For Hester

So here’s what I know about Iggy Pop, gleaned from movies and general pop culture participation:

He was in the movie Coffee and Cigarettes where he appears in one of the better vignettes with Tom Waits- they are sitting in a bar, (spoiler alert) drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. Their conversation wanders all over, at one point Tom Waits tells Iggy Pop that he’s a doctor and delivered a baby on the way over. Iggy Pop is impressed, until he checks the jukebox and doesn’t find any of Tom’s music in it. Tom is dumbfounded and Iggy slinks away. I imagine he sort of slinks everywhere.

He also played an insane character in the “sequel” to The Crow, The Crow II: City of Angels. This was my first introduction to Iggy Pop aside from Lust for Life featured so brilliantly in Trainspotting and then sort of creepily, years later, in cruise commercial. He was most excellent at being the psychotic junkie, Curve, in The Crow II and that impression was firmly cemented in my memory. Heroin use being a pattern in his own life.

Iggy Pop unsettles me. I quite certain that this is not a unique or original reaction to him. But, I really like the way he unsettles me.

I know that he spent some time in mental hospital after his time with The Stooges. Right after he got out, his first call was to David Bowie. Because, really, who better to call? This is supposedly the fodder for Velvet Goldmine.

He is from Detroit.

His first foray into music started with blues and jazz, naturally, he was living in the birthplace of Motown at the height of its heyday. His high school band, The Iguanas, spawned his name.

Richard Avedon captures him, stereotypically but perfectly: shirtless, ropey armed, hollow eyed and sneering, leathery, blonde.

I don’t really listen to Iggy Pop. Not regularly. I know Lust for Life, I Wanna Be Your Dog, and my most favorite song by him: Success. I have toyed with playing Success as Matt and I exit the ceremony after our vows.

Most recently, I was driving back to work after a completing a long distance donation pickup and NPR was talking about Iggy Pop. He has a new album out. It is blues inspired. They played a clip. His voice, ragged and hard, came at me from the speakers. It was the perfect crossover. All the things I know and like about jazz and the blues, having seen the one-man play about Jelly Roll Morton- the man who claims to have invented jazz- how blues clubs are always portrayed in movies, the jazz and blues clubs I’ve been to in real life… melded completely in his rendition. I associate Iggy Pop with seediness, the underbelly of things and a tremendous amount of confidence. His life history and his exuberant performances lend themselves extremely well to my romantic idea of blues and jazz. His voice was almost tangible. I could feel it in my teeth. And again, I liked it. I like that Iggy Pop exists. That he is still doing things, perhaps tirelessly. Undoubtedly, tirelessly.

I have found that what I am most attracted to in life, in people, is unabashed excitement. The act of being thrilled is thrilling to me. If you are excited, jazzed, psyched, into something to the point of obsession, to fanaticism and you wanna tell me about it, chances are I will be into it too and also into you. I am bored, bored, bored by apathy, by the too cool, by the lukewarm reaction to someone else’s empassioned rant about their new favorite thing. I want the vulnerability of loving something, even if it’s weird, especially if it’s uncool or even creepy. If you are going to spend the energy getting hyped about it, I will damn sure expend the energy to listen.

That’s how I feel about Iggy Pop. I imagine him to be in a constant state of excitement, of curiosity, as evidenced by his jazz to blues to power punk inventor to glam rock back to blues and jazz musical trip. And for that, I will always be all about whatever he is all about.