You Woke Up My Neighbourhood reminds me of coming to Toronto and living here for the first time.

While my favourite album is Workers Playtime, there is absolutely no competition when it comes to best track – Levi Stubbs’ Tears. With its heartbreak lyrics and his best sparse guitar work, it never fails to move me even after all these years. And it perfectly sums up the experience of living in the UK at the time – not very optimistic at all. There was nothing quite like the Thatcher Years to disillusion a generation…
I’ve seen Billy three times now – once for Talking To The Taxman, once for Don’t Try This At Home (where Robyn Hitchcock was the support band…) and once a couple of years ago and can highly recommend the experience because he makes it so memorable thanks to his between song banter.

I’m going to go in a slightly different direction, partly because of Frank’s dismissal of 1996’s William Bloke CD – which I think is a very strong album, and well worth revisiting. Although the best song on the album is "Upfield", with it’s Northern Soul stylings and Socialist refrains, I also rather fond of Billy’s reworking of Rudyard Kipling’s "A Pict Song". I think it’s one of the few songs on the album which revisit his old solo electric guitar/vox style, and under Mike Harris’ scumbag government Billy’s visceral rendering of Kipling’s appreciation of the power of the oppressed masses really meant something to me.

I always go back to "This Guitar Says Sorry" from Brewing Up With Billy Bragg. I first heard it after taking a flyer on buying the two-album (yes, as in vinyl) Back to Basic set. The raw energy of its Bo Diddley beat was infectious, and the first time I picked up an electric guitar and even remotely knew what I was doing, I taught myself the song in a heartbeat. Thank God my weak attempt at his accent never left the bedroom. That, coupled with the Britishisms that took me years to parse, have made it my favorite despite the fact that dozens of great songs came after.

Tough one, my friend. I can pick many "favorites", but I’ll go in a different direction and pick the one song with the most emotional heft.

Like many of Bragg’s decidedly British references, I never understand what "Tank Park Salute" meant….but I certainly understood the lyrics.

With the transition from child ("Daddy is it true we all have to die") to adult ("A little boy’s lifetime away"), this is the one song that almost makes me cry every time; I challenge anyone to listen to it and not think of their father, living or dead.

Chris

Although I’m tempted to pick "It Says Here" or another of Bragg’s more politically-themed songs due to their relevance in these times, I have to choose "Must I Paint You a Picture". Other than being a jaw-droppingly heartwrenching love song, it reminds me of seeing him play at Irving Plaza in New York in the fall of 2000 and how the song stood out. I’ve always thought that Bragg is much better on his own as opposed to with a band (especially live, though I always go back to his first few records when I wanna hear him) and when he played this song with just him and his guitar (and some organ from Ian McLagan), it confirmed that feeling.

disagree with your view, which is not unique, about William Bloke – I think it’s def. his most slept-on album and the one that i find gets better the more I revisit it – I think songs like 14th of Feb, Upfield, Brickbat and Space Race rank with his best, plus Goalhanger and Sugardaddy were good fun.

I used to love The Saturday Boy from "Brewing Up…" because schoolboy sexual frustration was something I could really relate to even if I was twenty when the album came out – those scars ran deep. Billy was great for me politically but it’s all those songs that aren’t political that make hime special. St Swithins Day and Levi Stubbs Tears are two of my favourite songs ever. Oh and Life With The Lins because "arsehole" is just the best word to have in a lyric.

(I ‘ve already got the box set, as well as lps, cds, cassettes and sheet music so this isn’t a competition entry just a chance to get all dewey eyed at my pathetic youth…)

Hey Frank: long-time reader, first-time writer. Interesting take on Bragg,
although I’d have to dispute the sharp separation you draw between early and late Bragg. Much of the early stuff (my own faves, especially Brewing Up.) contains both amazing relationship insights and reflections as well as tub-thumping and fascist-killin’ guitar licks. Take for example, *my* all-time favourite track, "A New England": blends the dole, Thatcherism’s diminished expectations, and youthful anomie into a punchy reflection on life in a deindustrializing world: "I saw two shooting starts last night/I wished on
them/But they were only satellites/It’s wrong to wish on space hardware/I wish, I wish I wish you’d ca-a-are." Need I say more?

A friend gave me a tape of ‘life’s a riot’ in the summer of 1984 and I’ve never looked back. I agree that you shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss William Bloke, and I think that ‘Brickbat’ is one of my favourite songs – a real grown up love song mixing the transcendent and the every day. I first saw him live in summer ’85, and last at Easter this year, and both were wonderful. To be honest, though, I’d be perfectly happy to go back to that first day and choose ‘The Milkman of Human Kindness’ as my favourite song – it’s witty, angry, heartfelt, everything a billy bragg song should be, and not bad at all for side one track one of a whole career.

I could say "Richard" but that would be too easy. I love the way that he brought Leon Rosselson’s "World turned upside down" to a broader public, but I think I too will have to to go with Waiting for the Great Leap Forward – reminds me of why I have to continue in the stuggles that I’m in.

I feel like all the best ones are "taken" but there are so many… as a nascent guitarist myself – Billy is hardly a technically great guitarist, which makes many of his songs easy to play! – I enjoy playing and singing "St. Swithin’s Day" (a song so beautiful and so sad), the clangy ringing chords of "There is Power in a Union" and, most of all, "A Lover Sings," which like many of his earlyish relationship songs has a wistful, clever edge undercutting the ultimately bitter facts of love gone wrong, or just gone. So, "A Lover Sings" it is.

"… and your tights around your ankles – late at night a lover thinks of these things…"

By the way: A Billy Bragg story. I brought my then just-turned-15 son to a press conference for the "Tell Us the Truth" tour show in New York in November 03; he was sitting there with me facing the performers answering questions, when Billy singled him out in his a Clash T-shirt as an example of something right (vis a vis political awareness) with America’s youth. Later on, milling around, Billy put his arm around him. And then during the show while one of the other acts was on, Billy saw me and said "You must be so proud."
I still refer to this as the day my son officially became cooler than me.

I’m surprised no one has claimed "Sexuality" for their fave. It’s a great song, and was one of his highest charting singles (I bought one of them). Plus, it combines politics and sex with clever wordplay.

Why isn’t it anyone’s favourite? Is it because it’s too poppy? Or because Johnny Marr shared the song credit? Or is everyone too embarrassed to mention it on a family site?

You really understand that there IS power in a union when Billy sings "I’ve had relations with girls from many nations…"

I would have to say "The busy girl buys beauty" – one of the catchiest songs ever written about the female obsession with artifice. Only a truly enlightened man could ever understand how a young girl learns "the truth about pain" from the pages of fashion magazines.