Album: Brewing Up With Billy Bragg
Artist: Billy Bragg
Artist: Billy Bragg
Born: Barking, Essex
Released: November 1984
Genre: Punk Folk
Influenced: The Levellers, Manic Street Preachers, Green Day, Wilco
Among a growing 80s throng of goths and synth pretty boys, Billy Bragg cut a solitary figure. His concerns were a long way from the rarefied air of indie labels like 4AD and were focused on the streets of Britain, where there was a battle brewing. Miners' strikes were an ongoing feature of the Thatcher era but they reached fever pitch in summer 1984 with the Battle of Orgreave in Yorkshire. Bragg says his political awakening was seeing the Clash in the late 70s, while spending time drinking tea with the striking miners in the 80s also helped to crystallise his left-wing perspective. He got his breakthrough by bringing John Peel a mushroom biryani (and his first record, Life's a Riot with Spy Vs Spy) after Peel had announced he was hungry on air. The success of Kirsty MacColl's version of A New England, released in late 1983, also raised Bragg's profile. Like his first LP, Bragg's second record Brewing Up mainly consists of him and his guitar, but the production is enhanced with overdubs (like that wonderful medieval trumpet on The Saturday Boy). The songs on his first two records explore very similar territory, alternating between the politics of human relationships and wider society. Opening track, It Says Here, is an articulate and still relevant attack on the British press ("where politics mix with bingo and tits in a money and numbers game"). I just don't think this type of song would be played on breakfast TV nowadays.
There are people that find Bragg's singing voice and earnestness off-putting, and I can see that, but those traits have never got in the way of my appreciation of Woody Guthrie or early Dylan. The first time I saw Bragg live was at the Leftfield stage at Glastonbury 2005 and he was a brilliant and passionate former, adept at connecting with a crowd. One of the songs from Brewing Up that he played was The Saturday Boy, a staple of his live set and one of his confessional songs. The autobiographical elements and honesty about the pain of unrequited teenage love give it a real emotional punch. The Myth Of Trust and A Lover Sings also explore Bragg's sexual disappointments, while Island Of No Return and Like Soldiers Do are songs about Bragg's experience in the army and his feelings about the Falklands War. Two of my favourite songs on the record are St Swithin's Day and the lo-fi sound of Like A Vauxhall Velox, with its witty Bragg one-liner ("some people say love is blind and I think that's just a bit short-sighted"). St Swithin's Day in particular has that brilliant mix of the personal and the political, a trait you also find in Bruce Springsteen's songs, and Bragg remains one of the best chroniclers of life in Thatcher's Britain.
There are people that find Bragg's singing voice and earnestness off-putting, and I can see that, but those traits have never got in the way of my appreciation of Woody Guthrie or early Dylan. The first time I saw Bragg live was at the Leftfield stage at Glastonbury 2005 and he was a brilliant and passionate former, adept at connecting with a crowd. One of the songs from Brewing Up that he played was The Saturday Boy, a staple of his live set and one of his confessional songs. The autobiographical elements and honesty about the pain of unrequited teenage love give it a real emotional punch. The Myth Of Trust and A Lover Sings also explore Bragg's sexual disappointments, while Island Of No Return and Like Soldiers Do are songs about Bragg's experience in the army and his feelings about the Falklands War. Two of my favourite songs on the record are St Swithin's Day and the lo-fi sound of Like A Vauxhall Velox, with its witty Bragg one-liner ("some people say love is blind and I think that's just a bit short-sighted"). St Swithin's Day in particular has that brilliant mix of the personal and the political, a trait you also find in Bruce Springsteen's songs, and Bragg remains one of the best chroniclers of life in Thatcher's Britain.
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