billy bragg, don't try this at home - classic or dud?

xpost

it's a heartbreaker. i'd actually be a little suspicious of anyone who wasn't moved by it.

"north sea bubble" is awesome, yes. especially the way he's just frantically trying to fit as much as possible in there and the lines don't really scan ... how he gets away with it, i'm not sure. but he does. there's something charmingly open and honest about this album - far more so, imho, than the hectoring earlier albums - and that's why it will always have such a special place in my heart.

it's a heartbreaker. i'd actually be a little suspicious of anyone who wasn't moved by it.

i'll fourth that, haven't thought about it for ages, hasn't done an album as good since

The edition I've got is on two 12" records which I think I'm right in saying play at 45RPM. Why all the gimmicks? Was it ever released as an ordinary 12" 33RPM album, or was it just too long?

Coincidentally, this was actually one of the very last proper vinyl records I bought before finally succumbing to the inexorable advance of those nasty little silver things.

i'll quite often pull out Back To Basics or Talking to the Taxman and Worker's Playtime but always flick past this - will give it another try today mebbe.

However, "Sexuality" and several of the other full-band numbers seem MUCH less successful, as he doesn't devise a way of successfully deploying his voice over mid-paced rock arrangements. I'm not sure he has yet!

Hmm...it's actually not too bad, although the uncharacteristically hard rockin' guitar sound is odd.

It's just kind of sad that it was so early in his career.

I've had relations with girls from many nations
I've made passes at women of all classes
And just because you're gay I won't turn you away
If you stick around I'm sure that we can find some common ground

Wait, he can't be serious, this has to be an insufferable persona he's adopting. There has to be a twist in the tale later, surely, a little hint from the author that this persona, this narrator, is a jerk. I mean, only a jerk would boast that his politics were so egalitarian that he'd "allow applications" from women of any nation, and men too, on principle? How big of you, mate! I'd imagine there's a queue as long as... your nose, too! Prejudice, or even some kind of personal preference, would cut down the waiting time on both sides, but no, you will not stand for preferential treatment, even in love! You truly are a political hero!

Sexuality - Strong and warm and wild and free
Sexuality - Your laws do not apply to me

A bit of an anarchist, then! Down with governments and laws and things, right, and their attempts to submit "wild and free" sexuality to mere politics, eh? Except... isn't that at odds with the above-mentioned egalitarian employment policy? I mean, if you're so "free", you might want to start proclaiming a preference.

We then get headlines about nuclear submarines etc, not quite sure why, maybe it just adds some Piscator-like documentary footage and shows that everything is political. And then some typical English breast-beating self-deprecation, you know, "I'm crap in bed, so come home with me and we'll have a giggle at how bad I am at giving you an orgasm..."

I'm sure that everybody knows how much my body hates me
It lets me down most every time and makes me rash and hasty
I feel a total jerk before your naked body of work
I'm getting weighed down with all this information

What's the point of "body of work"? Who cares, it sounds clever, like an 8 year-old's joke.

Safe sex doesn't mean no sex it just means use your imagination
Stop playing with yourselves in hard currency hotels
I look like Robert De Niro, I drive a Mitsubishi Zero

The slogan about safe sex sounds like straight editorial, but who knows who the admonition to "stop playing with yourselves in... hotels" is to, surely masturbation is a valid part of the safe sex program? The last two lines seem to satirize the vanity of the narrator and put some distance between Bragg and him, but maybe it's just a get-out clause, a smattering of English embarrassment? And does that mean he retracts the responsible AIDS message, the stirring libertarian chorus, the smutty "small car, big cock" joke about the Mitsubishi Zero? Or wait, is that a pro-British car industry, anti-Japanese message right there?

What the fuck is this song saying about sexuality? And why is it considered "good songwriting"? And in terms of production and sound, isn't this record completely reactionary, formless, gormless, an irritating ear worm that wants to sound clever but is actually just a confused piece of rhetoric that doesn't add up either to good politics or good poetry?

Momus is of course the anti-Bragg; how could I not have seen it before? But Nick, I wonder how much you're satirizing yourself in that post -- passing over the goofy humor of "Sexuality," which is the one thing that keeps it great, and calling him on the opening lines, which strike me as the most semi-Momusian thing on the record. ("I've had relations / with girls from many nations / but mostly Japan.")

Skipping over the point of the submarine, too, which is basically a meta humorist line: "Nuclear submarine sinks off the coast of Sweden / headlines give me headaches when I read them." But this is Billy Bragg singing! Surely Billy Bragg is more concerned with nuclear submarine placement than his personal life? But no, this is "Sexuality," in which Bragg briefly becomes Momus! You're right that he's never clear between his goofy free-love embrace and his reflexive satirizing of it, but that just might be what I respond to in the song, and that just might be what "goofy" means; it's the happy and appealing free-love world of a narrator who's not clever or conscious and doesn't really intend to be. You don't seem to believe Bragg would be so humorless as to mean this entirely as a satire (especially when "The Few" is as far as this album can get in that direction! he is no Morrissey!), so why reject the complications? (And "body of work" is not the world's best line, and "your body = art" is not the world's freshest trope, but I'm not sure what there is to not-get about it.)

So it's good songwriting because there's that goofy joy to the whole of it, something that fits Bragg's boomy voice quite well; it's about the feel of the package more so than the textual intent of the lyrics, which is, once again, somewhat anti-Momusian. In terms of production and sound this album is indeed pretty meat-and-potatoes, but then again Bragg fancies himself a FOLK SINGER and therefore it strikes me as kind of bizarre to ask him to be busting open the future. (Beyond which this post is already too long to go into the fact that this album is a lot more sonically varied than most of its equivalents: "Cindy of a Thousand Lives," "Wish You Were Her," etc.)

Lately I keep getting "God's Footballer" stuck in my head.

I hate Bragg for his political and formal conservatism, for his awful sub-Costello lyrics, for his simplistic take on life, for his self-righteousness, for his sentimentality, for his flat Thames Valley vowels and his terminal Englishness, for his hackneyed chord sequences and wretched cheesy strummy rhythms, for his face, for his "inadequacy machismo" (that maddening English trait of breastbeating about your shortcomings), for his tactical alliances, for his stupid campaigns. Anyone remember the "reclaim Englishness" one? The gist of it is that "if the notion of Englishness is not to become the property of the extreme right, then those who were born there have to begin to celebrate a positive image of Englishness".

'During the European Football Championships," said Bragg, "I was in a pub which had a flag of St George (the red cross on the white background) behind the bar. If you had seen that five years ago, you would have assumed there was a right-wing meeting going on. Now you just assume they are supporting the national football team.'"

Wow, what a victory for... our Little England, not their Little England! It's an important difference, don't you see?

Bragg was always an old-school socialist, doomed to extinction once his bête noire (Thatcher) faded from the world.

But I like him for his sentimentality, and don't understand why you are describing him as simplistic over and above any other artist who tries to balance political songs with love songs. Sure, he screws up that balance often, but there's a basic humanitarian warmth about his music that seems the polar opposite of the hackneyed humourless conservative you're describing.

(I keep getting POXY FULE messages, hence the [probable] gap in replies.)

As for the album...wow, it's been a long time since I heard it; I bought it and Robyn Hitchcock's Perspex Island on the same day. I do remember thinking it had way too many songs, dull earnes acoustic ballads, and not enough rockers.

It makes one wonder: did artists purposely minimize Johnny Marr's contributions when he was hired as producer/composer/instrumentalist? I wonder how much better this album and The The's records might have been if he'd had his way.

oKAY, WOAH WOAH WOAH.

With all due respect Momus, to judge Bragg's entire career by the likes of "Sexuality" or even memories of the miner's strike is just so ignorantly WRONG. For one thing, "Sexuality" sucks, okay? And I don't much like the idea that he later worked with Wilco. But never mind.

Suzy Creamcheese eloquently explained my feelings about Back To Basics without me having to bother. Must pull it out and play it soon. "Island Of No Return" was my favourite...

"Fighting in the dancehalls, happens anyway..."

Don't even get me started, for I was 21 years when
I wrote this song but I won't for long...

Homophobic cunt.

Boo hoo...

All of which makes me curious: Nick, are there any artists that you like not out of respect for their proper brilliance but simply because they're appealing as "characters?" A dumb rock band that's charmingly dumb? A clever MC whose politics or worldview you're not very close to sharing? Some goofs who make an interesting world to visit, even if it's not the one you choose to live in?

It's kind of like the "sensitive pimp" thing going on in Hustle and Flow for me.

Bragg gets put in the ring with crooner Morrissey and WHAM!, Bragg wins! Sure, he sounds like a cheery minicab driver singing us his opinions through a particularly trying journey, but who needs nice singing when someone is prepared to "TELL US THE TRUTH!"

Bragg gets put in the ring with political acuity and WHAM!, Bragg wins! Sure, he's an old school socialist of a sentimental kind, prepared at times to align himself with causes like "reclaiming right wing values for the left", but, well, what's so great about being right about politics anyway?

Bragg gets put in the ring with taste and WHAM!, he wins again! You know, it's good for us to question our high standards, our desire to see artists innovating and creating new forms, from time to time. What's so great about our own taste anyway?

Bragg gets put in the ring with me and WHAM!, you win, Bragg, what's so fucking great about me anyway?

Compared to The Pop Group, why, yes he is.

I think charisma, if that's what you're talking about, is absolutely part of my appreciation of artists, perhaps even more important than purely musical values. It's just that I don't find Bragg charismatic at all.

And nabisco OTM throughout.

Something broken, something stained
Something waiting for the worms to claim
And you can never go there again
---------------------------------------------------
The people from your church agree
It's not much of a career
Trying the handles of parked cars
Whoops, there goes another year
Whoops, there goes another pint of beer
---------------------------------------------------
When the carpet’s paid for
You can have a party
And your friends can all come round
But they were not my friends
My friends were in the future
Just as well I had the sense to hide
---------------------------------------------------
Your family and friends don't understand
They treat me so strange
The book you said to read
Well I have read but nothing's changed
---------------------------------------------------
And the way she rubbed herself
Against the edge of my desk
She became a magic mystery to me
And we'd sit together in double
History (two standard length school classes back to back) twice a week
And some days we'd walk the same way home
And it's surprising how quick
A little rain can clear the streets
--------------------------------------------------
She should have been the last
But she was just the latest
If she wanted to be a farmer's wife
I would endure that muddy life
I would dig for victory
-------------------------------------------------

Some day boy you'll reap what you've sown
You'll catch a cold and you'll be on your own
And you will see that what's wrong with me
Is wrong with everyone that
You want to play your little games on
-------------------------------------------------

As brother Barry said
When he married Marion
The wife has three great attributes
Intelligence, a Swiss army knife and charm

I know people whose idea of fun
Is throwing stones in the river in the afternoon sun
Oh let me be as free as them
Don't let her pass this way again
----------------------------------------------

A hot day, the smell of hairspray
And the sound of a shower running softly
It's things like this that remind me how I felt
The first time you came back for coffee
The way you took it amazed me
-----------------------------------------------

To me these are fantastic pop lyrics. Any musician's political leanings must be taken with a grain of salt. I personally always enjoyed his love songs the most, but when he took on the character of the person he was singing about, the political songs improve. Here I mean say, Tender Comrade or Between the Wars. Or when he combines his politics with his awareness of his own smallness and mortality in the face of EITHER political fevor or love, i.e. "she said 'kiss me or would you rather live in a land where the soap won't lather?'" And so forth. Political ideals and romantic love are both the territory of those lacking in cynicism, with a surplus of energy and a certain childlike self importance: these are traits of the Bragg and both his strengths and his flaws.

That reminds me of another one I think Bragg wrote:

The other night upon the stair
I passed a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish I wish he'd go away he'd vote Labour

My name's been Ben Elton, thank you, g'night!

Anyway so yeah, Momus, it's not about "charisma" in the normal sense, which is still an attempt to fit everyone into regularized positive values. My uncle isn't charismatic, but I like him anyway -- that's closer to what Bragg's doing. You probably have an uncle who isn't charismatic, either, and I worry you'd go to dinner at his house and tell him how conventional he is.

Funny thing is, you're basically saying the same things about Bragg that I am, but you're saying "Relax, it's okay to be mediocre!"

Do you have a mediocre uncle, and do you go to dinner at his house and say "Hey, uncle, you're pretty mediocre, but that's okay!"

it's easy to knock billy bragg for being an earnest strummer ... but sometimes a little earnest strumming is precisely what the soul needs.

If you stop visiting him because he's mediocre, you're an asshole.

The family metaphor works fine for me: I have earnest, normal relations who I actively enjoy spending time with, and I have brilliant, fascinating relations who I do not. I'm not sure what I can say to make clear that the qualities you're judging Bragg on seem to be very narrow, and to tidily ignore all the other things that an earnest, unbrilliant musician can be very good at. For me -- and especially with albums like Bragg's -- part of the point of enjoying music is to spend time with a particular sort of "character," one who -- as in books -- can successfully be brilliant, dim, forward-looking, backward-looking, or anything else; the point is that there's something in the character and its presentation that's rich enough to engage me as a reader or listener. Bragg's earnest-and-normal persona is a part of that, yes; it's not all. And musically, geez: one day ILX forward-look standards will banish all strummy nice-songwriters from the universe, and we'll all look back and consider that maybe we should keep just a couple good ones, because somebody needs to do it.

Musically I have nothing against "strummy" songwriters; Martin Carthy for instance, or Richard Thompson, or indeed Leon Rosselson, on (from) whose career Bragg has more or less based (ripped off) his own. But I do think life's too short to waste on studium songwriters.

Also there is the minor but key issue that Bragg is in no way, shape or form "hott." You can imagine the ladies going for Momus, as he has elegance and a certain charisma. But Old Bill? "Just because you're gay, I won't turn you away." Unlikely, I think, to be reciprocated, even at half eleven in the gents at the Bull and Gate Kentish Town when you're pissed and not that fussed.

This always annoyed me – if you put gratuitous science into songs, then at least make it correct. It's a helium nucleus, dammit.

"I am reviewing hsi new cd as we speak . I think he manages to balance sweet love and rabid politics with a grand voice . He name checks as much as momus but is less ambiohous about it . That and hes hot ."

So who are we mere heteros to judge Bragg's queer/gay appeal?

I think the record terrific and moving.

I like much of Bragg's work a lot, but one thing possibly unmentioned here is that it isn't all the same. On the whole I could take everything up to 1991 and leave the rest. But of course I need not.

I think I agree with Nabisco. He will probably agree if I say that I don't think I fit his description of ILM taste, which he talks interestingly about above.

I don't think that Bragg's camnpaigns and values have often been bad. I think that, as Harvey W says, he is usually more catchy than those post-punk people, whom I usually find I don't really like; though he is not always that catchy.

It seems to me that to criticise BB for not being like the sort of things which were on El in the 1980s is a bit like complaining that Tracey Emin is not enough like Takashi Murakami.

My use for BB is that he writes and performs very directly, and on those occasions when he gets it right he can be enormously affecting. Emotional weight is important to me (though it's not the only thing).

Often, my inability to find an emotional hook was what I didn't like about many of those old El records, though I generally admired them. Perhaps I should return to them, now I'm older.

But no - I think I will stick to that view. I was terribly impressed with side 1 (of 4), alone, in October 1991. I heard a dark rush at the start of 'Accident Waiting to Happen', a poignancy in the opening of '...Goalposts', excitement in the openings of 'Sexuality' and 'North Sea Bubble'. I am aware that I am only praising the intros. I think some of the rest of the songs are good too. Yes - the sweet pianos in 'Tank Park Salute', the aimlessness of 'Mother of the Bride'! Even the Morrissey touch in 'Trust'. I am not just inventing my affection for this LP, I think.

(That was a cross-post, apols for worrying you PF, I didn't mean to.)

I think the secret is to tap into the huge reservoir of concealed aggression which lies in the el catalogue. Although it sounds like "pa-pa-pa" and songs about "high tea on my country estate", it's actually a blast against almost everybody in Britain. It's no surprise that Mike Alway's next label was called "If..." — the machine-gun turret spirit of that film is really what el was about. And yes, we would have gunned down the pompous Bragg as happily as we gunned down the pompous headmaster at speech day.

Would you be similarly derisive about (say) the kind of reggae that was coming out of South London at the time? That too took a different approach to the world of the 1980s to yours.

Some of BB's work is pompous, it's true, but some of it is anything but. You might try tapping into the reservoirs of doubt which run through his songs. Or don't bother, I don't mind so much.

Of course what you /they meant to convey as the artist(s) is of very limited interest to me. Your having to direct me to particular feelings in those records might be taken as a failure of those records on their own terms. A failure in me too, perhaps, but I'm used to that.

Not at all, I love, for instance, Dennis Bovell. And Linton Kwesi Johnston! Every time I go to Brockley I start singing "Dem a gotta little fac'try, dwan ina Brockley, and inna dis ere fact'ry all em do is make crackers... for 15 years dema get ma labour, after 15 years, fall outta favour".

The difference between LKJ and Sir Billiam, Bard of Barking is that whereas LKJ sings "England Is A Bitch", Sir Billiam sings "I don’t want to change the world, I’m not looking for a new England, I’m just looking for another girl".

But Bragg did end up looking for a new England. It became his pet theme. Here's a page where right wing philosopher Roger Scruton and Billy Bragg find they're singing from the same hymnal. And here's an anti-racist who derides "that twat Billy Bragg".

It's true it's hard to imagine Bragg singing much of LKJ's catalogue, the protest song about the police killing of Blair Peach, for instance: "dem a kill Blair Peach, the teacher, dem a kill Blair Peach, the dirty bleeders..."

I don't think that saying 'the difference is' and then quoting two songs gets you very far. There are lots of other differences, and / or similarities, presumably.

I know that Bragg used to be a soldier but it seems harsh to speak of wanting to gun him down, especially at a time when people are being gunned down or blown up. Or maybe the time is irrelevant - it is harsh anyway.

I admire - or envy? - Tim H's jesuitical, or Beckettian (a different track, of course: Protestantism) precision with negations; and I note again his Beckettian, but not very jesuitical, sense of the perpetual proximity of his own failings. I think that is quite healthy - or perhaps not healthy, but probably accurate. Not just for TH, but for all of us humans.

I think I am digressing, from Billy Bragg.

I don't spend my time expecting ideological coherence from pop music, I tend to think that's generally a fool's errand, though I welcome political pop because I like thinking about politics, and pop. I seem to recall you are a David Bowie enthusiast, so clearly you don't need to agree fully with an artist to enjoy their work.

I'm afraid I can't see what those links add to your argument, or mine, or ours. The Scruton one is some tiny quote where BB says that Britain could do with a constitution, an opinion to which I have no objection. The other is a fellow whose argument appears to be that politics has no place in rock'n'roll, a view I'm surprised you're keen on.

While I don't agree with all he says by any means, I don't hate BB's politics as you seem to.

I find it hard to imagine you singing LKJ lines, too, for what it's worth. Maybe you should give it a go.

The 'When the carpet's paid for, you can have a party' line quoted above from Lover's Town, for example, is great.
I also learnt to play the guitar with the Back to Basics songbook, and free flexidisc.

I got the 7" box of DTTAH and so never really got to know it. Talking to the Taxman is the best one, really.

re-bought his for the 3rd time. Cindy, Tank Park, Goalposts, North Sea...just as amazing as last time I listened 3 years ago.

I can't find anything about the song "everywhere" on the net. Who are Barabra Griffin and Leah Cooney? What year was it written, etc etc?

It looks like maybe the chorus references this old patriotic song?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over_There

I think that the song refered to in the Q&A about two friends in WWII is called everywhere, written by Greg Trooper and Sid Griffin and an excellent version is available on Billy Bragg's don't try this at home album.

http://archive.richardthompson-music.com/catch_of_the_day.asp?id=990

This is probably the last Bragg album I'll go anywhere near in his discography.

true. bought this on tape along with "nevermind" and "achtung baby" around xmas '91. i listened to again recently, it still holds up! sounds even better than it did back then tbh as i was slightly disappointed back then that it wasn't the strident billy of old.

ah thanks, curmudgeon! greg trooper, eh? for some reason i thought it might have been an older tune, like 60s-ish.

"You Woke Up My Neighborhood" and "North Sea Bubble" working for me today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGNFR7pgxDY

I will cross this body of water if you promise me you won’t try this at home

We need a singer/ songwriter union

i fucking love this guy

At el Records we hated Thatcher, but we hated puritan populist prig politicos like Bragg even more.

really?

another reason to cancel the old git