Customer Reviews

Million in Prizes: The Anthology

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After 35 years, Iggy Pop gets a double disc anthology. While far from essential (I mean the man has what, over a gazillion albums?), it is a great starting point for anyone who wonders what the real thing sounds like when it comes to rock.

The first disc confirms this. With some blisteringly remastered Stooges cuts (can't wait for those re-issues!), songs like "Search and Destroy" or "I'm Sick Of You" show exactly what John Lydon and Malcolm MacLaren were hunching over when dreaming up the Sex Pistols. There is a terrifying amount of energy that blasts from those first ten songs, and you can hear the inspiration for everyone from the Ramones to Billy Idol, not to mention eventual cohort David Bowie, who nurtured Iggy through such classic songs as "China Girl," "Nightclubbing" and "Lust For Life."

The second disc is still great, but much spottier. The Arista tenure gets represented by a mere 3 songs, and the quality runs all over the map. A&M obviously saw Iggy as a star, and then tried packaging him. It did pop out some memorable songs, like "Real Wild Child" and "Cry For Love," but somewhat neutered his impact. Almost to prove he could mainstream it with the best of them, an almost unrecognizable Iggy recorded a hit single with B-52's Kate Piersen ("Candy" the sole Top 40 record of his career) for his stunning and consistent Virgin album "Brick By Brick."

The two new live tracks are defiantly worth the price of admission, and the remaining tracks are the best from each of his remaining albums. It also contains the meditative "Look Away," one of Iggy's few ballad moments. Getting the title track from "Skull Ring" is a nice touch, completing the circle by reuniting Iggy with the Ashton Brothers (and if you don't have that album, it's worth the bucks). "A Million In Prizes" is a long overdue honoring of Iggy's input and influence.

Many other bands get the credit for the invent of punk (Ramones), and others for the invent of glam (Bowie), but you've got to give it to Iggy and the Stooges as well. Every time I see a kid with a Ramones shirt on, I wonder what the chances are that they've ever heard the "Fun House" album. Anyway, this is a great collection for those who needed more Iggy than what was on "Nude & Rude". One thing I often wonder, is why not just a Stooges collection? Or looking at "A Million In Prizes", why not all of disc one Stooges, and disc two just Iggy? No big deal though. A quarter of this collection is Stooges tracks. More would be nice, and I'd prefer the studio versions of "TV Eye" and "Loose" also. Iggy wise, most of the good stuff is here, and this includes everything that was on his last collection and then some. Despite minor complaints, this is an excellent and lengthy anthology at 38 tracks, and a good purchase for anybody with a "Lust For Life".

Iggy took a little of The Doors and the MC5, and created Punk Rock. His music was dark. "I Want To Be Your Dog" was the first moment of Art Rock. This was Marcel Duchamp drawing a moustache on the Mona Lisa. Iggy was the music at its most raw. The Stooges did two albums and they were out of here. Mr. Pop was a homeless junkie for a few years. He reformed the band with James Williamson and produced Raw Power. This was the heaviest American music ever made. Iggy Pop was a gifted lyricist. I forgot to add that everyone hated this band at this point. They had one hundred fans. He had a revival in the late 1970s and did a bunch of cool albums with David Bowie. He lived in Berlin and influenced plenty of post-punk bands and goth people. The early eighties was a good time for Iggy. A few mediocre albums. Later in that decade he had top 40 success with "Cry For Love." In the 1990s, Iggy Pop played big concerts in Europe and Asia. But he has always been called the Godfather of Punk: a title that he doesn't really like. Finally we have a career spanning double CD to look at the work. There are four punk songs from the first two albums. All the jazz noise and weirdness is omitted. There is a lot of Raw Power, since it's more musically advanced and even futuristic. This sound has been copied but never equaled. Then we have four songs from his two Berlin period albums: Lust For Live and The Idiot. This is the real solo Iggy. This guy is a riot. On songs like "Sister Midnight" and "The Passenger" he has influenced the whole goth movement, including especially Bauhaus and Siouxsie and The Banshees. CD two focuses on the more commercial stuff he did in the later 1980s, and early 1990s. Sometimes it works, on "I'm Bored," and "Run Like A Villain." Sometimes it doesn't. Unlike Bowie who produced whole albums that stunk, Iggy Pop would do albums with a few interesting moments that gave us hope. There are some collaborations included and the bizarre bits. Some live early songs are included. His last album before this, Skull Ring, was probably his best in ten years. This is for those people who need a little Iggy in their lives, but not the complete works. Along with Neil Young and Lou Reed, Iggy Pop is an American musical genius. He has become an icon. He has music on TV commercials. There is always hope with Iggy.

Iggy Pop is an iconic figure, somewhat on the margins of rock `n roll and the entertainment industry, a cult figure, a charismatic whirling dervish messiah, and, miraculously, a long term survivor of rock `n roll excess.

Iggy Pop was/is also the lead singer and de facto leader of the Stooges, a band now understood to be as seminal as the Velvet Underground for punk rock and other forms of modern music. But whereas the VU were something like a group of grad student misfits, the Stooges were more a motley collection of trailer park dirtbags, from the wilds of Ypsilanti, Michigan (also tied to the great Detroit garage band/biker band scenes)

For these two reasons, this greatest hits package is divided, more or less into two: a Stooges/Iggy and the Stooges disk (along with selections from the Bowie produced Idiot and Lust For Life) and a solo disk. The Stooges cuts manage to convey the raw, wild power of the Stooges and thus to hint at their greatness as a band. The Bowie cuts, with their austere Berlin ambience, have aged well, even though Lust For Life has, by now (2005) been transformed by the culture industry into an overused commercial jingle, such as to sell Carnival Cruise bookings. I wonder what Iggy thinks about that?

Disk two covers some of Iggy's solo moments, and while the music becomes a bit more formulaic, it's still very good, as it becomes a blank canvas for Iggy to, well, be Iggy. Formulaic or not, his tunes here are catchy and fun. Real Wild Child is as close to bubblegum as he's ever come, but it's great bubblegum, right up there with, for example, Sweet or Joan Jett. Home is nothing less than a kick ass rock and roll dance number; someone ought to use it in a Broadway revue. In fact, his tongue-in-cheek duet with Debbie Harry is their version of an old prerock Broadway showtune, yet it rocks! Finally, starting with the delightfully noisy Wild America, the disk closes with Iggy taking things full circle, and returning to the Stooges; Iggy has finally located his inner Stooge and made peace with it.

This is highly recommended as either introduction to Iggy and/or the Stooges for those just beginning to check this music out, as well as for Iggy compleatists, who want to own every piece of product related to Iggy Pop and the Stooges.

"A Million in Prizes," like other two-disc compilations by acts like The Fall, Devo and The Damned, features an essential first disc with Iggy Pop at the peak of his powers (with the Stooges, James Williamson and David Bowie). Featuring remastered versions of the Stooges best songs plus the remixed songs from "Raw Power," this stuff is blood-curdling, head-banging rock n' roll of the highest caliber. Topping it off are newly cleaned up versions of Iggy's pre-hardcore classics "I Got a Right," "Gimme Some Skin" and "I'm Sick of You." This material is followed by the best songs from his first and best two solo albums, "The Idiot" and "Lust for Life." Once again an improvement over "Nude and Rude," the previous official Iggy best-of, this disc features "Success," a wonderful, unheralded cut from the latter album. Then ... there's disc two. It starts off solidly with a holdover from "Lust for Life," "Some Weird Sin," and the best cut off his underrated "New Values" album, "I'm Bored." Even "I Need More" is listenable, as Iggy's voice is still thunderous and convincing. After that, however, Iggy's records fall victim to bad 80s production and a seeming complacency on his part. "Real Wild Child (Wild One)" represents Iggy at his most commercial ... something akin to David Bowie's "Let's Dance" album, only much less satisfying. Despite the dropoff in quality, Iggy's energy and commitment to musicmaking is praiseworthy, making "A Million in Prizes" an essential part of any respectable music fan's collection.

This is a reasonable selection, though the omissions are many. I think I own every Iggy CD ever produced, and everything ever pressed on vinyl. I also own the boxed set of the Fun House sessions. Obviously, I am a fan.

One thing that really struck me was the intelligence of all the previous reviewers. You CAN have your punk and cranial capacity. In fact, I'd insist that real punks were the smartest people around when I was coming up, back in the day. I agree. Iggy invented punk. But he also helped invent metal, industrial, glam, goth and a host of other styles as well.

I walked out on him in Onstead, Michigan, at the Wamplers Lake Pavillion, when he was real young and I was real young and the energy just terrified me. He was just too intense. He threw himself off the stage and onto some guy's girlfriend. The guy punched him and threw him back onstage. I later grew up. Iggy did not.

I saw him thirty years later. He threw himself off the stage and landed on some guy's girlfriend. The guy just threw him back onstage. No punch. Iggy will always be Iggy.

Recommendation: This is a great place to start an Iggy journey, but it's gonna have to end with owning the catalog. There are just too many great songs and great performances, record by record, to condense onto a sampler like this. Nice that it's out, but everyone interested in music should just buy the whole mess.

Thanks for signing my t-shirt, Iggy.

Buddy L

Disc one exposes a man who could shift with the best of them: His Stooges days are marked by wild proto-punk riffery mixed with the most cantakerous nihilist lyrics this side of 1976. Fantastic. The latter portion of the disc sees our man taking a trip with Bowie, a trip where synths plod along within the most vacous soundscapes this side of dub. The legacy of drugs looms in the content of these tracks, and the clash of Iggy's vocal delivery and the atmospherics is unique indeed. A triump.

Disc 2 is revelry smothered by cliches. The first few tracks on the disc have homogenous production values that make all the songs sorta blend into each other. The cod-Bill Idol phase (from the Blah Blah Blah album) is rather amusing, since the slick production makes Iggy seem like the glossiest rebel ever (and that's not a bad thing). After that, however, tracks like Cold Metal and the like reveal a complacency characterized by yelling over the most contribed riffs. Nothing special. The latter tracks share one thing: bloody awful production values. These sound like they were recorded in a Third World radio station's maintenace closet in 1965. At least the live tracks (re-hashes of Fun House tunes) revive the raw aggression of the Stooges.

I'd say that forking over the extra dough to get this set, when you could get the one disc compilation, seems rather extreme. Just get the 1996 compilation and then buy all three Stooges albums. If you're really curious, get Iggy's late 70s albums and Blah Blah Blah. And that's about it. It's not plausible that you'll be tempted to delve into most of his 90s work.

Up to now, the only "decent" Best-of that existed, namely, "Nude and Raw" was always rightfully criticised for being superficial and omitting to a ridiculous degree. Several years after, comes this brand new, and much improved effort in "A Million in Prizes", a double CD (triple in the limited edition that includes a DVD) and attempts to put together the big and fuller picture on one of rock's most definitive performers, personas, and live legends.

But improved as it may be, this double CD is still not doing proper justice to this incredible phenomenon known as "Iggy".

The first CD covers (in the vague sense of the word) the Stooges era. Quite rightly too, as the Stooges have STILL not been put in their just light. People still associate the Sex Pistols with the advent of punk, when the truth is that the Stooges invented punk. They did it 1000 times better, a 1000 times more provocatively, and with a 1000 times more shock value and substance than all those that followed them during that time . It's time those that are interested in punk start discovering the facts. Starting indeed with the Stooges.

The second CD gets to Iggy Pop himself, solo. The same applies again, that it only vaguely "covers" what has made Iggy to what he is.
Alone the fact that "Louie, Louie" is spectacularly absent, as well as other stunning songs (easily 3 or 4 of them) from the "American Caesar" (for many his best album) is enough to warrantee a mere 3 stars for this CD. But then again one of Iggy's most intriguing albums, "Avenue B" is entirely absent here, which in my opinion is an utter crime. A couple of songs from the incredible "Arizona Dream" soundtrack easily deserved their place here and didn't get it either.

Still, those that don't want to drop the considerable cash needed to shelf all of Iggy's vast discography will be for the time being well served with this Best-of album. Despite all the notable absences or omissions, some truly inimitable rock classics are included here, songs that have carved their niche in rock history in stone. And especially for those very thinly familiar with Iggy's history this double CD will be nothing less than a revelation.

Other than that though, i would have to agree with those placing their hopes on a future Iggy box-set when it comes to a complete picture on the man actually called James Osterberg.

Through all the years and through all the fake "legends" the music industry has created, the few real ones that have persisted have served as a measuring entity for musical truth. One of these few, is Iggy Pop. He's never compromised his ferocity, whether singing ballads or hard stomping high-octane rock. And as far as rock personas go, extremely few even come close to the life and doings of that man.

While not the definitive collection many fans may have wanted (notable absences for my money include "Living on the Edge of the Night" [from the Black Rain Soundtrack], and another gem mentioned elsewhere: the title track to the film Repo Man), A Million in Prizes still packs the punch that is Iggy Pop. Especially disc one (Search and Destroy, for exanple, has never sounded better). It's certainly a package long overdue for this pioneer that inspired a generation of punks, goths, glam, garage and grunge bands. And it would no doubt be difficult to assemble these 38 tracks on one's own. It's just a shame there's no accompanying lyrics; still, the package does include some interesting reminiscences from Iggy's peers and progeny.

All in all, like the man it honors, A Million in Prizes is flawed; nonetheless, it's a good introduction to the enigma that is Iggy Pop in all his raw, imperfect glory. No one has rocked harder over the past thirty-five years.

I can remember a time back in the dark ages, a period I like to call my high school years, when a Stooges album was harder to find in Detroit than, well, the Stooges themselves, especially after that Michigan Palace brannigan immortalized on "Metallic K.O."

Imagine that! All three were out of print in the U.S. - Elektra and Columbia apparently uninterested in pressing any more - but if you looked hard enough and lifted up enough toadstools, you may have been lucky enough to unearth a pricey import.

For better or worse, the market is now flush with Iggy/Stooges durables, some well worth the scratch and others downright treacherous. This one, Virgin's best shot at a hagiography of Michigan's patron saint of lucidity, isn't bad, depending on your willingness to embrace whatever flaming record company hoops El Pop was trying to jump through at the time.

Those comfortable with the sound of narcotic-induced delirium, primal therapy, and civilization collapsing would be hard pressed to find much wrong with Disc 1, the section of Iggy's curriculum vitae covering the years he spent with the Stooges, making some rather unusual contributions to mankind, up through his employ as David Bowie's lap dog in Berlin. However, by "much wrong," I don't mean "anything wrong." Only one song from "Fun House" ("Down On The Street"), but four from "The Idiot" and five from "Lust For Life"? Hmmm...

The inclusion of non-LP sides "I Got A Right," "Gimme Some Skin," and "I'm Sick Of You" is a nice touch, though, all three redolent with the unmistakable bouquet of ozone and a tinge of stale sweat. And despite Bowie's attempts to re-create Iggy as the fifth member of Kraftwerk, "Funtime," "Sister Midnight," "Lust For Life," and "The Passenger" all lurch, twitch, and spasm with at least a faint trace of Murder City palsy.

Disc 2 is a little more, shall we say, problematic, Iggy bent, shaped, and pulled in so many directions by so many clueless A&R hacks that even he probably wasn't sure who that guy was looking back at him from the mirror every morning.

Part of the frustration of career retrospectives such as "A Million In Prizes" is not only what compilers choose to include, but what they choose not to. I try to console myself with the naïve belief that the complete short shrift given to the "Soldier" and "Party" albums had to be due to licensing issues between Virgin and Buddha. How else to explain ignoring "Pumpin' For Jill," "Bang Bang," "Knocking 'Em Down (In The City)," "Loco Mosquito," and, especially, "Dog Food" in favor of dross like "Look Away" and "I Felt The Luxury"?

And is it just me or does anyone else detect the faint scent of desperation in the duets with Kate Pierson and Debbie Harry, perhaps the nadir of Iggy's slowly-decomposing, post-Ashetons residence on Planet Virgin? Yeah, "Avenue B" counts, but just barely.

"A Million In Prizes" isn't a total wash, not a bad starter kit for tourists, but it's far from definitive. The shadow cast by The Stooges is simply too long, thick, and impenetrable, eclipsing everything Iggy's done since, darkening his world and ours.