Fri. Nov. 4

Ian Hunter wrote the verse a long time ago, 1973, when he was 34. It was in Mott the Hoople’s hit "All the Way From Memphis" and Hunter sang, ""Yeah, it's a mighty long way down rock 'n' roll/As your name gets hot, so your heart grows cold/And you gotta stay a young man/You can never be old."

And so, on the phone with him this week, I ask, as Hunter, now 72, continues his 16-date Northeast string of gigs, stopping at the Paradise Friday Nov. 4: Does he do the song in concert? How does it feel being, well, even older?

Hunter laughs. "It gets played," he says. "It’s a good song. It’s a rock ‘n’ roll song. It’s got a piano base, a couple of nice riffs running up and down. It’s fine. It’s still in the set. I really don’t think about the old stuff much. The set is usually a third recent, a third from before and a third why-the-hell-is-he-doing that? ‘Memphis’ is one of those old ones. I’m more concerned with making a new lyrics than thinking about lyrics from ‘All the Way From Memphis.’ I never wanted it out as a single in England. Dick Asher, who ran CBS in London at that time, waited until we toured here and the minute we were gone he put it out on his own and it was top ten so that just goes to show you how much I know. Dick only put it out cause his 14-year-old son liked it."

Studio version with Mott: http://youtu.be/ubBpu3MHmtM

So, Hunter’s not about to reflect on the rock-aging question right now. I’d asked hm something similar in 1988 and then he mused, about age, "It's better. It's less body and more head. It's not at all what I thought it would be. I like it a lot better; I'm more balanced; I'm a lot more confident.

Mon. Oct. 31

 I saw the Tiger Lillies but once, somewhere in the mid-90s, at the late, lamented Kendall Café (a very intimate setting) and remember being quite wowed by these charismatic, oddball British,  gypsy cabaret punks, whose sartorial style (and violent theatrical lyrics) owed just a bit to Malcolm McDowell’s in “A Clockwork Orange.” (No knock on Amanda Palmer or Dresden Dolls, but the Lillies were there first.) In fact, singer-accordionist-uke player Martyn Jacques and his two merry men have been doing this since 1989. This, in the words of England’s Evening Standard is a “a journey into wild emotion that passes right through melodrama and out the other side into bizarre beauty.” Sounds right. They’ve got a Halloween show, Monday Oct. 31 at 10:30 at Club Oberon and we spoke recently with Jacques from New York. Jacques will be joined in Cambridge by longtime fellow Lillies, Adrian Stout and Adrian Huge

JSInk: What themes concern you now?
Jacques: We’ve just been doing a theatre show in Vienna for the last six weeks, “Woyzeck,” an old German play from the 1820s. Tom Waits did a version of it. Robert Wilson did a version. It’s been done by lots of people. We’re not doing the show here – it involves a 12- piece brass section and actors -  but some of the songs will be “Woyzeck” songs and it is about this guy who murders his girlfriend ;cause she has an affair with another man. The theme is murder, jealously and madness. And then the others main source [for the Cambridge concert] comes from an old album around the time you saw us, a little later maybe, “Low Life Lullabyes,” [1998] which as the name would suggest, is about people that are drug addicts or prostitutes or poor people. The third thing I usually do at the end is a few old songs, requests. We’ve recorded something like 30 albums, so it’s different songs from different albums people shout out songs. Sometimes, I can’t remember the lyrics.  My memory is limited so. But sometimes when they should it out, I relearn the song.

 Sun. Oct. 30

"Well," emails the Lights Out Adam Ritchie, we didn’t stop at The Kinks – we still had to make good on our annual Halloween tradition! This year it’s Zombie Michael Jackson." What's he talking about? Well, his "tribute" to the dead gloved one at Church Saturday, part of a local tradition of rock bands shedding their serious (or semi-serious mein) and going balls-out musically (and sometimes sartorially) to pretned they're one of their heroes. Sometimes, the bands they ape are close to their own - say Lights Out and the Kinks last year, or sometimes not. The Lights Out join Brownboot (the Beatles), Sidewalk Driver (Spinal Tap. Yes, a parody of a parody) and Muy Cansado (Prince).
Friday night at Radio (the old Club Choices, across from the Market Basket) you've got Full Body Anchor/Varsity Drag/Permafrost as Bikini Whale playing the B-52s, Neon Angels as the Runaways ("Hello, daddy, hello mom, I'm your ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb!" That always sounds good!), Gondoliders as Motley Crue and Louder My Dear as INXS. Also Friday at Great Scott's the Pill, fake Brit-pop/shoegaze rules when Endless Wave takes on the nearly forgotten but great Ride, Dirty Bombs as Kasabian, Lindsey Star is the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Spirit Kid as the Beatles. (That makes two Beatles, and Beetlejuice is not even playing this weekend.)
Saturday at the Midway Pat Healy upends the concept a little more as Uke2, playing the songs of U2, but under his frequent nom-de-cover Uke Springsteen. There's also a tribute to '80s hair metal that's not "Rock of Ages," but the folks in Full Time Dreamers under the moniker Conbra-Kai.

Fri. Oct. 28

 Duran Duran? Back with us in 2011, playing concerts. Really?
   They are indeed, and quickly sold out Royale in April. They're back at the Wang Citi Theatre Friday Oct. 28.  I talked to bassist John Taylor before their spring visits and he had a lot to share about Duran Duran, past and present.
    The stylish British new wave became an overnight sensation through its early ‘80s videos on MTV. In concert, they’ll mix classics like “Hungry Like the Wolf,” “Girls on Film” and “A View to a Kill” with tunes from the new hit CD, “All You Need Is Now,” produced by hotshot Mark Ronson.
    When we talked, they played a well-received gig at the huge Coachella festival in California was still revved.
    “It was awesome, just one of those amazing things,” he says. “A career highlight. … It’s nice to still be having them.”
      Indeed, no one could have called this, three decades after their formation. There have various lineup changes, down periods, comebacks and breakups, but the core lineup, which reformed in 2001, is back stronger than ever.
    The band consists of Taylor, singer Simon Le Bon keyboardist Nick Rhodes and drummer Roger Taylor (no relation). The other unrelated Taylor, guitarist Andy, left in 2006, replaced by Dom Brown.
JSInk: Last month at a London concert Simon introduced “Ordinary World,” by saying, “We put this song out just when everyone thought we were finished in 1993. Well, 18 years on, all of the people who thought that can kiss my ass.”
Taylor: He did say that. But that’s not typical. We try to exercise humility at all times. We’ve been written off a few times.
And you’ve written yourself off a few times.
Ha! Touché. Success came very early to us. Our first three albums were hugely successful and then we began this humiliating downslide where we lost our audience incrementally.
You left the fold from 1997-2000, but came back when Simon wanted to put the “classic Fab Five” lineup back together. What made you think it would work in the 21st century?
I wasn’t thinking about the 21st century then. I was thinking about a reunion tour, which I thought would be fun. And I was thinking about the idea of an endless stream of session drummers since Roger left. The idea of getting back with those guys and playing the songs from the first three albums the way they’d been written was exciting. I wasn’t really thinking past that point. Nick was the one who said, “Hold on a second, we’re not just doing a reunion tour, we’re going to write and record a new album.” That was a whole other proposition entirely. It took us a long time to get to that.

Thurs. Oct. 27

Once a Strangler, always a Strangler? Not exactly. The Stranglers lead singer-guitarist Hugh Cornwell has carved out a sharp, interesting career after the sut finally set on the English punk band. (There were numerous incarnations, spats, addictions, fights, etc. Also, some of the best music of the late-'70s/early-'80s. They were of course knocked in their native Britain because these guys were a it older than the young punks thumbing their noses at the music world. I'd put their songs "Tank," "Golden Brown" and "No More Heroes" up against anything from the era.) But that's then. Cornwell survives and recently released a solo album "Hooverdam," which you can download free at www.hughcornwell.com. But he's doing what more than a few other acts from the day are doing these days: He's revisiting that early period of his notoriety, and for Cornwell that's album No. 1 and "Rattus Novegicas IV," which was Doors-y seductive, but vicious and, perhaps, misogynist. I asked Cornwell about this in 1977 when they came to America