Iggy Pop with David Bowie - Agora Ballroom, Cleveland, OH, 3-21-1977

It's high time I post something from Iggy Pop, so he's a concert from probably the most pivotal year of his music career. Plus, this could be of interest for David Bowie fans. Bowie was involved in every song here, but... only in a backing role. He played keyboards and sang backing vocals, but no lead vocals at all. You can see him sitting at the keyboards in the background of the cover photo.

It's fitting that Bowie was involved, because he played a pivotal role at this point in Pop's career. Pop had a few wasted years in the middle of the 1970s after Pop's band the Stooges broke up, mostly due to drug abuse. Bowie helped Pop get a solo career started. He co-wrote nearly all the songs on Pop's albums "The Idiot" and "Lust for Life," and produced and played some instruments on them for good measure. Still, the albums were more Pop than Bowie, and they were very critically acclaimed. They probably still are the most praised albums of Pop's career. However, sales weren't that good, although the albums at least reached the Top Forty in the U.S. and Britain.

In early 1977, Bowie had just released an acclaimed album of his own, "Low." But rather than tour to support it, he joined Pop's tour band for about six weeks. Pop went on to tour a lot more that year without Bowie, but this concert happens to be one with Bowie. Bowie deliberately kept a low profile during these concerts, never singing lead vocals or addressing the audience. However, if you listen carefully, you can often make out his voice with the backing vocals.

This concert happened after the release of "The Idiot," but before the release of "Lust for Life." So it mostly consists of songs from "The Idiot," plus songs from when Pop was in the Stooges.

After releasing "The Idiot" and "Lust for Life," Pop had one more album on his record company contract. So he decided to release a live album from his 1977 shows that ended up getting called "TV Eye Live 1977." Unfortunately, it was a pretty bad album. Pop put most of the production costs in his own pocket and had it produced and mastered very cheaply, which resulted in poor sound quality. So, for instance, although allmusic.com reviews gave both "The Idiot" and "Lust for Life" five stars out of five stars, "TV Eye Live 1977" only got one and a half stars. So there has been a big need for a good live album from his 1977 concerts.

Happily, in 2020, a box set called "The Bowie Years" was released. Not only did it include all three albums mentioned above, it included three full soundboard-based concerts. Two of those have disappointing sound quality though, and this one was the best, by far. So I'm posting this here to give this concert the prominence it deserves. 

I didn't have any problems with the recording, except for two near the end. First, the last song, "China Girl," faded out before the song ended. So I took the last bit from one of the other concerts in "The Bowie Years" and used that to give that song a decent finish. 

And second, this concert was lacking the song "Lust for Life," and that's my favorite Pop song from 1977. So I added that at the very end as a quasi-bonus track. That version comes from a concert in Manchester, Britain, in September 1977.

This album is an hour and two minutes long. Just the Cleveland part (without "Lust for Life") is 57 minutes long.

01 Raw Power (Iggy Pop)
02 T.V. Eye (Iggy Pop)
03 Dirt (Iggy Pop)
04 1969 (Iggy Pop)
05 Turn Blue (Iggy Pop)
06 Funtime (Iggy Pop)
07 Gimme Danger (Iggy Pop)
08 No Fun (Iggy Pop)
09 Sister Midnight (Iggy Pop)
10 I Need Somebody (Iggy Pop)
11 Search and Destroy (Iggy Pop)
12 I Wanna Be Your Dog (Iggy Pop)
13 China Girl [Edit] (Iggy Pop)
14 Lust for Life (Iggy Pop)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16050169/IggPp_1977_AgraBllroomClevelndOH__3-21-1977_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is actually two photos put together. I wanted a photo that showed Pop and Bowie together on stage, but I could only find photos of either Pop or Bowie. So I used Photoshop to put Pop in front of a photo of Bowie (and a couple of strangers standing at the side of the stage). Both photos were from the same concert, at the Rainbow Theatre in London, on March 7, 1977. So that was about two weeks before this concert.