billy idol

Talking of Generation X, whom I believe we mentioned in passing a little earlier, still kicking ourselves we missed Idol on his recent visit to the UK, our disappointment curbed a tad by stumbling across this earlier today. In the death throes of his former band, unravelling fast due to creative differences and a lack of success, ‘dancing with myself’ was the Generation X hit that never was, Chrysalis had all but given up on them, a lack of press, publicity and radio play at home, an album ‘kiss me deadly’ receiving at best lukewarm reviews, their day had come and gone while they argued and imploded, the musical landscape seemingly shifting in the opposite direction leaving them stranded. Idol would abscond to the US amid a deal of acrimony, a token stateside punk primed for an oncoming MTV age. Still a firm favourite nearly 40 years on, a staple of the Idol set list, ‘dancing with myself’ gets the stripped down treatment from RAC, still possessed of the buzz-sawed riffs, this monochrome electroid with its minimalist fettering is enabled with a coolly coalescing subterranean casing that aside slowing up on the originals prowling desperation serves to bring up its primitive quotient several notches to give it a spared lo-fi club floor pulse. https://soundcloud.com/rac/sets/billy-idol-dancing-with-myself