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Desert Island Idol

Hot in the City

0 votes

Cradle of Love

1 votes

Mony Mony

0 votes

Eyes Without A Face

1 votes

To Be A Lover

1 votes

Sweet 16

0 votes

Rebel Yell

2 votes

White Wedding

2 votes

Flesh for Fantasy

0 votes

Catch My Fall

0 votes

Dancing w/ Myself

2 votes

Johnny Lunchbucket Aug 10 2020 07:57 AM

For reasons I'll explain later I've been thinking recently about punk sellout turned 80s MTV star Billy Idol and so figured it was time for another Very Important Poll. Rules as always: Choose among the selected songs below. The one you choose accompanies you as you spend eternity on a desert island armed with only a mix tape (and a '82 walkman and batteries). If you choose not to participate, you get the entire box set, PLUS the Taboo idol in the Brady Bunch bound to bring you near-drownings and spider attacks, so don't wuss out. I know some of these tunes were premade with Idol's previous band but don't complicate things by writing in Gen X. Discuss your selection in great detail below. Hot in the City [YOUTUBE]PinBVYKQGeM[/YOUTUBE] Cradle of Love [YOUTUBE]NCZuYS-9qaw[/YOUTUBE] Mony Mony [YOUTUBE]sYYAv-QW38Q[/YOUTUBE] Eyes Without A Face [YOUTUBE]9OFpfTd0EIs[/YOUTUBE] To Be A Lover [YOUTUBE]_L9epO3tJT4[/YOUTUBE] Sweet Sixteen [YOUTUBE]ClxXDfvtoj0[/YOUTUBE] Rebel Yell [YOUTUBE]VdphvuyaV_I[/YOUTUBE] White Wedding [YOUTUBE]AAZQaYKZMTI[/YOUTUBE] Flesh For Fantasy [YOUTUBE]dw1oM7LBbxE[/YOUTUBE] Catch My Fall [YOUTUBE]EiMFvx43vpw[/YOUTUBE] Don't Need A Gun [YOUTUBE]Nd_GRy8SKII[/YOUTUBE] Dancing w/ Myself [YOUTUBE]FG1NrQYXjLU[/YOUTUBE]

MFS62 Aug 10 2020 08:05 AM Re: Desert Island Idol

When I used to drive my daughter to junior and high school events (before she got her drivers license) I told her she could pick the music on the car radio. But I only had three rules: 1) No Billy Idol 2) No Sammy Hagar 3) No groups with the word "death" in their name. But looking back on the grunge and other crap that followed, his crap isn't too bad. And since I hate spiders, I voted. Later

kcmets Aug 10 2020 10:20 AM Re: Desert Island Idol

We wore out 'his' first album with Generation X circa 1978, it's worth checking out just for historical shits and giggles. Went with White Wedding. [YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1awLkO4wIRs[/YOUTUBE]

TransMonk Aug 10 2020 11:58 AM Re: Desert Island Idol

I went with White Wedding. Idol had a sound and style that he rarely strayed from. While it wasn't always my cup of tea, I can respect his commitment to his brand.

Frayed Knot Aug 10 2020 01:03 PM Re: Desert Island Idol

Wait, you mean to tell me that those were all different songs?!?

whippoorwill Aug 10 2020 02:07 PM Re: Desert Island Idol

I liked billy idol but his girlfriend Perry the Little Girl Squirrel gives me the creeps

Edgy MD Aug 10 2020 07:34 PM Re: Desert Island Idol

I went with "To Be a Lover." (1) It was originally co-written by Booker T. Jones as a sixties soul single called "I Forgot to Be Your Lover." (2) Got remade later as a reggae song with the newer title. (3) The video did quite well in our poll of best boxing videos. (4) Features a keyboard lick instead of Steve Stevens' usual metal guitar. (5) Stevens nonetheless gets to do his upstaging act in the video by gamely attempting the always-futile act of trying to do sexy phallic stuff with the keyboard.

Fman99 Aug 11 2020 07:15 AM Re: Desert Island Idol

If I'm picking a video to take to this island then it'd be "Cradle of Love." For reasons I don't feel I need to elaborate upon. I listened to the songs on here I didn't already know and there are some I like, like "Sweet Sixteen," but I'm still going with "Eyes Without a Face" as my choice. I always liked that one.

Johnny Lunchbucket Aug 11 2020 07:39 AM Re: Desert Island Idol

Eyes w/o a Face was the song that inspired this list. So we're camping all last week and have a boombox. Got Mets games by night but otherwise a local CNY radio station that plays a "greatest hits of all-time" format that includes everything from the 60s to 80s from soul to new wave and rock chestnuts (Temptations, Beatles, some Stones, etc). It's a fun station to hear for a day but after 3 days you can already count on the playlist. It struck me as odd that played not 1 but 2 Billy Idol songs: Mony Mony and Eyes Without A Face. Heard each one multiple times and it struck me: These songs both suck, and Billy Idol is one of those guys that NOBODY seems to identify as their favorite artist. This thread in fact started off as "Billy Idol Sucks" but in keeping with my openmindnedness and apparent staying power, I felt he deserved the DI treatment. Fun Billy Idol FACTS: * UK native obviously, but spent part of his childhood in Rockville Center and Happaugue due to his dad's work. * His solo work was mostly collaborations with Steve Stevens (real name: Steve Schneider) a Brooklyn-born, NY-based guitarist. Not sure how they met. Like a lot of successful 80s-era axemen, SS was pretty restrained but you could tell he wanted to rock out. * Idol was about 85% look, 15% music. He adopted the same look as the Police, who were probably copying him, to win "punk" cred but not actually do punk. His snarly countenance was the thing. * The chick singing background in Eyes w/o Face signs in French. I think Idol was schtupping her at the time. * I voted for Rebel Yell which I thought really rocked.

whippoorwill Aug 11 2020 07:45 AM Re: Desert Island Idol

I went through a Billy Idol phase about six months ago. My husband nearly went crazy with me walking around singing Eyes Without a Face for about a week. I even researched the movie The chicks slapping their own butts are kinda hilarious but I think it was supposed to be sexy

Edgy MD Aug 11 2020 09:36 AM Re: Desert Island Idol

The title of "Eyes Without a Fucking Face" comes from a really creepy-ass 1960 French horror film about a plastic surgeon determined to go to Frankenstein-ian lengths and worse to rebuild his daughter's grill after she is disfigured in a wreck. That alone kind of scratches the song off the list for me.

whippoorwill Aug 11 2020 05:01 PM Re: Desert Island Idol

Yep

whippoorwill Aug 11 2020 05:05 PM Re: Desert Island Idol

The more I think about this (I haven't voted) the more he creeps me out. Not just his sleepy trash gf but him too

Edgy MD Aug 11 2020 09:30 PM Re: Desert Island Idol

I once had three assignments due at once in high school. This was senior year, so I had my schedule packed with electives — lots of writing/English courses. But my writing, like my shitting, has long tended to pour out of me all at once or not come at all. It was getting close to midnight, and I was so wigged out that I didn't really look at the descriptions of the assignments until I finally sat down and committed to getting at least one turned on time. I read the descriptions, looking for the easiest, and was shocked and delighted that two of my writing classes were looking for a persuasive essay and my public speaking class was looking for a persuasive speech. I had the opportunity to kill three plant-based, imitation birds with one stone. "Rebel Yell" came on the radio. I grimaced and reached out to change the station, but something made me stop, and I hammered out the title DON'T WORSHIP IDOL on my Brother typewriter, and began pounding away on a murderous takedown of Billy Idol's career in a fevered fury. I felt ethically skeezy turning it in to two different writing teachers, but (inexplicably) felt confident that they wouldn't share with each other. I felt better reading the essay as a speech, because I kind of took on the persona of a conservative scold warning chixx that enjoying Billy Idol records would damage their reputations in the eyes of the community. More sincere was my observation of my fellow Rockville Centerite's complete and shameless inauthenticity, observing that he got his sneer from Elvis, his haircut from Sting, and his leather trousers from Jim Morrison. As I left the podium, my sociopath friend Dave, who hated all music until I introduced him to punk a year earlier and he learned how misanthropic a song could really be, raised his hand and asked, "But Gen X is still cool, right? I can still listen to them?"

whippoorwill Aug 12 2020 07:40 AM Re: Desert Island Idol

Excellent Title!

Edgy MD Aug 16 2020 09:17 PM Re: Desert Island Idol

In the late nineties, Billy Idol moved to LA, trying to jump start what he hoped would be his next act, as a film star. And it really started out great, as he quickly got cast by Oliver Stone for The Doors, to play Jim Morrison's confidante "Cat." Following this, James F. Cameron gave him an even bigger role, casting him as the villainous T-1000 cyborg, as well as the cop that the T-1000 steals his face from. HUGE! But Billy's Billy, and he ran a red light with his motorcycle on the Hollywood strip and got t-boned, smashing his poor legs up. His role in The Doors got cut to one or two small scenes and the Terminator role was recast entirely while he recuperated. You can see him limping around LA in his video for a cover of The Doors' "LA Woman," which he presumably chose in part to capitalize on what he thought would be his borrowed Doors authority that the movie was supposed to give him. He tries to rock a walking stick as a sort of cool, rich-punk, leather-glam fetish, when in fact it's all that's keeping him upright. [YOUTUBE]ef3mFZzGM4M[/YOUTUBE] I don't know if he moved into Laurel Canyon, but I have my suspicions (And would you put it past him to check right into Morrison's old house? I wouldn't.) Anyhow, the reason I think he set up shop there is because around 1989, Joni Mitchell put out a would-be comeback album Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm, and it included guest appearances by folks who set up shop in the Canyon subsequent to her big era, like Don Henley and Tom Petty, but it also included sort of an incongruous drive-by from Idol. (You'll recognize Steve Stevens' guitar in here too.) https://youtu.be/73IvazD2u6c?t=12 I dunno, maybe Idol wasn't a neighbor at all, and he and Stevens were just in the next studio the day she was recording. One last Idol treat is this classick contrived-dickiness appearance on Late Night from 1984, in which he screws up the name of the Long Island village he lived in, and brags that his records copious drug abuse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdzcfP_ItSY

LWFS Aug 16 2020 10:32 PM Re: Desert Island Idol

He was also all gimpy in FMan's favorite, "Cradle." (Hence the Edgy MD wrote: I went with "To Be a Lover." Fun game/thought experiment: guess how many grams of cocaine are coursing through BI's bloodstream during each facial closeup. Talk about sweatsweatsweat! [Snap-on spiky collar spins around, all wacky-like] And loogit how cute baby is with a guitar and a Bruce impression in "Sweet Sixteen!" Hey, little boy, is your daddy home... because I want to ask him if I can pinch that punim until you rebel yell! Speaking of which... that's mine. It's silly as hell, and it rocks. It's like a funny car.