Podcast: Iggy Pop: The Idiot World Tour (w/ David Bowie) – Live in Ohio, 1977

Today, Web in Front posted a widget broadcasting the film DiG! in its entirety—it’s the story of two charismatic frontmen, one fueled by art-stained chaos and the other driven to create chameleonic, commercially successful pop art, and how their relationship (and feud) inextricably directed the course of their music. Though the film’s two chess pieces are Anton Newcombe and Courtney Taylor, if the hands on the clock were to somehow windmill backwards thirty years, the documentary could just as easily been about David Bowie and the sway he held over the anarchic force that was Iggy Pop in the 1970s.

Touring in support of The Idiot, an album produced and co-written by Bowie, Pop’s set in Ohio in 1977 is a documentary of the sonic tug-of-war between the two men—though the music of The Idiot and its tour (which featured Bowie on keys and vocals) was positively marrow-stamped with the treated electronic introspection that would soon haunt the Thin White Duke’s ‘Berlin Trilogy’ (Low, “Heroes,” and Lodger), deep within that cold, spooky ambience one can hear Iggy gnashing and burning in a chaotic fury, particularly on their renditions of such sludgehammer Stooges tracks as “TV Eye” and “Search and Destroy.”

A parasitically beneficial relationship—Bowie was able to test out his musical experiments on Iggy before applying them to his own LPs; Pop got a desperately needed shot in the metaphorical arm in terms of creativity and commercial attention—it soon crumbled, as did Taylor and Newcombe’s, within a haze of drug abuse, paranoia, and jealousy. However, just as in DiG!, their bitter, tumultuous coupling also created a rich tapestry of darkly indelible music.

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Iggy Pop: The Idiot World Tour (w/ David Bowie) – Live in Ohio, 1977

1. Raw Power
2. TV Eye
3. Dirt
4. 1969
5. Turn Blue
6. Funtime
7. Gimme Danger
8. No Fun
9. Sister Midnight
10. I Need Somebody
11. Search And Destroy
12. I Wanna Be Your Dog

July 25, 2008 | Filed Under Exclusive Features, Podcasts 

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