40 years of shirtless Iggy! Incredible.

Exert from “40Days” by Daryl St.Arno
“…. I could really start digging all the new groups.
All except one. I had a setback when we went to see Iggy and the Stooges.

It was a Saturday afternoon, and the show was outside, at a fair or schoolyard, something like that. This was really Danny’s idea that we all go there, he was really into this band called The Stooges, and their singer, a Mr. Iggy Pop. I had never heard of them, but it was nice autumn day, and there was the opportunity for my pals to do a little business. We brought a cooler of beer and stood near the rear of the audience drinking and watching the warm up bands. They didn’t seem very good to me, but the crowd really liked them, and more and more people started showing up in anticipation of Mr. Pop’s performance. Danny wanted to move up front, so we grabbed the cooler and worked our way to the front of the crowd, near the stairs leading up onto the stage as the band took the stage. It was the Stooges, opening their set with an instrumental number. I guess that’s what you could call it. They were wearing ripped up jeans and t-shirts, and it sounded like they were destroying their instruments with chainsaws and jackhammers. I knew that I wasn’t looking for harmony and melody here, so I tried to keep an open mind, but man, these guys had a lot of balls for just getting up there. The opening number ended just as brutally as it had began, and they started the next song, and the crowd went wild as Iggy Pop took the stage. This was too much. He was wearing a filthy white nurse’s dress and a swept wing, two-pointed nurse’s hat. He was wearing eye make-up that looked like it was applied by a child with a crayon, and the whole bottom half of his face was covered with smeared lipstick. There appeared to be bloodstains on the front of the dress, which he kept lifting up to prove he wasn’t wearing any underwear. He was howling and screaming uncontrollably and rolling around on broken glass on the stage and girls were offering their naked breasts to him and grabbing at his bandaged cock and guys were throwing bottles at him. In between songs he berated and verbally abused the crowd, spitting on them and throwing beer on them and egging them on into a state of rabid, lathered, frenzied, insane and irrational behavior. The band, while maybe not being musically sound, was nevertheless powerful and hard, and there was a certain barbaric charm there. But Iggy Pop? I was appalled. I was just standing there, once again with my jaw hanging open, watching him as he pranced over in my direction. We actually made eye contact. That’s when it happened. This mincing sissy spit on me. The one thing I could not put up with. The symbol of your hostility for me. A hate bomb went off in my head, and I exploded up the stairs, and the look on Iggy’s face went to fear, and he tried to back up. As I got to the top I felt hands on me, around my ankles, and I started to fall. I made a desperate grab and got one hand on Iggy’s foot, and he fell, too. The band never stopped playing. Iggy kicked and wiggled away, and the hands on me dragged me the other way. I was white hot with rage and fought to get away, I wanted Iggy bad. I rolled around to see who had me. It was Danny, the fucking idiot. He tackled me to prevent me from killing one of his hero’s. I got one foot loose, and all the rage I had for Danny, and Iggy Pop, and anyone else who wanted to spit on me came to a peak, and I kicked Danny as hard as I could in the side of the head, and he went limp. Now Paul had me by the arms and was telling me to calm down, because he was holding drugs. He dragged me back to the rear and I pretended to be rational, but all I wanted was to kill Iggy Pop.
Paul left me with the cooler and went back to check on Danny. I stood there boiling mad and drinking a beer and plotting how I could get this bastard without getting Paul in trouble.
But once again, the worm turned. One minute I was planning a murder, the next I was rocking out to this band in spite of the singer. Maybe it was the fighting, maybe it was because I finally got to smash Danny, if not Iggy, In the face and relieve some pent up hostility, but by the time Paul came back with Danny, I was hooked. I even apologized to Danny, but he couldn’t answer. I had broken his jaw.