With Lou Reed settling into a comfortable, BBC-sponsored retirement, David Bowie lapsing into a deeper coma of pretentious irrelevance by the minute, and Mick Jagger dedicating his life to the sale of Rolling Stones merchandise, it's good to see that Iggy Pop--rock & roll's original wild child--is still the consummate punk rocker. It's remarkable, also, though, that he's still alive--Nude and Rude... is surely testament to Iggy's iron constitution. A retrospective covering his career from The Stooges's eponymous 1969 debut through to 1990's Brick By Brick, Nude and Rude... can crudely be split into three parts. The Stooges' grimy "I Wanna Be Your Dog" and "Search and Destroy" are magnificent howls of scuzz-rock, "Nightclubbing", "Lust For Life" and "The Passenger" are fruits of Iggy's dramatic rebirth in 1977, and, if the later work isn't as flattering to Iggy's legend, remember that it's still better than any of Reed, Bowie or Jagger's output at the turn of the century. --Louis Pattison