Bragg space

[realthog]

The new Billy Bragg album, Mr Love & Justice, can be streamed for free at http://music.msn.com/music/ListeningBooth (it's about 4th on the list as you scroll down).

Fine stuff . . .

 

Comments

[louismaistros.livejournal.com]

Typically brilliant, though he actually seems to be loosing his accent on this one.

My Bragg story:

It's Baltimore in 1986 or so and I've warn my copy of Talking With the Taxman About Poetry to a nub (the days of vinyl were holding), when someone tells me Billy Bragg is doing a last minute show at PT Flagg's at the Inner Harbor (PT Flagg's was a failed indoor amusement park that wound up a bizarre concert venue, very surreal). So I ask this cute little blonde I've just met if she wants to go, she says sure, though to my amazement she'd never heard of him.

So we're at the club, and Billy is doing his thing. His shows (at least then) were only about one half music, the rest being very funny and politically radical dialog. The blonde is looking very intense through it all, I figure she's digging it in her way.

Billy closes the show with a surprise; sweet rendition of "Ask" by The Smiths. He does this with his trademark (at the time) voice and electric guitar only, and it's just damn fine (I wish he'd recorded it).

On the ride home the blonde gets all edgy and reveals that she is conservative Republican to the core. She tells me how offensive all that socialist talk was. Being young, I'm regretting that the relationship with the cute blonde is over before it's begun, but it's not like we'd ever be able to have a political discussion without wanting to rip out and devour each other's hearts Aztec-style, so it's all good.

But to this day I look back fondly on the day that I accidentally subjected a "staunch" Republican to the work of a brilliant socialist pop star in the post-apocalyptic animatronic hellscape that was PT Flagg. I wonder if she even remembers it.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

That's very funny!