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Stumpage Reports
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Monday, December 23, 2002 :::
Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell, or: Tales of My Misspent Youth: Part 1
When I was in high school, a large part of mine and my friends� identity and leisure time was tied up in music. As brats of the late �70s, we went through our obligatory StyxKansasReoSpeedwagon phase. Later, we got into 60�s music. Then in 1978, our token British stoner friend brought home a copy of the Sex Pistol�s first album. Artists like Devo and Elvis Costello were appearing on Saturday Night Live. The television show Fridays brought us the Talking Heads and The Clash. My best friend Scott discovered his older brother�s MC5 albums. We got strange looks when we brought our boom box to the illegal drug supermarket courtyard outside school. But reigning above them all was the Godfather of Punk: Iggy Pop.
In late 1979 or early 1980, three of my friends and I journeyed to the Motor City Roller Rink at Nine Mile Road and Van Dyke Avenue in Warren, Michigan to see Iggy Pop. In those days, �getting ready� for the concert and making sure you had all of your �supplies� was 80% of the concert-going experience. We cut our last couple classes that day and started getting ready for the concert about noon. After four or five hours of getting ready, four snot-nosed, white, suburban, 16 or 17 year olds ventured into the nether regions of the motor city to skate on the razor edge of the burgeoning punk rock movement.
In this part of the world, at this time, you did not see people with mohawks and safety pins in their noses. But you saw them at the Motor City Roller Rink that night. We were easily the youngest people there, looking goggle-eyed at the parade of humanity and trying hard not to look like the rubes we were. I remember a guy with a pink jumpsuit and green hair posing against the building with his friend taking pictures. We shuddered at the exotic thrill of it all and fearfully wondered if those guys �might be gay.� Ambulances and other sirened vehicles were whipping by. After so much getting ready for the concert, I kept falling asleep on a stranger�s shoulder. Sharing a few sticks of mary jane revived me and placated the stranger.
The doors finally opened, we went into the venue, a roller rink with a temporary stage set up at one end. We hustled right up to the edge of the stage and gaped at the strangers we discovered copulating beneath it. The opening band was Coldcock, and they sounded about as good as you might imagine.
Iggy finally hit the stage, clad in blue jeans and a white dress shirt. He immediately hurled insults at the audience, left the stage, and the houselights came up. He returned a few minutes later, minus his shirt and already sweat-soaked. He was met by a barrage of popcorn, which stuck to his sweaty torso, an image seared in my mind. The band tore into �Search and Destroy,� we almost wet ourselves, and my whole idea of live music changed forever. We went to a lot of concerts after this, but nothing ever measured up to an Iggy show. A year or two later we left a Springsteen show early, we were going to see Iggy the next night, who needed anything else?
P.S. Just as I finished this post I learned that the Clash's Joe Strummer has died. I'm going to play their debut album The Clash really loud tonight.
::: posted by tom at 7:29 PM
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