Iggy Pop announces jazz album for French people

Birth of Cool-- Iggy Pop.

Where Danzig fears to tread, Iggy Pop charges (or moseys, judging by his demeanor in this video press release) into the fray.

Expressing contempt for the very behaviors for which Pop drafted manifestos ("idiot thugs with guitars banging out crappy music"), Pop released a video trailer, announcing his love of Jelly Roll Morton, his affection for quiet ballads, and the pending release of his debut jazz album Preliminaires.

Of course, Pop's time with the Stooges is nigh inviolate. The man invented punks, stage diving, and on-stage self-desecration, and, unlike those who followed the Stooges, the discography he left behind is of uncommon worth and continuing influence.

But there was a time in the not-too-distant past when Pop himself would easily have qualified as a hood with a microphone, pounding out albums that were sonic migraines for everyone outside a small, mohawked few, hell-bent on finding something to love in a musical corner regarded by the public at large as an aural urinal (hello, Lester Bangs).

What will Pop do to jazz? Likely, the same thing Danzig did to classical (see Black Aria)  and Dee Dee Ramone did to rap music (see Standing in the Spotlight). It's not necessarily a slight to the punk genre that artists within it usually make a stinky mess of whatever genre they attempt to enter when the bloom of youth fades. But it's not exactly a credit, either.

Pop's credentials as a jazz composer? He "loves jazz" (something straight out of www.stuffwhitepeoplelike.com), and is a big fan of controversial French author Michel Houellebecq. It's basically how Miles Davis got his start, so who knows? In my book, the co-composer of China Girl gets free rain to sweat on any genre within range.