Still waiting for a decent remaster of Iggy Pop's seminal 1977 album The Idiot (and Lust For Life for that matter).
In the meantime the 25 year old cd will have to do, all muddy and hazy but still brilliant.
Now's not the time to go into the whole album, but I must just mention the final song. The Idiot ends with what is perhaps one of the oddest song Iggy ever committed to tape. "Mass Production" is basically the culmination of Bowie and Iggy's vision for the album. Teutonic, industrial, experimental, a weird mish-mash of Neu! and early Kraftwerk, Stooges and Detroit Rawk, and Station To Station and Low.
It drags the listener into a nightmarishly twisted landscape of rain and darkness full of massive, industrial, smoke-belching factories. The lyrics are a clever, wry look at the identikit girls that Iggy used to find when on the road and the music is woozy, warped and more than a little deranged.
The opening was meant to conjure up images of the Ford car plants near to where Iggy grew up in Michigan - as a boy he'd been captivated by the rhythmic metallic clanging and bashing that emanated form these giant plants. But what I find most interesting is that the opening of his track is also virtually identical to the opening track on an oft-bootlegged Kraftwerk show from June 1971. Kraftwerk is German for power plant and Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider were equally fascinated by the musical possibilities offered by big industry.
This 1971 gig however only features Florian (no Ralf, who was finishing his degree) plus Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger who shortly afterwards split to form their own band - Neu! This is a very heavy show all motorik drumming and lots of overdriven guitar - nothing like the Kraftwerk we came to know and love, and also nothing like the first three Ralf and Florian albums for that matter. But it's wonderful that Bowie and Iggy were so into the Germanic synth / experimental bands that they were paying homage to (or ripping off, if you prefer) tracks on very obscure bootlegs!
Anyway, "Mass Production" has to be played extremely loudly. It's just better that way.
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