The Riviera, Chicago - 29 August 2010

Well, some of this review is incorrect (JW was NOT a computer programmer for 30 years), but it's still a decent review of the show.

Many rock stars of a certain vintage are in a look-don’t-touch phase as late autumn descends on their careers.Then there’s Iggy Pop. The 63-year-old singer with the perpetually naked, perpetually sinewy torso is just fine if the fans want to touch and even manhandle the merchandise. In fact, he encourages it, the crowd’s enthusiasm a necessary ingredient in what is routinely the best show in town on whatever night in whatever city he happens to be playing. In a filled-to-the-gills Riviera on Sunday (after the show was moved from the larger Aragon), Pop was still in stage-diving, microphone-hurling, room-wrecking mode with the latest reconstituted version of his ‘70s proto-punk band the Stooges. The current lineup includes James Williamson, who has spent the last 30 years as a computer programmer in California. But Williamson wrote much of the music that propelled the Stooges’ most popular album, the 1973 release “Raw Power,” and his presence was apparent from the get-go.

The title track from “Raw Power” opened the show and was played with a pummeling intensity that made it sound twice as fast as the recorded version. In contrast to the guitar playing of the late Stooges founder Ron Asheton, who brought a bluesier, deeper, sexier edge to the band’s sound, Williamson is all about fast, hard riffing. His lines were frequently doubled by saxophonist Steve Mackay, giving the mix a thick, rumbling texture. Somehow, drummer Scott Asheton made it all swing – the essential ingredient that distinguishes the Stooges’ rhythmic drive from the countless garage bands that have imitated them.

Mike Watt, the lone ringer on stage in that he isn’t a longtime Ann Arbor, Mich., survivor but a member of the postpunk generation influenced by the Stooges, hunched over his bass and brought an expressive, melodic edge to his playing while huffing and puffing with Popeye cheeks, often with Pop learning into him for some face-to-face affirmation. Watt also deserved some sort of award for holding forth in a near three-point stance with a damaged knee that required a brace and crutches to get on and off stage.

Pop was running the show and spazzing out at the same time – not an easy combination of duties to juggle. He danced the flamenco hot-foot and skipped like a schoolboy evading a truant officer. He directed the band with waves of the microphone, frequently commanded that the house lights be turned up so he could leer into the faces of his fans, and tumbled into the crowd when he felt the energy flagging. Even on the night’s lone ballad, “Open Up and Bleed,” he could not lay back, instead squirming inside an invisible straitjacket.

It was steamy inside the Riviera, and Pop’s leathery skin was slick with sweat and several quarts of water that he kept pouring onto his head. His barely-there jeans threatened to slip past his hips into the X-rated zone. He played for 75 minutes, his baritone voice still strong despite the physical requirements of being Iggy Pop. He embodied the characters in his songs: the junkie in “Penetration,” the “world’s forgotten boy” in “Search and Destroy,” the outcast delivering a civics lesson in “I Got a Right.” They were all looking for human connection in a world that blows people apart. In lieu of it they are hollow, lost. One suspects that behind Pop’s audience-interaction mayhem, a similar need is being filled.
greg@gregkot.com

Iggy and the Stooges set list Sunday at the Riviera:

1. Raw Power
2. Search and Destroy
3. Gimme Danger
4. Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell
5. Shake Appeal
6. 1970
7. Night Theme
8. Beyond the Law
9. I Got a Right
10. I Wanna be Your Dog
11. I Need Somebody
12. Penetration
13. Death Trip
14. Open Up and Bleed
Encore:
15. Funhouse
16. No Fun