Friday 12 June 2009 @ William Aston Hall, Glyndŵr University, Wrexham.Wales on a special 8-date solo tour to remember the Miners’ Strike and its legacy on the communities across Wales. Ex-punk, ex-soldier, and ex-member of the Labour Party, Billy Bragg rose from working class origins in the 1980s to become one of the UK’s foremost pop and protest singers and left-wing icons.

The thing about Billy Bragg is that he has always ‘got on me tits’ and I don’t mean that with any disrespect (lol) then again I don’t care what he or you think of that statement either… He is just one of those artists I could never get my head around, he just seemed to drone on about ‘stuff’ political shite really while I was busy living, loving, drinking and sleeping (rock ‘n roll)

But last year two things changed my opinion of him, Firstly I received a copy of an album by him called ‘Mr Love & Justice’ which was a double set, one cd was acoustic and the other cd was the same songs but done with a band, this to me was a revelation, as both were strong enough to stand alone, both were full of great songs, both were singing about real life, about love, death, fear, family, emotion, war, people, places, it spoke to me like no record he had ever done, it also spoke to anyone of ay age, any colour, any creed, any background, this was a first, this was the ‘Real’ Billy Bragg coming of age, Woody would have been proud…

Perhaps it was because he had been singing Woody Guthrie songs for a while, his album with the Wilco guys was a revelation too, Perhaps he had realised that singing songs that were 7o years old, Songs that were speaking of dark times, depression, problems, all that could have been written ten minutes ago because they were just as relevant made Billy really understand that the more things change, the more they stay the same, clichés are clichés for that simple reason!

The second thing that changed my opinion was again getting a retrospective three cd ‘best of’ also last ear, now I admit some of it did remind me why I was not a fan, but the collection showed how Billy had changed, grown over the years, but it also showed that there was no disillusions, he had not lost the fight, he was still willing to be the ‘leftie’ on the outside, throwing those stones out of the red corner, but now they travelled beyond the blue! With this ‘best of’ set was a third cd of covers and remixes and it was here that Billy really did come into his own, it was a journey through his heart and mind… When Will I See You Again…

So, with this all in mind, when I read Billy was coming to my home town, I thought I’d better go along and see what this was really all about, when I get to the hall, tonight’s ‘support’ is a welsh poet called Patrick Jones, now this is an interesting twist, Patrick is renowned for his knife edge cutting poetry, he is a bit of a dark horse, he seems to come and go like a thief in the night, his words are like weapons, sharpen the knife! There is little doubt about the quality of his work, in ink, on a page, in one’s own mind it comes to life, Patrick however is perhaps not the best person to be reading his own words, when he reads them it’s fine, but it’s the explanations that leave hi exposed, I never of course saw Dylan Thomas reading his own words, perhaps it would have been the same, yet when Richard Burton read Dylan’s words, they changed my life forever, Patrick needs a Richard, he needs a voice to carry his words beyond the pale, but one thing I must saw and applaud is the fact that he his out here doing this tonight, a brave and exciting move… Maybe with the advent of digital  multimedia Patrick can embrace the modern world and become a modern hero!

Billy Bragg just seems to amble onto the stage and he is away, he just simply is ‘there’ and to be honest the crowd don’t mind at all, they love him for it, almost as if he just got up out of one of the seats, jumped on stage and started to play, the songs live really do come to life, the venom, the love, the sheer life delivery make Billy’s songs stand out, even the songs that on record I detest take a whole new meaning when you can see expression and emotion.

The stories and banter in-between the songs are just as important, Billy is like your mate down the pub telling you a story that’s irreverent yet essential, humorous yet tragic, it’s just his involve ones of getting up at 7am to be on some political television programme and how his ‘lifestyle’ of not normally getting up until the crack of ‘neighbours’ really did not lend this to him, but you can relate to every story he tells.

The songs of Woody get a direct airing and are certainly delivered with style and substance, the songs from ‘Mr Love & Justice’ are exactly like the record, just as you would expect, Billy plunders his own catalogue for nearly two hours, and it never gets boring, the songs are placed so well, the crowd is very receptive (it’s Friday night in Wrexham!) and Billy feeds of them as they feed of him, and it’s over in a flash and by the end I’m converted, sure he still does ‘get on me tits’ and I feel that if I had to sit in a room with him for ten minutes I would want to punch his face in, loud, brash, opinionated, unabashed, direct, incessant, in fact he reminds me of me! but Billy Bragg has something to say, something real, something for yesterday and today, people should listen…

Jj: 2009.