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Billy Bragg rallies troops at entertaining show
10/05/2006 9:01 PM, Reuters
Craig Rosen
Initially, Billy Bragg's
gig Wednesday at the Music Box appeared as if it was going to
be a drag. Before the Brit punk-folk vet hit the stage,
attendance was so sparse that the balcony was closed.
But a funny thing happened during Bragg's nearly two-hour
set. As he delivered his songs -- and between-song patter that
was stand-up comedy, history lesson and political rally in
equal measures -- the crowd became more engaged and
enthusiastic. By the show's end, Bragg had fans singing along
to his Kirsty MacColl-covered Brit hit "A New England" with
such verve that it felt like the room was filled to capacity.
More than 20 years after Bragg emerged from the U.K. as a
one-man tour de force, the singer-guitarist is now a
gray-haired elder statesman, and is back to his one-man-band
approach after experimenting with the Blokes and Wilco after
the "Mermaid Avenue" albums. He's left the majors for the indie
Yep Roc, also home to fellow Brit vets Paul Weller and Robyn Hitchcock.
Like those two artists, Bragg is too British for mainstream
American consumption. Despite the fact he hasn't issued new
material since 2002, he retains a cult following, stoked by
reissues and two new boxed sets. In his time away from the
studio, he wrote a book, "The Progressive Patriot," in which he
examines his Britishness.
Bragg's patter, like Hitchcock's, is nearly as important as
the music. After opening the show with the politically minded
rants "To Have and to Have Not" and "NPWA (No Power Without
Accountability)," Bragg riffed on his love of tea and the
thought of Starbucks offering "tall skinny espresso enemas."
After the romantic reminiscences of "A Lover Sings," Bragg
spoke about how he discovered his Britishness at the age of 12,
thanks to Simon and Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair." Later in
the set Bragg joked about how, after losing his voice from
yelling at a Morrissey concert, he developed an alter ego,
"Johnny Clash, the man in black and red," to accommodate his
limited vocal range. Under that guise, he played "Old Clash Fan
Fight Song," an amalgam of recycled Strummer/Jones riffs
containing the couplet, "The people are moving on/George Bush
will soon be gone," which garnered boisterous cheers from the
crowd.
As the show wore on, the jokes became fewer and Bragg
became more impassioned. He ripped into Woody Guthrie's "All
You Fascists" after an extended monologue that noted it was the
70th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, in which a
multicultural group of Jews, Irishmen and unionists stopped
fascist Blackshirts from marching through London's East End.
An acoustic set followed, including Leadbelly's "Bourgeois
Blues" recast as "Bush War Blues," with Bragg proving he still
remains inspiring and relevant more than two decades on. The
only pity is that at this point he's preaching to the
converted.
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
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