Wow. I still like Billy Idol.

I guess swagger still matters.

I’m a late Baby Boomer, so I went to high school around the start of the 80s. After enduring about half of my life with nothing but British Invasion Rock, I happened upon a radio station that played “New Wave” music, KROQ. I also found MTV, a cable television station that defined music television. And from there, I found Billy Idol. These two events were the respite and the retreat I needed from a constant radio rotation of the Rolling Stones, The Kinks and some other British pop bands that I no longer care to remember.

I don’t have any of Idol’s CDs. You might remember those shiny discs they used to sell with music encoded on them. I still have my collection, but Billy Idol never made it to my collection because, like The Rolling Stones, I heard his music on the radio every single day. He was in heavy rotation every hour on MTV, and probably more so on the radio, and that just wore me out of him.

Back then, radio and MTV were a thing. There was a lot more “shared experience” of media than we have now, but it was never going to be like the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show again. And as the diversity of music grew, so did music sources and outlets. Cable TV was a huge dilution of media given the number of channels that were becoming available every year.

While I was in the mood for nostalgia last night, I watched videos of all of my favorite songs from Billy Idol. I don’t listen to the radio much anymore and I’m so far removed from his…