Pop Life

When I’m 64 (to borrow a phrase), I hope I can throw my lithe, half-naked body into a sea of outstretched hands and land back on stage, on my feet, “a street-walkin’ cheetah with a heart full of napalm.” Somewhere Iggy Pop has a portrait of himself aging, because at the Stooges’ show Thursday at the Hollywood Palladium, I swear Mr. Osterberg looked younger than any of the dozen other times I’ve seen him in the last few decades. Pop is the punk-rock Peter Pan. His body is now permanently curved into the impudent-child pose he’s adopted since the late 1960s. See him offstage, and he’s crippled with scoliosis, the incredibly hard-drug years he’s lived now permanently etched into his limp. But with his old bandmates, and a couple newer ones, behind him (including fellow San Pedran Mike Watt), he inhabits that body with all the fuck-you insouciance of his eternal adolescence.

No Fun

, via Wikimedia Commons”]Iggy Pop emailed me earlier with the sad news he has fractured some bones in his foot and had to cancel his gig with the Stooges at the Hollywood Palladium September 7, to be rescheduled. I’d assigned my Reviewing the Arts students to review the concert, after reading Lester Bangs’s seminal 1970 Creem piece on Mr. Pop. No fun, to coin a phrase.

See "The Runaways"

There are precious few movies about women rockers: The Girl Can’t Help It, What’s Love Got To Do With It, The Rose, Dreamgirls, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains. This paucity is just one of the reasons that Floria Sigismondi’s The Runaways — which opens nationwide today — is so important. The first-time film director hones right in on the feminist issues of the Runaways’ story — sexism, sexploitation, girl love, etc.  It’s also just a really fun, raunchy roll through the LA glam/pre-punk scene. Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett and Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie have a hot kiss to the Stooges’ “I Just Wanna Be Your Dog.” What else do you want?

Of course, while that titillating scene generated a lot of publicity heat for the film, it might also have kept the hoped-for Twifans away. As has been reported elsewhere, the planned wide release of the film has been scaled back to art houses after disappointing turnout at its initial foray into major cities. This isn’t really a big surprise and is probably where the R-rated movie should have started anyway. Rock films rarely make big bank. Unfortunately, The Runaways is now tainted with a cloud of disappointed expectations. All the more reason you should see it. Support girl love, as the Riot Grrrls used to say.

I have serious issues with the film as a historical document. But as a feature film, it’s pretty great. It shouldn’t be called The Runaways, as it leaves out the stories of band members Sandy West, Lita Ford, Jackie Fox, Vicki Blue, Kari Chrome, etc. But if it were called The Cherie and Joan Show Starring Kim Fowley, I’d retract my reservations and completely endorse it.

I talk about the film, my LA Weekly story on Sandy West, and other matters on this weeks Podlicks podcast. Listen, and then go find your local art house this weekend and do rock and women a favor.