Damn, 'punk' really is dead..

[Uncle $cam]

Or it died of old age...lol

James Osterberg, Jr retires from Stage Diving
http://beatcrave.com/2010-03-22/iggy-po ... ge-diving/

Alas, it’s the end of an era–James Osterberg, Jr., a.k.a. Iggy Pop, age 62, has announced that he will no longer be stage diving at rock concerts.

The geriatric, but still unarguably cool, frontman for the Stooges and all-round rock ‘n roll wild one made one of his famous leaps at a show in Carnegie Hall last month, and the unusually staid crowd simply stood aside and led the man once crowned “The Idiot” slam right into the ground. Pop later recounted the incident to WENN, and how it seemed like a fitting end to one of his classic stage moves.


“When I landed it hurt and I made a mental note that Carnegie Hall would be a good place for my last stage dive. The audience were just like, ‘What are you doing?’”

And while it’s a sad day to acknowledge that one of my rock ‘n roll heroes is tickling retirement age and can no longer slam himself into the crowd, I have to remind myself that there will always be plenty of knives, broken glass, and peanut butter for Iggy Pop to writhe around in onstage, so there’s that. Small comfort, but still.

And now if we can just get Jagger to finally halt the whole chicken-dance thing…

OUCH! watch at 21 sec in.

P.S. Maybe I'm gettin old too, I kept thinking, he could pull his pants up, --just a little-- at least...lol

[Maddy]

A) Look at the people he dived into. We're getting old. >.< But I still can't believe going to an Iggy Pop concert and backing up! Jebus!

B) They went to an Iggy Pop concert, and just stood there, watching. WTF is wrong with these people? They're like "Ouch! We may get hurt!" Dudes are in suit-shirts! This entire thing boggles the imagination.

C) At 62 the pants are still hawt.

D) I am not getting old. [/denial]

[barracuda]

I kept thinking, he could pull his pants up, --just a little-- at least...

Pull 'em up? Oh hell no - pull 'em down.

[Maddy]

Thank you, barracuda, thank you.

[norton ash]

I've got to discover that golden heroin-to-exercise balance that seems to work so well for some blokes...

[compared2what?]

I've often wondered about the thin-junkie/fat-junkie dichotomy.

I am getting old and I love it, actually.

Punk died as much of a death as anything that exists mostly in a mechanically reproducible medium ever does or can die a long time ago. I'd say in approximately 1978.

Also, Mr. Osterberg is a sui generis artist whom you could definitely describe as "proto-punk."

But he was not a punk-rocker, in any sense of the term. He was not a part of the emergent punk scene in either New York or London, and he also wasn't a collaborator, guest artist, producer or promoter of any of the first wave punk acts. He had almost nothing at all to do with the punk movement apart from being an influence on it until....Maybe the early '90s? Whenever it was, punk had already been as dead as disco for years by then. Except, as noted above, in the sense that it will never die.

Iggy's just not a punk, is what I'm saying.

I guess that if you felt so strongly about rock taxonomy and Mr. Osterberg that "sui generis" just didn't do it for you, you could make a mini-sub-proto-punk category exclusively for the Stooges, the MC5, and the Velvet Underground and put him in there, though. Which is quite a thought, really. Imagine the infighting.

Anyway. Here he is addressing the subject himself in 1977. It's the first question.





Although to be fair, he obviously walked out and sat down totally determined to disagree with every proposition that was put to him just out of pure Iggy-ness. Which is a very punk tactic, actually.

What a hottie he was, too. Oh my word.

[Uncle $cam]

Yeah, fanzine Sniffin' Glue, said, "punk died the day the Clash signed to CBS in 1977", I was to young then to get either punk or zines. Zines, later became my only access to really good far away underground music and subversive-sub-rosa thought. Though I lived in Memphis, which was a music garden of futile sounds the kind that seeps into your bones. And by then Kiss had caught my eye so, (actually, Kiss, 'Destroyer' was the first album I ever owned) I gyrated to metal and became a head banger, though always had respect for the punk scene, and local music, but Black Sabbath, Black Oak Arkansas, krokus, Deep Purple, and Richie's Rainbow held my attention, the darker and the angrier stuff, that all seems a parody now. But it saved me, to a great extent, from a severely traumatic childhood. I didn't really open to full on punk until I was much older, and angrier, "The Night GG Allin Came To Town." If you could even call that punk... but I understood the blistering PSYCHOTIC chaos... I guess w/the murder junkies, etc, punk wasn't fun anymore as much as a way to stay numb as I suspect it was meant to be. By then it had turned quite seedy and dangerously neurotic borderline criminal. I missed the fun stuff, w/the edgier, but positive passionate message.






btw, excellent pics barracuda...

[compared2what?]

On consideration, for completion's sake, here's the performance Canadian TV didn't get:



Although it also coulda been "Sister Midnight." I just like "Funtime" better.

Plus, an interview from only three years later, with an indirect message for the kidz.



Don't do drugz. Or at least not as much as Jimmy did. Though it's still a great interview. He's an articulate man. Smart, too. If you feel like reading the essay on Gibbons' The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire that he wrote for a scholarly journal called Classics Ireland, it's here.

Also, I'd like to revise my prior statement on the death of punk. Punk's not dead. It's undead.

We will fall in time, no doubt. But it will stand.

[MacCruiskeen]

An essay* on Gibbon by Iggy Pop in a journal published by the Classical Association of Ireland?

Well, goddammit. Good on him, and good on them. But how did it ever get there? Did he just submit it?

*Half a page, to be exact. But well worth reading.

[compared2what?]

Yeah, fanzine Sniffin' Glue, said, "punk died the day the Clash signed to CBS in 1977", I was to young then to get either punk or zines. Zines, later became my only access to really good far away underground music and subversive-sub-rosa thought. Though I lived in Memphis, which was a music garden of futile sounds the kind that seeps into your bones. And by then Kiss had caught my eye so, (actually, Kiss, 'Destroyer' was the first album I ever owned) I gyrated to metal and became a head banger, though always had respect for the punk scene, and local music, but Black Sabbath, Black Oak Arkansas, krokus, Deep Purple, and Richie's Rainbow held my attention, the darker and the angrier stuff, that all seems a parody now. But it saved me, to a great extent, from a severely traumatic childhood. I didn't really open to full on punk until I was much older, and angrier, "The Night GG Allin Came To Town." If you could even call that punk... but I understood the blistering PSYCHOTIC chaos... I guess w/the murder junkies, etc, punk wasn't fun anymore as much as a way to stay numb as I suspect it was meant to be. By then it had turned quite seedy and dangerously neurotic borderline criminal. I missed the fun stuff, w/the edgier, but positive passionate message.

Oops, missed this. I can totally identify. I do totally identify, in fact. You're never born too late to have your life saved by rock and roll, imo. I've never spent that much time in Memphis, but whenever I was there, I always felt a little bit like there was something ominous somewhere just out of sight. Same for New Orleans, only more so. Although I loved both cities. But I'm sure it's a completely different deal for a native, anyway, it always is.

I was technically born too late to be a baby-boomer, by justhismuch. So in formal terms, I'm on the high end of Gen X. But realistically speaking, I've always thought that how someone felt about Kiss as a teenager was a much truer indicator of on which side of that particular cultural boundary-line he or she fell. I didn't learn to love Kiss until I was well into adulthood, myself. Although there are lots of former kids the same age as me who know which of these...



...suck and which is cool as well as they know their own names. I don't think it matters that much which rock and roll one's life gets saved by, as long as it gets saved. Is what I'm trying to say. After that point, we're all equals in coolth. Plus: Alive, let's not forget.

[compared2what?]

An essay* on Gibbon by Iggy Pop in a journal published by the Classical Association of Ireland?

Well, goddammit. Good on him, and good on them. But how did it ever get there? Did he just submit it?

I honestly don't know. He's Iggy Pop. Things happen to him differently than they do for normal people. Manifestly, considering the shape he's in on Tom Snyder and the fact that he's still alive. Although having a nice friend like Mr. Bowie who'll record three of your songs during the only two minutes of his career when he was a guaranteed multi-platinum selling artist, thus ensuring that you at least have enough royalty income not to starve to death probably doesn't hurt either, no matter who you are.

Despite which good intentions, I've gotta say that Tonight is just a bad record. As is the one after it. (Never Let Me Down, but come on, who even knows what's on that one? Least said, soonest mended.) Before and after those, they pretty much all have something that's at least worth the listen, however. Not including "The Laughing Gnome" and other pre-canonical works. Which is pretty fucking impressive, considering how many records he's made.

That's why I feel like I can get away with a little blasphemy. Although I think "Blue Jean" is on Tonight, and that's a great song. So it might just be the one after it that's an unmitigated loser.

In any event. I always thought it was very sweet of him to do that. And it's really kind of touching that they're still friends. It's been quite a while.

[norton ash]

It's 1978 in my Canadian town. My 16 year old friends and I have turned our backs on Rush and Zeppelin, Sabbath, and Floyd, and Kiss is for morons and little kids. Yes, ELP, and Genesis are dinosaurs. We get pumped over Costello, Graham Parker, Clash, Jam, Pistols, Ramones, Springsteen, Stranglers, NY Dolls, Iggy, Bowie, Roxy Music, Lou Reed. Stones and Dylan are still allowed. Eagles, Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon, Todd Rundgren are shunned, but we listen to them with our girlfriends... or in private. We have personal enthusiasms for J. Geils, Southside Johnny, Al Green, Marvin Gaye, Little Feat, the Allmans. Kate Bush and Joan Armatrading pop up.

Wire and Ultravox, Blondie, Television and X are doing some cool things. There's phony punk shit like Tuff Darts, Teenage Head, the Damned. The Battered Wives from TO, who bow to Canadian pressure and change their name to the Wives.

The Wives open for Elvis Costello and the Attractions in November 1978. They suck. Costello and band are FEROCIOUS in the bingo-barn venue. I'm dressed leather long-hair Ramone-style and stoned on weed and acid. This is something else.

And I remember the night in '77 when Iggy was on late night CBC being interviewed by Peter Gzowski. (Thanks, C2W. ) (Short-lived TV show, Gzowski was a radio guy.) Quiet phone calls from parents' houses were made afterward, because it was SO FUCKING COOL. The only music on TV then was Bert Sugarman's Midnight Special, Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, American Bandstand and the odd CBC special or CTV variety show.

It's all like yesterday. And now the love of my life is an unreconstructed metalhead. We would have sneered at each other in '78. And I had a great fucking time at AC/DC in August... and the early Kiss albums rock.

Not long ago I listened to "The Last Resort" from Hotel California during an exhausted hangover, and it made me cry.

Life is really fucking good!

[nathan28]

um, bump. on edit, i seem to have made the youtube clip disappear.

[filedactivity]

Every generation has "punk".

Even though the punk from your time has died, it's manifested as something else.
I'm in my twenties, trust me, punk is still around.

You guys are old btw.

[beeline]

Every generation has "punk".

Even though the punk from your time has died, it's manifested as something else.
I'm in my twenties, trust me, punk is still around.

You guys are old btw.

Depends on your definition of 'punk' I suppose. As a social movement that was born out of the politics of the Situationists, 'punk' was specific to England between 1976-79.

As a musical genre, it's 'dead' inasmuch as jazz or rock and roll are 'dead'--in other words, not dead at all, but quite vibrant and alive.

As an outlook on life, i.e. nihilism, rebelliousness, etc., punk transcends generations.

Someday I'm gonna post my treatise on the Pistols and Clash and how the British government tried to clam them up. Conspiratiorial shit I tell ya.