John Lydon's Public Image Ltd. walks the line between post-punk nostalgia and new music

"Still there?" John Lydon snarled,between songs,from thestage of a Toronto club.

The former Sex Pistol is in the midst of a North American tour promotinghis bandPublic Image Ltd'snew albumWhat the World Needs Now.

The question seemed partly a coy plea for more noisy adoration from the crowd, which was mostly old enough to have followed his career since Lydon, then known as Johnny Rotten, famously swore on live British TV back in 1976 and thrustpunk into mainstream consciousness with the subtlety of a slam dance.

But he also seemed to be testing his long-in-the-tooth fans' willingness to listen to such brand new songs as Double Troubleand Bettie Pagealongside old favourites like Religion, Rise, This Is Not a Love Songand the self-titled anthem Public Image. After all, it'sbeen37yearssincehe firstformedPiL.

Despite a plumper physique andhaving to peerthroughreading glassesat a binder of lyrics to help him remember the words, 59-year-old Lydon was in good form.

He wasenergetic, spitting vitriol as he manically waved his arms aroundand alternated glaring and grinningat the audience.

Lydon's well-paced mix of old and new tunes underscored the fine line some bands must walk. When adored for earlier material and hitting the road with a new album to promote, a group couldpotentiallystrainthe patience of its aging fanbase.

More post-punk bands have chosen to reunite of late, realizing thattheir once youthful followers are now old enough to have paid off their mortgages and canafford concert tickets and $40 t-shirts.

For their part, manyfans seem willing to recapture the pleasure they felt when they first heard these bands andare apparently overcoming any trepidation about wrecking their youthful memories. That's always a fear whenseeing a bunch of aging musicians jumping around onstage andrisking throwing out a hip.

Strikingthe rightbalance

Some bands turn their backs on the songs that made them famous, ignoring the reality that the vast majority of ticket holders are there because while they willtolerate a smattering of new songsthey want to hear the old material.

British singer-songwriter Paul Weller, recently on tour for his new album Saturns Pattern, stuck mostly to new tracks when he played in Toronto in June. He paid little attention to his earlier solo albumsand made only one nod to the songs that made him famous when he led The Jam in the late 70s andearly 80s.

Weller's sole acknowledgement to that era washis final encore: a rousing version of Town Called Malicethat brought the crowd to a frenzy. It felt like he'd finally succumbed to the pressure and tossed the song in at the end as a reward for sticking with him all those years.

A friend flew to another city a few months ago thrilled to catch a rare concert by Graham Parker & the Rumour. He was dismayedwhen the artist largely snubbed his early cataloguein favour of songs from his new album,Mystery Glue.

In contrast, when I recently caught the Psychedelic Furs, reunited around brothers Richard and Tim Butler, the group was content to play old hitslike Pretty in Pinkand Love My Way.Since they haven't released an album of new material since 1991, there wasn't anythingto get in the way of fans happily wallowing in nostalgia.

At Sunday's concert in Toronto,Lydonto his creditwalked theline betweenback catalogueand new material.It's thesavvy he's shownsince his Sex Pistols days, as the master showman who wailed the protest anthemGod Save the Queenwhile the band sailedthe Thames on a barge during the Queen's SilverJubilee year.

Near the end of his Toronto show, after inviting the audience to join asing-along, he quipped: "Thank you my friends. We're all in this together."

And when it comes to pairing old and new in just the right proportions, that rang true.

Public Image Ltdappears on The Late Show with Stephen Colberton Tuesday night.