I think of songs like TVI, I think in 1970. I think of even the madness of something like LA Blues. What do you think about this? And, Scott, were you able to wrap your arms around this madness?
- [41:40]
A
My. See that Cam the G. See that C, you. She got a TV yeah on me. She got a cd, man. She got a TV.
- [42:16]
B
Oh, yeah. And especially directly after the debut, this is more of what I expected from the band. Right. This is more of that just, you know, raw, powerful song as a sound. It's helped in places by the edition of the Saxophone. Right. Which is added to this, to this, to this record. Driving beats, jagged riffs. And that. That Iggy Pop yowl that. That takes over some of these tracks.
- [42:50]
A
You.
- [42:51]
B
From the first track down, down on the Streets, which is one I knew about because it was a frequent. Well, at least sometimes Black Crows cover during their live career. You have Iggy Pop, you know, Yelping like a dollar. And that's the first song where I hear. That's that very unique Iggy Pop delivery where he's sort of rolling certain vowel sounds like that's the way that he's.
- [43:15]
C
That's a little bit cowboy in some ways. Almost like he sort of slurs or like. Yeah, he's a kind of Western twang to it. Although, like, he's obviously, you know, from, you know, the middle of Michigan.
- [43:24]
B
Yeah.
- [43:25]
C
I don't know how to explain it, but it's a very unique delivery.
- [43:27]
B
Very unique. That's the first time I really heard. Here it is on. Down on the Streets. First song on Funhouse.
- [43:56]
A
I'm a real old mind.
- [44:01]
C
See a.
- [44:02]
A
Pretty wall See your pretty ass Thing ain't no wall, no wall, no wall the wall.
- [44:28]
B
Completely powerful off the hinges, kind of, kind of, kind of rocker. And the very next song, I would argue, is the best pure song, I think, in the band's catalog. Just from. From a songwriting execution perspective, Loose is incredible. That little bit of modulation here were there. You know, that Stick it Deep inside before. Before the. The chorus explodes. It still has the yelping. It still has the freak out guitar solo. But when that thing kicks into overdrive, what about 2 1/2 minutes in and that bass gets even thicker. It's such a huge, huge sound.
- [45:14]
A
I took a rather. I went down, baby, you can tell I took a rapid affinity. Now move to the stick, motherfucker. Stick it deep inside Stick it deep inside. Cause I'm loose. Can I.
- [45:57]
D
Can I jump in?
- [45:58]
B
Yeah.
- [45:58]
D
Make a technical observation, which is. Is of course the MC5. Let's kick out the jams and the. I think Lucas, even when the Release comes on the 5, I think it's basically the same chords as Kick out the jams. And I think actually it's better.
- [46:19]
C
I don't like the MC5 at all.
- [46:22]
D
I don't mind the MC5, but there's something a little bit contained or cartoonish or performative about them. There's an awareness, I suppose, that they must stay within the confines of R B. In particular, while on 1970, you hear the Stooges going beyond garageband, beyond R B, the notes that, you know, that Ashton is choosing for the guitar are going sideways. From what is obvious what the MC5, as much as the MC5 are good.
- [46:52]
C
At it, you know.
- [46:53]
D
You know where they're going once they start with the Stooges, you don't. Loose has this.
- [46:58]
C
It's.
- [46:58]
A
It's.
- [46:58]
D
It's the origins of the blues. It's a simple line and I mean, and we. There's usually three chords in the. In the blues and they've got all three of them, but not in the usual sequence. They just run with that line until it's time for the release and then they're back to it. And it's just like. I mean, a steamroller or a cavalry charge or something. It's unstoppable.
- [47:26]
A
I went down baby, you can't Pearl. I took a rap with a bit of music and now float father care and I'll stick it deeper inside and.
- [47:57]
D
I remember a couple of years after I, you know, heard it for the first time on an album, going to some gig in London as a teenager, you know, and before the band came on, you know, they play tunes on the PA and hearing that, that kind of volume was just one of them. Again, a revelatory thing, because this is epic music. Down on the street. It's all space. They just come in and then this amazing bit where the. In the intro, the guitar just goes. And. And that's it. They've broken down the kind of the rock feel to its most basic elements.
- [48:32]
A
And.
- [48:33]
D
And there's this huge space between the rhythm section and the odd noise from the guitar. And then Pop's voice above it as if he's. He's kind of sticking his head out of a jet plane or something. And it's absolutely. I mean, it makes the. The hairs on your neck stand up when you hear it. They. They. It's the most basic, powerful elements of the music on down in the street and again in Loose, where they actually, you know, pour everything in and everybody is playing one line. And, you know, a few weeks ago I went to see Iggy playing live in. In London and they opened with TVI and. And for the first time I realized what they were doing. There was a bass and two guitars and keyboards and they were all playing the riff, just all playing the same line. And so. And it's a dev. I mean, it's just so powerful.
- [49:25]
C
You guys are all talking about the songs of the first half of this album. I actually want to mention some of the ones on the second half. And this is actually the point. Maybe the issue, perhaps the Stooges, the debut, is that it's a bit unbalanced. Those two big numbers open and then there's a lot of stuff that you might think maybe you have no fun to open side too, but there's not a lot of balance. Meanwhile, Funhouse is actually a great start to Finish. And my favorite part is the stuff that comes on the second half, the chaotic half, the saxophone half, the jazzy half.
- [49:53]
B
That's all. And you might make this point, what struck me is that back half is all one song. It's really all one song.
- [50:00]
A
It really.
- [50:00]
C
It almost feels like it segues, right? And like 1970 is nominally a sequel to 1969, but they are not related musically in any way. 1969 is. Yeah, just some simple bow diddly beat. 1970 just goes straight into jazz.
- [50:15]
D
Yeah, exactly. And 1969 is. Is the blues, conventional blues. 1970 is just two notes.
- [50:22]
C
It's a jam, it's a jazzy jam, but the thing, it works so well. And again, the. The guy who they added for these sessions, Steve McKay, I guess this guy actually does a fantastic job in adding to the ensemble sound.
- [50:45]
A
I feel all right I feel all right I feel all right I feel all right I feel all right Feel all right Feel all right Feel all right Feel all right.
- [51:06]
C
This is exactly what you want on the playout of that song. You want it all the way through. Even to the chaos, the chaos of LA Blues, which I'm sure is, you know, contrary. I'm sure Scott loves it. Right, Because Scott loves it.
- [51:16]
D
How many rock bands really are able to do what the studios do here? Because you can add a saxophone to supplement things and. And, you know, add a bit of class or a soul feel or something, but that's playing along with the band. What Steve MacKay is doing is. Is jamming with them as an. As an equal member of it. And there are very few rock groups that have been able to pull that off.
- [51:37]
C
And even more importantly, most bands, when they would try to simply break it down like, that would sound absolutely horrible. I mean, I. I've. I've heard mediocre groups, like, do their attempt at some sort of crazy jazz improvisation and it'. It's atrocious. Something about this group. Nobody would ever pretend that these guys were like elite players, but they played right with one another. And they were. I guess, maybe it was drugs. Apparently they were all deeply addicted to heroin at this point. Maybe they were like, drugging on the same vibe. But there's something about LA Blues that is singular. It's chaos, but it's chaos with a purpose. And it works for me as the closing track on this record. And I know, Scott, you're probably not a fan of this stuff, but maybe I'm wrong.
- [52:28]
A
Wow.
- [52:49]
B
I don't love LA Blues, like, as a track. Like, I would not press play on LA Blues. But as I mentioned, the continuation, sort of the single statement that they're making from 1970 through Funhouse through LA Blues, that all makes sense. It all makes sense in a way. But that's sort of one of the big questions you have to ask yourself, right? Is LA Blues, like, brilliant for these guys who sort of had a plan and executed it, or is it just five guys kind of messing around around? Right. Is Iggy Pop's onstage presence and banter again, brilliant? Or just kind of a sideshow guy who's smearing peanut butter out himself and bleeding and like, you sort of have to take a stance on those questions before you come to understand and appreciate what the band is. But even in the middle of that stretch, the title track, Funhouse, I'm listening to this. And for as much as we talk about, you know, kind of the chaos and the, and and I guess, you know, Dominic's, you know, sort of jazz influences, there's a very nice song. Yeah, there's a very firm core at the middle of that song. The rhythm section is holding everything down and holding everything together as the guitar does its thing and as Iggy Pop does his insanity on top and as the saxophone goes. That wouldn't quite work unless that rhythm section was so solid in the middle. And I love Iggy directing things. Take it down, take it down. So he can sing with the first verse and he, you know, blow Steve, like this illusion of control in the middle of all this. This not improvised, but the middle of this. This chaotic sort of, sort of stew they're building. All of it really comes together nicely. But it doesn't work without, without that rhythm section holding it down in the center.
- [54:42]
A
A little baby girl A little baby boy A cover. Do I dare to hurt y' all with my love Every little baby no, top what I mean. A living in division in a chair Damn sign all mankind Call him from Fun House. A whole fun house.
- [55:39]
C
Dominic, any thoughts on Funhouse?
- [55:41]
D
Yeah, I couldn't agree more with that. And, and look, if, if I had to, you know, select the, the keepers, it's going to be the short, powerful tracks. Much as I like the whole, you know, Psychedelic Monks and, and the free jazz bit, to me, I'm happy to take it as a package and it's a key. As I, as I said, this open endedness is vital to, to the way they treat crunchy numbers. But let's face it, it is the greatest hits that, that's why we're, we're talking about it. 50 odd years later.
- [56:09]
C
All right, but the thing is, is that even though this seemed like a really promising software album or A it didn't sell and maybe how could it ever given but B the band itself was falling apart. Would you be surprised to find out that a group as wild sounding as the Stooges was also a bunch of drug addicts? Well, big shocker. They all were, I think, except Ron. Ron Ashton maybe actually was the only one who wasn't on heroin at the eventually fell apart. I think like their bases showed up drunk for a gig, they fired him and then they, you know, hired a bunch of other random fill in bases before the group itself eventually fell apart. Because all of them might not have been alcoholics, but they were out heroin addicts. And at that point, Iggy Pop with his band in disarray, happens to meet David Bowie. And it's a really important piece of timing because they run into one another somewhere in late September of 1971. Now this is this part of the story that if you've listened to our David Bowie episode, our three part David episode with Damon Linker, actually he was just a guest very recently with us on Tom Waits. We go into that in depth. This is the period of his career where he's himself like looking around. He's recorded and it flopped. The man who Saw the World, he's already had that number one hit that was random. And some people think, you know, thought of it as a time as a one off called Space Oddity. But he's written these good songs and he's put together an album called Hunky Dory. You might, you might think, say, well, this is an album that has changes in Life on Mars on it. I might want to go out and promot that. He doesn't want to because what he has really in his mind is an album about a great lost rock star called the Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, which he's already putting together in late 71. He has this idea of all these great lost rockers from his, his, you know, influential period, you know, his period of greatest openness to other music, which would be in the late 60s. And then he meets Iggy Pop and he says, wow, these things are dovetailing together. He meets another band at the time called Motha Hoople, same idea, a great hard rocking group that has fallen on bad sales and hard times and it's about to break up. And he's like, well, you know what? I. I'm gonna play. I'm gonna play God here I'm gonna play Dr. Frankenstein. I can save you guys. I think I know how to do it. I'll help you write some of your music. I'll produce it for you. I'll get you out of. You know, I'll give you a contract. And that is exactly what he did with many groups. Lou Reed also included. But most importantly for our purposes here, Iggy Pop, David Bowie's name, is going to come back a lot on the rest of the show because their stories are intertwined. I think Iggy kind of resents that at this point because he's like, you know, I have guy. But on the other hand, David Bowie did a lot for him. I think I've spent a lot of time thinking about, like, the influence that Bowie had on young Jimmy Osterberg. And it's impossible not to look at it, you know, and it's, you know, in its completeness and just say, like, this guy really actually went out of his way to help Iggy because Iggy was low. He was addicted to drugs, and he had no contract until he brought them. He brought Iggy with this other guy he just met named James Williamson. It's a great guitarist. They know each other from back on the scene in Detroit. Said, hey, come to England. We'll record a band. We'll do a new Stooges, just you two, and, you know, we'll find some British guys and they'll play on the rest. Tried that. It didn't work. Then they sent back to Michigan for the Ashtons. Ron Ashton was really not pleased about this, about being second. You know, like, he wanted to record this with studio pros. He was also not pleased about having to switch from lead guitar to bass, because now this other guy, James Williamson, is playing lead guitar. And the result of this is an album called Raw Power. Raw Power is, if you spent any time in this space, a very controversial record, primarily because of its mix. People agree this is a masterpiece. There are classics on it. People fight until this day about whether the original mix that David Bowie supervised is the right one or the, you know, many, many. Including one of iggy pop's late 90s remixes of this record is the definitive one. I guess I'll start by just asking, what do you think about Raw Power as a Stooges record, as the really the final one of this trilogy?
- [60:39]
A
You alone and you got the fear so am I baby let's pull on out of here.
- [60:52]
D
Well, I mean, you're talking about James Williamson, and James Williamson adds a whole new dimension because he is much More skilled and various.
- [61:01]
C
Right.
- [61:01]
D
He has this tremendous discipline and, and power and also a really good musical imagination. But he plays extremely loosely and wildly and, and that I, I got to say that's the hardest thing to do. To be very loud and to be very smart and subtle at the same time. It's like tightrope walking, you know, a cranked up amplifier and guitar.
- [61:23]
C
You.
- [61:24]
D
There is no room for error. Everything you strike is going to resound extremely loudly and, and, and commit you to a certain, you know, sequence responses. So he's totally in control of what sou. Totally out of control instrument. And that is, that's artistry of the highest order. And he writes these brilliant songs with pop. And, and the controversy, of course is the production. And, and I'm just going to say it straight off, I wouldn't change a note of the production.
- [62:02]
A
It's so bad, so fast.
- [62:26]
C
Okay, so the original mix of this album that came out in 1973 and didn't sell, it always has had the reputation of being quote unquote, tinny, a little bit thin sounding or whatever. And then the one that came out in 1997, which for me, I'll admit is the first one that I bought, is all the Way into the Red. There's a lot of distortion on it. There are some other like production touches that you don't hear in the original. There's these glockenspiels or whatever they are on Penetration that are actually surprisingly delicate and you're like, wait, where was that on the original? But I agree with you, the original mix is where it's at. The original mix has the energy and people are free to disagree. Maybe they want a little bit more distortion, maybe they want, you know, they want their music brick walled. But there's something funky about that original Bowie mix that really has always done it for me.
- [63:35]
D
Yeah, it is.
- [63:36]
C
I think it serves this because it's such a song based record unlike the other two. There's a lot of actual songs on this album.
- [63:43]
D
Yeah, I would just add to that that the, you know, the story goes that the Bowie booked them into a 24 track studio and the tapes had like three tracks on them and you know, so they had to be inventive with the sliders just to vary it. And at some point Bowie turned up the guitar louder than it should have gone and they realized how amazing it sounded and became the sound of the album. And that kind of serendipitous discovery and you can't get that twice. And it's an amazing Thing. And the sound of James Williamson's guitar, it just takes the top of your head off.
- [64:15]
B
Destroy.
- [64:15]
C
I'll just show it to you right there. It cuts in like, you have this sort of like faded tinny sounding rhythm guitar in the background. Then all of a sudden, Search and Destroy. All of that guitar work from Williamson just like overdubbed. Top it. It's what it sounds like, but it's like. It's unlike anything you've even heard it from the Stooges up until.
- [64:50]
A
I'm a ski walking cheetah with a hat full of napal I'm a runaway son of a nuclear apology I am a world's full goddamn boy the one who searches and destroys Honey, gotta help me, please Somebody gotta save my soul Baby Destiny for me oh, look out, honey. Cause I'm using technology.
- [65:25]
B
I agree that it's great, and I agree that the original mix is better. I heard the original mix, I guess, first, and I've listened to the. To the Iggy Pop mix from, I think the 99 reissue. I know there's been other.
- [65:40]
C
That's the one I got too.
- [65:41]
B
Yeah, there's been other attempts to. There's no. I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with the original. I think that production, that mix serves these songs extremely well. They would not. Not be as powerful. Even though, as you mentioned, Jeff, that the. The pop remix is so. Is so hot. It's so in the red. It's louder, but it's not more powerful.
- [66:03]
A
The.
- [66:03]
B
The Bowie mix is more powerful.
- [66:05]
C
And dynamics, my friend, dynamics matter.
- [66:08]
B
Yes. Listen to Search and Destroy and how that song builds and explodes as it gets to the chorus and how that guitar flow flies off the speaker. I think, Jeff, you mentioned there are actual songs here. I mean, Search and Destroy is a verse, chorus, verse, chorus sort of song. There's a song structure here. And even lyrically here, pop is getting a little more interesting with these war terms. The heart full of napalm and love in the middle of a firefight. There are new elements.
- [66:38]
C
I went back and I laughed when I finally heard the acoustic guitar on Gimme Danger. I'm like, oh, wow, you're getting fancy now, Iggy with acoustic guitar and everything.
- [66:46]
A
Yeah.
- [66:46]
C
Like, he's like. But there's actual effort put in the arrangements of these songs and make them feel like songs. And that's clearly got to be the.
- [66:53]
B
Bowie influence, you would imagine. So.
- [67:02]
A
Give me the danger Little stranger and I'll feel you a. Give me the danger little stranger and I'll Feel your disease there's nothing in my dreams Just some ugly memories Kiss me like the ocean breeze now if you real be my lover There are.
- [67:44]
B
A lot of really good things here. I, I, I wanted to mention a few where there's such a, a symbiotic relationship among these bands. In Detroit we already mentioned MC5 and it was this whole Detroit scene and Seeger. Yeah. Well, you're Pretty Face is Going to Hell. That's an Alice Cooper track and you know, they're around the same time. This is Post Killer and Love It To Death, but before some of the other stuff Alice Cooper does. So I'm not saying someone's taken from someone else, but certainly they're influencing each other in various ways. And Alice Cooper used a saxophone on a song like Under My Wheel, which is a great track. But the vocal styling of Cooperation is, is borrowed for your Pretty Face is Going to Hell, which even sounds like an Alice Cooper title for a song too. And then in Penetration, the very next song, that opening riffage sounds so much like what we'd hear from Malcolm Young in what, three, four years. Those first bluesy AC DC albums. That sounds just like what Malcolm Young would be playing for AC dc. And Penetration is neat because I pay a lot of attention to drums. As longtime listeners know, there's a weirdness in Penetration. It's trying to keep you off balance. And it sounds to me like they're offbeat in places. There's an uneasiness about this. It's such a this pulsating track about clearly raw sexual energy. But you're off put because the beat doesn't quite match where you think it's supposed to be in that song. So again, interesting arrangement, different kind of arrangement. And I just want to say one more thing about a song in the back half. Pop. I've read some stuff where he talks about the slower songs in these records.
- [70:30]
A
Like.
- [70:30]
B
Well, the record label said every album has to have a slow song. I think the best of a lot is I Need Somebody. I really like I Need Somebody, which is the slow like Dirty Blues. And the chorus provides such a good release from the tension inside. Great big big drum fills in the chorus. There's the start, stop, riff under, you know, just like you just like the post chorus part of I Need Somebody. That's a really good song. I'm not sure they would have been capable of pulling something by that off on these previous two records before a little bit of outside interest influence on them. But that's a fully executed song like from from concept to. To execution. And again, just to echo Jeff, the actual songs here are more like actual songs. But you don't lose that. That raw energy and power. It's a really great statement.
- [71:34]
A
And too I need somebody baby Just like you Just like you Just like you Interference is too strong.
- [72:15]
D
Yeah, I was just going to say, I mean this is all true. And I would add to this that it's with this album that Iggy Pop becomes the great influence on punishment punk in Britain. And if you want you can actually date it to. I think it's the 14th of June 1972 when Lou Reed and the Bowie sponsored Iggy Player show in London that that's the point at which you can really trace punk in England back to its inception. And famously Steve Jobs of the Sex Pistols learned by playing along to this album and. And many of us guitar players learn simply from this one more than any other. I think it's just an astonishing album and astonishing feel. And you're right, it's h. Got good tunes and of course they messed it up right, because it's. It's Iggy. And so the whole thing fell apart in catastrophe.
- [73:03]
C
Got to have a little bit of imperfection. It wouldn't be like can you imagine Iggy Pop releasing a sparklingly Al like produced album studio gem.
- [73:11]
A
That's not.
- [73:12]
D
Well, he did in the 80s and they're not so exciting.
- [73:15]
A
Exactly.
- [73:16]
C
Yeah, we get real wild one wild show.
- [73:18]
D
But it's true he was on the cusp of the kind of. Of success that Bowie had had and the kind of success that. That Bowie was able to secure for Lou Reed in 1972. Three with transformer, which is very much from a similar sonic, very much cut.
- [73:32]
C
From the same color.
- [73:33]
D
But of course with the Stooges, you know, they were a bunch of lunatics and. And it fell apart. And also these songs are mixed in ways that they're not going to get on the radio. So they. The studios are a critical success increasingly and they are, you know, caviar. The general musicians love the Stooges and they have this colossal influence on punk in England. But they're not selling any records at this point. And of course then they go back on the drugs and break up.
- [74:40]
A
Once I care for you.
- [74:47]
C
Yeah, of course this leads us to like the apocalyptic 1973 and 74 tours.
- [74:53]
D
This.
- [74:53]
C
I'm only going to mention this. Well because it's important as part of the story. And it did result at least in one pretty famous live album. They, you know, go out and tour with this music and these records, the United States primarily. Even though, you know, it was Bowie in Britain that really tried to resurrect them. Of course they're from Michigan and it doesn't work because they're all addicted to drugs. And they're also very, very confrontational. Now Iggy Pop has a stage Persona that's very different from, you know, James Osterberger, but boy, he was probably under the influence of way too many things when he started like, you know, starting fights on stage. This is the era of his most self destructively infamous stage behavior. It leads to the album Metallic Ko which is a document of the last Stooges show. It's a mixed up thing, you know, but we primarily, it has. The last Stooges show would be like February of 1974. The day before Iggy had gotten into a giant fight, you know, heckling the stage with like some biker gang. The Scorpions I think was the name of them. Goes on the radio and he's just like, yeah, I dare you to come down. Just say every nasty thing you want to me. And then like the next day they're like, yeah, we're gonna come kill you. Your next show. This show is taped and you hear basically people say it's one of the great live albums ever because you can hear the bottles breaking. I think that was Chris Gal's criticism of it. It's not a great live album. It's not well recorded as my whole primary problem. It just sounds like it's a bootleg.
- [76:17]
B
It's all it is. It's audiences.
- [76:57]
C
I thought, yeah, it could be a cassette, could be a cassette soundboard too. I'm experienced, but in that era it could easily have been. But either way, it's not a hi fi quality sound. It is an experience of what the Stooges at their drunkenness and their most aggressive were capable of sounding like. And I gotta say, James Williamson play guitar man. He's actually really, really fun to listen to. Just as I would imagine a drug add on fury at that time. But yeah, it's not art. And it's obviously the Stooges at their, like, you know, you know, what are. They're cashing checks here. They're releasing an album that I think in retrospect is loved by fans. But you know, it's kind of not too very important now. I don't listen unless you guys have any on that or can I.
- [77:41]
D
No, I think that's very fair actually. It's a kind of historical document and it catches the rage. But it also shows the limits of what they were about. And in fact, from here on for several years, this question of sound quality becomes an issue because if you're a fan, the next few years actually have got lots of really good songs. But if you're not a fan, it just sounds like they were recorded through a thick wall, even in the studio. Sometimes unfinished songs played by. By incompetence. So very much. If you're already a fanatic, then actually the next three, four years of Stooges music are very interesting and there are loads and loads of good songs, despite the fact that they can't get it together.
- [78:22]
B
So.
- [78:22]
C
Right. And so this is the point. Oh, Scott, were you going to say something very quickly?
- [78:25]
B
Metallic Ko is. This is the audio equivalent, the real life equivalent of the Blues Brothers playing at Bob's Country Bunker in the film. And it is worth a listen, just one time to hear Iggy Pop talking crowd. And at the end of Louie Louie saying, hey, you missed my head. Try again tomorrow or earlier. Throw all the ice you want. You're paying five bucks and I'm making ten grand, baby. There's an actual track here called Iggy Talks. Right. So one, one time, one experience to hear that. Because as you guys, it's a document. It's a document of a very strange show. But it's worth one time.
- [79:13]
A
I never thought it close to this, baby.
- [80:00]
C
We've never done Lou Reed here on, on the podcast.
- [80:03]
D
I can't believe you can sign me up, but I tell you, I know where you're going with this. I know where you're gonna go.
- [80:09]
C
He was inspired, I think. I'm pretty sure he was inspired by Metallic Ko to release a live album called Techno Prisoners.
- [80:15]
D
Yeah.
- [80:16]
C
Which is like literally. He plays five songs and like literally fully half of the album is him heckling the crowd, like talking about Robert, Chris Gal, like his critics. It is like, like, you know, like ducking bottles there albums I've ever heard that are quite like this. And then we actually, we did Tom Waste, we talked about Nighthawks at the diner, but that's a much more forgiving crowd. Audience hostility. There's Metallicao, there's. There's Take no Prisoners about Lee Reed and it's pretty, pretty obscure. But there's a band called Wire that I'm. That I love called Document and Eyewitness. It's after right after they made the decision to stop writing and playing pop songs alive and they were just going to do Avant Gardens experiments instead. And like, basically the tape is just of the Audience rebelling against them, like throwing bottles at and saying, like, where are your hits? Play something that has a beat. That's basically what this is. And it needs to be pointed out that this is Iggy Pop's lowest moment. And you think about a guy who's probably had some low ones, this is it. And we locate ourselves in 1974. All right. Iggy Pop, at this point, is strung out on drugs. He's mentally unstable. And he made the voluntary decision, I think, at that point, to check himself into a mental hospital. He's like, I have to get healthy, I have to get sober. And this is something he struggled with for a couple of years. So this is not like, you know, one day it happened and he, you know, flipped the switch. This is several years worth of work from this point onwards to try to sort of retrieve himself. And at this point, he's at his lowest. And what happens is that James Williamson, who's, you know, out there, the Stooges, broke it up. James Williamson says, like, listen, I got. I kind of got an album. I think we should do it. And he calls Iggy. Apparently. He says, like, I don't remember doing this record. I was literally checked out of the hospital periodically just to sing on it. But Kill City is a masterpiece. You going to have to bleep me, but I'm shocked at how unknown this record is. It was actually the name of a pretty famous book about the punk scene written later. So this is known among, like, the real hardcores. But Kill City is like, a frighteningly powerful recording and it's.
- [82:19]
A
If.
- [82:19]
C
If anything else, you should know it A. For its title track, which I think is great, and also for I Got Nothing, which is a song that the late Period Stooges had already written. They played it. It's on Metallic ko. This is the definitive version of this. This thing, when it was originally released, was released with a horrible mix. They finally found the Orig mixes, you know, the original master.
- [82:37]
B
And they're really good. They sound great.
- [82:39]
C
Really, they sound great.
- [83:12]
A
Man, I feel so washed out today where the sheets of a man there Throw that girl away.
- [83:46]
C
This is. You'd be shocked at how professional a band Iggy Pop with Troy Thurston, who has been a Stooges veteran, and James Williamson, they put together some forgotten gold on this record. And I just want. For this episode, I just want to flag it. As a fan, a fan of this record since in the 90s, 2000s, I finally now hear it the way it was meant to sound. And it's really wonderful.
- [84:21]
A
And I am the wise hell boy, if I have a diet, I'm gonna make. No.
- [84:49]
D
Yeah, it is really tremendous. And it doesn't get released for like two years. It's recorded in 1975, released in 1977 and. And 77 is basically Iggy's, you know, great year.
- [85:01]
C
And it's renaissance.
- [85:03]
B
It is in.
- [85:04]
D
77 is the year that the two the Idiot and Lust for Life, the two Barry produced solo albums come out. And it's also the year Kill City comes out and the year that punk breaks and he's finally taken. Taken seriously.
- [85:18]
C
And this is the beginning of it. And of course, it's all out of chronological order because nobody was interested in releasing. The reason any of this Iggy Pop music ever got released is basically because of David Bowie. And this is, by the way, what I mean when it says like, whatever your opinions are now, like, well, you know, I don't like the David Bowie era albums. It's not true. Iggy, you know, you got to give the man credit for resurrecting Iggy's career when nobody else was even interested in him. Pop has mentioned this. He said, like, you know, when I was in the asylum, nobody came to see me. None my friends, none of the people I'd ever been hung out, hanging out with. But David Bowie came to see me.
- [85:54]
D
You know, I'm not the biggest Bowie fan and. But I think what he did with pop is really, really good.
- [85:59]
A
And.
- [85:59]
D
And I think it's. It's better in its way than what he did with Lou Reed. I think that was quite formula. Transformer is basically Ziggy Stardust with Lou Reed on it. But the pop music is. Is always something surprising and experimental and interesting. And I love those two solo albums. You know, the Lust for Life and particular as a track is. Is one of the greatest rock tracks. Full support.
- [86:20]
C
Give me a moment to get tricks just. Just to cue this up though, Dominic, because there's a story. I'm going to actually spend a fair amount of time on these records because they're important for me. For a. Like, David Bowie, of course himself was bottoming out at this time. This is the Diamond Dogs cocaine era. He goes on to do Young Americans where he's like, help me, who can I be now? Then he does Station to Station where he's like throwing out Nazi salutes at Victoria Station. It's a dark era for him that he prefers. He preferred before not to talk about. He's like, I have to get well myself. He got Iggy out of the asylum, he said, let's go to Berlin, all right? Literally, let's just move to a place where we cannot access drugs at least as easily as you can get them in Los Angeles. And he's like, hey, while we're at it, I don't know what the hell I'm doing with my musical career, but I have some interesting ideas. Why don't we just make an album? And this is how he Pop restarts his solo career. It's with the Idiot in 19 set. It's technically came out in January of 77, but it's only because the record label again, was not interested in releasing anything. Iggy Pop's name on it. They only did it once, Low by David Bowie, which was recorded after that had hit. And they're like, all right, fine, we'll release this. You know, some people might be interested. This is the first step in the new chapters in both of Bowie's and Pop's care.
- [87:45]
A
Four more times. Hey, I feel lucky tonight I'm gonna get stoned and run around.
- [88:05]
B
Last night.
- [88:06]
A
I was down in the lab and it is true.
- [88:20]
C
And yeah, the Idiot is not like big, violent, viral, like ferocious, feral, Iggy Pop stooges like music. It is an art rock project. And most of that music was written by David Bowie. But I'm a huge Bowie fan, unlike you, Dominic. I love that weirdo. And this is one of my favorite eras of his career, so. So when I hear songs like Nightclubbing, I hear Dum Dum Girl and most especially China Girl. Oh, yeah, China Girl to me is like one of the most sweeping songs. This is an album that sounds, again, poorly produced. It's not a great sounding record because they were doing it essentially like demos. I don't even know how you can really remix it. They've tried recently, stick with the originals, but, man, this stuff I listen to again. I listen to the despair of China Girl, which Bowie wrote the music and then pop responded to the. The sadness of the music with his own lyric. They matched together so perfectly. And they match together in a way that is so superior to what Bowie did himself in 1983 with a big hit single. I listen to this and I'm back in Berlin again with those. Those Carlos Al guitars and those weird, desperate sounding synthesizers. This isn't maybe natural like Iggy Punk Pop, but, boy, it takes me to a place that I always. I really love to go musically.
- [89:56]
A
I'll give you Eyes of Blue, I'll give you.
- [90:24]
C
Any thoughts on the Idiot, and then we'll Move on to Little Bit of Lust for Life.
- [90:29]
B
We talked a good deal about this in the Bowie episode, but it's been a while and you sort of understand things a bit better with the background. This is. It's a Bowie record with Iggy Pop's help, and so you sort of have to look at it that way. And, you know, that's why Jeff loves it. And it's a very good record, but it. It rarely feels like. Like an Iggy Pop record. It feels like he's. He's. He's helping his friend out. But that's not to say the stuff he said.
- [91:00]
A
He.
- [91:01]
C
He said. He said. I said, I knew David was using me as a guinea pig for his ideas that he was working out on his own, and I was just like, well, I've got nothing better to do. I'm drying out in Berlin. Let's get Iggy to sing this. Then Iggy responded by writing his own words to these songs. And then, of course, you know, then at the next album, he takes control.
- [91:20]
B
It's interesting the way that Pop writes these songs. So Nightclubbing, Fun Time, in particular. Nightclubbing. I like very atmospheric synthesizers. It sets this scene. But the lyrics, like, we're an ice machine. And as Pop sings, Isn't it wild? We walk like a ghost. You're just numb to all these exciting things that are happening around you. You're alienated from everything going on around you. There's no excitement.
- [91:48]
C
The album cover was outstanding. In the snow doing that weird pose that looks like it's from expressionist German art, right? That's Nightclubbing.
- [91:57]
A
We're night loving we're walking through town Night clubbing We're night clubbing we want like a ghost. We learn dances, brand new dances like the nuclear bomb. When we're night clubbing. Right. White clubing. Oh, isn't it wild?
- [92:46]
B
The same thing with Fun Time, which is, you know, working hard to convince yourself that you're having a good time, that it's true.
- [92:52]
C
All aboard for Fun Time. It's like. It's like so.
- [92:55]
B
And my point there we. At the very beginning, I was saying, look, these songs aren't about anything, but they're about a feeling and emotion. Everything points to one place. This is different. There was. There was clear glue between the literature lyrics and the song with the Stooges. And here there's this ironic distance between what you think you're hearing in the lyrics and what the music is actually telling you you should be feeling about the lyrics.
- [93:20]
C
And that's why I love it so much. Yeah. It's an intellectual. It's a wire conceit for me, but I love that so much.
- [93:25]
B
Yep. And then the one other song I'll mention is Dum Dum Boys, which is one I like a lot. It's a song lyrically that so specifically about the trials and tribulations of the Stooges. I think by Bowie's recommendations, like Iggy, you should write a story. Write a song about the story of the band. And it starts with these finger snaps and electric piano. They're talking about old friends who either died or overdosed or someone, Someone went straight. And yes, there's, you know, there's an extreme David Bowie influence of the way this song sounds, but the self, you know, being. Being so. So knowledgeable about oneself. Right. I was most impressed. No one else was impressed. Not at all. As he, as he says about the band. Right. And I really like the groove they get into on this song. Toward the end, the walls close in and I need some noise.
- [94:19]
A
Right.
- [94:19]
B
Dum Dum Boys is both a great song and also a great story told from a guy who was not really at this point, to this point, known for being a great storyteller. But it's a nice story about the Stooges.
- [95:21]
C
Dominic, any thoughts on this one?
- [95:23]
D
That's very interesting. So I think it, it, it, as they say, it speaks to what I. What I always thought about this. So obviously it's an album about being bored with being on drugs, which is a major running theme of Iggy's music. And, and I think him and Bowie reached peak drug boredom around this time. But also there is the beginnings of, of the, the, the. The mature Iggy Persona in this, in, in the self consciousness you're describing, which is very. Bowie like to be prompted to, you know, write a song about yourself and the band and, and then another aspect that will become more pronounced in time is Iggy, the kind of baritone balladea, the romantic Iggy, which begins with China Girl. And I think he's singing his imitation.
- [96:11]
C
He's so much better. I think he's doing his David Bowie imitation.
- [96:14]
D
Sometimes it may be. Maybe it's older. I think of Jim Morrison in Iggy Pop and he always goes sideways. I have the feeling there's, there's, there's kind of old. There's 1950s singing behind there somewhere is Mel Torme. Is. Is there in Iggy Pop such a.
- [96:27]
C
Cracked and damaged voice? That's, that's what makes it weirdly moving. Okay. People will say like, well, why do you like the song so much you can't really sing. You can't really like crack that melody out.
- [96:37]
D
You're right.
- [96:38]
C
But it doesn't matter. There's something about the damaged way he sings that makes it.
- [96:42]
D
And I hear him sing, singing it, I believe it. And when I hear David Bowie sing it, I believe in the entertainment value of the performance perfectly. That David Bowie ever loved anybody as much as. As he claims when he sings it.
- [96:56]
C
Or was ever just torn by those weird thoughts like, you know, I was. I wander into town Visions of swastikas in my head and plans for everyone like. David Bowie's never been quite that demented in the way that he wouldn't.
- [97:08]
D
He didn't fully admit to it. And when he did act like that, as you say, he didn't want to talk about it I.
- [97:12]
A
Afterwards.
- [97:14]
D
But you know, that, that is. That's. That's Speed Freak talking as well about visions of. It's.
- [97:21]
C
It's what it is.
- [97:22]
D
Lenny Kilmin from Motorhead said about playing slot machines that. That if you play them for long enough, you can see swastikas spinning in the reels.
- [97:32]
C
But it's about. It's. It's about that loss of like, like hope and just any sort of focus or rationality. It's a confession. Again, this is where the lyrics and the music match so well. It's of just like I'm at absolute bottom. And I hear that again in the instrumental parts because remember, these guys were both at bottom at the same time and then they were both climbing out of it at the same time.
- [98:10]
A
It.
- [98:44]
C
Which leads to Lust for Life, the follow up record to this one. This one's finally released in 77. People are like, hey, Iggy Pop's actually cool. David Bowie is weird, but Iggy Pop, he's cool. And then he comes out with this record where he very much asserted himself more Now, Bowie, actually, Bowie, not only Bowie, but his guitarist on Low Guy by the name of Ricky Gardner dominate the music on this record. Record technically, but it feels so much more like an Iggy Pop album from second one. And speaking of, you know, Scott, you confess that you're a big drum fan. Do you agree with me that the drum sound on Lust for Life is one of the best drums ever recorded? I think that to me is like a gaggle of dogs that have escaped from the pound and are now bounding down the street for you, chasing after like, you know, maybe a juicy steak or something like that. Lust for Life is one of the most alive Tracks of the entire Dec.
- [100:51]
B
Hunt sales on the drums. And the song is mostly drums like that. That is the song that rolling.
- [100:59]
C
That little Morse code tap on the guit.
- [101:01]
A
Yeah.
- [101:01]
B
And the thing is, there's a radio edit of Lust for Life where they cut the intro down. It's about a minute 15 originally. And they cut it down. And it's such a bastardization because I.
- [101:14]
C
Was about to say, you can't do that.
- [101:16]
B
You can't do that. The Luster Life intro has perfect symmetry everywhere. It is exactly as long as it needs to be. These little elements entering exactly when they should exit when they should. The momentum is exactly what it should be. You can't. You can't cut that down. It needs every second of that to sort of set up the song. And you know, there was that Jet song a couple of years ago, are you going to be my girl? Which is, you know, exactly the same. And yet. And yet. I mean, also, you can't hurry Love is fairly close to that same sort of drum beat intro.
- [101:54]
C
So they're all going back to Motown in some ways.
- [101:59]
D
Yeah, absolutely.
- [102:01]
B
Yeah.
- [102:01]
D
But except it's done with maximum impact and everything turned up loud.
- [102:21]
A
Well, I'm just a modern guy the cause I had in my ear before.
- [102:41]
D
It'S an incredible sound. And a nice trivial note is. And this is a nice David Back Maui high concept touch. The vocals are put through a Fender twin reverb guitar amp. Which is what you do when you're jamming in someone's garage and you know you don't have a pa. You just put the microphone into another guitar amp. And that gives it this enormously cutting but rather trebly sound. You can only get that with a.
- [103:04]
C
Guitar amp for vocals, actually.
- [103:06]
D
So the whole thing has its intensity.
- [103:08]
C
The thing actually sounds like it was played in the garage. But here's the other mysterious thing about Lust for Life. The first Iggy Pop like related album that actually sounds semi well produced. Like, again, like those drums boom, out, I think of some weird sin. Which to me is the most Bowie like song on this right now.
- [103:23]
B
Absolutely sounds absolutely such a.
- [103:26]
C
Such a great little Bowie like musical number. But of course I love Iggy's lyrics.
- [103:40]
A
I never got my license to live I won't give it up so I stand at the world's edge I'm trying to break in oh, I know it's not for me Let the siren makes me say that in you that's what I want Somewhere.
- [104:12]
C
The passenger and then even. You know, the funny. My least favorite song on this record is the one that Bowie eventually used for himself on one of his worst out.
- [104:19]
D
Yes, Tonight.
- [104:19]
B
Tonight.
- [104:20]
C
Tonight was bad.
- [104:21]
B
When.
- [104:22]
C
When Iggy did it is even worse, believe it or not, on the album Tonight, which Bowie. We'll get to this. Bowie titled his record after that. That's a different weird phase. But boy, the first half of the. This record is just like, you know, famous songs, pop songs. This is very. Actually conventional music. I'm. I'm almost surprised it didn't sell. It's almost people just like OG Pop. He's dangerous, there's drugs. It's probably weird and arty, but if people would put this on at the time, there's nothing but a party on this record.
- [104:57]
A
Got it? I want to kiss your trash and you can't help it no one care now that it knows there's nothing to get Will you still place your bat against the neighborhood somewhere?
- [105:31]
B
It was the COVID People couldn't bear to have that cover in their house of Iggy Pop in like his, you know, 8th grade yearbook photo.
- [105:37]
C
Look at that cover. He looks so normal.
- [105:39]
A
I know.
- [105:40]
D
I think also he had a problem. He started to be overtaken by his admirers that by 1977 the music press and a younger generation of music.
- [105:49]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [105:50]
D
Were much more expensive. Excited by these often very incompetent, you know, one off bands than they were by the fact that Iggy had produced an incredible album. And. And so I think he was a victim of that in one way. Plus he was still pretty unstable in terms of his, as they say, his lifestyle. And I. I like to add to. To our consideration here the 1977 live recordings which were issued as TVI live.
- [106:16]
A
Yeah.
- [106:17]
D
Which I think. I mean, if you're going to pick an Iggy Live album, I would put this well ahead of Metallic KO or.
- [106:22]
C
Indeed problem with it is that it just also does. It doesn't. It's horrible tapes. They're not like really poor soundboard tapes. I. You know, if you'd given them a real professional 24 track, who knows what it would have come off. But yeah, that's great. The funny thing about those live tracks is that David Bowie is actually playing in the band. I mean, I think there's two tours, so he's on half the records. But Bowie didn't want to talk about it. He didn't sing, he didn't even say hi to the audience. He just hid behind his keyboards and.
- [106:48]
D
Like he was enjoying it, I think.
- [106:49]
A
Yeah.
- [106:50]
D
I mean, there is lots.
- [106:51]
C
Back when he was like playing a Low profile, right?
- [106:53]
D
Yeah. There's a live footage from Manchester and they actually sound the same as on the live tapes that were recorded, I think. Was it in Kansas City or something? Most of the tracks are. I mean, they just actually sounded like that. Really, really loud and basic and. And the versions of. In particular there's. From that last era where the Stooges are writing songs but not making albums. There's a track called I Gotta Write.
- [107:15]
A
Yeah.
- [107:16]
D
Which I think is one of the best studious tracks of all time. And there's a version of it on that TVI Live album which is just astounding. I mean, it's like a rocket ship. And when you compare that to how Life could recordings anyway of the English punk bands in particular, how they sounded. I mean, they sounded awful live. And compared to this, this is like Men and Boys. The band on. On TVI Live. Are they. They are serious, serious players. And it's. It's. It's a devastating thing. So, you know, it's unfortunate that no one bought it, but it is wonderful.
- [108:34]
C
That band probably deserves some mention. By the way, I think Scott mentioned the Sales. Broken Brothers already.
- [108:39]
D
Yeah.
- [108:40]
C
Hunt Sales and Tony Sales. These are guys that. The Twin brothers. I believe they're children of Soupy Sales. Remember so. Well, you probably don't. Dominic, you didn't grow up in America. You don't know anything about Soupy Sales. It's myth. Even to people of mine.
- [108:53]
D
I've heard this name.
- [108:54]
C
Right, right. He was like one of those vaudevillish, kind of clownish TV comedians. I think his heyday would have been the 50s, maybe the early 60s. That was before my time. Right. But apparently his kids grew up to be maniacs. Absolute friggin maniacs. Because if they could hang with Iggy Pop and they with David Bowie. The reason I know them so well is that they later showed up as a semi criminal participants in Tin Machine. You're not a fan of Bowie? Again, you probably wouldn't know about this, but I do. The late 80s and early 90s. It wasn't the best of David Bowie's experiments, but it was formed at a time when he was desperately trying to return to sort of roots rock. Roots in a certain spontaneity. So no doubt that, you know, that's why he came back to the sales guy, the salesman who he had known very well from this period. But playing with them in a band. But also Ricky Garfield Gardner again. Ricky Gardner in the Bowie story is known as the guy who does the work on Low. And then Robert Frit came in for Heroes, but on this record he's fantastic. And it's probably the only live Iggy document that's worth it. And at this point he's done with rca, the label that has sort of grudgingly been forced to put these records out, mostly because David Bowie has been like prodding themselves. Let me.
- [110:09]
B
Let me jump back just very quickly, because you mentioned Gardner, and I want to say. I was going to say something very quick about the Passenger from Lust for Life.
- [110:16]
C
Oh, yes.
- [110:17]
B
So this is.
- [110:18]
C
You wrote that music.
- [110:19]
B
Yes, Gardner wrote the music for the Passenger. And this is one of those songs. It's like. Like Jeff's Tom Sawyer Rush story. I never would have said I'd heard the Passenger up until preparing for the show, but the second I heard it, it was insane. Instantly recognizable. And it's a magnificent, magnificent song. And part of that is the. Is the music.
- [110:42]
A
The.
- [110:43]
B
Gardner wrote that really springy groove, that indelible riff that the song rides from start to finish, that riff that somehow defines this sense of motion for us. And it's one of his really brilliant lyrics that pop would write. Seeing things from under glass as the passenger in a car. And I guess it's kind of real life where Bowie would just take him around Europe and he'd be sitting in the passenger side of the car.
- [111:09]
C
You didn't have a driver's license even.
- [111:11]
B
Yeah, right. Looking through the window and seeing what he sees. And there's a portion where everything. The guitar gets a little funkier, things surge and he talks about seeing the silent hollow sky and the stars come out at night and the city's ripped backside and the winding ocean drive and everything was made for you and me that's a transcendent moment of music.
- [111:34]
A
Oh, the passenger he rides and he rides he looks through his window what does he see? He sees a sight and hollow sky he sees the stars come out tonight he sees the city's ripped bad sights this is the winding ocean drive and everything was made for you and me all of it was made for you and me Cuz it just belongs to you and me so let's take a ride and see what's mine LA.
- [112:36]
D
Oh, and I gotta say, that could have been written by Jim Morrison, right?
- [112:40]
B
Yeah.
- [112:41]
D
You know, not to do it down in any way. I'm just saying that the. The poetic E comes out more and more in the 70s. Yeah. And I think it's a really good thing. And that song is. Is a magic, magic song.
- [112:51]
C
Song.
- [112:51]
D
And just to blow the trumpet Ricky Gardner's a Scottish session player who writes this incredible tune, just as Herbie Flowers, an English session player, comes up with the famous bass line on Lou Reed.
- [113:02]
C
For a walk in the wild side. Yes.
- [113:04]
D
So this is like continental pop, Euro pop.
- [113:08]
C
Scott Walkerish almost, but not quite. Although Sky Walker at that point was doing stuff like Night Flights, which, actually, you'd be surprised if, you know, this has more sympathy with stuff like the Passenger than you would think. And it also has that Berlin vibe to it. This brings us, you know, know, just to return to the place that we were at, you know, after Lust For Life. Well, Iggy pops alive. He's done a successful tour, even. You even released a cash in live album. Right. What's he gonna do? Was he gonna get a new record label? He goes from RCA to someplace that he thinks he'll be valued, which is Clive Davis's Arista. I think we've mentioned this in the past, Scott, about how Arista Records always seemed like to be a bad move.
- [113:44]
B
Yes, yes.
- [113:46]
C
All these bands that always went to Arist.
- [113:48]
B
Yeah.
- [113:49]
C
The Kinks. I'm thinking the Grateful Dead, too. Oh, my Lord, the Grateful Dead. I love the band, but, boy, those Al. And. Yeah. Well, here's Iggy on Arista. And this is the point where people say, like, hey, I can take it. I can leave it. Because, like, his classic era has passed. I think Dominic and I are both agreed that there's actually, like, a full album's worth, a full CDs worth, even. We'll fill out 80 minutes.
- [114:10]
D
Yeah.
- [114:11]
C
Really great stuff from four albums from the Arista era from, you know, from. From that point onwards. And I guess it begins with New Values, which was his. You know, his. Like, I'm gonna be me and I'm doing my thing. The most important thing you need to understand about New Values is that, okay, he's done working with David Bowie and he's like, okay, I get it. He. He saved my career. But I'm more than just that. I'm more than just the guy in the background there. He gets back together with James Williamson on guitar, but these songs mostly are written by him. He's also got Scott Thurston in there, who's, again, associated with the Stooges. But this is his new post Punk. Must be pointed out. The punk revolution has happened. All the punks are kind of looking to see, what is Iggy Pop gonna do? What is Iggy Pop gonna say? It was almost universally treated as a disappointment. Lightweight. It's not. It's not fierce. It's not wild, it's not even avant garde the way the Idiot was avant garde. But I really like New Values. I think it's his last great album, actually.
- [115:10]
A
What must I do to take a holiday? Show me a bill that they can make me pay Tell me a story and maybe I'll believe that I. Yeah.
- [115:37]
D
I mean, there are two classic, classic pop numbers that he still performs live on this.
- [115:44]
C
And.
- [115:44]
D
And they are I'm Bored. And the lyrics are hilarious. I'm bored. Chairman of the board.
- [115:50]
C
Right.
- [115:50]
D
And. And the other one is Five Foot one, which is what it's like going through life being short.
- [115:54]
B
You.
- [115:55]
D
I've got a pain in my neck what the hell, what the heck. And. But musically, yeah, these are conventional songs. What they are is kind of tight, new, wavish R and B inflected, good for the radio music. And of course, this, being poppy, doesn't get the kind of hits that they're shooting for. But I will say also, if you look on YouTube, you can search up a cover that did a Fortune Teller, which was a track originally, I believe.
- [116:21]
C
The old, like Alan Toussaint, right, went to the Fortune Teller. I mean, I know it from the who and the Stones.
- [116:26]
D
Yeah, the Stones. The who had covered it. And I would nominate Pop's cover of it as far better than any of theirs. If you look up Iggy Pop on the old Gray Whistle Test. And there's also a live version of it which is even faster and louder as well. Recorded in Paris, called Paris Palace, It's. He has a really good band backing this, including Glenn Matlock, who was formerly.
- [116:49]
C
Of the Sex Pistols.
- [116:50]
D
Yeah. So he's got a sort of new wavy band and he's doing new wavy tunes. But, you know, on each of these albums there's a couple of good ones.
- [116:57]
A
I'm bored I'm the chairman of the board. I'm a lengthy monologue I'm living like a dog I'm bored I bore myself to sleep at night I bore myself in broad daylight Cause I bore bored Just another slimy BO I'm free to bore my well bought friends I'm bored.
- [117:40]
D
The next one to my mind has got the most interesting party is Sorry, is that Soldier.
- [117:46]
C
Soldier, Soldier comes next. All these three albums are. Are pretty interesting there, but yeah, sold a sad party.
- [117:53]
D
On the other hand, there's again this new angle of Iggy the balladeer, which has begun with China Girl, I Feel.
- [118:00]
A
And.
- [118:00]
D
And he starts doing these retro covers he does on Party. He does Sea of Love and Time Won't Let me find the outsiders, 1965, an old kind of garage pop tune. And they. And they record, but they don't issue a T take of One for My Baby by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, which has got. Again, you can find it online. It's got a double bass and a saxophone. So jazz Iggy is. Is quietly developed, you know, in the Arista years.
- [118:43]
A
I'm feeling so bad. Can't you make the music easy and sad? I could tell you a lot, but I gotta be.
- [119:15]
C
Well, Scott, I don't know if you have many opinions on this latter era of Iggy's work, but did you listen to these first few at least?
- [119:21]
B
I was only able to listen to a little bit of that first record, which means I have very little to base any opinion on. Trust you guys implicitly.
- [119:31]
C
Well, it's a bit of a shame we don't have to spend too much time on this part of his career, but I'll say, say that like, yeah, those three albums, the ones that go up through 1981, I'd say new Value, Soldier Party. I think there's some decent stuff on Soldier, but really Party at Dominic adequately already singled out. The best stuff on that. I don't know if anybody has any thought about the weird Chris Stein album Zombie. You know, Chris D, A Blondie. Right.
- [119:57]
D
So, yeah, this is the high concept, experimentally experimental synth album in the years, years ahead, you know, and after he's had his 80s revival, he goes back to this experimental bit and, and. And on American Season. It's not bad.
- [120:10]
C
I mean, you know, it was the end of an era for him. And of course, this is a weird point at which David Bowie comes back into this story because, you know, Bowie in parallel careers at this point, had a big triumph with scary monsters in 1980 and then sort of burned out. A lot of reasons offered for this, but who knows? All we know is that ironically enough, his Burnout album was his most successful. Let's Dance, that's 1983. On that album, there's either one or two Iggy Pop cover songs. So he was kind of out of ideas himself and he was like, well, I'll give some of James. I'll give James some money. See how it's working out then, I guess, basically because he was trying to become successful and he didn't want to work too hard, that album became his most famous record. Let's Dance. Don't like it. Never have a couple good songs on it tonight. The album that he did to follow it up, that's the number one album. Let's Dance. He needs to have a number one follow up in 1984. It is tonight an album with three pop covers and also the worst version of God Only Knows by the Beach Boys I've ever heard. And it's clear that Bowie has no ideas, but neither apparently does Iggy, because these people are both just sort of pinging off one another and looking for the new sounds in the charts. And the sad thing about it is that it does return at least one song that people who don't know they know he pop actually know. The same way that you don't think you know Todd Rundgren, but you know that, damn, I don't want to work. I just want to bang on the drum all day. It's like, what is that horrible thing? It's the 80s in material form. Even if you don't know a thing about Iggy Pop or the stages, you probably have heard Real Wild Child, which is I'm a real wild one Wild one, Wild one and it comes from 1986 is blah, blah, blah, which was his quote, commercial success. But, oh, I'm a real wild one.
- [122:00]
A
Wild one wild one, wild well, I'm.
- [122:29]
D
Just out of school Like I'm real.
- [122:31]
A
Real cool Gotta dance like a fool Got the message that I gotta be a wild one oh, yeah, I'm a wild one Gonna break and lose Keep on moving Wild but sweeping. Baby, I'm gonna be a wild ch. Child.
- [122:51]
C
I don't know. I don't have a lot to say about that or this album.
- [122:54]
D
The whole thing is boring. And what I will say in Iggy's favor and you know, he'd done his time by this point, 20 years, he'd earned it.
- [123:02]
C
Come on.
- [123:03]
D
And. And I wish him all the royalties he can acr. But a few months after it came out, I saw him live for the first time. And the band he had was, was again like I. Uncompromising, slick and extremely loud. They were tremendous as a live act. Iggy Pop remained uncompromising and really incredible. I've never seen anything quite like it. Actually. They were just streets ahead of anybody in terms of like the impact and the way that they. Again, the way that they managed the volume, the raw power that they were handling, the way it was done, it was. I mean, if you. If you, you know, as I was a would be musician of 16 or something. You hear that and it's like, you know, a university degree in one night, you know, and how to. And how to do it, just incredible. So whatever nonsense he was putting out in the studio live, really, really good. And again, at this point, he started to get a second generation of pop fans that you have people around.
- [124:05]
C
The third generation.
- [124:06]
D
Yeah, generation three.
- [124:08]
A
Yeah.
- [124:08]
D
They appear. You've got people like Dinosaur Jr.
- [124:11]
C
The first generation is like original Detroit and then second generation is the punks from Britain. So now, now we're on the third generation. Yeah, yeah, you're right.
- [124:18]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [124:19]
D
So you have people like Dinosaur Jr and Stuff who are basically covering his, you know, the Stooges, including incidentally on Freak Scene, which I think is probably the earliest and best of Dinosaur Juniors tracks. Freakstein lifts the mix that Bowie had done on Raw Power. It's got this insane solar guitar guitar louder than everything else.
- [124:37]
C
Would never mistaken you for a J. Mashes fan.
- [124:40]
D
You know, again, talking about, about playing, you know, blues music as if it was jazz. You know, that's what, you know, jamming means. And Dinosaur junior Tremendous textures and attack and so on. You know, anything with a well played, loud guitar, I'm there for it.
- [124:56]
C
Well, listen, I don't know if we have to go through like the many sort of mediocre solo albums that he put out. I think maybe. As we conclude. I wanted to know if anybody had any thoughts on the reunion Stooges record record in 2000?
- [125:08]
D
Yeah, I have a policy of not attending reunion gigs.
- [125:12]
C
I do too.
- [125:12]
D
By the way, I turned down a ticket to see the Velvets when they reunited. I had, I, I avoided the Stooges reunions. I, I generally, I, I like the originals in the way that I wouldn't change the Raw Power mix. The albums, you know, they're nice, but then, you know, the Iggy does not stand or fall on those. I'm glad the guys got paid off. I, I mean, you know, the original bass player Dave Alexander basically Dr. Drank himself to death in the 70s, but the others were around to get it. And it's really good.
- [125:43]
C
Mike water them and of course, which I'm a huge fan of as well.
- [125:47]
A
Right.
- [125:47]
D
James Williamson had the most amazing post Stooges career possible. He did a degree at California State and, and then joined Sony Records and retired as their Vice President of technical standards in 2009 in order to go back on the road with the Stooges, which is, you know, that's the career.
- [126:08]
C
Arc you want, isn't it? I remember he gave some quote explaining his career path. He's like, I quit drugs and decided to study calculus. It was just a really funny way of deciding to live your life. And it worked good. Became an engineer.
- [126:21]
D
All right, so we should dwell on the greats and the golden age, I'd note, you know, the Beatles lasted seven years. The Rolling Stones kind of didn't really do much after about maybe 15, 16 years. But the Stooges, despite all the lunacy, you know, from 1967, 8, to the point at which he goes off the boil in 1982, it's like that 15 year run and the number of really, really good recordings that are generated, let alone live recordings, it's pretty substantial. They're a genuine, serious proposition.
- [126:54]
C
And the thing is, they hide in the cracks because they have that one tooth, maybe three albums in the original run. Then they have, like, live bootlegs. Then you have Iggy Silver. You forgotten the album that he did with Williamson. It's a hard discography to assemble coherently. Yeah. I guess one of the reasons I'm really glad we did the show is that I wanted to make. Make sure that people understood that, like in between, like 1969 and 1979, there was a lot of great work that came out of the collaboration of a bunch of yahoos from Detroit.
- [127:23]
B
Solid decades worth of work, no doubt.
- [127:26]
C
Yeah. All right, Scott.
- [127:28]
B
We come to the part of the program where we have our recommendations. The two album. You should own the five songs you absolutely need to hear from the Stooges and Iggy Pop. And our guest, Dominic Green is up first, Historian writing for the Wall Street Journal, Washington Examiner. Dominic, your two albums and your five songs, please.
- [127:48]
D
Okay, well, the two albums have got to be. And can I put in Iggy solos.
- [127:54]
B
From that golden period? Absolutely.
- [127:56]
C
I'm going to cheat like hell. So you do whatever you want. Right.
- [127:59]
D
I'm going to go for TVI live in 1977 with, of course, Funhouse, that second album.
- [128:11]
C
Right. And the five songs.
- [128:12]
D
The five songs, I'm not going to pick anything from the first album. From the second album, I'm going to pick Loose as. As we discussed, that's a kind of, you know, just a summit that hardly anyone has come close to. From the third album, I'm going to pick Raw Power. And I like the way, particularly you think that the beat is, is slipping sideways and in the way that they're playing across it and then suddenly they fall into the groove when it goes Raw Power, you know, that is just a genius, genius moment. So I'll pick that one and then I'm going to go a little bit into the, into the, into the shrubbery. I'm going to say kill city. 1975 is a brilliant, brilliant song and it sounds like it lands somewhere between the New York Dolls and the Rolling Stones. And as you said, it's a tragedy that it did. That it did didn't become a huge, huge hit. Number four is. Is one of those Stooges tracks that they demoed. I Got A Right, which is often talked about as inventing hardcore. And regardless of what we talk about genres, it's just one of the greatest pieces of music ever recorded as far as I think. And the live version in 1977 is better than the earlier demo. And finally, because I want people to appreciate, appreciate the. The artistry and breadth of Mr. Pop, that he's not just a hooligan and a yobo.
- [129:33]
A
It's.
- [129:33]
D
It's his. It's his recording he did as a later period is. Is what you'd expect. It's a long victory Tour. But in 2009, after he'd been reading the novels of Michel Weldbeck, he uses continental pop again. He recorded an album called Preliminaire, which is French for preliminaries. And on this was a Jacques prevor lyric from 1945, which he sings in French and it's called Les Feuille Mort. And it's an incredible kind of pop, you know, torch song ballad like, you know, one for my baby that he'd recorded for party in 1981 and not issued. And of course we know Le FRAMERT because about five years later, in 1950, Johnny Mercer wrote some different lyrics and we know it as Autumn Leaves. So that's my five pop tastic classics.
- [130:28]
C
Very a famous jazz standard on top of it All. And think of where's your thing. It's like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon Connect, Iggy Pop, Miles Davis. And so they both did Autumn Leaves.
- [130:40]
D
And he's a jazzer. This is something consistently jazzy about this most rock and roll of people.
- [130:46]
C
That's lovely, Scott.
- [130:48]
B
All right, My two albums from the period are Raw Power and from the solo years, Lust For Life. Those are the two albums. My five songs, I Will Double Dominic and say Loose, absolutely might be the best studio song overall. Search and Destroy is just a killer track. Just, just. I mean, it's Raw power in, in, in. In a lead off track from the solo records. I like the Passenger an awful lot. Not just talked about that, but Dum Dum Boys on there too. I really like that groove. And then it's a story about the band. And then lastly, we didn't talk all that long about that Kill City record Jeff went into detail, but he recommended I listened to it. I had not before prepping, and I'm glad he did. I'm not quite as over the moon. I didn't make it one of my two. I think it would be a masterful ep and it's probably a little long for a full record. Maybe if Iggy Pop was fully function, we would have had a more robust set of songs. But to Jeff's point, title track, which. Which Dominic just picked, is a great song. There's a song called Sell youl Love which is really fun. Joanna has a great nasty riff on it that Williamson provides. But my favorite song is Consolation Prizes. That's my fifth track. A real stonesy swagger to that, to that song. You can kind of draw it to direct line from there to like, please to meet me era Replacements. Just a really, really good song. Consolation prizes off that Iggy Pop James Williamson collaboration. That's my fifth song. Jeff, over to you.
- [132:32]
C
Oh, you made this impossible for me. The format of the show makes this impossible. So I'm just gonna cheat like a dastardly devil here and say my top two albums for the Stooges are Funhouse and Raw Power, but for Iggy are the Idiot and Lust for Life. And listen, if you put a gu. I would say, I guess Raw Power and the Idiot are the ones that I would absolutely choose. But that's a strange thing, and it wouldn't give you the right sense of what the Stooges or Iggy were up to, because this is a guy who actually spread out over a far wider and more interesting range with the help of some really amazing collaborators. I think you got Ron Ashton, James Williamson, David Bowie. Those are the guys who obviously played a really important role in helping James Osterberg reaches his peak powers. As for the five songs, this is equally difficult. I mean, okay, for the two studio songs, I'll say I want to be your dog from the debut. It's just an amazing sort of like, hey, guess what? Psychedelia is over now. Something new is happening. And I. And I might say raw Power, actually from the album Raw Power, as opposed to anything from Funhouse. Since you already talked about Kill City, Scott, I'll say. I was gonna mention I got nothing, but I'm gonna drop it. You know, hopefully we'll have clipped it earlier show, but it's another great one from that forgotten record. Instead, I'll go to Sister Midnight from the Idiot, which is a very David Bowie song. So much that he reclaimed it for the song Red Money. The conclusion of Lodger in 1979. The original version with Iggy is better. Sister Midnight is a much better lyric. It's a much drearier sound, which actually helps it. And then to follow that up, I'll go with something bright and bouncy from Lust for Life. That's the Passenger. That would be my fourth song, as Scott, you explained it just so well. Finally, I'll conclude with From New Values. Will say, I'm bored. It's hilarious. As is. Dominic already went through it with us. He's the. He's the chairman of the board, in fact. And since it host prerogative and because this is such a difficult episode, I will cheat and I will add a sixth song. I'll say, yeah, China Girl, the original China Girl from the Idiot, which you should hear as a complete album anyway. But if you do anything, call up the original version. Not the hapless remix, but the original album version, however poor it might sound of China Girl to hear a completely different side, not only of Iggy Pop, but also a David Bowie. I think it was them collaborating at their best. And it was the moment, really. It was the first time I really got into Iggy. And even before I found the Stooges, that was what cemented my love for this guy. This guy was out there being weird. Fearlessly, dangerously weird in places that my young mind had barely even begun to contemplate and which to this day, still. Still stand up.
- [135:19]
B
All right, now take that peanut butter off your chest. That is the political beats. Look at the music and career of the Stooges and Iggy Pop. We thank our guest for returning, Dominic Green, historian. Find him writing at the Wall Street Journal and the Washington examiner, and as you could tell, a fine jazz musician in his own right. Dominic, thanks so much for joining us once again here on Political Beats.
- [135:44]
D
It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you.
- [135:46]
B
Thank you. Inadvertently, Jeff, our all American summer continued into an all American fall.
- [135:52]
C
As we didn't we start and end in Detroit like we begin with Bob. Seekers.
- [135:56]
B
Right?
- [135:56]
A
Yeah.
- [135:57]
C
Right. There we go.
- [135:58]
B
So we're. We're in good shape. I'm not. I. I actually can't. Oh, I do know what's next, right? Yeah. It will be an all American fall. Our British compatriots are going to be so sad. We haven't done a great British.
- [136:11]
D
They need educating.
- [136:12]
C
We're going to be heading back to the future on our next episode, hopping into a time machine in our own way. That'll be fun.
- [136:18]
B
All right, so you can find Jeff on x@ esoteric CD. I'm there at Scott Bertram. You again can find us at Patreon too. Patreon.com political beats help the show stay ad free. Entry level, mid level, upper level. It's all there. Patreon.com politicalbeats subscribe to our feed for new episodes or check them out@nationalreview.com we're on X @politicalbeats this has been a presentation of National Review. This is Political Beats.