Iggy and the Stooges – "Search and Destroy" (1973)

I am the world's forgotten boy!

The one who searches and destroys!

[NOTE: The final member of this year's class of inductees into the 2 OR 3 LINES "GOLDEN DECADE" ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME is a stick of dynamite if there ever was one.  I originally wrote about "Search and Destroy" on March 9, 2011 – here's  a lightly edited version of that post.]

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2 or 3 lines has featured several songs that have been used in Nike television commercials – including "Nobody But Me," which was featured only a few days ago.

This post is about the best song ever featured in a Nike commercial, which just happens to be the best Nike TV commercial ever (which probably means it's the best TV commercial ever).

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I KNOW IT'S ANNOYING WHEN PEOPLE WRITE IN ALL CAPS, BUT "SEARCH AND DESTROY" AND THE 1996 NIKE "AIR" COMMERCIAL IT WAS FEATURED IN DESERVE NOT ONLY ALL CAPS BUT ALSO ITALICS AND BOLD FONT AND LOTS OF EXCLAMATION POINTS!!! 

Michael Johnson at the 1996 Olympics

THE NIKE SPOT FEATURES A BUNCH OF OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALISTS (CARL LEWIS, MICHAEL JOHNSON, ANDRE AGASSI, SCOTTIE PIPPIN, CHARLES BARKLEY, AND MANY OTHERS)!!!  IT FOCUSES ON ATHLETES IN EXTREMIS, AND HAS BEEN CALLED THE "BLOOD, SWEAT AND VOMIT" COMMERCIAL!!!

SWEAT IS EVERYWHERE IN THE SPOT!!!  THE VOMIT COMES AT ABOUT 0:52 COURTESY OF A DISTANCE RUNNER WHO COLLAPSES TO THE GROUND AND RALPHS!!!  THE BLOOD COMES AT THE VERY END AS A BOXER'S BLOODY MOUTHPIECE IS KNOCKED OUT OF HIS MOUTH AND FLIES ACROSS THE SCREEN IN SLOW MOTION!!!   

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE "SEARCH AND DESTROY" COMMERCIAL.

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One final note.  "Search and destroy" is a term that is probably very familiar to those of you old enough to remember the Vietnam War.  "Search and destroy" was a military strategy that involved the insertion of ground troops into hostile territory, usually through the use of helicopters.  The troops would search out enemy forces, destroy them, and then hop back on their helicopters and return to their base. 

Click here to listen to "Search and Destroy," which was released on the Raw Power album in 1973.

Click below to buy that record from Amazon:

Iggy Pop – "Repo Man" (1984)

I'm a repo man

And I'm looking for the joke . . .

Looking for the joke with a microscope

In 2003, Rolling Stone reporter Evan Wright was embedded with Bravo Company of the 1st Marine Reconnaissance Battalion – the unit that was the “tip of the spear” in Operation Iraqi Freedom.  

Wright’s book about his experiences, Generation Kill, was made into an HBO series with the same title.      One of the Marines who is prominently featured in the book is Sgt. Antonio Espera, who portrayed himself in the TV series.  (I would have never guessed he wasn’t a professional actor.)   

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Espera, who grew up in a broken home in Southern California, told Wright that he was a “bad motherf*cker”:

You see, dog, my wife is smart, but she f*cked up big time when she married me.  I was a piece of sh*t. . . . See, I didn’t grow up with no understanding.  My mom tried, but my dad is a psycho ex-Marine Vietnam vet.

Espera’s father abandoned him when he was young.  Several years later, he tried to patch things up by taking his son on a fishing trip.

On the way to the lake, the elder Espera decided to stop off at an X-rated bookstore.  While his son waited for his dad to take care of business in the store’s viewing booths, he got into an argument in the parking lot with a man he thought was trying to cruise him.  Espera ended up throwing a brick through the man’s windshield.

“That was our father-son trip,” he told Wright.

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After meeting his wife – who was a college student at the time – Espera became a voracious reader.  During his time in Iraq, he spent his free time writing long letters to his wife.  

Sgt. Antonio Espera

Here’s an excerpt from one of those letters:

I’ve lost 20 pounds, shaved my head, started smoking, my feet have half rotted off, and I move from filthy hole to filthy hole every night.  I see dead children and people everywhere and function in a void of indifference.  I keep you and our daughter locked away deep down inside, and I try not to look there.

After reading that letter to Wright, Espera asked him, “Do you think that’s too harsh, dog?”

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Before he joined the Marines, Espera worked as a repo man in Los Angeles.  He learned that the ideal time and place to repossess a car was in broad daylight in the middle of a crowded parking lot:

Jump in, drive that bitch off with the car alarm going – nobody’s going to stop you, nobody’s going to even look at you.  You know why?  Nobody gives a f*ck.  In my line of work, that was the key to everything.

Espera told Wright that he ever wrote a memoir of his days as a repo man, he would title it Nobody Gives a F*ck.

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Today’s featured song is from the soundtrack of the 1984 cult movie, Repo Man, which also includes songs by Black Flag, the Circle Jerks, Suicidal Tendencies, and other hardcore L.A. punk bands.    

Here’s the Repo Man poster:

Repo Man – whose executive producer was ex-Monkee Michael Nesmith – was directed by Alex Cox.  Cox also directed the Sid Vicious biopic, Sid and Nancy.

Click here to listen to Iggy Pop’s “Repo Man.”

Iggy and the Stooges – "Gimme Danger" (1973)

Gimme danger

Little stranger

If you’re a fan of Iggy Pop and the Stooges, you’re going to love Gimme Danger, director Jim Jarmusch’s new documentary about the group.  (Gimme Danger was released in New York and Detroit last week, but is hitting theaters in the rest of the country today.)

Here's the Gimme Danger trailer:

Jarmusch has been described as an idiosyncratic filmmaker – which is a polite way of saying he is a really weird dude.

His feature films – Stranger Than Paradise, Down by Law, and Broken Flowers are three of his better-known movies – often move v-e-r-y slowly.  

Jarmusch once said that his goal as a filmmaker was “to approximate real time for the audience”:

Instead of embellishing the pace with quick editing, and moving things along simply because the audience is accustomed to being moved along at a certain “film” pace, I wanted to remove all that.  Minimalize it so that you watch people in almost real time. 

Jim Jarmusch and Iggy Pop
at the Cannes Film Festival

By contrast, Gimme Danger moves right along.  In addition to the usual talking-head interviews and footage of live performances by the Stooges, Jarmusch mixes in all kinds of old movie clips, kinescopes of old black-and-white TV shows, even animation – there’s never a dull moment in Gimme Danger.

One of the many strengths of Gimme Danger is that it’s not just about the group’s infamous lead singer, Iggy Pop – whose real name is James Osterberg.  Gimme Danger also pays attention to the other original Stooges – bassist Dave Alexander, guitarist Ron Asheton, and drummer Scott Asheton – as well as guitarist James Williamson, who joined the group after the first two of the three Stooges albums were recorded.  

Gimme Danger introduces us to Osterberg when he was an Ann Arbor high school student and aspiring blues drummer in the mid-1960s.  

James Osterberg as a high school senior

Osterberg got tired of staring at his bandmates’ butts, so he gave up the drums and became the frontman for a new band he formed – which was initially called the Psychedelic Stooges, and then renamed the Stooges.  (After the Stooges signed a record deal, Osterberg called Moe Howard on the phone to see if he had any objection to the band’s name.  Howard told him that as long as the band wasn’t called the Three Stooges, he couldn’t care less what name they used.)

The group’s eponymous first album was recorded in New York in 1969 – its producer was Velvet Underground member John Cale.  It didn’t sell.  

Neither did their second album, Fun House, which was recorded in Los Angeles the next year.  

Ron Asheton, Williamson,
and Osterberg in 1973

Iggy met David Bowie at Max’s Kansas City in 1971.  Bowie persuaded Iggy to come to London to record a new album, which he produced.  But Raw Power didn’t sell any better than the group’s first two albums.   

The Stooges’ record company cut them loose shortly thereafter, and the group was reduced to playing at some really sketchy venues.  Here's how Iggy described the band's final tour:

We bumbled around America, playing raggedly [and] upsetting people wherever we went.  Some gigs, I could get it together to sing – some I couldn't.

The Stooges performing live

During a 1974 gig at a biker bar, a thrown bottle narrowly missed Iggy Pop’s cabeza, but Iggy was such a degenerate heroin addict by that time that he might not have felt anything if the throw had been more accurate.  (We’re talking the Blues Brothers at Bob’s Country Bunker, boys and girls.)

The Stooges threw in the towel after that biker bar gig.  Iggy – who had moved to West Berlin with his friend and fellow drug addict Bowie – eventually kicked his habit and released several acclaimed solo albums.  Ron Asheton and later his brother Scott joined forces with frontwoman extraordinaire Niagara in Destroy All Monsters and then Dark Carnival.  (Unfortunately, Jarmusch didn't interview Niagara for the Gimme Danger.)  James Williamson said good-bye to rock ’n’ roll and enrolled at Cal Poly Pomona as an electrical engineering major.  

Ron Asheton with Niagara

After a hiatus of almost 30 years, Iggy got back together with the Ashetons and ex-Minutemen bass player Mike Watt in 2003 and reformed the Stooges.  When Ron Asheton died of an apparent heart attack several years later, he was replaced by Williamson.

Gimme Danger closes with the Stooges’ 2010 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.  Iggy flipped the bird to the black-tie-attired crowd with both hands before delivering his acceptance speech, which included a heartfelt tribute to Asheton.  The 63-year-old then stripped off his shirt and led the Stooges in a rousing performance of “Search and Destroy.”  

Don’t you just love a movie with a happy ending?

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The significance of the Stooges is much greater than you might expect given that the group only released three albums, none of which sold worth a damn.  

The band’s best songs were and are almost unbearably intense.  “I Wanna Be Your Dog” and “Search and Destroy” in particular stagger you like a body blow from a heavyweight boxer. 

Bob Dylan recently won the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature for his song lyrics.  No one will ever mistake the lyrics of a Stooges song for those of the songs of 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature winner Bob Dylan.  (“Blah blah blah blah blah blah” is how Iggy characterizes Dylan’s lyrics.)  

Williamson, Osterberg, and
Scott Asheton in 2010

Dylan’s influences included Woody Guthrie, William Burroughs, William Blake, Arthur Rimbaud, Jack Kerouac, Bertolt Brecht, and many others.  The Stooges lyrics were inspired by  . . . Soupy Sales? 

In Gimme Danger, Osterberg reminisces about watching the children’s TV show, Lunch with Soupy Sales, when he was a kid growing up in Ann Arbor, MI.  The comedian would invite his young viewers to write letters to him, but asked them to keep those letters brief – 25 words or less.

Osterberg says that Soupy’s 25-words-or-less rule inspired him when he began to write songs for the Stooges.  

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“Gimme Danger” was the second track on the Stooges’ third and last studio album, Raw Power, which was released in 1973.

The Stooges recorded Raw Power – which also included “Search and Destroy” – in London.  Iggy Pop produced and mixed the album, but the group’s record company insisted on having David Bowie remix it.

Raw Power was Kurt Cobain’s favorite album – he said it influenced Nirvana’s sound more than any other album.

Here’s “Gimme Danger”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Iggy Pop -- "Baby" (1977)

We're walking down the street of chance

Where the chance is always slim or none

T. S. Eliot's 1925 poem, "The Hollow Men," famously concludes with these lines:

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper 

T. S. Eliot

Delete "world" and substitute "2 or 3 lines series" and these lines ring just as true.  Once again, a series of related 2 or 3 lines posts -- this particular series features records that I bought and listened to during my law school years (1974-1977) -- is ending with a whimper.

We had such high hopes when this series began almost a year ago with Roxy Music's "The Thrill Of It All."  (It goes without saying that we were so much younger then -- but we're older than that now.)

There were some highlights -- the Sparks, 10cc, City Boy, and, of course, Roxy Music.  But as usual, I front-loaded the series.  I trotted out my favorites at the beginning -- after that, the whole thing succumbed to a slow, inexorable decline, as I gradually lost interest in this series and began to plan new series in my head.

Now that I've admitted that the "Law School Years" series has lost its way, let's hustle the old boy off as quickly as possible -- we'll pull the plug and make room for a new series.

I didn't buy Iggy Pop's 1977 Idiot LP.  I didn't steal it either -- well, not exactly.

I became a member of the staff of the Harvard Law Record, the law school's biweekly newspaper, as a second-year student and held various editorial positions in my penultimate (yes, it has been a long time since we've used our favorite word) and ultimate law school years.  

I got a new editorial title each semester -- features editor, executive editor, senior editor, and one I've forgotten.  None of them really meant anything -- my role at the Record was pretty much always the same.  Basically, I was kept far away from anything that smacked of serious journalism, spending most of my time on restaurant reviews and articles for the annual "April Fool's" issue.  

Oh, yes -- I always volunteered to go out and get the pizzas and beer that sustained us every other Wednesday night, when we edited and laid out the upcoming issue.  That way, I could make sure that we had the kind of pizza and beer that I liked.

A couple of months before graduation, it finally hit me that I could get a lot of free stuff by calling up publishers, record companies, and movie theaters and telling them I was the Record's book, music, or movie reviewer.  That was true, in a way, although I don't recall ever seeing a book, music, or movie review in the paper.

Most of the free books I got were boring, law-related tomes.  I did go to one free movie screening -- The Late Show, a well-reviewed (but not by me) comedy/mystery starring Art Carney and Lily Tomlin, which was nominated for the Academy Award for best original screenplay in 1977.  

(By the way, the screenwriter and director of The Late Show was Robert Benton, who had co-written the screenplay for Bonnie and Clyde.  Two years later, Benton wrote the screenplay for Kramer vs. Kramer, which he also directed.  That movie won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Benton won the Oscars for Best Director and Best Screenplay.)

I still have the one free review LP I managed to snag -- Iggy Pop's The Idiot.  Today, Iggy has a place in my pantheon of music gods, but I didn't know much about him in 1977.  

Iggy Pop (born James Newell Osterberg, Jr.) was a native of Muskegeon, Michigan whose extreme on-stage behavior -- he rolled around in broken glass, exposed himself, and invented stage diving -- was inspired by Jim Morrison of the Doors, whom he saw perform at the University of Michigan in 1967.

Iggy stage-dives

The story goes that Iggy called Moe Howard to ask permission to call his nascent band "The Stooges."  Moe supposedly said he didn't care as long as he didn't call the band "The Three Stooges."

The Stooges released a couple of interesting albums that didn't sell very well, then broke up -- but got back together and issued Raw Power in 1973.  Its first track was "Search and Destroy," which is still an awe-inspiring song.

"Search and Destroy" has already been covered by 2 or 3 lines, but I can't resist posting the famous Nike commercial that featured it:

Iggy had a nasty little heroin addiction at this time, which contributed to the Stooges breaking up again in 1974.  He checked himself into a UCLA hospital in hopes of getting clean.  David Bowie, who had produced Raw Power, visited him regularly.  He  usually brought along some cocaine to share with his friend.  

Iggy and David later relocated to Berlin.  Bowie help write and produce the two albums (The Idiot and Lust for Life) that Iggy released in 1977, and the two performers wrote some songs together (including "China Girl").

Iggy has kept busy in the ensuing years.  He's recorded a number of albums, written an autobiography, and appeared in a number of movies and TV shows -- including the great Nickelodeon show, The Adventures of Pete and Pete.  Pete and Pete had some other very odd guest stars, including Adam West, Steve Buscemi, Frank Gifford, Deborah Harry, Patty Hearst -- yes, that Patty Hearst -- LL Cool J, and Michael Stipe.

Here's one of Iggy's Pete and Pete appearances:

I don't think The Idiot is one of Iggy's best albums, but the price was right.  

Before we listen to "Baby," here are a few lines from the song "Funtime," which is also on The Idiot:

Hey baby, we like your lips
Hey baby, we like your pants
All aboard for funtime!

I was sorely tempted to feature "Funtime" because of these very lyrics, but the song is a bit of a downer -- not that "Baby" is what you'd call upbeat.

Here's a bonus video -- Iggy and David Bowie performing "Funtime" live on . . . the Dinah Shore Show?  That's right, boys and girls -- hard as it may be to believe.  If you don't like the song, jump ahead to the 2:56 mark and watch Dinah's interview of these two seriously weird guys.

Here's "Baby":

Click here to buy the song from Amazon: