Iggy & The Stooges – Live In Detroit (DTS DVD/Creem)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: B-     Extras: B     Concert: B

 

 

If all you know about Iggy Pop is Lust For Life from Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting and writing a hit with David Bowie (Fame), then you have not heard of Iggy and The Stooges or their classic album Raw Power either.  Creem Magazine now has a new DVD series and the new Live In Detroit DVD offers nearly 70 minutes of the band still surviving and doing it very well after all these years.

 

The consistence and intensity of the performance is impressive, destroying the myth once again that Rock music is somehow dead.  Its survival is actually surprising the media so much that they are ignoring it as much as Japanese Animé, but it is a big as you’d think, no matter what garbage the record labels are pushing.  The songs include:

 

Loose

Down On The Street

1969

I Wanna Be Your Dog

TV Eye

Dirt

Real Cool Time

No Fun

1970

Funhouse

Skull Ring

Not Right

Little Doll

I Wanna Be Your Dog (reprise)

 

 

This is mostly a darker concert with the usual multi-color lighting.  The full frame presentation is on analog NTSC videotape of a professional type, but that is limited.  It is still worth watching and the tape has no damage.  The note that the sound is in Dolby Digital & DTS 5.1 is so small, most lawyers could miss the fine print, but it is and it is not bad, though the original sound master form the live recording caught a bit too much stridence at points, limiting what is otherwise an energetic presentation.  The Dolby is a disappointment, while the DTS really delivers the punch from the real Rock music Iggy and his crew stands for.  There is a third Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo mix that is only worth your time if you have really bad speakers or a downmixing problem with the Dolby 5.1 on PCs and the like.

 

The extras are as impressive as the main program, though the audio is limited to Dolby 2.0 in both stereo and mono.  You also get 11 previews for other solid Music Video Distributors titles, some of which we have already reviewed on this site, as well as the following sections:

 

50-minutes-long NYC In-Store Appearance

Sing-A-Long With Iggy (four of the main program’s songs with captions)

Mike Watt Journal (8 minute piece narrated by Watt about touring with stills)

From The Creem Archive (stills that run 3 minutes set to an Iggy classic)

 

 

There is even a paper fold-out, but the text is too small to read under most circumstances, further sabotaged by the red background.  That was a mistake.  Otherwise, this has a parental advisory, so you get the band raw, and they include Ron Asheton, Scott Asheton, Steve Mackay & Mike Watt.  Even when Sony does Raw Power as a Super Audio CD, Live In Detroit will continue to be a great DVD title and the DTS does not hurt.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo