IGGY POP

Blah-Blah-Blah

(A&M)

Whether or not you like the new Iggy Pop album is inevitably going to depend upon your response to finding the Ig back in David Bowie’s clutches. Ah yes, the cultured Englishman is once again helping the inchoate Michigander attempt to realize that next-big-icon potential everybody’s anticipated from Iggy since the days of the Stooges.

A strange relationship, this one, in which Mr. Bowie talks a great Iggy Pop, seems to regard Pop as ultimately his artistic and shamanistic better (Ig is, for my $$), and yet when Bowie finally gets a chance to record and produce Pop, he always seems to end up patronizing his theoretical idol, treating him with all the superstar charity due such a psychic orphan (well, Ig’s probably that too). Iggy & The Stooges’ ancient Raw Power contains some of the most apocalyptic songs and performances in the whole history of rock ’n* roll, and yet Bowie mixed the platter down so lowww I always have to double the volume on my stereo just to hear the thing. I’m almost certain that the Agent Orange in Bowie’s hair color got to his brain that year.