Iggy Pop: "that has nothing at all to do with a major record label in the 21st century and their demographics and marketing schemes and their velveeta schemes and Janet Jackson's boob.".

I'M NOT GONNA EXPLAIN WHO IGGY POP IS. Names like the Stooges, Fun House, Raw Power, Lust for Life, The Idiot should all ring some fucking bells. If not, arm yourself with a copy of the scumbag Bible Please Kill Me and the new career-spanning, two-disc Iggy "Godfather of Punk" Pop anthology A Million in Prizes (EMI) immediately. Thrasher recently got the good-natured Mr Pop (who came through caller ID under his original moniker, James Osterberg) on the phone from his current Miami homestead to talk everything from dirty minded blues to the Dandy Warhols.

So are you playing a lot of golf now that you live in Florida?

I used to when it was really uncool, but it's not uncool enough for me. When I started playing it was because they opened a little par three and practice range next to my trailer camp. My first job was working there and picking up golf balls and moving the sprinklers around on the golf greens. So it was always about walking six miles with a 40-pound bag when I was doing it. And now it's like you ride around in a cart with Motley Crue or something.

It feels like every raw new rock band is getting compared to the Stooges. How does that feel to actually be in the Stooges?

You don't necessarily feel good inside, but you feel like that's a good thing. Somebody somewhere may read [about a band sounding like the Stooges] and they might see the name on a CD cover and play it, so that's a way to hear it. It's like, I'm 58 and I'm still on the upramp; it's really weird, you know. 'Cause usually there's an arc in this thing--the way this American consumerism thing is supposed to work you're supposed to be shot at about 28 or something. Then you're supposed to work down, but I'm arcing up so that's all right.

Are you working on a new solo/Stooges record?

I haven't worked on a solo record but I have been working on the Stooges [Mike Watt plays bass for the late Dave Alexander]. We get together in a little room that's about 10 by 12 here in Miami and we have a little 10-watt guitar amp, a 12-watt vocal amp, and a toy drum kit, and the three of us write that way. It sounds fucking kickin' too. Sometimes you really don't need the noise enhancers. The bigger they get, the more they get in the way of actually developing an idea. Ideas are really good in miniature, the same way that there used to be really good directors who would write out their film in cartoon storyboards entirely.

When this [solo anthology] comes out it'll be about 20 major releases for me. I spread them all out on the carpet the other day and went "OK, tried that, did that." The only thing I really want to do is to play really, really dirty--and I mean dirty as in sexually dirty--blues songs. I like to sit around with an open turned guitar and just sing really dirty blues. But that has nothing at all to do with a major record label in the 21st century and their demographics and marketing schemes and their Velveeta schemes and Janet Jackson's boob.

That song you did with the Stooges for the Junior Kimbrough comp ["You Better Run," off 2005's Sunday Nights: the Songs of Junior Kimbrough] is awesome. The lyrics are so nasty.

They're really nasty and that's why I wanted to do it. When he does it he just throws them off the whole thing, because he sounds very reasonable. I got [Kimbrough] to come out on a tour with me once. He lasted as far as Chicago and then he got homesick and wanted to go home. The first day on the tour he came out in a sweatshirt that said "Junior" on the front, and the first thing he said to me was, "How long you been playing?" At the time it was like 28 years or something. And he told me, "That's nothing."

What's the newest musical discovery you've made?

Brian Jonestown Massacre! That's a fucking great band! And the way I got into him was I read in my local paper about a documentary [Dig/] and they interviewed the director and she 4 was saying what a loser [frontman Anton Newcombe] was and all these terrible things he did. I didn't like how she sounded so much, but he sounded cool. So I thought let's just check out his music and I hoped it would be good. a There's a new double album out on them, and man, it's good, it's really good. I know I don't like [Dig/ co-stars] Dandy Warhols' music as much as that, though. No way, Jose.