This has been one mommapoopa of a year for Iggy Pop. First of all, who can forget the unparalleled triumph that was The Stooges reunion album? I don’t know about you, but I had been waiting for what seemed like my whole fucking pathetic life for someone, anyone to write a song about getting some cash out of an ATM machine. But Iggy, man, Iggy did it! And that line about his dick getting hard like a tree or something, and that line about the beer in England being warm, and that line about stinky French cheese -- man, fucking genius, like this never grows old.
In an apparent attempt to capitalize on the globe-pulping success of that album, you lucky bastards are soon gonna be able to pick up a live recording from the year that’s unanimously acknowledged to have been the most fertile of Pop’s career -- well, prior to this year. Naturally, I’m speaking of 1981, the apex of the fabled “Arista Years.” This beauty is entitled Live In San Fran 1981 and is being unleashed by MVD Entertainment Group September 18. The band includes Blondie drummer Clem Burke and former Bowie guitarist/future Toronto Blue Jays second baseman Roberto Alomar on git, and most of the killer cuts from Iggy’s stone-cold 1981 classic Party are on here. You may also remember Party as being housed in the most totally rad artwork of the Pop’s long career. And -- as if that wasn’t enough -- the disc also contains two previously unreleased tracks from a fabled 1983 session Iggy recorded with the famously unattractive Ric Ocasek at the controls. Recordings of this session, commonly referred to by Iggy fans as “The Unheralded, Largely Forgotten and Almost Certainly Insanely Overproduced Session,” have long been coveted by pretty much next to no one.
Not as if the tracklist matters with a purchase this essential, but whatever:
