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Books Related to Billy Bragg Andrew Collins - ISBN: 0753512459
Eminently Suitable for Everyone - Rated
I first became aware of Billy Bragg on hearing `Between the Wars' during the miners strike and his brand of Urban Folk music fitted the times we were living in completely. Originally politicised from the records of the Two Tone label and Weller's bands The Jam and The Style Council the songs Billy Bragg was singing seemed to me, with a then complete lack of knowledge of folk music, to be more immediate and resonated more. I soon needed more of what was screaming out of the dansette from the `Between the Wars EP' and soon complimented this with `Life's a Riot' and `Brewing Up'.
Following Billy through `Taxman' his difficult Smith's influenced third album and the fantastic pop folk records of `Workers Playtime' and `Don't Try this at Home' as well as my own favourite `The Internationale' convinced me he was the greatest songwriter I'd followed and with a limited range that meant my shout along accompaniment wasn't too jarring. Billy Bragg concerts were events with or without a band due to his between song banter that joined the dots between the songs with his own back-story.
After a absence `in the bathroom with the baby' that Billy could return with an album as strong as `Bloke on Bloke' was an achievement in its own right but to follow this with the Woody Guthrie album `Mermaid Avenue' was almost beyond belief.
With no drugs busts and his personnel life laid bare in songs such as `Saturdays Boy' and `The Short Answer' the question remained, what kind of a biography can be made out of this? Well Andrew Collins gave us a long answer, well worth the reading. Bragg winning a poetry completion at school tells its own tale and this as well as the details of Bragg's original punk band `Riff Raff' and the army career make this a well rounded story with Collins tying the personal to the professional to give us the story of the down to earth troubadour we had imagined.
That Bragg is eminently quotable helps this book bubble along as does Collins humour and encyclopaedic knowledge of music which makes the book a delight to read. Read the Bragg, confuse the enemy.
