Iggy Pop - A Million in Prizes: The Anthology

Iggy

If you are like me and you have heard about Iggy over the years. This
anthology is a great way to go. I discovered that I loved the early Stooges and that everything after was hit and miss.
July 21, 2008

Creative Anger Followed By Regular Anger

Disc one exposes a man who could shift with the best of them: His Stooges days are marked by wild proto-punk riffery mixed with the most cantakerous nihilist lyrics this side of 1976. Fantastic. The latter portion of the disc sees our man taking a trip with Bowie, a trip where synths plod along within the most vacous soundscapes this side of dub. The legacy of drugs looms in the content of these tracks, and the clash of Iggy's vocal delivery and the atmospherics is unique indeed. A triump.

Disc 2 is revelry smothered by cliches. The first few tracks on the disc have homogenous production values that make all the songs sorta blend into each other. The cod-Bill Idol phase (from the Blah Blah Blah album) is rather amusing, since the slick production makes Iggy seem like the glossiest rebel ever (and that's not a bad thing). After that, however, tracks like Cold Metal and the like reveal a complacency characterized by yelling over the most contribed riffs. Nothing special. The latter tracks share one thing: bloody awful production values. These sound like they were recorded in a Third World radio station's maintenace closet in 1965. At least the live tracks (re-hashes of Fun House tunes) revive the raw aggression of the Stooges.

I'd say that forking over the extra dough to get this set, when you could get the one disc compilation, seems rather extreme. Just get the 1996 compilation and then buy all three Stooges albums. If you're really curious, get Iggy's late 70s albums and Blah Blah Blah. And that's about it. It's not plausible that you'll be tempted to delve into most of his 90s work. November 15, 2006

Disc One -- Indispensable; Disc Two--Dullsville

"A Million in Prizes," like other two-disc compilations by acts like The Fall, Devo and The Damned, features an essential first disc with Iggy Pop at the peak of his powers (with the Stooges, James Williamson and David Bowie). Featuring remastered versions of the Stooges best songs plus the remixed songs from "Raw Power," this stuff is blood-curdling, head-banging rock n' roll of the highest caliber. Topping it off are newly cleaned up versions of Iggy's pre-hardcore classics "I Got a Right," "Gimme Some Skin" and "I'm Sick of You." This material is followed by the best songs from his first and best two solo albums, "The Idiot" and "Lust for Life." Once again an improvement over "Nude and Rude," the previous official Iggy best-of, this disc features "Success," a wonderful, unheralded cut from the latter album. Then ... there's disc two. It starts off solidly with a holdover from "Lust for Life," "Some Weird Sin," and the best cut off his underrated "New Values" album, "I'm Bored." Even "I Need More" is listenable, as Iggy's voice is still thunderous and convincing. After that, however, Iggy's records fall victim to bad 80s production and a seeming complacency on his part. "Real Wild Child (Wild One)" represents Iggy at his most commercial ... something akin to David Bowie's "Let's Dance" album, only much less satisfying. Despite the dropoff in quality, Iggy's energy and commitment to musicmaking is praiseworthy, making "A Million in Prizes" an essential part of any respectable music fan's collection. November 10, 2006

A Million in Prizes: The Anthology

A Million in Prizes: The Anthology~ Iggy Pop is an amazing anthology collection from an icon in the rock industry and rock music history. Iggy Pop has surprisingly good vocals, the lyrics are not as simple as one would have like thought they would be. I must admit that I only heard Lust for life and to be even more honest I had no idea that this song was written by Pop and Bowie. I love the photos in the book-let and the cover photo is vintage Pop at his best. I was a bit ticked of that they had not included the lyrics for the songs in the otherwise amazing book-let. This is a compilation that I highly recommend.

May 5, 2006

Pop Rocks

While A Million In Prizes offers little for those who've kept an eye on James Osterberg's career since the days of The Psychedelic Stooges, as a five decade overview of the leathery Detroit legend it completely eclipses the hits packages that precede it. Whether it's garage rock, glam, punk or even Berlin cabaret, Iggy Pop has kept at the top of his game via reinvention, clever allegiances and simple survival.
Roughly divided up into the four eras of Stooges-fronting, Bowie-befriending, 1980s commerciality and 1990s icon(oclast), the double disc package A Million In Prizes fulfils the obligation of presenting Iggy as an enigmatic, genre-hopping artist whose successes have been often down to savvy collaborations. Early Stooges tracks Search And Destroy and 1969 set the bar high for where the trailer park kid could go, but after The Stooges' 1973 post-Raw Power split, the helping hands of David Bowie, Jimmy Webb and even members of The Sex Pistols assisted Pop in his sonic travels. Early solo track Nightclubbing, the slamming beat of Lust For Life and the amusing Iggy drawl of I'm Bored show an artist keen on probing styles far removed from the primordial rock sounds he'd worked on with The Stooges only a few years before.
While Bowie's shadow looms large at the midpoint of this collection during the pair's Berlin recording period, by the time of his 1980s chart successes with Real Wild Child and the Steve Jones co-write Cry For Love, Pop had shown he was no mere pet project for Bowie. With the beautiful Candy (surely the single of 1990, if not the greatest duet ever), the Debbie Harry allegiance Well, Did You Evah? and the neatly cyclical reformation of The Stooges for Skull Ring, A Million In Prizes complements Iggy's sizeable manhood by being a similarly lengthy and exciting package. Here comes Johnny Yen again - rest assured, Pop rocks. March 22, 2006

More reviews at Amazon.com ...