Format change here on Friday Night Music Video. Instead of the random bit of insufferable chaos that you may be used to, I am going to try to shed some light on some of my favorite pieces of music, albums and artists. First up is an album that is of extreme significance to me, Iggy Pop’s The Idiot.

This album is my Kevin Bacon for music collecting. Almost all of the over 2,000 albums that I own connect, in one way or another, to this album in one or a few degrees. Here are some of the extensions….

As my music tastes matured from adolescence into adulthood, Joy Division took on an important role as my soundtrack to that transition. To be honest though, I could have used them in my life even earlier (I didn’t discover Joy Division until a high school road trip with my friend Jenny to Chicago). There is an earnestness about the music that makes it timelessly relatable, and the tragedy of the lead singer’s death gives it that much more emotional pull. Ian Curtis’ suicide is a rock music loss up there with Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain. In May of 1980 (the year I was born), Ian hung himself while Iggy Pop’s The Idiot played on the turntable and a Werner Herzog movie played on the television.

In 1994, a controversial song appeared on the radio, called Closer by Nine Inch Nails, and 14-year old Jason took note. It was exciting and different, and featured a noticeable, enticing space in the music where it seemed the word “fuck” might be. The Downward Spiral became an anthem for my youth, not just for the rebellion it offered, but because the pain it suggested meant that I wasn’t alone as a child of abuse. I could go into some heartbreaking allegory for why this album reminds me of Christmas, but I will spare all of you. Also, the underlying beat is lifted directly (and slowed down) from Iggy Pop’s Nightclubbing from The Idiot:

One of the curious things that people do is to look up the famous people that were born on the day that they were born (not necessarily the year). I discovered fairly early on that one of my very favorite artists, David Bowie, was born just two days before me in January. Unfortunately, he also died exactly on my birthday in 2016 (while a show named after one of his songs and featuring over 50 paintings of the artist, that I had curated, was on display). Additionally, he produced Iggy Pop’s album, and cowrote many of the songs (including a song he also recorded, China Girl).

Bowie also performed alongside Nine Inch Nails (and a gazillion other performers):

The band that survived Ian Curtis’ death reformed as New Order. New Order went on to produce an 80’s and early 90’s songbook that would be difficult to replace, in terms of its significance (and emotional pull), by any other artist.

If you just stop to consider the connections already mentioned and their individual influences (and those that influenced them), then it is easy to see a massive web of connections back to The Idiot emerge. A web that merges pop, rock, hip hop, industrial, grunge, electronic music and more.