This is not the first song I've written about from the album New Values, let alone the first time I've written about New Values. I think it's a good one, its stuffy, airless atmosphere has somehow aged well, standing as a fine setting for a memorably tight unit: James Williamson on a punchy, delicate, reeling guitar, Scott Thurston doing a little bit of everything, including horn arrangements, and rhythm section drummer Klaus Kruger and bass player Jackie Clark. Recorded in Hollywood, produced by Williamson. Iggy is about 32 years old and fit as a fiddle. The best songs are rife with throbbing guitar chords and a powerful propulsion, artfully detailed by the horns—talking about "Five Foot One" and the title song mainly, maybe "Tell Me a Story" and "Billy Is a Runaway" and some others—but this takes a page out of the loose and playful Iggy I last showcased with "Success." This one also has a precious turning-point moment, and that is what I love about it, as it seems to me to be the real Iggy id, as it were. For the most part it's all Iggy the peacock, strutting and preening about in exuberant clown-like fashion, pouting and declaiming his disaffection even as he sounds anything but: "I'm bored / I'm the chairman of the bored / I'm a lengthy monologue / I'm livin' like a dog," etc. It's a bit monotonous perhaps, to tell the truth. Then comes the guitar break, ushered in with, "Awright, doll-face, come out and bore me." And that's it. That's the moment I'm talking about. Williamson eats it up alive, and then back to the verse/chorus at a slightly higher pitch, over and done, 2:48. I have a theory that only old friends who know each very well and have been through a lot together can pull of a stunt like that. But I'm often wrong about these things.
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