A year ago I wrote to Billy Idol’s website asking when he’d be performing in New York and got no response. After flying across the country in May to see him (and other musicians) perform at the Cruel World festival in Pasadena, he announced a tour. Tonight he performed at the Kings Theatre, a spectacular theater in Brooklyn, NY, and I saw him again. (I won a free ticket from the “new music” internet radio station WDARE, the successor to WLIR and WDRE.)
As he did in Pasadena, he performed all his hits, but I’m particularly glad he sang “Bitter Taste,” from his latest EP, The Roadside (which he didn’t sing in Pasadena). I’m still wondering why that song isn’t getting more airplay. I think it’s one of his best. And “Hot in the City: New York!” (which sounds like “New Yoke” when he says it) sounds a lot better than “Hot in the City: Pasadena!” He even did the same joke in New York as he did in Pasadena about having to do the same amount of promotion for an EP as for an album.
Idol has accumulated an impressive song catalogue (no one-hit wonder he) and he knows how to work an audience, as well. And his guitarist, Steve Stevens, is an amazing musician who is at least as responsible for Idol’s (and this concert's) success as Idol himself.
Billy Idol is now a grandfather, as he reveals during the concert. But let me assure you: this old punk has still got it!
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| The marquee |
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| The ceiling |
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| The audience |
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| The man |
