Billy Bragg

I went to see Billy Bragg a couple of weeks ago in Liverpool. He's always good value. This tour was under the banner of Hope Not Hate and was aimed at raising awareness of the threat of the BNP in the local elections. Unfortunately, as the results subsequently showed, the voters in his home town of Barking did not heed his call and elected 11 BNP councillors. The party appeals to people's baser instincts and preys on their fears by portraying immigrants and ethnic minorities as bogeymen stealing jobs and benefits from 'true' English people.They appear to have managed to divert attention away from their inherently racist policies and attitudes.

Support was from Seth Lakeman. I was disapointed not to hear more from him as we only got to the venue in time to hear the last three or four numbers but what I did hear was excellent.

The venue at the Academy is a great one and Billy seemed really fired up on the night. As usual he interpersed songs with a lot of chat andsome funny stories - he really is a natural comic. Some of the set was just Billy and his guitar with Ian MacLagen on keyboards for the rest. He played a good mix of old, new and cover versions (including one of the Faces song 'Debris'). For the second encore he came back on and stormed through the complete Spy vs Spy mini album, finishing with A New England - absolutely brilliant.

There are many Billy Bragg live recordings available at a free (and legal!) website called www.archiv.org, which I can thoroughly recommend.

Five Words you Might Have Used ...

... instead of 'literally' :

1. completely
2. kind of
3. almost
4. not at all
5. figuratively