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it's a nice day for a white ... christmas?
12/07/2006 = 05:25 AM

Dear Billy Idol:

Your holiday CD is very sweet and sentimental, and it's even technically proficient on a musical level.

However, I don't want any. I can get sweet and sentimental anywhere. I go to Billy Idol when I want angry punkass, and this is not that.

You are opening yourself to a new, heretofore untapped market, but I have always counted upon you to bring the rebel yell on my behalf, since I cannot do so and retain my own reputation as a productive member of society. You are no longer reliable. You're in danger of becoming ...

... mainstream.

Billy Idol, how dare you become mature when no one was looking.

Sincerely,

Golf "She Cried, 'Less, Less, Less!'" Widow

To soothe my troubled, grown-up-Billy-Idol-contaminated soul, I am currently listening to Tommy by the Wh♂, which I have in about five million incarnations (and in five types of media: vinyl, eight-track, cassette, CD, and MP3, not to mention a bunch of video performances on tape and DVD), performed by or with about five million orchestras.

Tommy as a rock opera is the Golf Widow equivalent of Andy Martello and Louie Louie. I'm just not as obsessive about cataloguing all of mine.

Tommy was the first CD I owned to play on my first ever CD player (attained shortly after CD players were made available to the public) and it was the first of my CDs that I converted to MP3 to be listened to even when I didn't have the CD with me, and it was the first album of MP3s I moved from my workstation to my adorably cute pink iPod, because I can't quit the Wh♂, even though I'm still harboring a grudge against Peter Townshend for the whole computer fiasco in 2003.

There's also the fact that every time I now listen to the Wh♂'s song Christmas, my first thought is "CSI: North Pole."

But still. Tommy's a great go-to. From overture to end, just musical darkness and flashes of light, smashed mirrors and broken dreams. Tragic imagery and touches of twisted humor (humour, I guess — they're British) because you can't have Keith Moon without something twisted and humourous happening. Don't even bother trying.

The Wh♂, in other words, before those of them that died before they got old, got old.

The Wh♂ burnt out and sold out long ago, as Claritin commercials will attest, but I still held out a spark of hope for Billy Idol, because although he did a cameo in an Adam Sandler film, he was almost playing a parody of himself and it was enjoyably sly and still pretty punkass.

Billy Idol's holiday CD is desperately sincere. I am a bit heartbroken. I long for a more naïve time, sort of like still believing in Santa Claus.

(Yes, I believed in Santa, for just as long as my friends did. I merely believed, not that Santa was a Melgibsonite, simply that he didn't come to our house because we had menorahs instead of trees and also — tiny-kid-logic at work— we didn't have a chimney.)

The version of Tommy I'm currently listening to is a digital remastering of the original studio tracks, produced by Pete. Stereo headphones are not mandatory, but they're a great touch.

"How can he be saaaaaaaaaaavvvvved?"

Must I be asking the above about Billy Idol?

Tags: Billy Idol, The Who

drinking: coffee
listening to: The Wh♂, Tommy
do you read dog eat doug: read it and get your newspaper to add it, 'cos, hello, cute