Billy Bragg - Shepherds Bush Empire

I wasn’t sure what to expect from a solo Billy Bragg show these days – so I travelled to the Shepherds Bush Empire with my friend Ross with some trepidation.

With the recent release of the ‘Volume 1’ box-set featuring re-masters and out-takes of his earliest releases – I thought there would be a chance of some early favourites getting an airing. On the other hand, as the show was part of his national Hope Not Hate tour - a dedicated push against the BNP in local elections, there was some concern it might be, as my friend Ross put it, “a bit preachy”.

Unfortunately we missed the support act Seth Lakeman so I can’t give any feedback on him – but we did time things pretty well so we took our seats half-way through Billy’s first number ‘The World Turned Upside Down’.

He seemed in pretty good form – a little bit out-of-tune (but then he was never that in-tune to begin with) – kicking off with solo electric versions of half a dozen or so “classic Bragg” tracks. Favourites for me where ‘Levi Stubbs Tears’ (including a very funny story about Paul Weller), ‘England Half English’ (a song I’ve probably under-rated because I seldom play much later day Braggy – in particular his most recent one “England Half English”), and ‘Greetings To The New Brunetter’ (which included a very funny self referential gag about having to look the chords up on billybraggtabs.com – and wondering what he was thinking when he originally wrote some of the lyrics).

Ian Mclagan (Faces/Small Faces – still sporting the same mullet-esque hairdo he’s had since the Seventies) then joined on organ (or “horgan” and Braggy describes the Hammond Organ sound his reputation has been founded on). I could probably have done without the cover of instrumental ‘Green Onions’ – but I found the sparcer arrangement of ‘The Price I Pay’ incredibly moving. A cover of The Faces ‘Debris’ was excellent, especially when Ronnie Lane’s tribute to his Dad was couple with Billy’s own ‘Tank Park Salute’. A new song ‘I Keep Faith’ was played – but didn’t do much for me to be honest.

As I’d been concerned – there was some preachy elements – but it was constrained to three or four longer bursts. I think he’s better to let the songs do the talking – and a well chosen set closer of Mermaid Avenue IIs ‘All You Fascists – Bound To Lose’ seemed to be specifically crafted for the cause Billy was touring to promote.

The first encore started with Braggs talking about starting to loose his voice in Austin, so he had to sign in a slightly lower register, which led to the invention of the Johnny Clash pseudonym. This was at first treated as a kind of open in-joke, doing a version of ‘Pinball Wizard’ in the style of ‘Folsom Prison Blues’. But then Billy played a new song he’d written in this style – tentatively titled ‘Old Clash Fan Fight Song’ – that was easily the highlight of the night for me, and I’d go so far as to describe it as one of the best new Billy Bragg songs in the last decade. Hopefully this beauty will see release pretty soon – but if adopting the Johnny Clash persona leads to him writing stuff this good – keep it up!

The second and final encore ran a close second in the highlight stakes – a seven-song set featuring the entire “Life’s A Riot with Spy Vs Spy’ EP. Interestingly it wasn’t played in strict order (he saved ‘A New England’ for the end, and ‘Richard was played third-last) but it was fantastic. Kind of like a mini- Don’t Look Back festival.

So despite his efforts not really being reflected in the local council elections the next day – the BNP doubled its number of councillors – it was a fantastic show.

Viva la Johnny Clash!

(PS - thanks to http://moblog.co.uk for the camera phone photo of the show!)