There was a time when you did not even have to speak to invoke the name of Billy Idol. A clenched fist, snarled lip and a gravelly shout, "C'mon, C'mon!" or "Flesh!" were all that were needed to summarize his beloved pop-punk and new wave career.

Idol (who plays House of Blues Wednesday night) has been working as a solo act for nearly 30 years following the dissolution of his more traditional English punk band, Generation X. His solo output has not exactly been voluminous. Take away his last two quickly forgotten studio albums, Cyberpunk and Devil's Playground, and a hilarious 2006 holiday album in which Idol makes like Bing Crosby for the cover art, and one realizes that his most-lasting work was all made before 1990.

The key word here is lasting.

Idol has managed to dupe us all into forgetting that his greatest singles — "Dancing With Myself," "Rebel Yell," "White Wedding," Every Without A Face" "To Be A Love" and "Cradle of Love" — are all 20 years old because he has one of the few song catalogs that never sounds dated or like a slave to any niche music moment.

His hits have outlasted post-punk, new wave, modern rock, alternative rock, new rock, FM radio, the cassette tape and the CD — yet his songs still keep pouring out of Sirius digital players and Pandora jukeboxes on your web browser as if they were made yesterday.

Idol's trick: He looks great.

At age 54 he still looks like Iggy Pop feels. The difference is that Iggy looks like Crypt Keeper. Aside from a few more lines around that curled upper lip, Idol looked like he stopped aging about the time his singles did.

More importantly, Idol's best work has always been an offshoot of songs by rock's pioneers. For his first EP as a solo artist, he covered Tommy James & The Shondells "Mony Mony," and never deviated from that theme.

Idol absorbed the lessons from classic rock, tweaked the formula with a little Idol swagger for his own originals and found the fountain of youth as his songs became classics themselves.

Admit it. You know all the words to at least two Billy Idol songs by heart.

Not bad for a guy who never had an album chart higher than No. 6 and only one No. 1 single on the U.S. Hot 100: A re-release of "Mony Mony" in 1987.

Billy Idol, 8:30 p.m. Wednesday at House of Blues

Tickets: $39.50-$65