If Billy Idol is still Dancing with Himself, What’s your Excuse?

Gen-Xers: These 80s bands are still touring, and reminding us it’s the life in your years and not the years in your life that matter

Coming out of lock downs, curfews and a corresponding sense of pandemic ennui — plus being googly-eyed and thicker-at-the-waist from hours on video calls — I vowed 2023 and beyond were going to be the era of getting out and getting down, as in dancing to the music of my teens and 20s in as many live performances as possible.

Luckily, a whole bunch of 80s acts were also ready to hit the road after the previous months/years of confinement, and there was no shortage of gigs to see in Montreal (where I live), and beyond (hello Niagara Falls, Huntington Beach, Paris and NYC).

For context, in 1980 I turned 15, and aside from the prog-rock albums passed down from my brothers, and the $4.99 K-Tel Out of Sight compilation I bought at my local Woolco in 1975, my lifelong musical tastes were formed listening to the bright yellow debut album by the B-52s (released in 1979 and a Christmas gift to me that year), Replicas by Gary Numan and the Tubeway Army, True Colour by New Zealand’s…