Before I pushed it into the CD player, I had read a couple of reviews of BEAT 'EM UP, Iggy Pop's umpteenth CD, panning the bad boy on nearly every level. The songwriting was bad, the performance was weak, etc. Well, in the words of the inimitable Iggy himself, Blah blah blah. This is the best thing he's done in years - wait. Make that decades. BEAT 'EM UP is the first project --- maybe the only project --- that this crazy man has done which consistently matches the power of the Stooges albums.

I try to start my day, whenever possible, by listening to either RAW POWER or FUN HOUSE, with the Stooges' self-titled major label debut occasionally thrown in just to let the neighbors know that I'm still alive. These three works, which taken together clock in at under two hours, constitute the Rosetta Stone of American hard rock after 1970. They continue to influence bands who don't even know they're being influenced. Pop has released a number of solo projects since 1973's RAW POWER, the last official Stooges' release, and while each had memorable moments, none of them ever seems to quite match the power, the psychotic attitude, of those early days when Pop and Co. were getting banned from Detroit high school dances. One account, of Iggy getting into an altercation with the daughter of a high school principal wherein she slapped him and he bit her, all in the middle of a song, mind you, is the stuff of rock and roll legend. You hear that story, and even Marilyn Manson rubbing his crotch into the back of a security's guard head pales in comparison.

BEAT 'EM UP, however, shows Pop off the Ritalin, displaying lots of attitude, with power chords and energy to match. The best rock, to me anyway, has always been angry and edgy, with the ability to kick your head in, make you like it, and ask for more, while never losing sight of the fact that the music has to match the intensity of the message. Otherwise you're gonna lose your audience. This is what Public Enemy knows, and what D-12 doesn't. Iggy wrote the book on it. BEAT 'EM UP is the revised, 2001 edition.

BEAT 'EM UP is 65 minutes' worth (the CD is 72 minutes long; more on that in a paragraph or two) of pyscho-sexual imagery ('Mask") isolation ("L.O.S.T.," "Howl," "Death Is Certain,") and outright antisocial hostility ("Beat 'Em Up," "Go For the Throat," It's All Shit"). Even when Pop takes it down a notch ("Savior," "Talking Snake") there's menace in the arrangement and in Pop's threatening croon. It's like sharing a subway car with some derelict who you think is passed out, until you notice that his eyes are open, staring right at you, and you don't like what's lurking behind the pupils. Then the lights go out. "The Jerk" is about a guy who is hitting on the Popster's woman, contains a line that I won't repeat here and is absolutely perfect. If you've ever been in a situation where some guy comes up and starts hitting on a woman who is obviously with you, these lyrics, or the sentiment behind them, have undoubtedly run through your mind just before you straightened the guy out. It's "Go For the Throat," however, which is the cornerstone of the CD. Pop's music has been a 35 year-plus primal scream, with a few d'crescendos here and there. "Go For the Throat" gives you the abridged version, as well as the whys and wherefores, in under four minutes. The refrain "go for the throat/I'm so fucked up" is not a throwaway profanity; the listener knows exactly what Pop means.

The only place where Pop drops the ball --- or maybe just bobbles it a bit --- is on "V.I.P." A relatively low-key rant on the famous and on being part of that group, Pop is dead on, though it's hard to tell whether he is bemoaning his status in that group or mocking it from the outside. Either way, however, it lacks the energy and fire of the rest of the CD, though it is by no means a dealkiller. Fortunately, the hidden track that follows "V.I.P." provides a fiery finality to the proceedings. The track, which may be titled "Sterility," sounds like it could have been an outtake from RAW POWER, with Pop spitting and snarling his way through most of it before everything abruptly stops, but not before Pop lets out one last final howl. Amazing.

Iggy is the other side of 50, but if you thought he was going to slow down, or retire, or fade gently into the background ---and you could be forgiven for reaching that conclusion, given his more recent work --- any illusions on that count will be dispelled by BEAT 'EM UP. Anyone who has bought a hard rock CD in the past 20 years should have this one, just to see where the genre came from and to see how it is properly done. Play it loud. Oh yeah, just to show demonstrate that Iggy's covered all the bases, the cover art is great, too.