Listen to what the Bragg says

The Twelve CDs Billy Bragg says you've gotta get - By Any Means Necessary - Right Now! (lovingly retyped from the pages of Entertainment Weekly)

1. Laurs Nyro - New York Tendaberry (1969)

2. Various Artists - Motown Chartbusters, Vol.3 - "The first album I really craved owning"

3. The Clash - The Clash

4. Bob Marley and the Wailers - Live! at the Lyceum

5. The Shangri-Las - Golden Hits of …

6. David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust
"When I was at school, at lunchtime all the pretty girls were going round to one of thier houses and listening to Bowie Records. I immediately became a Bowie expert"

7. Paul Robeson - Ballads for Americans
"In difficult times he reminds how great America can be when it puts its mind to it"

8.Chuck Berry - The Great Twenty-Eight

9. Bob Dylan - The Times They Are A-Changin

10. The Jam - Sound Affects

11. The Louvin Brothers

12. Joanna Newsom - The Milk-Eyed Mender

That's a different list from the one he gave out last week:

Billy Bragg's List of Music You Should Hear

'The Milk-Eyed Mender', Joanna Newsom
I just love this album. She sings like no one else and her songs are ripe with gothic imagery. And she plays the harp. How great is that?

'Trouble', Ray LaMontagne
This is probably my favourite album of the past few years. This guy writes the most wonderful songs and then performs them in a manner that is understated, yet powerful. There are subtle flavours at work here: Fred Neil, Tim Hardin, Van Morrison.

'Shake Some Action', the Flamin' Groovies
This band were as revolutionary as their contemporaries the Ramones but now seem to have been forgotten. This is their seminal album in which they updated the sound of the '60s British invasion. The title track is a classic.

'Ronnie Lane's Slim Chance'
Here's a great album by one of England's most undervalued songwriters. This is probably the closest that anyone on this side of the Pond came to emulating that old-timey vibe that the Band had. From 1975.

'Pioneering Women of Bluegrass', Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard
First met Hazel Dickens at a benefit for the mineworkers in West Virginia. I heard she'd recorded the definitive version of "Long Black Veil." She did, and it's here.

'This Land Is Your Land - Songs Of Freedom'
Picked this up in New York City, first time back after 9/11. Reminded me why I love America. Some great performances here–Dylan and Baez singing "With God on Our Side," Buffy Sainte-Marie doing her "Universal Soldier." Best of all, a live cut of the Chambers Brothers singing "People Get Ready."

'Scottish Tradition 6': Gaelic Psalms from Lewis
For those who don't know, Lewis is an island off the west coast of Scotland, although these voices sound as if they come from another planet. I first heard this in a record shop in Dublin and still can't quite believe that I was only a few hundred miles away from where it was recorded. Full of awe and unearthliness.

'Hold on Tight', Ginny Clee
Lovely album from this ex-member of the Dear Janes. Contains the beautiful coming-of-age song "Sam" and the sweet resignation of "C'est La F*cking Vie." We've all been there.

'The Lark Descending', Chris Wood
Recently did a show with Chris and was inspired to go straight out and buy this, his latest album. I just love his voicings. Worth buying for the track "Hard," about bringing up his daughter.
[This album is not available on Amazon.com, but Wood's 'Ghosts' and 'Chris Wood/Roger Wilson/Martin Carthy' are.]

i'm guessin' his ew list is the "mainstream" version …

And I'm just wonderin' what the sudden interest in Bragg's "must have" list is all about?

and whats odd is that the only the new bonus discs from the yeproc re-releases have shown up on emusic and some of them incomplete.

the new boxset includes the re-releases of his first four records with their bonus discs and 2 bonus dvds

further reading turns up that Yeproc liscensed the four BB CDs from Electra and have only been given the rights to digitally distribute the bonus discs on eMusic and that overpriced music download service.

Billy Bragg Gets Boxed
Evolution of punk-folk singer's career evident in slew of rarities

How much has the world changed since leftist icon Billy Bragg began mixing pop and politics nearly twenty-five years ago? Here's one clue: Britain's new conservative leader David Cameron is a Smiths fan whose favorite album is The Queen Is Dead. "It's like Karl Rove coming out and saying he always liked Black Flag," says an incredulous Bragg, who worries he might be next on Cameron's hit parade.

Another way of marking the progress of Bragg's career, however, will arrive February 21st, (pushed back to March 7th due to manufacturing problems) with the release of Volume I, a nine-disc box set that includes four of the British punk-folk singer's early releases, plus a pair of live DVDs. The music documents Bragg's rise from a singer-songwriter to the full-fledged political activist who helped form a coalition of left-leaning pop stars called Red Wedge.

Each of the remastered albums – his 1983 debut Life's a Riot With Spy Vs. Spy, 1984's Brewing Up With Billy Bragg, 1986's Talking With the Taxman About Poetry and a disc that combines the EP's Live and Dubious (1988) and The Internationale (1990) – comes with a bonus disc of outtakes and rarities that shed new light on the forty-eight-year-old singer's development. Life's a Riot, for example, is accompanied by extras that show Bragg's transition from singer in the punk band Riff Raff to solo performer, armed only with his electric guitar, Cockney accent and sharp wit. "There's some strange transitional stuff there where I'm veering towards Elvis Costello, who I've always admired," he says. "I'm trying to find my way, and I guess I discovered it on 'A New England.'"

Brewing Up's bonus disc includes Bragg's first attempt at a dance-style number, "Won't Talk About It." He would recycle the riff for the song "Levi Stubbs' Tears," and years later, turned the tune over to Norman Cook (the future Fatboy Slim), who released his own version of "Won't Talk About It" on the Beats International debut album. "So playing around with that riff did bear fruit," says Bragg. "Two great songs."

Meanwhile, the rootsy, countryish outtakes from Talking With the Taxman – including a cover of Woody Guthrie's "Deportees" – give the first hint of the direction Bragg would take in the late Nineties, when he teamed with the band Wilco to set some of Guthrie's old poems to music on a pair of acclaimed albums. "Before [Taxman], I'd been traveling around America for the first time," explains Bragg, "listening to Gram Parsons and Hank Williams, and finding all these things that you could never find in England."

The box set's rarities were resurrected by Bragg's former guitarist Wiggy. "He was at a bit of a loose end, so I sent him into the archive," says Bragg. "And he came up with a lot of stuff which I'd totally forgot about." Wiggy, Bragg adds, is currently assembling outtakes for a second box set.

Bragg is also at work on a book, England Made Me, Too, about English national identity. And while he's disappointed hardcore leftists by supporting a few pro-war candidates for Parliament, he remains a vocal foe of involvement in Iraq. "I did a lot of marching during the 1980s against Margaret Thatcher," says Bragg. "But I never saw the numbers in the streets that I've seen marching against the war. From what we understand in Britain, the American people are starting to move 'round toward that view as well."

Bragg will hit the road for a string of American dates in support of Volume I next month.

Bragg is on Conan tonight.


Anyone have an extra ticket for the Sunday night Birchmere show?

OMG TEH BRAGG!

The Bragg rally…err….concert….last night ran about 2 hours 20 minutes; which worked out to about an hour of music. A mix of old stuff, new stuff, and Guthrie stuff. The talking was typical Bragg stuff - quite amusing at times. It dawned on me during one of his longer winded rants that George W. Bush is the greatest things to happen to Bragg since the end of the Cold War. It gives him a purpose again. All in all, it was still a very good show – although I would have preferred to hear the show closer (A New England) without the amateur duet partner.

The opener, Jill Sobule, put on one of the more insufferably cutesie performances I have ever seen.

Bragg lost the plot with the Wilco/Guthrie fiasco (imho). A great lyricist nontheless, if not a little mis-guided with his politics.