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Nick Morgan and crew
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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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BILLY BRAGG
The Barbican
London
April 23rd 2008 |
| It’s
St
George’s Day. You know, England’s
own Patron Saint (well, not really our own, as he’s
also Patron Saint of Aragon, Catalonia, Ethiopia,
Georgia, Greece, Palestine, Portugal and Russia,
and, amongst others, the city of Moscow). As far
as anyone can tell he was Turkish, a warrior who
converted to Christianity and was martyred for refusing
to persecute his co-religionists. He had a tough
time: “stretched out on the rack and ripped
to shreds with flesh hooks, harnessed to machines
that drew him apart, and then beaten, after which
salt was poured into his wounds, which were rubbed
with a haircloth … then pressed into a box
pierced with nails, impaled on sharp stakes, plunged
into boiling water … his head crushed by a
hammer …”, and that was just the start.
He died, legend has it, on 23rd April. He also of
course, killed the dragon, and thus gained the reputation
of a protector which lives on to this day. And at
Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s request, England
is bedecked in red and white flags, spontaneous
street parties abound, Morris Dancers, Costermongers
and Pearly Kings and Queens dance through the streets
arm-in-arm like a nightmare scene from a Lionel
Bart musical, and it’s Roast Beef and Cornish
Pasties for lunch. |
|
They’ve even joined in at Don Corleone’s,
the little Mom and Pop pizza place which we patronise
prior to our visits to the Barbican. The extra
piquant Dragon’s Breath pizza is a revelation.
It’s Shakespeare’s birthday too, the
famous Baird of Stratford upon Avon, but I notice
their special Big Willy Gugliagones aren’t
moving too fast. |
 |
| We’re
out on the town in our red and white plastic
bowler hats to celebrate St George with England’s
own rocking patriot, the Baird of Barking, Billy
Bragg, who’s been much concerned
with Englishness over the past few years, having
read a couple of books about it, and written one
- The Progressive Patriot - of his own. You may
recall that a lot of this is connected with Bill’s
total misunderstanding of the causes, events and
historiography of the English Revolution, and his
willingness to ‘tokenise’ groups such
as the Diggers and Levellers as icons for his particular
brand of soft and sentimental socialism. But he’s
not too concerned with that seventeenth century
shtick tonight – his mission, he tells us,
is to reclaim St George and the idea of Englishness
from the clutches of right-wing extremists such
as the British National Party, and to get the English
to reassess nationalist politics in the light of
the success of our neighbours in Scotland. “It’s
all about having a sense of place” says Billy. |
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|
He
begins the evening with Leon
Rosselson’s ‘World turned upside
down’, and then leads the audience in ‘Jerusalem’
(“You are so powerful” Bragg tells us)
before being joined by the first of his guests.
It’s the very talented, ‘though sadly
giggly and gauche Rachel
Unthank and the Winterset from Northumbria,
who delight the audience with their singing and
electric clog-dancing, and perform a charming and
quite excellent cover of Robert Wyatt’s ‘Sea
song’.“That’s really powerful”
says Billy, as he joins them as special guest. |
| Tom
Clarke follows, a Coventry patriot from The
Enemy who appears to have watched too many Paul
Weller videos, and sings a pretty ill-judged song
(“I only wrote this yesterday”) about
the distressing murder
of Sophie Lancaster. “How powerful is
that?” asks Billy, who joins him as special
guest. And finally from the left of the field Kitty,
Daisy and Lewis, a brother and sisters (with
Mom on double bass and Dad playing acoustic guitar
and having the time of his life) rockabilly, skiffle,
rhythm and blues and swing combo from London’s
Camden Town. They rush though about ten songs, changing
instruments at bewildering speed (and not always
playing them too well) and totally befuddle the
audience when they play a Hawaiian tune. “What’s
Honolulu got to do with England?” shouts a
besandled and bearded Guardian-hugging folk traditionalist,
giving Bragg a platform for what becomes an evening
long diatribe on inclusiveness. We also get a useful
lesson on the Hawaiian flag. “That’s
just so powerful” says special-guest Bragg. |
| Bragg’s
set is a mixture of some nicely played and sung
tunes, some patronising tub-thumping (“Why
does he always fucking preach to the converted?”
asks a frustrated fan at the end, hands still clamped
to his ears), and a long rant about the need for
a British Bill of Rights. There’s a nice Dick
Gaughan song, ‘ ‘Both sides between’,
and some old favourites like ‘Sexuality’,
and inevitably stuff from his 2002, England Half
English album, including the title track, a reworking
of ‘John Barleycorn’, and ‘Take
down the Union Jack’, which borrows heavily
from Rudyard Kipling. He also plays songs like ‘Keep
the faith’ from his well received new album
Mr Love and Justice. There’s the anti-war
‘Farm boy’ and Bragg’s reworking
of ‘The hard times of old England’,
and ‘Oh Freedom’. This is followed by
‘Old Clash fan fight song’ which leads
Billy into a long reminiscence about the start of
the Rock Against Racism movement thirty years ago,
and its influence on his then formulating politics.
It’s another unnecessary and self-focussed
stream of consciousness; it doesn’t seem to
have occurred to Bragg, for example, that anyone
else might have attended that famous march through
London on 30th April 1978 or seen the famous Clash
gig that followed in Hackney’s Victoria Park.
In this, as in many things, Billy is a tad myopic.
He ends the set with ‘There is power in a
union’. “Are there any teachers in tonight?”
he asks. They’re striking the following day,
putting over a million children out on the streets.
That, as Billy might have said, is really powerful. |
Finally he lets the audience sing ‘New England’,
which they do, badly. We’re then asked to
hold up our programmes to make a cross of St George
for a photograph, and finally, and most bizarrely,
encouraged to join all the artists in singing the
American spiritual, ‘Swing low sweet chariot’,
much brutalised of late by braying English rugby
supporters. Confused? Well I was. And I’m
not sure that Billy wasn’t too, as I was no
clearer on what this thing called Englishness was
or is, and I don’t think he was either. So
we left it at that, and after a couple of pints
of Fosters and Kronenbourg down the George and Dragon,
headed for the St George Kebab and Sushi House for
a carry-out chicken tikka with chop suey, which
we washed down with some of Scotland’s famous
midnight wine. Very patriotic, very powerful. -
Nick Morgan (photographs by Kate)
Kate's
gig photo album 
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