MINORITY REPORT: Iggy’s body should be given not to science but to religion. |
A full house of cave dwellers and recidivists welcomed the Stooges to the Orpheum last Saturday, and the cockfighting atmosphere of the place was hard to beat. Pre-set, a roadie struck one chord from Ron Asheton’s guitar and it almost took the roof off: the old inimitable noise, front-loaded with snarl and wah-wah, decaying into sheets of hostility. And then there they were — the Asheton brothers, aged and frowzy, Mike Watt on bass, and the Ig himself, doing “Loose.” The Orpheum turned upside down.
Iggy at 60 has the blowtorched physique of a champion surfer: when the moment comes, his body should be given not to science but to religion, to some cloistered alchemical brotherhood that can work on it for centuries, transfusing its elixirs in holy silence. Torso and hips kinked into the trademark S-shape, skin-tight denims working down to grant us an inch or two of still-perfect ass crack, the man took his 15,000th ride on the pretty music. “Down on the Street,” “TV Eye,” “1969,” . . . Nothing from Raw Power. It wasn’t all highlights: the first lull came with “Dirt,” which they played too fast, and as the set progressed it became harder to ignore the fact that we were hearing song after song from the by-no-means-excellent new album The Weirdness (Virgin).
Still, as Iggy kept reminding us, this was . . . the fucking . . . STOOGES. Or three-quarters of them: new kid Watt heaved and sighed, lovingly working his thunderbroom, in silent-screaming ecstasy during “1970.” He kept it straight-ahead, but when it came to “Fun House” he couldn’t help making that bass line pop a bit. The sexagenarian at the mic, meanwhile, whipped himself into another dance. His right side was steadily stiffening, and that gave a gimpy disequilibrium to his movements. His patter grew inane. “And now I want . . . to feel your hand!/And lose my heart in the burning sand — IN BOS-TON!!” Show biz, show biz. But then again: “Ever felt like you’re in a minority of one?” he asked, poised thoughtfully on a monitor. Not really, mate. But you have.
