“I’m going to do a cover,” says Billy Bragg highlighted by a row of amber spotlights. “So do you want one by Glen Campbell or one by The Buzzcocks? And I won’t be doing ‘Wichita Lineman’ because the chords are too hard.”
The Buzzcocks won, of course. It’s hard to imagine a typical Billy Bragg crowd voting any other way and many of the people here are just what you’d expect. A rolled up copy of The Guardian poking from a messenger bag here, a well-worn Clash t-shirt there and of an age to have rocked against racism with The Buzzcocks and the rest the first time round. These are Billy’s hardcore: loyal and lefty. But there’s no red wedge separating old and young, there’s an inclusive feel to the evening.
This is mostly down to Bragg himself, he’s enormously likeable: intelligent; funny and self-deprecating. He talks about playing Guitar Hero with his small son, noting that the computer game features no Billy Bragg songs because the difficulty rating starts at hard “and my songs are all easy.”
Bragg is happy to sell himself short as a musician and as a singer (although his nasal Essex accent has softened a good deal and his voice is strong and clear), perhaps because he prefers the focus to be on his song writing. The spare stage set up emphasises this too, it’s just Billy and his guitar up there, but he has enough presence to pull it off and the songs in question are worthy of the limelight.
Classics such as ‘St Swithan’s Day’ and ‘Sexuality’ are obvious crowd pleasers, but tracks from his new album ‘Mr Love and Justice,’ such as the stirring ‘I Keep Faith’ and the sad and tender ‘If You Ever Leave,’ draw equal enthusiasm from the die-hards.
Bragg is still a passionate polemicist; tonight he urges the audience to stand up to the renewed campaigning of the British National Party, noting that “the world doesn’t change because of a band, or because of a singer-songwriter. Change comes with numbers, it’s up to you, the audience.”
He’s greeted with cheers, but it’s hard not to feel slightly melancholy. There are far from too many protest singers these days, and very few protest songs. In that respect Billy stands almost alone. The people inside Camden’s Roundhouse this evening seem like the remnants; the survivors of the strange death of left-wing England.
But nothing is too serious for too long, Bragg is an entertainer as well as an activist. A live veteran and not averse to teasing, he leaves his best-known song ‘New England’ until last.
“Shall we get this thing finished then?” he asks. He gives a wry look, perhaps acknowledging his recent 50th birthday, and begins:
“I was 21 years when I wrote this song, I’m 22 now but I won’t be for long…”
I’ve seen him a half dozen times, but (I must confess) not in the last decade or so. The first appearance was the most memorable. It was early ‘84, I was 16 years old, and I and a hundred or so of my black-clothed and eyelinered friends were lined up outside the Rainbow Theater in Denver, CO, to see Echo and the Bunnymen. At around 5:30, I’d been sitting outside the venue for two and a half hours, sipping pilfered rum mixed with Coke in Wendy’s cups, hoping to get a shot at a good seat once they opened the doors.
Suddenly, some flattopped dude, wearing a backpack amplifier complete with mic and guitar, came strolling around the corner playing songs from Life’s A Riot With Spy vs. Spy — a record I’d actually picked up on a whim at Wax Trax earlier in the week. I actually told my girlfriend: “check it out, that guy knows Billy Bragg!,” not realizing until I got inside and the show started it was Billy Bragg himself, touring in support of his first US release as Echo’s opening act.
Drunk on rum as only a 16-year old can be, I screamed for “A New England” between every song. Everyone stared at me. Billy stared at me. Clearly, I was the only person in the building who had either heard the record (much less owned it). That, or I was the only one drunk enough to scream my fool lungs off. Finally, he played it, and I fell back in to my seat to wait for Echo (into whose set I lasted two songs before I started vomiting and was escorted out of the building — ah, youth).
It was a great show, but really short. As Billy himself put it, the sum of his recorded material at that point in his career was shorter than the longest song on Dire Strait’s Alchemy (which had been very recently released). 24 years later, I see he’s still going strong. Nice review, Anna. Thanks for stoking the memories.
Thanks for the great review. I’m a big Mr. Bragg fan. Just wish his new album was available in the U.S. Your link to its emusic page in your post got me all excited, but alas, it was not to be.