Billy Bragg
In Box
Reviewed by Marc Savlov, Fri., Aug. 25, 2006
Billy Bragg
Volume 1 (Yep Roc)
Brit politico-troubador Billy Bragg's first Austin appearance, opening for Echo & the Bunnymen at the Austin Opera House, is now 22 years past. In that time, while adressing the Divided Kingdom's niggling question, "What if Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, and Woody Guthrie had joined Joe Strummer in the Clash and found a sense of humor?", the perpetually peripatetic Bragg has outlasted right-winging lyrical nemeses Thatcher, Reagan, and (very nearly) a deuce of Bushes. This exhaustive, 7-CD/2-DVD set compiles the first four Bragg releases (available individually), and adds 37 B-sides, live one-offs, and various odds and sods to the mix and firmly cements Our Working Class Hero's place in the firmament of the Revolution (Ongoing). 1983 debut, Life's a Riot with Spy Vs Spy, is all glorious scabbed knees and elbows, Bragg's almost homely voice and spare, reverb-heavy guitar sounding like a clarion call to heartsick political fervor; "A New England" remains one of the 10 best folk songs ever written, and his take on "Route 66," here rechristened "A13, Trunk Road to the Sea," is a shouty barn-burning rave-up. "Difficult" third album Talking With the Tax Man About Poetry (1986) found all this hooligan-hollering backed for the first time by a band, which netted Bragg the lump-in-the-throat poignancy of "Levi Stubbs' Tears" and the wry, cold-war witticism of "Help Save the Youth of America," as well as the bracing a cappella anthem "Hold the Fort." Only Volume 1's DVDs fail to inflame either heart or head, despite historical performances such as Bragg playing a schoolroom in Sandinistan Nicaragua. Ultimately the box would have benefited from a more comprehensive set of liner notes and visual ephemera. Lack of decent flier art is a small quibble when compared to the mad cache of rarities and alternate versions on hand, and this is just the beginning: Volume 2 is due imminently.
