IGGY POP: World’s Most Forgotten Boy Discovered Performing Alternative Service for the Bourgeoisie

COMING, on your own TV, sometime around 1986: A loud, but dry, staccato male voice opens the commercial: "Do you remember those thrilling days when 'dada' was the four-letter word on everybody's lips?" ("1969" is playing in the background, as an obscenely young Iggy Stooge thrusts his iguana-tounged beak at the camera. jSQy is wearing the gold-lame, elbow-length ladies gloves he bought at K-Mart, and he rams a gloved hand down his pants to extract his favorite hunk of Oscar Mayer.) Do you remember the first time you got it on with your sister's dog?" ("No Fun," "Real Cool Time," and "Loose" in the background, respectively, as their printed titles roll down the screen, past a shot of i9Sy's kamikaze carcass hurtling through the smoky ^concert air, to flop into a scruffy sea of sons and daughters of Buick assembly-line workers.) "Do you remember that day your best girl slipped acid into your Pop-Tarts, and you ended up getting canned by the White Panthers when you insisted that John Sinclair was really Betty Crocker in flour-power drag?" ("Fun House," "Search and Destroy," and "Penetration" play and roll by, over a picture of Iggy dazed and triumphant back on stage. Blood flows freely from his naked torso and face, but he just smiles the pop-eyed leer of the justly deranged.) "Then you'll want to relive those golden times forever, as you glisten to Popeil's dee-stroy new collection of the music of the original Iggy and the original Stooges' first three, long-out-of-print albums. Jv(st $29.95 for records or tapeS, send check or money order now to 'Stooge Offer,' care of this station!"

Do you remember those times? I don't, either. And I was even alive then, a full-fledged adult, no less, when THE REAL STOOGES and THE REAL MC5 came down here to play that mammoth Cincinnati Rock Festival in 1970. But do you suppose I went anywhere near Crosley Field that day? Naaah. Grim young activist/ masochist that I was then, I spent the day mailbox, anxiously awaiting yet more threatening letters from my draft board.