Name Check

Peter has managed to name-check so many artists in the last few weeks that he has shamed me into a post with as many artists as I can muster under one tenuous roof. I salute his endurance for festival going with the kids. If the price of warm beer wasn't enough I'd have to say the complete lack of decent seating now really puts me off. And my God, the price of a ticket. I am the developing world's correspondent for this blog, so the cost of a Leeds festival ticket would keep me in fairly stylish cloth sacking for a whole year. Or possibly a lacoste bag for the Mrs.

Back to that tenuous roof (rather apt given that the ceiling in the second bedroom is being re-plastered today). A Friday night pint with guest poster Tom C (him of the Funky Chicken Rufus Thomas post) had me reminiscing about favourite and formative gigs of the past. A good reminisce is about all I can do on the topic of live music, as my gig-going days are well behind me and highly unlikely to return.

Of a thousand gigs over the years I'm not sure any will ever compete with my youthful exuberance for the early and mid - eighties Spear of Destiny. My mind plays tricks on me as to how many times I saw them live, although it always seemed to be at Hanley Victoria Hall or Nottingham's Rock City. Certain tracks from the 1985 World Service album can still make the hairs on my neck stand up, given the right mixture of beer consumed and heady nostalgia. Oh to be a teenager again and find something that blows your socks off.

It would probably be around the same time, the early 80's, that I saw The Cult, with Ian Astbury as the high priest of acceptable, alternative, lip-licking Indie-dom. It says something for my honest naivety that I found him to be a mesmeric performer live. He lacked Kirk Brandon's epileptic energy, but oozed a certain class in a daft costume. Spiritwalker, indeed.

Two dismal college going years seemed only tolerable because we went to see The Mission almost every weekend, or at least Pop Will Eat Itself (before they became a t-shirt), or The Mighty Lemon Drops. Every gig seemed to have Balaam and the Angel on the line up, or All About Eve. The Pogues also seemed to be almost permanently on tour, as did New Model Army, who also managed to play Telford Ice Rink at what must have been a low point in their career.




Oddities in my gig-going teens include what appeared to me to be an OAP fronted UK Subs, and a very scary evening where I think I may have seen Conflict. Sigue Sigue Sputnik at Birmingham Powerhouse was a great evening, not that I remember any of it, and Mr Lydon's PIL outfit in about '86 were excellent.

'86 saw me at Glastonbury for my one and only visit, where Billy Bragg lived up to all my expectations and played a stormer. The Cure were largely unengaging, although the pissing rain didn't help. Christy Moore was a giant amongst the pygmies of Level 42 and Simply Red on the main stage, although the Housemartins were hilarious.

Mermaid Avenue Volume 1

Time is usually a healer and in the interim between Medulla and todays commute album, Mermaid Avenue Volume 1 by Billy Bragg and Wilco. I may have realised that my words regarding Bjorks a cappella album may have been harsh. If anything they were too complimentary. Its still a dreadful brain scarring album.
Mermaid Avanue then. Many months ago when I reviewed the second volume of songs I touched upon my feeling that I didn’t think Bragg offered the authenticity that I was hoping for. It still exists, but as I think Billy’s contribution to this album isn’t as prominent as the second volume, it is a surprisingly good effort.
The album came about as Woody Guthrie’s daughter wanted someone to interpret the lyrics that her father had left, but instead of the peggy-o ramblings of some earnest young folkie, arran sweater and beard, she wanted a contemporary take that Billy Bragg and Wilco would afford the songs.
Assisted on this album we have the beautiful Natalie Merchant formally of 10,000 Maniacs perform lead vocals on the hauntingly beautiful Birds and Ships. A song that could be her own and this was perhaps the catalyst in her interest in folk music at the start of the millennium.
Tweedy again produces the authenticity and and again you believe what he has to say, but surprisingly you also get a sense that Billy Bragg may have wandered through the dust bowl and he may have lived the life of a hobo in the mid west.
All in all as I return to work, an enjoyable album to ease me into the blunt end of the week. 8 out of 10.



California Stars by Wilco

The Peel Sessions Album

I was hoping to catch up on the new sounds out there prior to Leeds Festival, Aston Villa distracted me last night though and so I didn’t download anything, in that case, better make it Billy Bragg’s Peel Sessions.
I have probably played this album in its entirety less than 10 times, maybe more but I only recalled 2 or 3 tracks on it that I thought were at the time exclusive to this, A13 Trunk Road to The Sea, Jeanne and Lovers Town.
A13 is a reinterpretation of Route 66, taking us through the highways and byways of Essex.

If you ever have to go to Shoeburyness
Take the A road, the okay road that's the best
Go motorin' on the A13

Lovers Town, I assume is a precursor to Lovers Town Revisited, or maybe that came first. Jeanne is The Smiths cover and anything that has a connection to Johnny Marr, Andrew Ridgely with a better haircut, is a bad thing.
This album is not a bad thing though, so far it has been my favourite Billy Bragg album, songs I had forgotten about in lovers Town, versions that were notably different, rare songs that haven’t appeared on the many live and compilation albums that I have heard whilst listening alphabetically to my CD’s.
All of this made The Peel Sessions Album, enjoyable, different, exciting and not predictable, its bereft of jokes that have got tiresome and as they were Peel sessions, they are songs that may have got their first outing and therefore there is a freshness to the songs that possibly is lost if not when recorded, certainly by the time I have listened to Victim Of Geography for the 50th time.
The only real downside to this is his cover of Jeanne, and that in itself is a superior version to the original and for that it’s a commendable album and one that easily hits 10 out of 10.



Greetings to The New Brunette by Billy Bragg

Don't Try This At Home

I don’t dislike Billy Bragg, I really enjoy his music, its more of a guilt thing and having to subject you the reader to BB overdose, I mean how many albums do I need, and this morning was indeed another, the M6 between junctions 14 and 27 were soundtracked by Billy Bragg and the album, Don’t Try This At Home.
My wife pretty much banned me from listening to Billy Bragg in around 2002, which was OK as it kind of coincided with the when I was going off him, I like to let her believe that she has had a small victory, I also put the toilet seat down when the mood takes me. The thing is though I listen to albums like this and on the whole I realise why I used to like him so much, yeah he is a leftie and lefties tend not to have a sense of humour, oh they believe they have, but they don’t, and I should know, rewind back to 2001 and you will have seen me outside Telford Town Centre trying to get you to buy Socialist Worker, you didn’t buy it by the way, you looked at your feet and hastily made off, I don’t blame you for this, I do it myself now.
None of this of course tells you about this Bragg album or my thoughts regarding it. Well for the uninitiated this album is the home of the singles, Sexuality, Accident Waiting To Happen and You Woke Up My Neighbourhood, the latter featuring Michael Stipe and Peter Buck, who Bragg appeared with earlier in the year under the guise of Bingo Hand Job, a recording of their version of Tom’s Diner appears somewhere else in my record collection, on an REM bootleg and it is without question up there amongst the worst cover versions ever, think Annie Lennox doing Train In Vain or James Blunt doing Where Is My Mind.
I digresse, this album also feature the contribution of Johnny Marr, and if you have read my views on him contributing to other tracks you might know that I do not rate Johnny Marrs production highly at all, him and the ginger one from Queens of the Stone Age are so caught up in their own egos they have to have their stamp any artist they work with, and it is Marrs contribution to this album that taints it.
It is not a bad album however, in the scheme of things Braggs take on Fred Neils’ The Dolphins is as good as any and much better than the version Beth Orton recorded with Terry Callier.
Also on this album we have Braggs ode to his father in Tank Park Salute, a really touching song and amongst the best of his career. We also have Bragg eulogising former Wolves player, Peter Knowles in Gods Footballer, Knowles was a Wolves player that gave it all up for religion.
Outside of these tracks we also have Cindy of a Thousand Eyes and Everywhere, but also Braggs worst, lyrically, song ever in Body Of Water, Christ it stinks.
As a whole though at 15 tracks long its easy to forget the bad, so 7 out of 10.



Tank Park Salute by Billy Bragg

Back To Basics

I thought it may have been Billy Bragg and what do you know, it was, the odds weren’t the most adventurous though. Today though it is the compilation of early material, Back To Basics.
This album is a compilation of the albums Life's A Riot With Spy Vs. Spy and Brewing Up with Billy Bragg and the EP Between The Wars. This should be an easy album to review then, Lifes a riot got 9 and Brewing up with got 8, bingo, 17 out of 20, or 8.5 out of 10.
Which it could be, and I don’t want to be too dismissive here, but as these songs are coming round over and over again I don’t really have much more to say on them, I did on my commute agree that Saturday Boy is still one of the finest songs ever written and lyrically A New England probably can’t be bettered, and that the Leon Rosselson song, Th World Turned Upside Down is done absolutely superbly.
So that’s it really, if this had been The Internationale you would have got something more indepth as it isn’t, Back To Basics, 9 out of 10.



Saturday Boy by Billy Bragg

Victim Of Geography

Do you expect me to sing songs of Love and Politics with a slightly condescending tone with ideals that aren’t based in reality? No I expect you to die Mr Bragg.
Commute CD was Bragg, yes Bragg, Victim of Geography, a compilation of Talking with the Taxman About Poetry and Workers Playtime.
Released in 92 or 93 I think this was the first album that I ever bought of Billy Braggs, this and Back to Basics, both compilations were a fiver, actually it may have been Don’t Try This At Home, the 7” boxset, its all neither here nor there though.
This album has a fine mix of bandless Bragg and banded up Bragg, the bandless Bragg deals with the political stuff and the banded up Bragg deals with the love stuff. Not exclusively but on the whole.
The love element being represented is amongst his very best work, Life With The Lions, Must I Paint You A Picture, She's Got A New Spell, The Price I Pay, and the Politics element is none too shoddy either, There Is A Power In A Union, Rotting On Remand, Tender Comrade, Help Save The Youth Of America. As well as all of that 3 of Billy Braggs most well known songs in Levi Stubbs Tears, Greetings To The New Brunette and Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards, lyrically 3 of the best songs I have ever heard.
But as I have said before familiarity breeds contempt and these songs have become extremely familiar over the past few months as they have appeared on bootlegs, original albums and compilations and the tedium has been turned up to 11.
What I will say about this album is that this and Back To Basics are the very best introduction to his work, you only really need to hear those albums and I think the resissue of Victim Of Geography includes a cover of The Count Bishops Train Train, which is a fantastic song. So on that note. Victim Of Geography, 8 out of 10.



The Only One by Billy Bragg

Big Mouth Strikes Again

Not The Smiths, Billy Bragg. Yes, another Billy Bragg album, I haven’t counted how many Billy Bragg albums I have but I think I have a comparable number of Johnny Cash albums, I would suggest reading something else until late 2009.
Todays offering between Stafford and Coleshill is a 1992 bootleg, Big Mouth Strikes Again. Recorded in Europe, that’s all I get but from the references I am assuming somewhere in the UK.
It’s a very good recording as Bootlegs go, from the sound desk I imagine, its got a really long cover of Groove Is In The Heart. 7 out of 10. Can you tell my heart isn’t in this one.

Later that day....

That was all to rather brief, I must say that this album is my favourite bootleg of Billy’s or indeed anyone. The mix of songs is perfect and at the time when I bought it, I think it was from a stall at Glastonbury Festival, it was at a time when Billy wasn’t touring too much.
On the first track, You Woke Up My Neighbourhood it sounds as if the tape is running a little slow, only a fraction and only for a short while but slow none the less.
The backing band is Robyn Hitchcock and The Egyptians, well, an Egyptian plus various other Bragg compadres. Lorraine Bowen, and possibly Cara Tivey who was Blurs ivory tinkler during their Parklife period. Wiggy also puts in an appearance, all in all it is the best BB bootleg I have, the low score reflects my tiredness at having to revisit so many Bragg albums, when I really don’t want to.

Reaching To the Converted

For commute purposes todays music was the 1999 album by Billy Bragg, yes, Billy Bragg, Reaching To the Converted. Effectively a B-Sides compilation.
Yes, I will be glad when the B’s are over too, I have the knowledge that I still have a lot of Bragg still to go through and I have hardly touched on Bjork, I will definitely be having a week off from the alphabetic journey through my CD’s next week.
So back to this, what is different on this album, well there is a ghastly previously unreleased version of Greetings To The New Brunette that has that Johnny Marr sound all over it, bloody horrible, that’s what happens when you give Marr free reign. There are also Ry Cooder tracks, Annie McGarrigle tracks and Smiths tracks, all excellent, I mean all of the tracks are excellent. Aside of the ones messed about with.
This also contains Billys version (with Marr) of Walk Away Renee, I must admit you will be hard pressed to find a better document of young love, the sister song to Saturday Boy and the last line sums up precisely the fickle nature of teenage love. “She cut her hair and I stopped loving her”. Genius.
So how are Billy locks on this album, I should do a plus minus convoluted process where I take the first track and deduct or add points for every song I like or dislike and see what it spits out…12 by the look of it, but no, the whole album, including the odd falsetto on Ontario, Quebec and Me, the accidental number one in she’s Leaving Home, all of this points to a better than average 7, but for Marr doing that Greetings to the New Brunette, then that’s 2 off for a start, the Red Stars version of Accident Waiting to Happen, that’s another one off, It’s a cynical disc marketed at the people that are likely to own the majority of songs already. Walk Away Renee would get ten though. 4 out of 10



Walk Away Renee by Billy Bragg Featuring Badly Drawn Boy

No Pop, No Style, Strictly Roots

No Pop, No Style, Strictly Roots. Billy Braggs official Bootleg from 1995 was todays music to drive to. A recording of his 1993 set at The Phoenix Festival. I will start to repeat myself soon regarding Billy, I do have a lot of stuff by him and more than one bootleg, I can only apologise, I can only say so many times that Greetings To The New Brunette is excellent. So I will try to avoid talking about the tracks too much on this bootleg.
This album highlights material from around the time of don’t Try This At Home, that album and the singles B-sides, notably Sulk and Quebec, Ontario and Me. Billy also throws out a near perfect version of weddings, Parties Anythings’s Ship In My Harbour, perhaps a highlight of the album. One song that I hadn’t come across before and unsure if it surfaced anywhere else was MBH, cant recall it being on a b-side or on any other album.
Billy’s banter with the crowd is evident and it was one of the things that made me fall in love with him as a performer, admittedly now in 2009 it seems a little corny at times, particularly when he crow bars “gags” into songs, this was an element that I loved when I was younger.
So as a live bootleg its of a good quality, the songs are pretty good, the only let down is the patter, and so it’s a 7 out of 10 for Billy.



Sexuality by Billy Bragg

William Blake

From Bloke to Blake. Kev in the comments to William Bloke suggested how about William Blake. I know little about Blake, I am an uneducated heathen, what little I do know is the hymn Jerusalem, Hubert Parry’s hymn that uses Blakes poem, And Did Those Feet In Ancient Times as its basis, and if you pop into my dining room to the left of the stereo is a 3 CD compilation put together by myself of the 50 greatest songs known to man, and by man, I mean this man, as they are, or at least were, my 50 favourite tracks. On one of those CD’s is Jerusalem, it is in my opinion a work of art and one that I adore.

The version on that disc is Billy Braggs version from his mini album, The Internationale, but as to if his is the definitive version, I don’t know, I have a number of versions and all of them are perfect in their own way.



Blake's Jerusalem by Billy Bragg

The Fall covered it on I am Kurious Oranj, and as expected from Mark E Smith, whilst trying to remain in the same postcode as the original, it is Smith’s take on it so listening you get “and did those feetuuuh, in ancient tams”



Jerusalem by The Fall

Emerson Lake and Palmer cover it on Brain salad Surgery and the politest thing to say about that is thankfully it seems that Youtube doesn't produce the goods.

Even this is rather good, minus all the bloody flag waving.



Jerusalem by BBC Symphony Chorus

Brewing Up With Billy Bragg

Yesterday William Bloke, today Brewing Up With Billy Bragg. I have a lot of Bragg, I mentioned that and I think as far as commuting CD’s go, we are due to hit a patch of them, don’t get me wrong I don’t look ahead to see what is coming, I return the days CD to the shelf sticking out a little and take the next album along, they are always a moderate surprise, in as much as I don’t know which B, just that it is a B.
Brewing up with.. is Billys second album, coming out in 1984 on Go! Discs, pitching half way between folk and punk and on the whole its Billy and his guitar. Rare appearances from Dave Woodhead playing trumpet on Saturday Boy and the late Kenny Craddock adding organ to A Lover Sings, this extra instrumentation only add to the beauty of the two tracks, but anything more would destroy them.
This album is a far more political album than anything that came after it. 1984 topped off a period that had seen Thatcher secure a second term, the beginnings of the miners strike and the Falklands War was only a mere 2 years in the past. 80’s greed was tightening its grip, Duran Duran were typical of the music that was filling the charts, and Billy was atypical. This album comments on all of this and more.
Billys contemporaries were the Redskins, Specials AKA, Paul Weller and The Smiths, Red Wedge had yet to be formed when this album was released so as political voices went in 1984, you would struggle, but Billy combined pop and politics and his usual excuses. On this album it works better than any other by him. He is still young, and bilious, and not living in a Dorset pile. He cares. He might still care but he has the school run to attend to and not kick over chairs.
The music is entirely strong and very few lines will make you furrow your brow, even after all these years, that’s the thing with political music, as time goes on, its likely to leave the listener scratching their head as to what they mean or it becomes trite. Billy’s words do still seem relevant, be it the tabloid press, the complications of love or being a modern soldier.
An enjoyable album today and one that will continue to entertain me, Saturday Boy remains one of my favourite songs. 9 out of 10.



Saturday Boy by Billy Bragg

Lifes a Riot Between the Wars

Lifes a Riot Between the Wars, a compilation of Billy Billy Braggs releases, Lifes a Riot With Spy Vs Spy and the Between The Wars EP. Theses will also pop up on the Back to Basics album at some point.
I used to work at Pontins and a colleague there assumed that I liked Billy Bragg, in 1988 I liked only one Billy Bragg song, his reinterpretation of Walk Away Renee, the colleague assumed though due to my political and musical stance that I was a fan. On telling him I wasn’t he lent me a tape of his music, it did nothing for me. Some years later I saw him at Glastonbury Festival and the rest they say is history.
These 11 tracks were short to the point of abruptness and the shouting was all over by the time I was passing Rugeley cooling towers. The songs themselves were all very familiar to me and on the whole, actually without exception I enjoyed them. You see the criticism I had yesterday, the authenticity could not be levelled at this release, its Billy, it is with the odd exception, his words, his experiences, be it love, or be it politics, you get that he means this and it isn’t from the hand of someone else.
What is from the hand of someone else are the songs Which Side Are You On and The World Turned Upside Down, the latter being my favourite song sung by Billy, and in A New England, my favourite lyric, in I saw two shooting stars last night, I wished on them but they were only satellites, its wrong to wish on space hardware. I don’t think those lines have ever been bettered by anyone, Tony Asher comes close though.
So that’s the album, enjoyable, to say the least, not Billys best, as it’s a compilation, but certainly good. 8 out of 10.



A New England by Billy Bragg

Mermaid Avenue II

The weekend over and so back to my in car listening. Today it is the second volume of Billy Bragg and Wilco putting music to the songs of Woody Guthrie, Mermaid Avenue II.
This was the last CD I ever bought by Billy Bragg, I was where he was concerned a completist and do have his albums over multiple formats, this particular album is the promo version.
As a result of the documentary that accompanied the release of the first Mermaid Avenue album, I had a dislike towards Wilco that really hasn’t changed all that much, but that isn’t the reason for this album being the last Billy Bragg album I bought.
Lets suppose this album is two EP’s, one Billy Bragg and the other Wilco and the other off tracks, lets forget about those for now.
Billy Bragg, OK, the thing with Billy Bragg and THE thing that makes him famous are his lyrics, the barking bard of Barking, he is reliant on his turn of phrase and his ability to lyricise (if that isn’t a word, it is now), so I always found listening to his songs on Mermaid Avenue, both volumes, difficult and found it difficult to believe him, an Essex boy singing about cotton fields, it just wasn’t authentic and it was at times painful listening to it. No doubt Billys heart was in the right place but it didn’t seem for real as we know that Billy didn’t live that life. At least when Billy did World turned upside down, he was giving a commentary, you didn’t think he lived in the 17th century, but he made Leon Rosselsons words his own, but I think a whole generation and a different continent was a step too far for him and this put me off his work so much. Coming back to his work on this album, my opinion really hasn’t changed, musically and lyrically the songs sung by Billy are very very good, but I don’t believe him, I don’t even come close to believing him and that’s a pity. 5 out of 10.
Wilcos songs are a different story altogether, and I wonder if that’s why they are on Mermaid Avanue II, to add that authenticity, as the songs they perform are the more heartfelt, but also stronger and no you aren’t transported back to the dustbowl, but you are taken some where and although Jeff Tweedy isn’t Woody, he is more believable than Billy. Their work on this album made me want to investigate Wilco further and their songs along with Natalie Merchant and Corey Harris’s contributions are by far the best on the album, and therefore 9 out of 10, extremely enjoyable and the average being 7 out of 10 for Mermaid Avenue II



Blood of The Lamb by Billy Bragg & Wilco