Morning Music Report, Lucky #13

This MMR comes from a bit of a weird direction, I suppose. Try and stay with me.

Of late, I've been really into a show on OLN called Long Way Round. In it, Ewan McGregor (aka Man of My Scottish Dreams) and his childhood friend Charley ride their motorcycles around the world. It's a great concept, and as things go down in various locales (eating sheep's head in Mongolia, meeting Chernobyl babies, getting bear-hugged by a crazy woman in Alaska, getting in a car accident with an absolutely terrified teenager outside Calgary, going ranching in Montana, etc.) you get more and more into Ewan and Charley's relationship--apparently Scottish men are okay with hugging...Canadian men take note--and you almost forget how fucking famous Ewan is, until he says something about it. Of course, because he's a total rugged bloke, he mentions it in context of its ridiculousness ("I have to read some scripts this week...when you think about meeting Chernobyl kids and the stuff we've done, these big Hollywood movies seem like a fucking load of crap") and punctuated with tons of F-bombs and a liberal smattering of off-colour Scottish humour.

Ewan and Charley end up being the kind of guys you want to hang out with. Hell, I have no interest in motorcycles--I saw a brutal accident a few years ago that essentially put me off them forever--and I am captivated, even by the motorcycle-babble.

The greatest thing about the show is that in the end it doesn't really matter who Ewan is--except beyond the sort of ethereal thought that the show most likely wouldn't exist without his name and connections. All that really matters is that these guys NEED to get across the world, and they NEED to do it in a certain number of days. You want them to succeed, and you feel that it matters that they do. That's good TV.

Bearing the show in mind, today's MMR (here's where the links start to form...pay attention) is centred around Iggy Pop. His career had basically plateaued when Danny Boyle (28 Days Later, Millions) came along with a little movie called Trainspotting, starring...Ewan McGregor! Ta-da! Suddenly a song the Pop-meister had written decades before was new again. It certainly introduced me to Iggy and led me to work backwards through his catalogue--solo stuff and with The Stooges. I recommend you do the same.

Watch him wriggle and do his Iggy best in this here video for "Lust for Life" (with scenes from Trainspotting)--and note that the glorious Anthony Kiedis looks more and more like Iggy as days go by. That's what transitioning from hard drugs to yoga will do, I suppose. Enjoy!