Iggy at Crosley Field

The House of the Rising Punk is a documentary that appeared on German television; directed by Christopher Dreher, it was produced in 1998, and it tells the story of the early days of the New York Punk scene at CBGBs. Part of the documentary has a segment devoted to proto-Punk bands like the New York Dolls and The Stooges. For some reason I have been mesmerized by the old video footage of Iggy Pop's performance of "T.V. Eye" at the Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival in June of 1970. It's common footage; I've seen snippets of it before. The festival took place at Crosley Field right before the Reds moved to Riverfront Stadium. Traffic headlined. Twenty-four thousand concertgoers attended; it concluded with a rock-and-bottle melee and 74 arrests. This is Vietnam-War-Hippie-era America. And it's got an edge: