Sunday, August 08, 2010

Billy F. Idol

Billy Idol came to play at our fair last night.  He tied the record for last year, with Huey Lewis & the News, but the Scorpions were here the night before, and they broke last year's record for attendance.
It was a fun concert.  The kids had "sung for their supper" at the fair food booth that will feed you if you do a song (isn't that great?), but we got curly fries for the concert anyway.

Billy actually did a good, two-hour concert.  He did almost all the songs I knew - only missing two I could recall.  White Wedding was his encore, and he did a great job with it.

His band was spot-on for everything, but ol' Billy started off a few songs with the wrong lyrics here & there.  He also did a chunk that sounded very punk, and I'm thinking it was Generation X stuff (before he went solo), but as I didn't follow him then, I'm not sure.  The paying audience seemed to recognize it, though.

He is still in fantastic shape.  For all the bare-chested stuff, we could see his abs & pecs from waaaay back.  The photo from the newspaper article has a close-up of his face - his age is much more apparent there - lucky for us, we were too far back to see that!

I did have to wonder about some of the people attending the concert.  When someone like Billy Idol or the Scorpions comes to town, you probably shouldn't be bringing in strollers with toddlers.  Our ears were ringing from the bass & there were people sitting a lot closer to the speakers that had very small children.  Not only that, both Billy & his drummer were rather liberal with the use of the F word.  "I'm Billy F***ing Idol!" (hence the F. as the middle initial on all his equipment).

Maybe I'm just a little prudish in my old age, but it just seems wrong to me to have small children attend something like that :/  Ah well.  According to Diana, the skunky smell that wafted over us once night fell was 'skunk pot.'  Low quality marijuana that has a skunky smell.  Lovely.

It was a great concert, but I preferred Huey Lewis last year by far.  Not only did he not swear, he knew all his songs, and he played everything that made it to the radio.  Still, for a free concert, it was a great show last night :)

Newspaper article - click Billy's image to see up close :)

5 comments:

keeka said...

Ok,first of all the abs and pecks could have been "enhanced" by airbrushing so they WOULD stand out heehee. And goodness where did you get the T-shirt?

Tina said...

I got the t-shirt in June 1980, of course. I like to keep stuff like that. Most of it is baby clothes though - like the knitted outfits from our friends in Germany for Trevor & Diana, their baptism clothes.

Ziploc bags keep everything in great condition forever!! :D

keeka said...

wow. And hey, it fits!

Daniel said...

I see Diana is getting an education at U of O... what that education is in? ;)

This has caused me to listen to more Billy Idol recently.

Tina said...

What? Smoking skunk pot?

My favorite song is Cradle of Love, but he didn't do that one :(

After that, it would be "Dancing with Myself."

White Wedding was overplayed after it came out, tho the video was kind of intense in a horror way.

Hope you're enjoying ol' Billy. Maybe you can join us next year for a show at the fair :)