New Values

Follow-up on http://bush-of-ghosts.com/ :

There's a global map looking down from above, with a dot in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Clicking on it, I found another inspired mix based on "Help Me Somebody" by Mental Health (a group? a composer? an art name?): "Bush of George (War Mix)" features speeches and pronouncements by G.W. Bush interspersed with the original preacher's Help Me Somebody exortations. Wonderful way to break the hypnotic daily tv/radio ramblings of politics. Funniest part is when two lines are sampled together like a drill team's mantra: We will prevail / We will not fail / We will prevail / We will not fail . . . . .

But get this:

We Will Fall . . .

Is a Stooges song . . . and New Values (1979) is an Iggy Pop album that could be compressed to about half an album, ditching the weaker material. The tracks that work are funny/tragic like Marlon Brando (remember "China Girl" from The Idiot, later covered by David Bowie?) I like the feel of "The Endless Sea," with lyrics like this: Oh, baby, what a place to be / In the service of the bourgeoisie / Where can my believers be / I wanna jump into the Endless Sea. Or from "Don't Look Down:" I went this morning to the cemetery / To see old Rudy Valentino buried / Lipstick traces on his name / He never looked down . . . / From Central Park to Shantytown. Clearly, Iggy's been reading a lot of books, despite his image as wild man from the backwoods of Michigan (Ypsilanti not being exactly the backwoods of anywhere).

"Five Foot One" is just awfully funny, or what Jim Carleton calls Wunderschlecht (miraculously/wonderfully bad), with an eye for cityscapes (Iggy Pop/James Osterberg is, by the way, actually taller and is imagining being a little person, I suppose):

I'm only five foot one / I got a pain in my neck
I'm looking up in the city / What the hell what the heck
I stare at the concrete / The girders eye high
The steel's above me / There's love in my eyes
And I'm doing the things / A Five foot one man can do

I'm only five foot one / I got a pain in my heart
All the night I'm working / In the amusement park
With a bottle of aspirin / A sack full of jokes
I wish I could go home / With all the big folks
And I wish life could be Swedish magazines
I wish life could be Swedish magazines
I wish life could be Anything / Ugh! Aie! Aie! Aie!

Then there's a classic anthem of bad moods, "I'm Bored:"

I'm the chairman of the bored
I'm a lengthy monologue
I'm livin' like a dog
I'm bored

I bore myself to sleep at night
I bore myself in broad daylight coz. . . . .

I'm sick
I'm sick of all my kicks
I'm sick of all the stiffs
I'm sick of all the dips

But he counters this with the life-affirming simplicity of "Girls" (yes, even Iggy's vision contains Whitmanesque multidudes):

Some have beautiful shapes
I wanna live to be ninety-eight

What I like about this album is its directness, Iggy wiggling free from the direction of his long-time pal Bowie. It wouldn't be Iggy, though, if there weren't horrible songs included, as well, ones like "African Man." I forget who said Iggy is a man who can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory (either his pal Debbie Harry or William S. Burroughs, if memory serves), but it's kind of true -- sort of like the auto industry of Metro Detroit, when you think about it. But then, decent ones like "Curiosity" and "Billy Was a Runaway" salvage the rest of New Values. The economy of the internet, mercifully, lets listeners download individual favorite tracks and ignore the rest if they wish.

Above us is a dirty sky
Full of youths and liquors
A little girl, a little guy
This air can't get much thicker

I Wanna Be Sedated

Now for some more fun in the New World. Curious about what random students think about their teachers, those people classed in Marxian nomenclature among the bourgeois specialists (i.e. professional service class)? A Macomb student pointed this out to me a few years ago. You look up your school by location and name, then check out teachers alphabetically. Some comments are flattering, some less so, but Rate My Professors provides an alternative take on college, either way:

http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/index.jsp

'Cause I'm feeling loose . . . ciao Detroit!