•Originally published in PARAPHILIA Magazine, 1.15.14•
• Since this gig, both Scott Asheton and Steve Mackay sadly have passed away •
• Since this gig, both Scott Asheton and Steve Mackay sadly have passed away •
LOOK OUT HONEY ‘COS THEY’RE USING TECHNOLOGY: IGGY AND THE STOOGES @ CONVERGE. CREATE. SILICON VALLEY
By Heather Harris
All Photographs © Heather Harris
“We don’t do what we’re supposed to, see?” — Beyond The Law (Pop/Williamson)
They
were the smart-alecks teasing quantum mechanics and particle physics
into transistors and microchips who changed the world forever in their
positronic conquest, rightly celebrated at C2SV. They were the rock band
first detonating the niche into a million smithereens of hardcore, punk
rock, speedmetal, thrash and all hardest rock genres thereafter in
music’s smoking crater and changed its world forever, rightly celebrated
at C2SV.
Although
its techfest seminars and multiple band showcases in twelve different
venues had been ongoing two of its four days prior, on 9.28.13 C2SV
(Create Converge Silicon Valley) Technology Conference and Music
Festival combined both factions with one individual who encapsulated
both worlds. Selfsame hardest rock game changers Iggy and The Stooges
assaulted St. James Park, downtown San Jose live that night after one of
their own had given a talk earlier in the afternoon as the featured
keynote tech speaker. James Williamson, newly retired Sony Corp.
Technology Standards Vice-President is actual Iggy and The Stooges
guitarist, most notably of its seminal 1972 release Raw Power now acknowledged as the template for punk rock.
Dan Pulcrano, journalist, publisher, newspaper owner of award-winning Metro Silicon Valley and C2SV promoter conceived of it as a locale-specific alternative similar to Austin’s SxSW. His sense of humor matched the sophistication of his cred by featuring discussions with inventor of anti-virusware John McAfee whom Pulcrano cheerfully proclaimed “Our fugitive from Belize!” alongside major notables like PC inventor Steve Wozniak, video game inventor Nolan Busnell, and three days worth of assorted panelists like Dead Kennedy Jello Biafra and former WIRED editor Brian Behlendorf.
Give it up, turn that boy loose!" -- Kill City (Pop/Williamson)
Off camera and a coast away, a there from the beginning Stooges insider with initial misgivings recently had declared, “James Williamson saved The Stooges. Twice.” This story can be reviewed in Paraphilia XII (“Open Up and Blood, Sweat, Tears and ‘Fanecdotes,” 2011 by yours truly) and more recent triumphs of his Stooges reunion gigs in Paraphilia 2013 (“Raw and Real Power” also by yours truly.) However, the middle act of Williamson’s life wherein he abruptly switched careers, got in on the beginning of computer technology in the late ‘70s as an engineer, moved to Silicon Valley with his young family, invented away and rose through the ranks to eventual vice-presidency of Sony Corporation hadn’t been heard aloud in the first person until this keynote address.
Interviewer Jack Boulware asked James if life on the rock and roll touring road nowadays was still nonstop sex and drugs. A: “Yeah, but now it’s mostly gabapentin,” whereupon they both cracked up along with the audience.
Best of all, Williamson deconstructed his most famous song “Search And Destroy” playing his guitar. Its novel if hyperspeed rhythms were traced to the Rolling Stones’ “Jumping Jack Flash,” the Ventures’ “Walk Don’t Run” and further back to conga-line dancing’s strong beats, revealing that “Search And Destroy, the anthem of Punk Rock, is really based on The Bunny Hop,” duly demonstrated in riffs and hops.
“I’m looking for a reason to live, I’ve only got two things to give…sex and money…” — Sex And Money, (Pop/Williamson)
Next was John McAfee’s first public
appearance since his highly publicized escape from Belize and arrest in
Guatemala, with self-admitted “a retinue of employees and young girls”
despite active military harassment and bounties. McAfee spoke about
quorum-sensing, drugs, sobriety, drugs, yoga, South American corrupt
jurisprudence and drugs. McAfee used the conference appearance to
announce his intentions to market a low-cost secure router to foil
government and other surveillance via a localized networking platform
with total, effective encryption.
On to the pleine air St. James Park main stage opening acts: Bay Area locals The Bang Girl Group Revue with high-powered rock-soul singers Angeline King and Rachel Mae Havens plus deservedly praised, eclectic guitarist (and acclaimed DJ) Derek See and company; Bosnian Rainbows with Teri Gender Bender from Le Butcherettes along with some former The Mars Voltas, then S.F. surf-ish stylists Thee Oh Sees.
“Screaming murder, bloody murder all in my brain…” — Joanna (Pop/Williamson)
A major highlight of any Stooge show remains an invasion of 100+ stomping, moshing audience persons invited onstage to wild it up with the band from its perspective, an interactive vestige of the days when Iggy would spend half the show out in a club’s audience himself, barking in people’s faces, scuttling under dresses, rather impossible with the group’s huge draw nowadays. The stage erected in the park proved inadequate for such a gambit, so a single dancer from the audience and later some lithe, body-painted nubiles solved selfsame problem to the satisfaction of all.
“I get excited, so fine, I’m alive” —Penetration (Pop/Williamson)
One
hyperactive young fangirl, frenetically frenzied practically to the
point of Tourette’s Disease next to Maria and me was going berserk with
maximum Stoogebliss. Fearing for our own lives and limbs, all around her
kept pointing and yelling “Her! Her!” while helping to push her over
the barrier even before Iggy called for a single volunteer to come
onstage and dance with the Stooges. She was great. Win-win.
“In my head there’s a cry of pain, I
wear my heart out and kill my brain…yeah, tell me lies…” — Open Up And
Bleed (Pop/Williamson)
It’s a
raunchy, tight, almost two-hour-long albeit speedy set of nearly twenty
songs that these grown men offer a audience, but they end it with their
one power ballad.
“They’re taking over as the world turns, I’m on file with a reptile, burn, burn…” — Burn (Pop/Williamson)
Both
to affirm the group’s sleazy origins and also to utterly repudiate their
first band dissolution under a hale of angry debris thrown onstage at
the Michigan Palace (sons et guerres in toto on the Metallic K.O
album, objects crashing thuds heard throughout, exhausted singer
exhorting the hecklers “Ya wanna hear ‘Louie, Louie?’ So it’s come to
this!”) here’s “Louie, Louie” as final, FINAL encore of Iggy and The
Stooges, phoenix fully arisen.
“I think about the meaning of my life
again and I have to sing Louie Louie again…”
— Louie Louie (Richard Berry) (embellished by Pop/Williamson)
— Louie Louie (Richard Berry) (embellished by Pop/Williamson)
Above
the audience din a clarion voice nearby shrieked “I’ll never give up on
you Iggy, you saved my fucking life!” Millennials, Xers, Yers or
Boomers, people care about these Stooges.
Folk taxonomy of the word “paraphilia”
embraces intense obsessions for atypical situations or persons. C2SV’s
Iggy and The Stooges gig can further define said obsessions clinically
and threefold: the band’s to excel on their own terms and to have
persisted (off and on) for four plus decades; the audience fangirl’s in
her going ungodly, flailing berserkness until she could dance onstage
with her musical idols; and, reluctantly admitted since I don’t do
selfies, your humble photojournalist here. One can observe, appreciate,
photograph and even write about greatness in the same artists over and
over again no matter how frequently (or seldom) encountered and
witnessed. Since 1973 I’ve seen and photographed Iggy and The Stooges a
half dozen times: it only gets better and better with each go.
SET LIST
1. Raw Power
2. Gimme Danger
3. 1970
4. Search And Destroy
5. Fun House/Night Theme
6. Beyond The Law
7. Johanna
8. Ready To Die
9. I Wanna Be Your Dog
10. No Fun
11. The Passenger
12. I Got A Right
13. Cock In My Pocket
14. Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell
15. Sex And Money
16. Penetration
17. Open Up And Bleed
18. Burn (encore)
19. Louie Louie (second encore, naked, body-painted dancing women stage invade)
2. Gimme Danger
3. 1970
4. Search And Destroy
5. Fun House/Night Theme
6. Beyond The Law
7. Johanna
8. Ready To Die
9. I Wanna Be Your Dog
10. No Fun
11. The Passenger
12. I Got A Right
13. Cock In My Pocket
14. Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell
15. Sex And Money
16. Penetration
17. Open Up And Bleed
18. Burn (encore)
19. Louie Louie (second encore, naked, body-painted dancing women stage invade)
-Heather Harris
