Beam me up, Billy Bragg

ILLUSTRATION by LUKE MCGARRY

Billy Bragg was at first a baby punker in a band whose best song was about girls, and he was so lost after that he signed up for the British Army, officially opting out during training because he kept thinking of songs he could write. Elvis Costello was already frightening enough for England, and freshly demobbed Billy had an amp and an electric guitar and a bunch of cracked schemes to get a record out, and no one who dared to care until just before that perversely opportune year of 1984—that was his first mass release for a first solo album that was like Joe Strummer gone Bert Jansch, clattering electric folk about love and politics, two of the three most alluring avenues for a young man to mangle his life. I listen now to those old, old songs and the ones for girls are still so fearlessly sad (“I loved the words you wrote to me, but that was bloody yesterday/I can’t survive on what you send every time you need a friend . . . ” and then that little spasm in the rhythm as he makes his wish on space hardware) and the political ones are so true it’s almost sickening—what is wrong with us that “Help Save the Youth of America” is 22 years old and still without a lyric that isn’t ready for a headline tomorrow? (“And the cities of Europe have burned before/and they may yet burn again/and if they do I hope you understand/that Washington will burn with them . . .”.) Now on LA label ANTI-, Bragg’s latest Mr. Love and Justice lets that sadness (and truth) come gently now—Joe Strummer gone Lee Hazlewood, maybe?—but all that sounds lost is the nervous shake in his wrists. “I fear for the future and what it may hold,” he sings now, but he’s still fearless just to sing it.

BILLY BRAGG WITH CR AVERY THE EL REY | 5515 WILSHIRE BLVD | LOS ANGELES 90036 | TUES 8PM | $32 | ALL AGES | GOLDENVOICE.COM

Tags: anti-, billy bragg, joe strummer, the el rey