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Billy Bragg
Brighton, the Dome
Article written by
Alan M - Jun 20, 2009
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Billy Bragg
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With Bill, it’s never just a gig. It’s personal. Before tonight’s performance, me and a mate were nostalgically reminiscing about how we’d both been blessed to have seen one of Bragg’s earliest gigs, in the very un rock ‘n’ roll surroundings of Ilford Town Hall. Supported by Rasta poet Benjamin Zephaniah (who gave a memorable rendition of ‘Dis Policeman Keeps On Kicking Me To Death’), Bragg was magnificent that night. Raw, passionate, a bundle of nervous energy, he bashed the hell out of his guitar that night. To be brutally honest, his playing wasn’t great, and there was little banter between the songs. But it didn’t matter. We’d fallen in love, and it’s a relationship that’s still going strong, more than 25 years on.
It made me wonder if much had changed in a quarter of a century. In some ways everything has changed, but in so many ways, everything remains the same. Benjamin Zephaniah is no longer seen as a scary black man, and is now something of an establishment figure, but his attack on the SPG of the 1980’s, still has a relevance and poignancy today. And my mate has changed. He now has to crowbar his ageing body into an XL ‘T’ shirt he bought from the merchandising stand (although, he seemed chuffed not to have expanded sufficiently to necessitate an XXL). Bragg has changed too. The DM’s, Levi’s, and ‘T’ shirt emblazoned with political slogans, have been substituted for a corduroy and cowboy shirt combo.
What hasn’t changed is that Bragg plays a blinder. He always does - every single time, without fail. (That’s not entirely true. I did see Bragg once in Portsmouth at The Guildhall and he was excruciatingly bad. What I didn’t know at the time, was that he’d just split up from his girlfriend, which partly explains, but doesn’t excuse, the most painfully embarrassing rendition of The Jackson Five’s ‘I’ll Be There’ you could ever imagine. Yes, it really was as bad as it sounds). So, the Portsmouth debacle aside, you always know what you are gonna get with Bill. And in these uncertain times in which we live, Bragg is like my comfort blanket. “When the world falls apart, some things stay in place”. And I’m grateful for that.
Bill looks a little pissed off when he walks on stage. He launches into ‘Ideology’ and it’s immediately apparent why he’s got the ump. There’s no sense of smug, self-satisfaction that his lyrics from twenty years ago, have proved so prophetically spot on for today’s “careerist” politicians – no, he’s just angry. He follows up with ‘To Have And To Have Not’ and it’s obvious this isn’t the right moment for a Jackson Five cover. There are more serious matters to be discussed.
Bill wants to talk about the BNP – who, let’s be clear, are just a spin-doctored National Front - and the recent European elections. In the past, I’ve sometimes felt that Bill was preaching to the converted, and rather than engaging his audience, he was in danger of hectoring them. Not so now. He’s a clever bugger is Bragg these days. He’s articulate, passionate and funny. He talks about cynicism, he lambastes the failures of the Labour party, and he has a few pops at Hazel Blears. But then just as he starts drifting into party political broadcast territory, he tells a hilarious story about the relative ‘coolness’ of Alistair Darling and George Osborne. (Apparently, George is the bigger Bragg fan).
He then plays ‘I Keep Faith’, surprisingly the only track we hear from the new album ‘Mr Love & Justice’, a song full of hope and belief in humanity. It’s then a trip down memory lane and we are treated to ‘The Warmest Room’, ‘Between the Wars’, ‘Greetings To The New Brunette’, ‘Levi Stubbs Tears’ and a lovely acoustic version of ‘Sexuality’. I’ve heard these songs literally hundreds of times, but Bragg’s poetic skill at changing a line, or just one word in song, keeps the songs sounding fresh and shows the man’s genius, perfectly demonstrated by his performance of ‘Waiting for The Great Leap Forwards’ – a song I’ve never heard him sing the same way twice.
The final song is ‘A New England’, and as me and Bill part company for another year, him driving back to Dorset in his van, and me walking along the seafront to Kemptown in Brighton, it seems a fitting place to remember I’m in love with this man.
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