Punk Godfather Iggy Pop: Anything at Any Time

Backed by four young British cats who provided his best supporting cast since the halcyon daze of the Stooges, Iggy Pop treated Friday’s full house at the Whisky to nearly 90 minutes’ worth of raffish riffing, spastic gymnastics and humid sexuality. Along with seven rock-solid songs from his pneumatic new “Instinct” album, the Godfather of Punk dipped back into his catalogue for such rarely performed clas-sicks as “Kill City,” “1969” (and “1970”), “Shake Appeal,” “Penetration” and “Scene of the Crime.”

Singing with much more emotion than he does when he’s been hangin’ around his pal David Bowie too long, the Igster proved he remains one of rock’s all-time greatest performers, using those piercing, cold-blue eyes, that lithe, still-incredible body and an impish willingness to do just about anything at any time to command every second of an audience’s attention.

And when ex-Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones sat in on the multiple encores of more-familiar Stooges numbers and the new LP’s pungently witty, anthemic “Squarehead,” well, if the result wasn’t punk-rock nirvana, you could definitely hear it from there. As one woman exiting the club shrieked to everyone in earshot, “You wimps wish you could rock like that!”