Billy Bragg At The Great American Music Hall, San Francisco: The Late Show
Its probably no surpise to most of you that I would be a fan of Billy Bragg, the singer-songwriter who has championed “the radical dissenting tradition” found in the music of Woodie Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Victor Jara, Johnny Cash and The Clash among others. However, as much as I identify with Bragg’s leftist politics, its his humanism, his gift for creating lovely melodies, uniquely clever lyrics, his clear respect for women and the fact that he has unabashedly chronicled his search for love that have made him an enduring presence in my life. How can you not love the man who writes songs like New England, Levi Stubbs’s Tears, The Only One, The Short Answer, Greetings to the New Brunette, Milkman of Human Kindness, Moving the Goalposts, Valentine’s Day Is Over and Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards–full of hope and disappointment, of love and despair–and ultimately, of a seemingly neverending supply of optimism and idealism for our flawed species.
Because I’ve never managed to see Bragg live before, there never really was a choice but to travel to San Francisco on Thursday, October 5th to make his late show at the Great American Music Hall, another terrific live music venue in a city full of them. The hall is an old restored burlesque theater that seats about 400 when the tables and chairs are set out. Its full of baroque architectural features in bronze gilt and a deep red that are easy to get lost in. On the whole, its a unique and intimate space. And wasn’t it nice of Billy to add a late show after the regular one sold out in ten minutes or whatever it was? As it turns out, that’s just the kind of guy he is.
Intimate was the mood of the night as Bragg began the show with “Sexuality,” not my favorite song, but it set the tone for some frank and hysterical conversation about things as varied as the effect of goat pheromones on men in a pub, favorite YouTube videos, and Bragg’s new alternate persona called Johnny Clash (Johnny Cash and The Clash–get it?!), which inspired a new song called “Old Clash Fan Fight Song,” a tribute I of course fell in love with, unabashed Clash fan that I am.
Other hightlights included an updated version of “Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards” called “Waiting for a New World Order,” which replaced mentions of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro with Rumsfeld and Cheney. Bragg is testing out a new gospel inspired song called “Sing Their Souls Back Home” which was a lovely, plaintive plea to end the Iraqi War and bring the troops home. And despite the fact that Billy did not sing “Levi Stubbs’ Tears,” my favorite song of his, I left extremely happy thanks to the last encore in which Billy Bragg accompanied the audience on “New England.” It was a lovely way to end the show–a bunch of strangers singing one of our favorite songs together.
You can listen to Bush War Blues, Billy’s updated version of Leadbelly’s “Bourgeouis Blues.” Although the recording quality isn’t the best, its pretty topical (”They spent three trillion dollars on this illegal war/Could’ve paid all our Social Security for a hundred years or more”) and available on his blog as are other songs through the podcasts. Bragg was also interviewed on NPR yesterday. You can listen to it here. In it he discusses his new book, Progressive Patriot: A Search for Belonging, which explores the meaning of patriotism from a progressive point of view.
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[...] The anticipation was massive as you can imagine as everyone waited to see if they’d show up. Fortunately, a guy standing in front of me ran into McGowan on his way backstage and reported that he was walking on his own–good news indeed. Because they play so many instruments, the set up after the opening band took forever, and several times the audience broke out into a chant: “Pogues! Pogues! Pogues!” until finally the lights dimmed, and in one of my favorite moments of the night, The Clash’s “Straight To Hell” began to play while the audience clapped along to the beat and sang the song until it faded out and The Pogues took the stage. Just like Billy Bragg, there is a huge overlap between Clash fans and Pogues fans so everyone knew the words and understood the signifigance of the moment. It was a nice homage to Joe Strummer, long considered an unofficial or at least honorary member of the band. [...]
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Excellent. I saw him at the same venue in 1991 or ‘92, supporting Don’t Try This at Home. The Saturday Boy and Little Time Bomb take me back 15 years in an instant.
Ah, Little Timb Bomb, one of my favorites. Bragg is a jewel of a man.