Gen X/Billy

Settled in last night for 3 hours of the Bio Channel's documentaries (Bowie, Courtney Love, and Billy Idol). First, you cannot do Bowie's career in 1 hour; second, you COULD do Love's career in 5 minutes...turns out she was married to someone famous and did some drugs. But the Billy Idol one was interesting, or I should say could have been interesting.
They obviously did not have clearance to use Generation X or solo music. So they dubbed in some atrocious bar band riffing every time they needed accompaniment. It actually sounded like 14-year-olds in a garage playing Alice in Chains. Very distracting. They showed a fair amount of live clips of Billy, Tony James and Steve Stevens with this god-awful soundtrack.
Here's my question, and one of you may have the answer. I've noticed that we are living in the Age of Deluxe Edition reissues. Double-disc sets, remastered, etc. And so far, no Gen X or Billy. And it can't be that nobody cares, I mean there's some pretty awful stuff being repackaged and sold as Collector's Editions.
Are there legal issues with his catalog preventing us from hearing this stuff remastered or even used in a documentary, or is it just that NOBODY CARES?
It's a shame I think. Gen X had 3 tremendous lp's and Billy had 2 pretty good ones too.



Post Edited (06-26-10 16:02)

I always thought Billy had every right to be a judge on American Idol, since he is a World Idol.

Agreed, kw. That first Generation X is flat-out incredible!

Gen X aside, I think Idol's solo stuff is held in the same regard as the likes of Pat Benatar and Huey Lewis. Eddie Money if you will. I don't think the demand is there at this point for those early titans of MTV.

Courtney Love is always an easy target. She makes a cruddy celebrity, but I always stand by Hole's 'Live Through This' and to a lesser extent the first album. I'd say she accomplished more than marrying someone famous.

Speaking of documentaries without licensing the music they're documenting, I recently saw one specifically about Kate Bush's 'Hounds of Love', in which they inserted insipid sound-alike songs in the background. Ghastly.

Same for the Runaways doc. But for some reason music was allowed for the fictional biopic.

Documentarians: get your music rights straight before you make the film.

Yeah, Billy Idol fits into that category of artists where he means one thing to a small group of people and something else entirely (if anything really) to a much larger group.

I wonder really how he'd see himself, his own career.

The 1st Gen X record is awesome, and if I recall correctly Ira listed it in his top 50 once on this board.

I think for most of the MTV era you would really want rough cuts of those songs. Even though most of them were trebbley and tinny and could be beefed up, I would be interested in hearing a demo or rough cut of Eyes Without A Face or We Belong. Could you imagine a version of Rebel Yell with the production of Guitar Romantic?

Rebel Yell was reissed in 1999 with five extra tracks, all either demos or alternate takes. Billy Idol and the remix collection Vital Idol both were reissued in 2002, with one extra track each.

Slim pickings, I admit, for "special edition" CDs ... but IMO, with Billy, a good singles collection is all a listener really needs (assuming he or she needs any Billy Idol at all). The 1988 UK release Idol Songs: 11 of the Best is an excellent, concise overview; 2001's Greatest Hits updates that collection well, and is easier to find.

My guess is, the biggest obstacle to any significant reissue program of his albums is the shortage of worthwhile extras to be had. I like Billy Idol just fine, and I'm happy to see him surviving and continuing to do well on tour. But at the end of the day, Billy's a singles artist. And singles artists don't leave good songs collecting dust in the vaults.

Curious, though, about the crappy musical support on the documentary. I mean, jeez, why bother doing a documentary about a musician if you can't use any of said artist's music in it?

I saw a Gun Club doc a few years back that had a lot of great interviews with insiders and band members, but not a note of the band's music. Made the whole thing pretty wonky.

I should correct myself: I actually agree that Courtney Love had a decent career and a couple good lp's. I was reacting to the doc I watched on her which spent 95% of the time rehashing her love affair with Kurt and her massive drug use. Very poor doc-making. In all fairness to her, she was a pretty good snarling punky chick before she met Kurt, and then a pretty good pop singer afterwards. Maybe they should have focused on that.

On the Billy Idol thing, I agree his pop songs were mostly throwaway ear candy, but they were huge hits in a time when leather-clad spiky punks didn't get to have huge hits, his image was awesome if you were a youngster bored with ELO & Supertramp, and he was a bonafide '77-'78 punk before the pop-chart transformation. So I was wondering why he hasn't been more updated and reissued.

I'm 40 years old and I love this recent trend of 2-disc reissues with all the outtakes and such. It gives a fresh perspective on things. The finest reissues to date have been the Joy D/New Order catalog and the recent Bauhaus reissues. Both sound wonderful, the packaging is excellent, etc.

And for crying out loud, they have a 2-disc deluxe edition of ABC's Lexicon of Love. I'll accept the Billy bashing, but he was better than freakin ABC!!

After reading Rip It Up And Start Again, I went through a brief period where I accepted Mr Reynold's premise that ABC was an important and brilliant New Wave band. It lasted long enough for my son to get addicted to the song Poison Arrow. I'm better now. Billy any day !!!!

I was disappointed with Rhino's New Order rollout. As has been discussed previously, there were inexcusable fidelity issues with many of the discs, and then, once I tracked down quality copies I already had pretty much all of the bonus material. Perhaps the New Order Retro box set was responsible for my unrealistic expectations.

On the other hand, I'm currently giving the 3-disc 21st Anniversary (?) Deluxe version of The Cure's Disintegration its first run-through. In this case, although I'm a casual fan of the band (at best), this edition is pretty damn impressive. I'd be interested in the take from more ardent admirers (should any exist on this board).

Salvo's deluxe Madness reissues have been outstanding thus far (I have One Step Beyond, Absolutely and7 – plan on picking up The Rise and Fall and Keep Moving, both of which came out in the UK yesterday, as soon as I can find the discs and the $)...tons of alternate mixes, radio session, oddities and an entire concert (on disc 2 of Absolutely)...not to mention the liner notes, which are top notch, too.

I received both box sets of Yep Roc's Bily Bragg reissues for Christmas a few years back, too...so, so nice.

Quite the timely post kwk!

Out of all the crap I listened to pre-TP, this album is one of the rare ones I'll still defend. To my astonishment, I just may cough up for this......it's gold even.

[www.audiofidelity.net]



Post Edited (07-02-10 22:30)