The View From Scranton

In Every Way (Revisited)

(Note: In this original post, I gave too short shrift to the world, to Billy, and to me. Curfew had beckoned and I had banged a little too rashly. A lot too unkeenly. Zeus-willing this'll make up for it.)

Every day, in every way, I feel I'm coming closer to a world. I'm not sure what world it is, or what that world is, and I know it's not yet my world, but it is a world. I know to that it is a world of my choosing, even if I have no choice. Taut. Tangible. Tagential. A world that sidles astride with each and every do, each and every maybe, each and every communique.

Like the Idol, a harried piece of hackery if ever there was one. Oh, I'm not saying I did a hack job, or that I don't appreciate the opportunity to hack. But Billy Idol? What more could possibly be said about such a bygone phenom? What more could possibly be added? And why? Well, turns out ol' Billy's flipped the script a bit. Still has something to shout about. Sure he's still all leather and fist and snarl, and the Forsey/Stevens re-collaboration ensures he's still real Billyfied, but Billy wouldn't be Billy if he were not him. More tautology I know, but nonetheless true for its tautness.

Take the unworthily-named Devil's Playground, his Spiky One's recent bid to re-emerge. There's a moment or three there when the grown kid kinda quiets, his voice gulps a crack or two, and he reveals himself. What he reveals himself to be I've no clue. But there's a reveal there -- especially on the Caved and Cashing Lady Do or Die ("it takes a dog to cry... misshaped before my time... I wonder what it takes to free someone") and the slung-low Summer Running ("There's always the world you know") -- a reveal of haunt and hurt and harm's waywardness that is -- yes -- candid to its core. It's a small consequence in the grand scheme of all things, still it's nonetheless consequential for its intimacy. Hell, the intimacy might even make it more of a consequence. More consequented. Whatever. The point is I wouldn't, couldn't have experienced such surprising nuance if I hadn't been assigned the hacking.

Color me grateful.

It's not an unusual color for me, this grateful, in fact I've long known it's hue. Now though, in this place that's not my place, at this time hat will be my time, the color's becoming me more and more. It's a hue I can taste. A hue I can touch. A hue I can live with.

And it's a hue that's becoming brighter by the days. Today I hacked my way to what I hope will be the first of many first Electric City cover stories. The piece Be Hear Now is some small testament to this newfound appreciation of the what-all wherever I find myself. There's gold in every hill, sometimes it just takes a little longer harder effort to dig it up.

Last night the dig was a near cinch. Billy Idol came to town -- well, actually, the nearby town of Wilkes Barre -- and he came in all the glory and all the gusto a formerly angry young man can muster after lo these many many years. More. Different. The same. Reliable Idol. He played the hits, he played the latest, and he played it with more heated heart than a certain-aged ex-junkie punk should. Cetainly with more than any certain-aged ex-junkie punks I know could. And though Billy mostly played it rock hero safe, he can be forgiven for the histrionics. The guy was just having too much fun.

No, he did't play Summer Running or Lady Do or Die, but he more than made up for the miss by pausing to breathe Randy Newman's brilliant Louisiana 1927, a strong, sad, terrible and terribly hopeful song who's time has unfortunately come again. And there, on the stage of the old Kirby Theatre, alone with a piano man, Billy Idol broke into hue, broke into heart, and broke into hurt. And something inside me broke too -- the big bad break of gratitude.

posted by John Hood. @ 11:21 PM