Roadkill Rising - The Bootleg Collection 1977-2009

iTunes Review

Iggy Pop has always been marked as one of rock ‘n’ roll’s finest performers and this extensive collection of re-mastered bootleg tracks puts him in control. The track selection is from all over his career with plenty of Stooges tracks like “1969,” “I Need Somebody,” “Search and Destroy” and “Gimme Danger” and solo material like “New Values,” “Nightclubbing” and “Sister Midnight.” There’s a particularly grisly cover of Van Morrison’s “Gloria,” a garage-punk cover of the “Batman Theme” and a version of the Kinks’ “You Really Got Me” that takes the Van Halen version and strips it to its punk roots. The performances are from many places: San Diego in 1977, Detroit in 1980, Berlin, Germany in 1991 and Paris, France in 2009 among the many stops. If anything, Pop gets better with age, as larger audiences come to embrace his music, which had been ahead of its time. A track like “Down On the Street” from the 2007 Glastonbury Festival is every bit as powerful in its own way as the version that kicked off the opening of Fun House in 1970.