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

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