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Setlist 01. Ready Steady Go ( Generation X song ) 02. ( Do Not ) Stand in the Shadows 03. Kiss Me Deadly ( Generation X song ) 04. White Wedding 05. Rebel Yell 06. Flesh for Fantasy 07. Dancing With Myself (Generation X song) 08. Mony Mony ( Tommy James & the Shondells cover ) BILLY IDOL, DECEMBER 31, 1983 For your approval: eight scorching songs from Billy Idol and his insanely hot punk/glam band, captured live at MTV’s 3rd Annual New Year's Rock N' Roll Ball, December 31, 1983. You’re going to have to look long and hard for a professionally shot live performance from this era of an icon that is this rocking, this raw, this full of nerves, spit and sweat. It was a very different MTV in late 1983. When this aired live – beamed from the Crystal Ballroom of the utterly shabby Hotel Diplomat in Times Square -- MTV was available to only 15 percent of America’s TV viewers, and the network’s New Years’ broadcast was still, seemingly, built out of spit, glue, and alcohol. At the time, MTV’s live events featured slickly choreographed and lip-synced performances. Billy Idol’s performance couldn’t be more different. Performing barely six weeks after the release of Rebel Yell (and less than three years after Billy arrived in America), what you have here is completely euphoric and chaotic rock’n’roll, fronted by a living, breathing, leaping, humping relic of the era of fingerless fishnet gloves, racoon eye shadow, and men wearing black nail polish. Here is Billy Idol at the crack between BC and AD, as it were; lest we forget, Billy Idol is the only veteran of a first-rank, first-generation U.K. punk rock band to become a solo star in the United States, and in this video, he has one leather clad leg astride in each identity: Soho street punk and Sunset Strip superstar (over one-third of the set is devoted to Generation X songs, just to underline that). Billy’s band (Steve Webster on bass; drummer Thommy Price; Judi Dozier on keys, powerful backing vocals, and major league electric blue eye shadow; and of course, Steve Stevens on guitar) play like a horny, over-stimulated, and over-achieving punk rock band, sort of like a cross between the Spiders from Mars and the MC5: loud, loose (but the right kind of loose), and balancing on the knife’s edge between glam’s sparkle, new wave’s gleam, and punk rock’s bedlam. Throughout the whole set, Billy is so excited it is almost as if he’s going to leap out of his own skin, and at any moment it feels like it might go to pieces, but it works (watch how Billy and Steve stumble over the opening of “Kiss Me Deadly” in a way that genuinely makes the song’s story of punk romance and violence more effective). The entire set has the spontaneity, sweat, vulnerability and joy of a late-night club show, and as much as Billy loves playing for the camera, Billy, Steve, and the band seem to be really playing for themselves. (Note that Billy frequently punctuates phrases with a yelp reminiscent of his hero Alan Vega of Suicide; Judi uses her high-end synth to create an low-fi Farfisa churn; and Steve seems to joyously tightrope walk his way through many of his solos, with the glee of someone playing them for the first time). A perfectionist won’t necessarily like this performance; but a rock ’n’ roller will love it. - Tim Sommer
