Be Here Now: Steve Waksman on Iggy Pop @ Williams College, 4/22/10

Steve Waksman – an associate professor of music and American studies at Smith College in Northampton – will give a guest lecture at Williams College in Williamstown on Thursday afternoon.

The topic? “Death Trip: Iggy Pop and Rock Performance.”

Here’s how the lecture was described in a press release:

“During his career with the rock band the Stooges, Iggy Pop was the most confrontational rock performer of the 1970s, a figure who presented a constant challenge to the audiences for whom he played. Channeling the aggression of the Stooges’ proto-punk brand of rock and roll, Iggy at times inflicted violence upon himself, at other times seemed bent on inciting the audience to its own acts of destruction. Doing so, he epitomized the move away from the utopian idealism that surrounded much of 1960s rock music and culture, and marked a shift towards a darker, more ambivalent set of impulses that rose to the surface of rock in the 1970s. Iggy’s ambivalence could be seen in his uneasy embodiment of masculinity, which teetered between power and victimization. It could be seen in a different way in the manner in which he tested the boundary between audience and performer, and posed a decisive challenge to the symbolic armor, the sense of untouchability, constructed around the figure of the rock star in the early 1970s.”

Here’s Iggy performing “Search and Destroy” at the Stooges’ induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame just last month:

Waksman’s lecture will be held at 4:15pm on Thursday at Williams College’s Bernhard Music Center Room 30, Williamstown. Admission is free and open to the public.

Oh, and by the way… Happy birthday to Iggy, who is celebrating his 63rd birthday today!