Hi folks, been a long time but Easter seems to be resurrection Sunday so lets see if we can get this up and running again,First and most importantly, I hope everybody is keeping well personally and also your friends and family are all keeping well toand to anyone who has had sad times in this pandemic I offer my utmost condolences,.

Now  for me I've just been an absolute prick, Mr Downbeat pissing off the ones closest to me because they were an easy touch, being a bit Mr Morose and bringing myself and everybody else down, but being old school I know the only cunt that can sort me out is me, so gave myself a shak and a kick up the arse.
I was doing two bottles of  vodka a week, but managed to cut the vodka down to the weekends, tough going but  2 bottles scooped in a weekend is no' that shady really!

Bring on Billy fuckin' Bragg

Album 571.
Billy Bragg.............................Talking With The Taxman About Poetry   (1986)







[img]https://www.billybragg.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Talking-With-The-Taxman-About-Poetry
.jpg[/img]




Got to be honest, can't stand this fucker, divorcing the music from the artist is normally quite a task but I'm no' gonna even try with this charlatan, a voice like Foghorn Leghorn (younger people may have to google it) and a habit of stealing and recyling other artists material and pretending to be original, just about sums up this self satisfying chameleon.


Anyways, the album for me at least had 1 good track which was "Greetings To TheNew Brunette," the other tracks in my humbles smack of someone looking in from a distance and making out that this was their life, another sign of his "your all daft ,You wont even notice coz I'm making you think I'm for the people"

This album wont be coming anywhere near my postcode, so wonnt be going into my vinyl collection (in case nobody guessed|)


Edited because extremely drunk so tidied up a little, but still stand by what I wrote, can't stand the bloke or his music!
Please listen to his Bob Dylan rip off (without any shame)


Bits & Bobs:



Revelations;


The army made a man of me Billy Bragg, Acton, 1981 



    EVERY MORNING on my way to a casual job, Artexing a ceiling for a mate, I had to walk past the Army Recruiting Centre in Acton and it seemed to beckon me in. I knew my destiny lay through those doors. I was 23 years old, punk had been and gone and come to nothing. It was a great disappointment because I thought we were going to change the world: the Clash by playing songs and me by going to Clash gigs.The band I had been in for a couple of years had just broken up. We'd been based in Oundle, east Northamptonshire - not quite the headquarters of rock. You only needed short hair and straight trousers to be the Kings of Punk.

However, I'd been an important person to the youth of that town, so returning to live at my mother's in Barking was a big comedown. The Artex would drop onto my face and I thought: I can't be doing with this. However, all I was educated to do was work at the Ford motor company at Dagenham. I'd been taken to the main body plant a couple of times by the careers officer from school and it was like Hades. Looking at the faces of the men, I knew I could never hack it; not being skilled with my hands, I would have just been working the line - forever.  However, I'd run out of other options and was turning into an oik: no good to nobody. So finally walking through the door of that Army Recruiting Centre, I felt back in control again. I'd stopped drifting. I told the officer I had two conditions: "I want to drive a tank and I don't want to go to Northern Ireland." Strangely enough, I'd chosen the Irish Hussars, which actually were a tank regiment; being Irish, they also didn't do tours of duty in Northern Ireland. So I signed up for nine years.

My decision was not just out of the blue - a number of things contributed. Thatcher had been elected, Reagan had just got in, Brezhnev had died and martial law had been declared in Poland. I was convinced something was coming to a head and thought: "where do I want to be when the big one goes off? Sitting on my arse in Barking, watching Nationwide, or actually be there, know it's going to happen and go in the first half hour?" I decided I didn't want to be left behind searching for my mum in the rubble. Looking back, I also think I needed something to measure myself against. My father had died in 1976 when I was 18 years old. It took a year and half for the lung cancer to kill him, just as I was old enough to square up to him. He'd been a tank driver in the Second World War, staying in India until partition, and it was very much part of my childhood. His death was the day that childhood ended. I gathered everything out of my room and put it in the attic. It was so tragic, I had just wanted it behind me.Not being the athletic type, I failed my medical and was sent to a special place in Sutton Coldfield for four weeks PE until I could do enough chin- ups to make the grade. It was a laugh. So it was not until I'd got to Catterick in Yorkshire that I realised I'd made a cock-up. It was another planet, I don't think I'd ever been that far north. I felt very culturally isolated; when Bob Marley died, I asked the corporal to stay up and watch the tribute on TV. His death was really tragic but no one else gave a hoot. What's more, having shown an affinity to black culture, I was scapegoated.

 After the first couple of days, some of the lads decided they wanted out and left. The sergeant explained how at the end of the 90 days, we could sign ourselves out, but to give the army a proper try. It made perfect sense to me. I needed something to push against and this was exactly what I asked for - it was sink or swim.         There was so much pent-up sexuality with all these young guys around that a Nolans' album in the NAAFI shop took on deeply significant proportions. While supposedly looking at the Marmite, my daily visit was not complete without copping a butchers at the cover, particularly Bernadette. (Recently, while on holiday at Weymouth, I saw the Nolans were on the pier with Cannon and Ball; it all came back to me.) Eventually, the officers brought up the subject of "clearing your custard" and for the last month of the course, each Sunday lunch time we could buy a porno mag. We were advised: "don't all buy the same one, you idiots, with four guys together in a room they could last you the week!" In close proximity to other people, you learn some important things. Until I was in the Boy Scouts, I thought I was the only person in the entire world who masturbated!I had a bit of a lip on me, so surprise, surprise, my bootlaces and belt were taken off me and I was marched down the block house a couple of times. I remember being in the classroom when they told us what to do on the battlefield if there was a nuclear explosion. For radiation fall-out, we were told to dig a shallow trench and put 14 inches of earth over the top of us. So I piped up: "Is that so the pioneer corps can just come along and put a headstone down?" I thought it was a perfectly rational point!

Although most people wouldn't think of me as a natural for the British Army, I was almost the best recruit! But I decided it was not for me and bought myself out. Walking out of Catterick, I felt sorted. I'd had to live on my wits and come out on top. I wouldn't recommend it to anybody as a sabbatical but it did focus me; where else did I get the courage to get up on stage and perform on my own? I felt I finally had something to measure myself against my dad. He enjoyed the armed forces and was good at it and so was I. Fathers are difficult creatures and when they're not around, it's even harder. But I could now say: "Look what I've done, Dad. I'm not a total time-waster." So my time in the army made me feel closer to him. For a long time, I didn't think about or talk about him to anyone, but now I find myself on a rainy day in Dorset at Boddington Tank Museum with my little boy showing him the model his grandfather drove and the Chieftain I was training to drive.I never realised how complex I was until my biographer made me think about myself.

However, it is our contradictions which make us interesting. I know being in the army is not politically correct, but life is not PC, and if you want to defeat your enemy, first learn their songs. Recently, I walked past the Army Recruiting Centre in Acton, but it has been knocked down to make way for a supermarket. Is that progress? Billy Bragg's official biography, `Still Suitable for Miners' written by Andrew Collins, is published by Virgin, priced pounds 12.99.




Emily Eavis and Billy Bragg








A joint cunting, if I may, for Emily Eavis and Billy Bragg. Another pointless day filled with YouTube surfing popped up this piece of shite:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LymykRl6imgNot ever having seen a picture of Ms Eavis, I wondered if it might have been a spoof. However, no, I was mistaken, as there was another cunt who I did recognise, who was presenting the NME award to her – Billy Fucking Bragg. The social warrior who is all for diversity but, unsurprisingly, lives in deepest Dorset, probably as far away from his “beloved” London as one could get.So, back to Ms Eavis. I know who she is, but have never seen a picture of her. I know she runs Glastonbury – a middle-class wankfest as far as I can tell. So she gets an award and is apparently, “god like” (I won’t give it a capital G as she is not God, she is a cunt) because she rakes in millions of pounds each year for the Eavis family. I see her bearded old cunt of a father was in the audience.What the fuck is wrong with this country? If you can bear to watch it, I think there is even more shit on this NME thing. What the fuck happened to the NME of old – anti-establishment, iconoclastic newspaper. Now they are more establishment than Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Billy Bragg wades into war of Southbank

Ph: Karen McBride

Left wing socialist and famed UK musician Billy Bragg entered the war of Southbank yesterday in a new feature published online by the Guardian newspaper. As a member of the arts committee at the Southbank Centre, Bragg wades into the debate on relocating skateboarders to the Hungerford Bridge claiming that there’s a lack of rehearsal space at the Undercroft for musicians and that skateboarders are not willing to discuss moving down river.To cut to the chase this is a choice feature coming from someone who throughout his entire life stood up and backed the little man, fought as a political activist on so many issues, yet sat in his £1.5 million Dorset home this morning has probably woke to read the plethora of negative comments posted on this article and wondered why he bothered.A blog feature written by Johnny Void in response to Bragg’s outburst calling Bragg a millionaire “knob, who knows nothing about austerity” was also subject of debate yesterday as the words resonated across the mainstream and skate scenes.Quote of the Day: “These people just can’t be reasoned with, Billy. You’re going to have to fight them. Preferrably on roller skates, or failing that little fold-up scooters.”



 'People think I'm arrogant. I probably am. I'm Billy Bragg, take it or leave it'


Bibi van der Zee meets the bard of BarkingThu 2 Sep 1999 02.07 BST


   You can hardly escape from Billy Bragg at the moment. He disappeared from view seven years ago when he got married and started a family - his paternity leave, he calls it. But he started a gentle resurfacing in 1996, when he brought out the wonderful William Bloke album, and continued in 1998 with Mermaid Avenue, his homage to American folk singer Woodie Guthrie. But this was low-profile stuff after the Red Wedge days of the late 80s, when everywhere you looked there was Billy hanging out with Paul Weller and telling us to vote Labour. But this summer he's been all over Britain like a rash: taking us on Rock Tours on TV, getting his picture in Time Out, doing voice-overs for documentaries about young soldiers, presenting the Johnny Walker show on Radio 2, and bringing out a compilation album. Oh, and having a street named after him: the brand-new Bragg Close in Dagenham, Essex. Tumultuous changes have taken place in his life since the 80s. Fatherhood has made a big impact, as has husbandhood; priorities have had to be changed, lifestyle turned upside down. Bragg's political songs may have made a thousand teenagers join the Labour Party - but now, aged 40, he says that if it hadn't been for the miners, he'd probably have just concentrated on romantic ballads. The man who wrote New England ("I don't want to change the world/ I'm not looking for New England/ Just looking for another girl") and had another generation of boys and men nodding their heads knowingly at the useless drive of the male libido, now gets his kicks in the supermarket with his wife. Ah, but is he happy?He pauses for a long time, as we sit in a crowded London coffee shop. "Happiness, happiness. It's hard to define happiness," he murmurs at long last. "Is happiness when you wake up in the morning and don't ever think, 'Oh God, I don't want to do this'? Because that happens to me quite a bit. In a couple of weeks' time I've got to pack my bags, kiss my wife and kids goodbye, steel myself to get on a plane and go to the other side of the world for five weeks and to be honest I don't really want to do it."Coming from a man who once revelled in touring (gigs in Moscow included political meetings with the comrades; gigs in Nicaragua took place in the Sandinista Cultural Workers' Union) this is a bit of a shocker. "It's a paradox, innit? I mean, it's sort of my definition of success - that I'm doing what I love to do, and that people will pay me to do it. And once I'm actually on stage, I really like it. I suppose happiness is probably like nirvana, you'll never get there." He actually looks a bit concerned. "Am I crushing your hopes? There is hope, you know, things do get less hard, don't give up."Bragg is, after all, famous more than anything for being a nice bloke. A nice bloke with a big mouth, and a lot to say for himself. And there seems to be a whole new audience going to his gigs: "I've noticed that. It's like, there's a generation that I supplied songs to while they were in college or whatever, and now they've grown up and want to use my music for films and stuff. And now there are all these young kids turning up to my gigs. I don't know what they were doing in the 80s, but I don't think they were listening to me."He refuses to admit to any regrets that his audience has always been pretty small. Bragg has only broken into the top 10 once, and his album sales rarely top the 70,000 mark. He frowns when asked if he wishes he could reach more people: "At what cost? With the 1992 album Don't Try This at Home I let the record company do it the way they'd always wanted to do it, with videos and singles and all that, and basically we sold the same amount of records. I can't be arsed to make singles every three months, and I'm excused videos - I've got a note. It just seems pointless spending £15,000 on a video that gets shown once on MTV at 3am." He warms to his theme. "It's not like I lie awake at night and wish I was playing stadiums. I've played stadiums, I've done gigs where there were 200,000 people there, like Artists Against Apartheid in 1987. I think, personally, that the sort of people who like my music have a kind of deeper sincerity. Their expectations are higher, so I have to keep my expectations of myself high."And Billy Bragg as Uncle Billy, as the father figure, writing love songs about bath time and bus stops instead of singing the Internationale? He says he's always written love songs, "and in a way, if the miners' strike hadn't come along, I probably would never have got so ideological. I've always written about what I see, about how I see things." For Bragg, after all, song- writing started out as a way of pulling: "I realised at school that if you weren't in the football team, and you didn't have a car, you were going to have to come up with a different way of doing it. And then I found out that if you put a girl's name in, or a reference or something, you could get their attention and they'd keep listening."But now those days are gone: how do you keep on writing love songs when you've been married for seven years? "Listen," he says firmly. "I wrote Saturday Boy [about the unrequited love of a 15-year-old] when I was 27; it's not that hard to remember what it felt like." It's an odd answer for someone who says his family is the centre of his world, especially as he's already written about married love: "Stealing a kiss in the supermarket, I walk you down the aisle, You fill my basket," he wrote in Brickbat (on William Bloke). "I'm having to learn that as I go along. I want to write about the things that are happening to me at the moment." The way love changes within a marriage? "I'm doing that, I'm writing, but I'm a dreadful non-finisher of songs. The urge to focus on them and finish them doesn't seem that strong at the moment." It must be harder to be absolutely honest if you don't want to hurt someone. The new album, called Reaching to the Converted (mostly B sides including Greetings to the New Brunette, and some previously unrecorded material), only has one recent song on it: "And we're both going to have to accept/ That this might be as good as it gets/ As our love for each other respects, Neither rule nor reason_" These are love songs for a married generation.In the meantime politics hasn't really been abandoned: he's been involved in the debate over the future of the House of Lords, and then there was the famous toilet incident. At Glastonbury this year Bragg came across a sign on a backstage toilet announcing that this was solely for the use of the Manic Street Preachers, and he blew his top. "I just get fed up with people singing about politics without living it. I wouldn't have minded the toilet thing if it'd been someone like the Prodigy, but I really care about the Manics." Not quite mellowed then.We get on to the subject of religion, and Bragg admits that he likes churches. His mother's Catholic, his wife is Catholic, and he wears a St Christopher medallion round his neck (although, as he points out, that's actually got less to do with religion than with the fact he comes from Essex). And from there, somehow we get to life in space, and the fact that Bragg believes that we are all alone in the universe. Pressed, the best argument he can come up with is that we haven't heard from anyone else. "Why haven't they got in touch? Nah mate, we're all on our own." He does believe in God, though not some all-powerful being - he just thinks that this planet is too impressive to have been an accident. "How can there not be a reason for us to be here?" And what exactly is his place in all this? "I don't give a shit what people think about me. People think I'm arrogant, and I probably am. I'm Billy Bragg, take it or leave it. Look, I've got a big nose, a bad singing voice, I'm probably a stone overweight, I drive a four-wheel drive car, I have my faults but this is how I am. This is me.






 Billy Bragg pays his taxes following protestMusician and political activist Billy Bragg, who was withholding his taxes in protest at bankers' bonuses, has conceded defeat and paid up.By Martin Evans 03 April 2010 • 08:00 am







Billy Bragg delivers a protest speech against "excessive" bonuses for Royal Bank of Scotland bosses at Speakers' Corner, London Credit: Photo: PA The 52-year-old, whose first hit album was called Talking to the Taxman about Poetry, decided to take a stand after learning bankers were in line for huge payouts just months after sparking the international financial crisis.In January he announced he was withholding his taxes until Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling took action to curb the payments being made to senior staff at the part nationalised Royal Bank of Scotland.Mr Bragg said he was "no longer prepared to fund the excessive bonuses of the RBS investment bankers" adding that until Mr Darling introduced a cap of £25,000 on bonuses he would be withholding his taxes.He launched a Facebook campaign to encourage others to follow his lead in the hope of co-ordinating the widespread national outrage at rewards for failure being offered to traders.But after two months Mr Bragg has now accepted that his stand had little impact and has caved in and paid his full bill plus a fine for late payment.In a message posted on his Facebook page the signer of hits such as There Is Power In A Union wrote: "I paid my taxes today, as well as the first fine for withholding them for the past two months. Our window of opportunity to put pressure on the Chancellor has passed and I have no wish to become a martyr. With the general election campaign just days away, I’d be interested to hear your ideas about where we go from here."       There was so much pent-up sexuality with all these young guys around that a Nolans' album in the NAAFI shop took on deeply significant proportions. While supposedly looking at the Marmite, my daily visit was not complete without copping a butchers at the cover, particularly Bernadette. (Recently, while on holiday at Weymouth, I saw the Nolans were on the pier with Cannon and Ball; it all came back to me.) Eventually, the officers brought up the subject of "clearing your custard" and for the last month of the course, each Sunday lunch time we could buy a porno mag. We were advised: "don't all buy the same one, you idiots, with four guys together in a room they could last you the week!" In close proximity to other people, you learn some important things. Until I was in the Boy Scouts, I thought I was the only person in the entire world who masturbated!I had a bit of a lip on me, so surprise, surprise, my bootlaces and belt were taken off me and I was marched down the block house a couple of times. I remember being in the classroom when they told us what to do on the battlefield if there was a nuclear explosion. For radiation fall-out, we were told to dig a shallow trench and put 14 inches of earth over the top of us. So I piped up: "Is that so the pioneer corps can just come along and put a headstone down?" I thought it was a perfectly rational point!Although most people wouldn't think of me as a natural for the British Army, I was almost the best recruit! But I decided it was not for me and bought myself out. Walking out of Catterick, I felt sorted. I'd had to live on my wits and come out on top. I wouldn't recommend it to anybody as a sabbatical but it did focus me; where else did I get the courage to get up on stage and perform on my own? I felt I finally had something to measure myself against my dad. He enjoyed the armed forces and was good at it and so was I. Fathers are difficult creatures and when they're not around, it's even harder. But I could now say: "Look what I've done, Dad. I'm not a total time-waster." So my time in the army made me feel closer to him. For a long time, I didn't think about or talk about him to anyone, but now I find myself on a rainy day in Dorset at Boddington Tank Museum with my little boy showing him the model his grandfather drove and the Chieftain I was training to drive.I never realised how complex I was until my biographer made me think about myself. However, it is our contradictions which make us interesting. I know being in the army is not politically correct, but life is not PC, and if you want to defeat your enemy, first learn their songs. Recently, I walked past the Army Recruiting Centre in Acton, but it has been knocked down to make way for a supermarket. Is that progress? Billy Bragg's official biography, `Still Suitable for Miners' written by Andrew Collins, is published by Virgin, priced pounds 12.99.



And to sum up what a complete Noel Hunt this fucker is I give you:



https://youtu.be/ZHFxCj3wqaQ

and, ffs


 Hear Billy Bragg Reimagine Bob Dylan Anthem as Trump Protest Singer-songwriter spins “The Times They Are A-Changin'” into critique of “1950s” worldview under new presidentByRyan Reed  



 Billy Bragg blasts President Trump in his mournful new protest song, “The Times They Are A-Changing Back,” which transforms the optimism of Bob Dylan‘s 1964 anthem into a bleak survey of America’s social and political backslide. The British folk songwriter-activist recorded an intimate live version in a hotel room, singing over quiet acoustic guitThe track opens with a clever twist on Dylan’s opening water imagery: “Accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone/ For the climate is obviously changing,” Bragg sings. “But the man in the White House says no one’s to blame/ For the times, they are a-changing back.”From there, the singer expresses fear of racial, religious and sexual intolerance in a Trump-ruled U.S.: “Come Mexicans, Muslims, LBGT and Jews/ Keep your eyes wide for what’s on the news/ For President Trump is expressing his views, and I fear that the mob he’s inciting/ Will some break your windows and burn down your schools/ For the times, they are a-changing back.”     He continues by uniting “mothers and daughters throughout the land,” subtly critiquing the Trump administration’s policies on women’s equality and reproductive rights. “A bunch of old men have come up with a plan,” he sings. “Never mind your ambitions, they’ve a better idea of how you should be behaving.”After noting that “Mather Luther King is spinning in his grave/ To see a bigoted bully taking the stage,” Bragg ends with a note of resilience: “The line, it is drawn, and the curse it is cast,” he sings. “The slow one now will later be fast, as the present now will later be past/ Let’s hold onto that idea for a moment/ And the first one now will later be last/ For the times they need a-changin’.”Bragg wrote the lyrics after hearing tourmate Joe Henry soundcheck a version of “The Times They Are A-Changin'” before a concert.“At 5pm on Friday, at the moment Donald Trump became President of the United States, Joe Henry and I were beginning our sound check in Salisbury. Joe began mournfully strumming Dylan’s classic ‘The Times They Are A Changing’ and, listening to him from the wings, I ruefully thought that it seems more like the times are changing back to how they were in the 1950s,” Bragg wrote on Facebook.“Checking into my hotel, I saw clips from Trump’s inaugural speech on the evening news and, 30 minutes later when I stepped out the shower, I had these lyrics in my head,” he continued. “I played the song that night in City Hall and it went down a storm. A night off in York has given me an opportunity to film a performance in my room.”




https://youtu.be/0K7gyTQuulsThe cunt's got the serious pus on as well, proper brass neck!


A bit off topic but if I got stuck watching that wanker I would, without a shadow of a doubt end up heckling the cunt, I don't know how common knowledge this is but it it was certainly an eye opener for me:

Origin

Although the word heckler, which originated from the textile trade, was first attested in the mid-15th century, the sense "person who harasses" was from 1885. To heckle was to tease or comb out flax or hemp fibres. The additional meaning, to interrupt speakers with awkward or embarrassing questions, was added in Scotland, and specifically perhaps in early nineteenth century Dundee a famously radical town where the hecklers who combed the flax had established a reputation as the most radical and belligerent element in the workforce. In the heckling factory, one heckler would read out the day's news while the others worked, to the accompaniment of interruptions and furious debate.

Another topical one I never knew;


 A botched job


Generally referring to a job not done very well, the origins of the phrase 'Botch job' or 'Botched' reportedly lie in Scotland.Though disputed, it's theorised that botch is a corruption of the name Bouch, as in Thomas Bouch, a Victorian architect and railway engineer, who built the Tay Bridge and received a knighthood from Queen Victoria for doing so.He later became infamous after he failed to recognise several flaws in his design which led to the Tay Bridge collapsing and killing the passengers of train that was attempting to cross.Very morbid and incredibly tragic if true.




Edited to tidy up a bit, was extremely drunk yesterday but stand by what I wrote, can't stand the wank or his music!

Last edited by arabchanter (05/4/2021 9:57 am)

With all due respect.

That's not an album review, that's a hatchet job.

And i say that as someone who is not a fan of Bragg as a person, his politics or this particular album for that matter (though he has written some great tracks imo).


 

arabchanter wrote:

Tek wrote:

With all due respect.

That's not an album review, that's a hatchet job.

And i say that as someone who is not a fan of Bragg as a person, his politics or this particular album for that matter (though he has written some great tracks imo).


 

Was well pished when writing that but stand by every word, I've never once called my slaverings a review, just write about how a feel about the album and artist, different strokes and all that bud
 

Fair enough.