(artwork: The Nation, Adrian Bellesguard)
It is no exaggeration to say that Billy Bragg got me through high school. I went to one of those creaky old boarding schools in the English southeast – one of those old-money right-wing bastions of Lunch-Snatcher Thatcher-dom (our MP none other than Geoffrey Howe – a regular at summer Speech Days where champagne and smarm flowed freely). Oh, how could one forget those days – where the teachers were Masters, you couldn’t get into the dining hall for breakfast unless you were wearing a tie and blazer (rather difficult for a lazy slob like me), with grace before every meal, where the only newspaper we got was the Telegraph (the Times was, apparently, too lefty) where females were a rumor, etc etc… I got there during particularly nationalistic times (the onset of the Falklands War), and the unstinting support of conservatism and “Conservatism” was – frankly – nauseating. One got to hear it all of course – not just the racist slurs and the wonders of Jesus Christ, monetarism and empires, but Masters worrying out loud whether the school was letting in too many foreigners and children of the nouveaux riche.
The reason I was drawn to Bragg was the rawness of his music – remember, this was the synthetic Eighties. The fact that he could barely play his guitar, and that his voice was a joke, were not disqualifications. In fact, quite the contrary. I appreciated – intellectually, at least – the Sex Pistols, but probably more the idea of the Pistols than the music per se – and I had not inherited their context to appreciate them fully. I came to love the Clash – but it was Bragg who introduced me to the Clash. I think that the fact Bragg was so overtly political – that he, often though he tried – was less metaphorically-inclined, that he stated his political case plainly, allied himself to a political party – the Labour Party of Neil Kinnock (and later – gasp! – Tony Blair), sang about current events – were all the reasons to love him. He was Dylan-esque, at a time when I needed my own Dylan. Much has changed over the last twenty-five years – the unapologetic Marxism, the author of Which Side Are You On and The World Turned Upside Down, giving way to movement progressivism (Great Leap Forward), and at times disillusionment and despair (Dolphins). His voice has gotten stronger – from the halting juvenile rasp of Life’s a Riot to a point now where it has the capacity to move you to tears. And always – paradoxically – it’s his love songs, his personal songs, that remain with you over the years. While Help Save the Youth of America and Ideology seem grating and dated, The Warmest Room can still make you smile (I can’t wait to take our blood tests, oh baby let’s take our blood tests now…). His best moments are those when he can combine those two instincts – personal and political – to come with something original and moving; my favorite example being the song below (Levi Stubbs Tears).
I found his last few efforts interesting at best – his forays into Woody Guthrie-dom – or uninspiring – England Half-English. I have not yet heard the new album.
I’ll download from ITunes when I have a moment to listen to it carefully. I’m hoping eight years of GWB have gotten Bragg’s dander up and his creative juices flowing again. I’ll keep the faith, anyway.
Jim Johnson – who is quickly becoming a must-read blog for me – has a post up about Bragg, including a link to an op-ed piece in the New York Times about music and social networking sites, and a Nation interview.
Bragg’s webpage is here. And he also appeared on the greatest radio station in America (KCRW) – where he performs, among other songs, an acoustic version of The Space Race is Over.
Tags: Billy Bragg
