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Billy Idol
"Billy Idol" / "Vital Idol" |
| By
Vinnie Apicella For a man who's ducked out of the public eye for nearly a decade now,
Mr. Idol appears poised to return to the scene he once took by storm
some twenty years earlier, with both fists in the air, and full bore
Idol-ized madness shall rise again. While the 1980s are once again
becoming all the rage, the "rage" for some, was never embodied more so
than by Billy Idol. Amongst the few innovative forces that grew with
the
MTV generation and in no small part aided the pioneering music video
channel to the mass success it was to achieve, Idol, musician, singer,
individualist and showman, created his own wave and rode it for an
entire decade, spanning millions of worldwide fans and platinum success
stories. The nineties weren't quite so kind to the unabashed Brit, soon
becoming more noteworthy for his offstage antics if anything at all.
With the interested parties again making their presence felt, Idol's
coming back and in no small quantity. Fresh off the expected VH1
documentary and Storytellers performance, he's back with longtime
collaborator and six-string wunderkind Steve Stevens preparing to
unleash a brand new, long awaited recording which will be the first new
material to speak of in the decade since the failed "Cyberpunk"
experiment. In the meantime, Idol's back catalog gets a quick revision
and reissuance in the form of two titles-the first being his
self-titled
1982 debut which yielded mammoth highlights as "White Wedding," "Hot In
The City," and the unsuspecting yet astonishing "Dancing With Myself"
mainstream and club hit. Unlike many of the "groundbreakers" of his
time, his early going was both unexpected and unbelievable in the wake
of Disco-era dominance and post-Punk asthma. Idol's emergence combined
the free spirit and attitude of pure Punk with a streamlined Pop charm
that soon won worldwide acclaim and made him into one of the biggest
stars in Rock history. Aside from the aforementioned chart-toppers,
there were a few sleeper hits here that didn't receive the attention
they were due, and there were also a few rightfully ignored silly sound
bites for songs that were better left alone. Still in all, this turned
out to be a more complete and memorable album far exceeding any of the
so-called one-hit wonder varieties of the time and was to form the
foundation for the many platinum smashes to follow. "Vital Idol" was
released five years and laid a different slant on his three previously
released studio successes. "Vital Idol's" eight tracks spotlighted the
best of his earlier going by featuring remixed and extended versions to
further his ongoing club appeal and unwittingly glorified an
unsuspecting "Mony Mony" cover track (originally appearing on his
"Don't
Stop" four song EP) into an all-time great with the college crowds. The
two efficiently packed reissues feature short but succinct accounts of
the performer with a few brief close-ups, neither of which will benefit
albums sales in the first place. You'll want to pick these up to not
only relive the excitement of that magical period of time that began
all
those years ago but to also realize the true brilliance of 24-bit
remastering-face it your old tapes are worn down to the bone and they
needed replacing anyway-and how an essential part of Rock music's past
could well turn out to be a vital component to its next future.
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