"Dum Dum Boys"

Iggy Pop - Dum Dum Boys (1977)

A eulogy by Osterberg and Jones in the city of Berlin.



A sad opening backed by David Bowie on keyboards, Iggy Pop gives us the the breakdown on where all of his old band mates The Stooges have ended up. We get a distorted guitar break after that to let us know how down and dirty the song is going to be. The guitars are distorted with reverb effects through the whole song. The drums even have some echo delay added. The bass is simple and clean, so it really sticks out.

Iggy's vocals are also laden with effects. The echo is so long it gives a dreamy almost heroin affected sound to his downer lyrics about his old band. He sings about old times with the gang with nostalgia, missing them, and what they did together. One of the last lines he explicitly wants them back, he doesn't know how to carry on without them; it's sad. But in fact, Iggy Pop had moved on. This album, written with and produced by David Bowie, while Bowie was in the middle of his Berlin Trilogy was Iggy's first real taste of success. The Stooges were seminal, and revered amongst the punks that they had influenced, but were unknown outside of that niche. This album The Idiot (whose title is inspired by the Dostoyevsky novel) is considered one of Pop's best, if not representative of his usual sound.

Final note. Tony Visconti, a frequent colaborator of Bowie, did the final mix of this album from the demo tapes that Bowie produced. He also wrote the preface to The Book.