Word: bragg
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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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
After years of scorn for singer/songwriters--the "sensitive" kind like James Taylor and Dan Fogelberg--the public seems to be picking up again on the pleasures of direct address, of music without synthesizers. Witness the rise of "folk heroes" Suzanne Vega and Billy Bragg. In fact, the Boston-area acoustic music scene is now so competitive and professional that there's little room for newcomers. One more good reason to encourage the further activities of this group...