THE PUNK ROCK THING

with special guest star Jane Ripley

The whole thing was that anybody could do it -- anybody could be a rock and roller, no matter how bad you were or how off your band was, because it was just do it, years before Nike put the idea out to everyone else in the sticks who didn't get it the first time around.

Hello to all of you folks dropping by here, I'm thinking a lot about the punk rock thing lately, as I am wont to do because I listen to too much Iggy Pop. I can't help it -- I need screeching tires and broken glass in my music because I've become too much of an old man to handle the sights and sounds of danger in my everyday life anymore.

Last night, the shooting I saw out my window, the young black kid crouched down behind some vines on a chain-link fence firing shots out a big black pistol, was the first real punk thing I'd seen in a long time. Now that kid was a punk. That kid was hardcore. And, being into the punk rock thing, I should have been completely fucking transfixed and awestruck by all this, right?

I guess I'm not punk anymore.

But not many people are. Even Iggy Pop does lunch meetings and spends his off-time tending his garden and playing with his cat and dog these days. I talked about John Lydon the last time I wrote a column.

I can say these things because I used to be a hell of a lot more bad than I am now. I've gone from being a frequent user of hard drugs and infrequent mental patient to being a guy that goes to work every morning (sort of) and puts up with all the shit like phone bills and apartment rent like every other average shmuck on the planet.

But I can still do the punk rock thing here, can't I? I can put anything or anyone I want on the web with this fucking column, so without further fucking ado, I bring to you this week's special guest star, the woman who makes my jaded, cynical heart go pit-a-pat, Miss Jane Ripley, to say a thing or two about Iggy Pop:

JANE RIPLEY:

It seemed kinda ironic to me that the Igster has finally gained idiot mass appeal via the Trainspotting soundtrack but when he leaped into the audience of the Polaris Amphitheatre in Columbus, Ohio a few weeks ago, the brainstems and so-called "fans" didn't even bother to catch him and he dislocated his shoulder. Yesterday he decided to take his doctor's advice and cancelled the tour. Now the lineup is Sponge, the Nixons, the Reverend Horton Heat and that awful woman that wrote "What's going on? " for the now (I'm so grateful) defunct 4 Non-Blondes.

This was not the case at the R.O.A.R. event in Chicago, where Iggy, wearing his customary simple outfit of tight-fitting, black rubber pants, looking buff and relatively lucid, after some shimmies and undulations body-cruised the crowd. I personally got to not only shake his hand and caress his ribs as his body passed over our trusting arms but got invited onstage, along with 24 other people and a foot boost from Chris, to dance with the Igster during "Lust for Life" and fight my way through the throngs to sing a chorus of it with ole boy while the security guards shot me dirty looks. I found out later that I was the last person they let onstage to party with Iggy. It was the most fun I've had since I saw the Red Hot Chili Peppers in '85 at the 9:30 club in Washington D.C. And today, after a long, muggy day of busting my ass mopping floors and cleaning pubic hairs off the toilets of smug wicker part yuppies, I lay on the bed and was flipping through "I need More, " the Igster's autobiography of sorts and I see this paragraph where he's describing the Goose Festival where the Stooges played circa 1969.

"It was a revolving stage so that one band could set up on the other side while the other band was playing; then you can just revolve and there you have it. What you've got for lights is a huge tower, I'd say 45 feet up. So there's all this razzmajazz between me and the people and they're really getting into it. It was such a nice night. So I'm playing the music. I had taken something, right? And my arm, it just rose up and gestured with a will of its own- 'Come a little closer!' That was all it took, man: they sort of started tearing the fucker apart. I really always felt very uncomfortable with separation, in all its forms, I mean I can do it with a fence, but I really enjoy working in the immediate vicinity of people. To play music I just think it's such a gross insult to presume a little fence in a certain place. "

Well put, Iggy. A speedy recovery to you and a "fuck you" to the brainstems that didn't catch you at the Cleveland show.

AND NOW, BACK TO YOUR FAVORITE WELL-MANNERED BOY…

…as I say a few last thoughts about the punk rock thing. Like any other thing, the punk rock thing doesn't really have any meaning. It is what you take from it. So take whatever the hell you want to, I'm going off and doing the same, and until the next break I take from abusing my mind and body in order to talk to you web-heads I'd just like to say tra-la-la until the next time.