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We Will Fall
The Iggy Pop Tribute (Royalty Records)
By: Melanie Campbell
Oh, joy! Did ya wonder how long it was going to be before some Einstein got up off of his dead ass, and decided to put together a homage to Iggy and the Stooges? Yeah, we know...everybody and their brother is jumping on the 'Let's get a bunch of current chart-makers together and cover a particular artist's songs, and donate the proceeds to charity' bandwagon, and most of the results of these trips down memory-lane have been pretty BORING, to say the least. At best, you might find only one or two good songs worthy of the original artist, in most cases. But, open yer mind for a long enough moment to check out 'We Will Fall', willya? Besides the fact that the charity in question is LIFEbeat, the Music Industry Fights AIDS, a darned worthwhile cause anyway, this is one tribute that actually does what a tribute should do. Which is to remind us all of what a major influence that said artist was in the first place! And if there ever was an artist who was a Major Influence on just about every punk of the last 25 years, it was Iggy Pop. He was that crazy fool that did the kinds of things you only dreamed about ever having the guts to do on a stage. Like whippin' out his weenie in front of everybody. Or rolling around in broken glass, and LIKING it. And didn't he invent the concept of diving repeatedly off a stage into a crowd of moshing drunks? Talk about bigger than life! And the music-ahh, the original concept of Rock-n-Roll. Loud. Obnoxious. Snotty as hell. Annoying to your parents, and then some. The Stooges were *not* maestros, and that's one of the biggest reasons why they were so great. But these guys also wrote some damn fine songs back in the early 70's, and they sound better than ever in the Year of Our Lord 1997, where the best that the Top 40 can do these days is to peddle sample-laden (read: no-good, lame-brain, talentless hacks steal Police songs, and somehow manage to convince the lemmings amongst us of their originality), too-bad-to-be-even-mediocre dreck. Yeesh. 'Gimme Danger' indeed...we here at 'IMWT' like to fantasize about what it would be like to round up every corporate radio programmer in the country, tie them up, and glue headphones to each and every one of their pointy little heads. We then imagine cranking up the volume to '11', and playing 'I Got a Right' (the Misfits), 'TV Eye' (the Holy Bulls), 'Down on the Street/Little Doll' (Jayne County), 'Shake Appeal' (7-Year Bitch), 'Loose' (Pansy Division), 'Sell Your Love' (Extra Fancy), 'Real Wild Child' (Joan Jett and the Blackhearts), 'Search and Destroy' (the Red Hot Chili Peppers), 'Sister Midnight' (the Bush Tetras), and 'Lust for Life' (NY Loose) OVER AND OVER AGAIN, until they're screaming for mercy, and swearing that they'll burn their Rolodexes, start from scratch, and actually forget they ever heard the word 'Demographics'... That would sorta be a just payback for stuff like Hanson and Michael Bolton, now, wouldn't it?? And, well, since we wouldn't believe their promises at first, we'd just leave the tape playing, while we grabbed our own headphones and chilled out with '1969' (Joey Ramone), 'Gimme Danger' (Monster Magnet), 'We Will Fall' (Lenny Kaye), and 'Ordinary Bummer' (Adolph's Dog, which is actually most of the original members of Blondie-Debbie Harry, Chris Stein, Clem Burke, and Jimmy Destri). Oh, we'd make sure that we stopped all this, er, REVENGE right before their collective ears started bleeding all over the place, heh-heh-heh. Wouldn't want to make a mess, or anything. Then again, maybe it's what they all deserve. Thankfully, though, there are some of us who know how to appreciate the finer things in life. Like the fact that every so often, an artist comes along, and grabs a hold of the status-quo, turns it upside-down, and bashes its head off the floor a few times, inflicting a concussion on it that is felt for a very long time. And the Ig is one of those artists, and this tribute actually does him and the Stooges some justice. So, do yerself a favor. You oughta like this one. Be warned, though... if you're anything over 30, you're gonna want to get real drunk and jump around a lot. And when yer done crashing into the furniture, and trashing the place, you'll stop suddenly, and sit there, hanky in hand, blubbering heartwrenchingly, remembering what it was like back in the good old days. You know, when 'young, loud, and snotty' actually MEANT something....
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