Various Artists - We Will Fall: The Iggy Pop Tribute
(Royalty Records)
4 stars (out of 5 stars)
Story by Tony Bonyata
Just what the music world needs, another tribute album. From Abba to Zeppelin this type of homage paying collection is becoming not only predictable but tiring in it's uninspired covers and forced worship.
But wait, just when you've think you can't take another hodgepodge collection from a mish-mosh of different artists along comes a brilliant tribute to one of rock's most notorious bad boys, Iggy Pop.
Rock music at it's best has always been lewd, slightly obnoxious, risque and, above all, dangerous. Nobody better fits this definition than the godfather of punk himself, Iggy Pop.
Iggy, along with his seminal punk band The Stooges, brought the free-loving, hippie sounds of the sixties to a screeching halt with his own brand of decadent, self-destructive, musical chaos. As the seventies approached Iggy helped usher in a new wave of young musicians that emulated his sound as well as his explosive stage antics (Iggy could very well be credited as the first stage diver, as he used to flail himself head first into unwary audiences throughout the early seventies).
Virtually every punk, new wave, grunge and alternative-rock act worth their salt have been influenced by Iggy to some degree. It is on the album We Will Fall: The Iggy Pop Tribute that some of these bands get to repay their gratitude.
Where most tribute albums fail to capture the essence of the artist's music, We Will Fall succeeds in capturing the raw power that is undeniably Iggy through various punk and hard rock acts such as Monster Magnet, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Misfits, Pansy Division, Sugar Ray, Superdrag and Joey Ramone.
The Chili Peppers implode on their combustible take of "Search and Destroy" as Anthony Kiedis belts out, "I'm a runaway son of the nuclear A-bomb". NY Loose delivers a hard-core, jacked-up, ultra-sleazy version of "Lust for Life" while the Lunachicks speed through their amphetamine-pumped cover of "The Passenger". Deborah Harry and Chris Stein, of Blondie fame, perform a sentimental take on one of Iggy's more obscure numbers "Ordinary Bummer" under the moniker of Adolph's Dog.
Seventies punk drag queen Jayne County cruises through a camped-up medley of "Down On The Street" and "Little Doll" and Blanks 77 manage to recreate the unbridled exuberance of early New York punk on Iggy's subterraneous "Funtime".
With such a great gathering of musical misfits this album turns out to be almost as good as the real thing.