Sizing Up a Genuine Bragg-Art

Britisher Billy Bragg titled his last album Talking With The Taxman About Poetry after a 1926 poen by Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. But a typical Bragg concert, like the sold-out show last week at the Paradise, is more like "Talking With the Rock Star About Foreign Policy."

Mr. Bragg, you see, had just returned from Managua, Nicaragua, and he was eager to communicate all of his impressions; as usual, nearly every song was prefaced with a lesson in leftist and Labourite politics.

But Bragg isn't a "Rock Star" in the usual sense--no drugs, wild groupies or massive entourage for this man. Armed with a couple of guitars and a sizable repertoire of his pithy tunes, he doesn't even use a backing band.

And his show is less preachy or patronizing than it sounds, and even a bit inspiring, because Mr. Bill just seems to be such a decent lad, a regular fellow from a working-class London suburb, doing his best at raising the conciousness of his comrades-to-be. It doesn't hurt that he also mixes in the sarcasm of a practiced stand-up comedian and several stirring songs about sexual politics.

A master of self-deprecation, Bragg calls himself the "big-nosed bastard from Barking." In person last Thursday, he looked handsome and healthy, not in the least worn out by his heavy tour schedule. And, as in concert, he provide to be a compulsive communicater, speaking rapidly in his gruff, not-always-comprehensible cockney accent.

Not unexpectedly, Bragg spoke most effusively about his three shows in Managua and about socialism. But he also deigned to answer questions about his music, his fans and his heroes.

Now nearly 30, Bragg grew up listening to music rather than to politicos--and everything from country and western to soul to pop can still be traced in his own songs. He found the most solace, however, in songs by Smokey Robinson, clever songs that showed love wasn't the perfect world of flowers and fireworks every other songwriter promised it would be. Even now, Bragg holds that "Nine times out of 10, it's like being hit with a sledge hammer...and it's not always a nice kind of hangover."

Bragg was also mightily affected by "the whole punk thing" that started in 1977, and especially by people like Elvis Costello and The Clash. Their inspiration started him off writing and performing.

For a short while, Bragg had a punk band of his own called Riff-Raff. But the most influential individual in his life probably has been Margaret Thatcher, whose divisive social policies and battles with coalminers have given him something to sing out against.

Still, he says that the biggest enemy is not Thatcher but apathy. In an effort to combat indifference in the U.K., Bragg helped form Red Wedge, a loose coalition of various music-makers and comics that has toured Great Britain in support of the Labour Party. Along with groups like the Housemartins, Style Council and the Blow Monkeys, Bragg traveled in the Red Wedge Battle Bus doing benefit shows, press conferences and general rabble-rousing in order to stir up the youth vote. Not quite the entourage of your typical rock star.

Likewise, Bragg's groupies tend to be young earnest types who know Billy will give them a decent and friendly talking-to about socialism, imperialism, and even mundane matters like marriage.

June's General Election was, of course, a major blow to the Red Wedge ideal--and apparently all of the journalists over here have asked Bragg to explain "what went wrong." He maintains that "it's still the effort that matters."

He doesn't leave it at that, though. There are plenty of other battles and causes he's ready and willing to sign on with. Last Friday in New York City, for instance, the performed in a benefit show for medical aid to Nicaragua. And the proceeds of a recent project, an LP entitled Wake Up, will go the miner's defense campaign in England.

But here in the Americas, Bragg is invited to folk festivals--in Vancouver, Toronto, Newport, and "by way of Dictatorship Airlines," in Managua, at the Festival Internacional del Libro Nicaragua '87.

Invited by the Sandinista Minister of Culture, Bragg calls his visit down South "an incredible eye-opener." He was able to travel around a bit, visiting medical centers around the Honduran and Costa Rican borders, and speaking to Sandinistas as well as to ordinary people.

Of the Nicaraguans, he says, "They were very, very warm. They are very open to foreigners coming in and helping them. There were loads and loads of Americans, far more than anything else, and it's great because it allows them to be objective about who their enemy is. They can clearly see it's the American government, the CIA and the Pentagon and not the American people."

But however reassuring Bragg's politics, there's nevertheless something slightly nettlesome about being preached to. One fortunate side of Bragg is that he anticipates all of the complaints--even the ones about how chick it seems to have become for rock stars (Bono of U2, Jackson Browne, and so on) to go down to see what's really going on down there--and he's ready to deal forthrightly with the complaints.

He'll also admit that it's "quite right" for audience members to yell out about Northern Ireland; he readily acknowledges the colonial sins of his own motherland. And though he listens to all the hecklers, he doesn't let negative reactions deter his speechifying; Bragg seems to thrive on response of any and every sort. Ultimately, Bragg has a soapbox and he's going to use it.

Bragg even has one song called "Help Save The Youth of America," but the sheer wit of the lyrics lifts the patronizing air somewhat:

When the lights go out in the rest of the World

What do our cousins say

They're playing in the sun and having fun fun fun

Till Daddy takes the gun away

Bragg has several messages--ranging from "Take responsibility for your nation's foreign policy," to "Every story has (at least) two sides," to his favorite: "and it's something that I've repeated around the world and it's remained the same, and that is: Buy My Records!'"

Yes, Billy Bragg admits to being ideologically impure. With glee. Furthermore, he dismisses those people who pursue him, particularly in Great Britain urging him to stop "messing around with all this love shit."

For those songs, tunes like "Greetings to the New Brunette" and "Levi Stubbs' Tears," are what Bragg knows he does best. Like the catchy Smokey Robinson classics, they show off a real eye for the details of true-love-gone-sour.

"On the other hand," Bragg adds, "there are people who come to gigs who say, "Bill, for fuck's sake, give the politics a rest, and sing us some more love songs.'" Of course, Bragg sees no reason why either set--"the politicos" or "the soppy ones"--should stop coming to his shows and buying his records.

He say that he is caught up with both politics and personal relations but "most intrigued in the area where the two cross over, where personal relationships are molded by political and economic circumstances." In any case, his rule of thumb remains, "If you can't love someone, you can't be a Socialist."

But more than "Buy My Records," the best Bragg slogan is his cheerful smirk, "You'd be surprised." He applies it to the marketability of political pop music as well as to a mischievous fantasy about how easily the Lone Star State could turn into the Red Star State.

But the saying fits him pretty well, too. Politically, personally and musically, Billy Bragg is surprisingly entertaining.