POP MUSIC REVIEWS : Squier Is Still Fans’ Kinda Star

If there’s any truth to the maxim that you can never put your past behind you until you confront it, Billy Squier should have opened his show Monday at the Palace with a rendition of the Buggles’ underground hit “Video Killed the Radio Star.”

Squier was riding a string of top-selling albums in 1984 when, for reasons only his primarily adolescent male audience knows for sure, his dancing in the “Rock Me Tonite” video alienated his core fans and sent his shooting star rocketing down the charts. After that, Squier was never able to recapture the spotlight he had spent more than a decade finding.

Although “Video Killed the Radio Star” was nowhere to be heard at the Palace, Squier, who plays at the Coach House tonight, nonetheless managed to lay to rest any doubts about his talent. His sexy slur of a voice, second only to Robert Plant’s for sheer rock authority, has lost none of its potency, and most of the material from his recent “Creatures of Habit” album held up to such older gems as “My Kinda Lover” and “Everybody Wants You,” full of hooks and snappy choruses and propulsive guitar. Squier, a Boston native, writes and performs “power pop” in the truest sense of the words.

Squier and lanky fellow guitarist Larry Mitchell played off each other well, driving “In the Dark” and “Rock Me Tonite” (during which Squier started to replicate the hip-swinging moves in the video before quickly catching himself) into frenzied finishes.

The sparse crowd was enthusiastic enough for one twice its size. The fans called Squier and his band back to the stage for two extended encores that were largely anticlimactic because they consisted almost exclusively of less-familiar material from his latest album. A straightforward, surprisingly tender version of Bruce Springsteen’s “Badlands” brought some who were on their way out back into the hall.

The audience’s eagerness seemed to bear some relation to its age: Many of those screaming the loudest must still have been in grade school when the infamous video originally aired on MTV. In another few years, the teen generation won’t even be able to remember back that far, and Squier should be able to make his remarkable music without the pall of a silly video hanging over his head. Until then, a blistering version of “Video Killed the Radio Star” might do the trick.

* Billy Squier plays tonight at 8 at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. Tickets: $29.50. Information: (714) 496-8930.