Rock legends Pop, Cooper never say die

By Chris Hansen Orf
Get Out

Two recently released discs this summer should have fans of primitive garage-punk reaching for the air guitar, as proto-punk legend Iggy Pop has a new career retrospective on shelves, and the Valley's own Alice Cooper has just released a collection of new songs.

It was in the late '60s that a young Detroit trailer-park-dwelling kid named James Osterberg, who got his start playing drums backing up blues singers in the Motor City and in Chicago, stepped up to the mic to form The Stooges, often credited with being the first punk band.

Adopting the stage name Iggy Stooge, Osterberg took it upon himself to mask the fact that the band couldn't really play (the rhythm section was rough and guitarist Ron Asheton deftly hid the fact that he was a six string novice behind walls of feedback and wah-wah effects) by cutting himself with glass onstage, rubbing peanut butter all over his bare chest and hurling himself into audiences, becoming the earliest known crowd-surfer.
The Stooges put out three records of ham-fisted, bar-chord-fueled rock 'n' roll that sold poorly but ended up influencing everyone from Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers to the Ramones. It was simple yet exhilarating, loud, obnoxious and primitive, but undeniably ahead of its time.

Iggy (now known as Iggy Pop) began a collaboration that lasted much of the '70s with friend David Bowie (who had a massive hit with Pop's “China Girl”) and had great success in the '80s and '90s with “Real Wild Child (Wild One)” and a duet with the B-52s' Kate Pierson, the surprise power-pop hit “Candy.”

Virgin Records has collected all this great material and more and released it as “A Million in Prizes: The Iggy Pop Anthology,” which is the definitive Iggy Pop retrospective and a great place for the uninitiated to discover a unique, singular rock talent.

LOCAL LEGEND

Like Pop, Arizona's rock 'n' roll son Alice Cooper has always been a rare performer, becoming the the king of shock rock in the 1970s, performing his blend of hard rock and glam metal with an onstage guillotine (which would theatrically “chop” his head off midtune), live boa constrictors and baby-doll heads strewn about the stage.

Alice is still delivering his sneering, over-the-top hard rock well into his 50s, and his latest disc, “Dirty Diamonds,” is one of his better efforts of the last two decades.

The opening cut, the tongue-in-cheek “Woman of Mass Distraction,” gets the power-chord riffs rolling, sounding like a long-lost Aerosmith tune, and Cooper gleefully spouts, “The first time I saw her she said she wants to date me; the next time I come back she tried to castrate me.”

The record is loose, at times Stones-y — such as the catchy “Perfect” and the bluesy “Sunset Babies (All Got Rabies)” — and at times almost all-out punk, as on the title track and “Steal That Car.”

Cooper has always been an underrated ballad singer (one of his biggest hits was the tender “Only Women Bleed” in 1977), and on this effort, “Pretty Ballerina” is the softy.

While not as popular as in his heyday, Copper still can bring the garage rock/punk as well as anyone.      

TICKER TAPE PARADE DOWN UNDER

A sneak preview of Valley power pop heroes Ticker Tape Parade's upcoming disc finds the band in peak songwriting form.

TTP has always been adept at crafting dynamic, hook-laden bursts of melodic rock, but the new disc ups the ante, with tunes like “Smile,” “Next First Try,” “Get Out Now” and “Sleep Away” sounding like bona fide hit singles.

The band's strengths — Aaron Wendt's alternately aggressive and melodic vocals, Wendt and Jesse Everhart's guitar interplay and the impossibly tight rhythm section of bassist Topher Bradshaw and drummer Sean McCall — are captured on the disc, which is scheduled for major release in Australia. TTP also will be touring down under, and hopefully, if American labels are on top of things, we will see their CD released on these shores too.