Thou shalt not worship Billy Idol...

IF YOU were a first generation punk, the chances are that you knocked about with a bunch of blokes who, much like yourself, used the dress code of this fearful subculture to convert their ordinary looks into something traffic-stoppingly disastrous.

There was always one bloke in your crowd, though, who was blessed from birth with the kind of angular bone structure that goes hand in fringe with designer hair. While you and the rest of your punk mates were all ANGRY, grrrr, he would be grinning breezily with an easy self-assurance. Everyone fancied him, even in his smelly leather jacket and disintegrating straight-leg jeans, so his grin just got broader while you and your mates got even ANGRIER and exponentially less fanciable. And so it goes.

Billy Idol was that bloke in the so-called Bromley Contingent, the loose mob who counted themselves among the earliest fans of The Sex Pistols and who also included Siouxsie Sioux among their number. The former William Broad allegedly changed his name after being inspired by a school report which included the telling phrase "William is idle."

Parenthetically, someone on www.anagramgenius.com has discovered that rearranging the letters of the phrase "the singer Billy Idol (William Michael Albert Broad)" results in "Alright, idle (I am a terribly shallow blond imbecile)", which is nothing short of remarkable.

Back in 1976, however, Billy Idol was sufficiently impressed with the surly demeanour and belligerent noise of The Sex Pistols to hanker after a piece of the same action, which is where Generation X (formerly Chelsea) came in. I was very fond of them at the time - cool name, great graphics on their singles sleeves - but in retrospect they just seem a bit... daft.

I can't decide whether I would have come to this conclusion anyway or whether my opinions have been tainted by Idol's subsequent solo career. Idolize Yourself, EMI's new "best of" CD/DVD, builds an album's worth of pouting, air-punching, cheek-sucking fare out of the bare bones of Idol's handful of 80s hits, and a tough old listen it is.

Or maybe it's just me. I have a real antipathy towards 80s LA hair metal-lite, but I can't help noticing that it's creeping back into favour all over the place, partly in an ironic sense and partly out of nostalgia for what is perceived as a more innocent time.

I can see the nostalgic appeal - that's me all over, if not for the 80s - but I just can't make the leap of faith required to interpret these songs as anything other than wafer-thin confections garlanded with reflexive, unconvincing sneers.

White Wedding, Rebel Yell, that bloodless cover of Mony Mony, Eyes Without A Face, Hot In The City... all are present and incorrect here, tricked out with two new tracks (John Wayne and Future Weapon) which display no significant deviation from the formula, but which at least benefit from leaving behind those ghastly 80s production tropes.

Funnily enough, Dancing With Myself has aged quite well - suggesting that Idol needn't necessarily have descended into the status of a cartoon celebrity punk doofus with high-profile personal problems had he not been seduced by the jasmine-scented air and readily proferred coke spoons of Los Angeles. Just a thought.

It was the fog and love beads of San Francisco, just up the coast, which shaped the early music of The Steve Miller Band, although the makers of the new double DVD (and bonus CD) Live In Chicago have missed a trick somewhat by not including any archive footage in the brief documentary segment.

For me, The Steve Miller Band are all about those early albums - Sailor, Brave New World, Children Of The Future - in which their blues chops were tempered and warped by bendy psychedelic influences. However, it's the hits which have come to define Miller and his cohorts, and they are presented here to a salivatingly partisan crowd in the beautiful outdoor setting of the Ravina Amphitheatre, the 100-year-old home of the Chicago Symphony.

It's a lavish, multi-camera production, expensively mounted and thoughtfully paced, so an essential purchase for anyone who lights up at the thought of a set list which includes The Joker, Abracadabra, Fly Like An Eagle, Rock N' Me, Jet Airliner and Living In The USA, staged in startlingly pretty surroundings. The old hippies in the vox pop segments are good value also: "Steve's the man, man." Well, when you put it that way.