Generation X Review

So the first artist I ever got into was probably Billy Idol. I know I'm not a girl and I know it's not the 1980s, but this guy is great and listening to his music again is cathartic. All the excitement of being in 7th grade and none of the embarrassment. I recently got into Generation X, the punk band he was in before he went solo.

Generation X is an original, 1976 punk rock band. I think they always got flack because they would play more pop stuff than others, but where are those other bands now?

Listen to this band, there's some great gems in these albums.

Generation X - Generation X

There were times when I was listening to this when I felt like I was listening to Green Day, and then I remembered that Green Day did their thing 15 years after these guys. "Ready Steady Go," "Kiss Me Deadly," "Your Generation" and "One Hundred Punks" stand out. I don't want to say the rest of the tracks are bad, but they're really similar to one another. You might not realize what song you're actually listening to.

Valley of the Dolls - Generation X

This is Generation X's best album. You can hear the band exploring like a lot of their self-destructing punk contemporaries never did. "Night of the Cadillacs" is hard rock. "Valley of the Dolls" is post-punk on the verge of new wave, and "The Prime of Kenny Silvers" 1 & 2 are songs I'd expect from The Who.

That said, "Running with the Boss Sound," "King Rocker" and the rest of the bunch are great punk music. "King Rocker" is something like "Ready Steady Go," at least in energy and awesomeness.

I don't really understand why this album isn't more popular than it is. Maybe "London Calling" was all the pop punk 1979 could take. I'd say this matches that album creatively, even if Idol's sneer couldn't match Joe Strummer's charm.

Kiss Me Deadly - GenX

This was released with a new version of the band, so it's got some pointless filler that I skip over every time I listen to this. But listen to "Untouchables," "Heaven's Inside," the live version of David Bowie's "Andy Warhol," and, of course, "Dancing With Myself" and you don't need to wonder why Billy Idol was such a success in the '80s. This is dancy goodness.

"Andy Warhol (live)" demonstrates what set GenX apart from other punk rockers, that they could listen to other genres (like The Clash did), and that they were willing to go back to the pre-punk scene forbidden by punk's declaration of 1976 as "Year Zero." "Andy Warhol" from Bowie's "Hunky Dory" is a great track, but this cover is so much better, with enough raw energy to do the song's guitar riff justice.

These are my favorites:

"One Hundred Punks"

"Ready Steady Go"

"Kiss Me Deadly"

"Your Generation"

"Running with the Boss Sound"

"King Rocker"

"Valley of the Dolls"

"Paradise West"

"English Dream"

"Dancing with Myself"

"Untouchables"

"Heaven's Inside"

"Triumph"

"Andy Warhol (live)"