MOG

After the larks we had at the Meltdown curated by Patti Smith a couple of years ago, I was excited at the prospect of the festival being curated by Jarvis Cocker. We failed to get tickets to Jarvis in conversation with Don Letts, The Forest of No Return (various players performing songs from old Disney films) and Devo (it's ok though, we got tickets for their show next week) but we did get hold of tickets for the Stooges show, which we went to last night. I acted fast enough to get pretty shit hot tickets too; the fourth row is not a bad place to be at Royal Festival Hall. Opening for the Stooges was Scout Niblett, whose song Dinosaur Egg has been on my myspace page for the last week or so. I had only heard a few Scout Niblett songs through some careful sleuthing on the too pure website, so a full set was a treat. She was really good and played drums for a couple of songs but largely guitar. I can't recommend her highly enough and will buy her album very soon.

The only problem was all the media types and dad-dancing city workers that made up about 80% of the audience who, true to form, favoured standing at the bar outside drinking overpriced lager to watching the support act, subsequently missing a rather touching performance. Most of them spent the entire Stooges performance with their phones in the air filming, but I guess most people do that these days. Whilst thinking about Scout Niblett's diminished audience on the train home, I noticed the curator had written in the programme, "Don't you dare turn up late and miss her set." Ain't that always the way. Anyway, Scout finished and out came Jarvis to introduce the band he dubbed "true rock royalty."

Iggy gyrated through Jarvis' introduction as Ron, Scott and Watt ran into their positions and got straight into Loose, Down On The Street, I Wanna Be Your Dog - during which Iggy performed what could well have been the first ever stage dive at the Royal Festival Hall, or at least the only one I've seen in my several visits to the venue - and TV Eye before stopping to catch their breath.

Dirt and Real Cool Time followed, then No Fun. 1970 and Fun House both had colossal freak-outs at the end, featuring Steve Mackay and showing Watt on great form… at the end of the latter song he was popping his bass strings with his teeth, it was insane.

At this point in the set they busted out some newer songs, racing through Skull Ring from Iggy's last album and Trollin' from The Weirdness. They all temporarily left the stage (to collapse in a heap I expect) then played an encore of I'm Fried, She Took My Money and Not Right. After dousing Iggy in water for the umpteenth time they played Little Electric Chair to finish. Afterwards Emma and I danced to Don Letts in the ballroom then jumped on the train, happy to have seen several of my heroes on the same stage on the same night.

I can't believe Iggy Pop can still perform like that. People seem to say that about every rockstar over 50, but Ozzy Osbourne is comatose by comparison and I'd like to see Mick Jagger crowdsurf, smash beer bottles, jump up on top of a bass rig or throw himself into a drumkit. Still punk rock at 60.