Editorial Reviews Music Review:
Music Review
Martinu: Czech Rhapsody, etc..
Music: Celtic Dance V.2 [Import]
Ride It [UK CD1] [CD-single] [Import]
Sekai Tomete [CD-single] [Import]
Pump Ya Fist: Hip-Hop Inspired by the Black Panthers [Import]
Amazon.com
Billy Idol, the original Gen X-er, remains one of the decade's enduring symbols--for better or worse. It's debatable whether this live career retrospective (taped in New York City for the VH1 Storytellers show in April, 2001) is intended to burnish the legacy of Idol's recently stalled career or, more likely, is an attempt to resuscitate it in time for the expected rising tide of '80s nostalgia. (I've got my parachute pants ready; how about you?) An intimate, largely acoustic outing co-helmed by longtime guitarist and songwriting partner Steve Stevens, it's a performance that succeeds by underplaying Idol's MTV-familiar, platinum-haired, curled-lip, and pumping-fist antics and imagery in favor of welcome doses of musical dynamics and scaled-back vocal drama. Indeed, when he drops the snarl, Idol can be a stylist of emphatic conviction, as he proves repeatedly on this set, whose songs range from his days as frontman for early U.K. punk stars Generation X ("Ready Steady Go," "Kiss Me Deadly," "Dancing With Myself") through his prime run of '80s solo hits ("White Wedding," "Rebel Yell," et al.) to more emotionally involved, if less successful, late '80s fare like "Cradle of Love" and "Don't Need a Gun." This is a reinvention for sure, but it's one that cuts beneath Idol's sometimes-insufferable mannerisms to find the musical worth beneath. --Jerry McCulley