BSPH: Iggy and the Stooges - Doojiman

"Doojiman" is a jam composition by seminal proto-punk outfit The Stooges. It was recorded in 1972 during the sessions for their third and final album "Raw Power". It was left out because it is more of an idea than an actual song - merely a raw sketch recorded for further development. For years it was gathering dust and then it was finally released in 2010 on a Deluxe reissue of "Raw Power".

"Doojiman" is a glorious example of The Stooges "duking it out". It is incredibly simplistic, even primitive tribal jam that pretends to merely meander but ultimately clumsily wreaks havoc all around and then does that elaborately "wink-wink". In some way - it is an glimpse into what Iggy Pop had envisioned The Stooges to be back in the late 60's - extremely loud, chaotic whiplash tornado of noise with a slight tint of Antonin Artaud's idea of cruelty. It is a blast of sound that goes through the listener, grinds his intestines and leaves him exhausted with a slight feeling of perplexity.

The composition starts with a swinging tribal beat that reminds me of Max Roach's beat on Sonny Rollins' "St. Thomas". It is playful but menacing. It wants listener to get lost in a gentle tender manner because it ain't going to settle into some kind of a pattern. Then comes James Williamson's guitar that churns angular bits of riff over and over again. Curiously - it never really develops into something - it stays a transition break that was misplaced into the spotlight. The riff circles around shell-shocked with a hollow tink. Coupled with the drumbeat it remind something perpetually falling down the stairs.

Iggy Pop goes full caliban on this track. He channels his inner Louis Armstrong, splices him with a Jim Morrison in shaman-mode and imagines a jump into the field of cactuses that turns out to be a swamp of quicksand. In result - he pulls dadaist / lettrist Little Richard and litters the song with wide array of erratic caveman scats. It is brutal. If you overthink it enough - there are lots of things that can be spotted. For example, Iggy Pop:

• hollers,
• shrieks, 
• bellows,
• squeaks, 
• wails, 
• roars,
• howls,
• groans,
• bawls Mediterranean glossolalia,
• evokes squalls of wind,
• imitates blares of ire,
• enacts blubber,
• yowl yodels,
• whoops random phonemes, 
• does Mesopotamic drooling
• cast makeshift spells,
• cackles,
• plays siren, 
• says long "wow" loud and clear with feeling and echo, 
• imitates chinese hysterical rambling that slowly morphs into mongolian, 
• exclaims random snappy words (JAM! All right!), 
• mumbles imaginary words that sounds African (just like Hugo Ball), 
• does some Native American offensive phasing howls, 
• some low Louis Armstrong do be do be do, 
• does some Tibetan drones. 

The whole this is peppered with cascading feedback. It mostly acts like a tickling spook that walks around in a white veil with a nondescript grimace and menacing sound.

I have a soft spot for any song with abracadabragesang. Because it takes a gut and a whim to pull it off. Anyone can scat as a snobby jazz bollocksmeister - it is overused and stripped of its power. But trying to go beyond, leaving behind all preconceptions and ultimately enacting your own "Dawn of Men" moment - is something worthy even if it happened absolutely accidentally.