It's hump day so, naturally, we thought of Iggy Pop.
The Michigan hell hound born "James" but who embodied "Iggy" from Day One spent the '70s palling around with his celebrity friends and blowing through record deals.
With an unshakable street cred, there were no shortage of labels eager to sign the diminutive shit starter, but not one of them knew jack-crap about promoting Iggy's combustible proto-punk sound to the heartland.
Imagine not being able to sell danger to midwestern kids dying of boredom in pre-internet, pre-iPhone America. How do those fireworks people do it, we wonder?
In hindsight, it would seem record labels were way more inept than we ever gave them credit for being.
By the mid-80's, the entire musical landscape had changed and Iggy went from not being played on the radio to not being played on MTV, the shiniest new toy on the block and soon to take over the hearts and minds of, you guessed it, middle America.
As Elektra, Columbia, RCA, Bomp!, Arista, and Chris Stein's Animal Records had already signed and dropped Pop, it was A&M Records' turn to sign Pop. A&M exec Nancy Jeffries had grabbed Pop for a cool $500k advance based on the industry buzz that the album (Blah Blah Blah) Pop and producer David Bowie were delivering to labels as a finished product would do for Pop what Let's Dance had done for Bowie.
While it fell far short of this goal, the album did give Pop his biggest U.S. chart hit in "Real Wild Child"; a song that has since gone on to be featured in such cinematic achievements as "Crocodile Dundee II" and "Adventures In Babysitting".
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iggy gets jiggy