IGGY POP - American Caesar

If Iggy Pop hadn’t released Brick by Brick in 1990, his most important album in the 90s would have been American Caesar.  This record brings us a different side of Iggy Pop, a side darkened by his inner turmoil, at the border between frustration and disgust. Angrier than ever towards society, in other words, as angry as when he released Raw Power with The Stooges  in 1973, Iggy Pop is determined to take the American society for target practice, with lyrics aimed squarely at the politics and all its dirty deeds. 

With American Caesar, Iggy Pop draws an obvious parallel between the US and the Roman Empire, Great Britain and the Ancient Greece. Starting from the main language used for communication: during the time of the Roman Empire its official language was Latin; of course there was Ancient Greece with its different habits and different approach to things, compared to the Romans, let’s say a Britain of our times in its relation with the US. Like the Roman Empire, US has had a tendency to conquer and dominate, to mention only Vietnam, Kosovo, or the most recent Iraq.

In other words, Iggy Pop seems to see things very simply when it comes to his discontent with the American system. From the desire for expansion, manifested violently in some cases, and the status as a world leader, to the media that tries to create diversions to distract people from the truly important things, and here I could mention Charles Manson, who was turned into national hysteria, or Jerry Springer’s shows, and the list could go on.

I have always appreciated Iggy Pop for the fact that he expressed sincerity in his music, to his listeners, to himself and to his status as the Godfather of Punk, and a well-deserved one at that. As his successors from Rage Against the Machine or Black Flag (Henry Rollins contributes on Wild America), Iggy Pop is a character expressing attitude, in fact we could say that Iggy Pop is the very definition of attitude.

H. Nota: 9