Hung out backstage with Billy Bragg before his show at the Hammerstein Ballroom here in New York. He had a really bad cold and was taking Albus Oil to get rid of it. We talked about punk for over an hour and then he went on stage and sang some songs.
Hung out backstage with Billy Bragg before his show at the Hammerstein Ballroom here in New York. He had a really bad cold and was taking Albus Oil to get rid of it. We talked about punk for over an hour and then he went on stage and sang some songs.
Before the show we went to this great, old Latino bar near Times Square. They had one of the coolest accidental art installations I’ve ever seen. It’s a hole in the ceiling with water pouring out of it that goes directly into the toilet. How did this happen? Was it done on purpose to discourage pooing? Leaks usually spread out and damage the whole ceiling tile. This one appeared to be cut specifically to drain out the water above. It could have been like that for months. Wow.
Anyhizzles, here’s Billy Bragg discussing his cold remedies.
Bragg’s latest hairstyle has made him completely indistinguishable from Sam Dawson, the Down Syndrome character Sean Pean played in I Am Sam.
Oh yeah, almost forgot, here’s the show.
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Billy Bragg “It Says Here”
Pogues “Streams of Whiskey”
Roxy Music “Street Life”
Gary Numan “Are Friends Electric”
Visage “Fade to Grey”
The Jam “A Bomb in Wardour Street”
Eddie and the Hot Rods “Do Anything You Wanna Do”
Ramones “I Wanted Everything”
The Undertons “Get Over You”
Generation X “One Hundred Punks”
Riff Raff (feat Billy Bragg) “I Wanna be a Cosmonaut”
Bad Brains “Right Brigade”
Black Flag “Gimme Gimme Gimme”
Dark City Sisters and The Flying Jazz Queens “Retswa Gauteng”
Bow Wow Wow “See Jungle”
It’s worth noting that I did NOT dig up the exact Flying Jazz Queens track Billy’s talking about which kind of kills the whole point. Sorry, but the track is totally out of print and even used CDs on Amazon are over $150. If anyone can dig it up I’ll happily throw it in here as an embedded Mp3. Good luck.
Johnny Moped “No One”
Jonathan Richman “Hospital (Live in Paris)”
Ever notice how much Richman sounds like Adam Sandler doing one of his jokey sing-a-long characters?
Billy Bragg “Farm Boy”
Billy Bragg “Old Clash Fan Fight Song”
After the interview, Bragg got up on stage and did one of the best shows I’ve ever seen him do (this clip is our view from backstage – the track is “Help Save the Youth of America” from Live & Dubious). This new album (his first studio album in six years) sounds a lot like the early demos, a great combination of hopeless love songs and hopeful politics (“Farm Boy” is on it).
billy bragg!!!!!
Nardwar’s Hat!
love the bragg
you forgot doo doo doo doo doo, doo doo!
they rule! billy bragg is the cool uncle i never had!
was that wet person an actor? from the Departed?
I saw Bragg play in Dallas almost twenty years ago and during the show he asked if anyone in the audience could give him a tour of the neighborhood (Deep Ellum) because he knew it as an important historic area for blues music. He was really exited about it. I don’t know if he got the tour but I hope so.
Also the water in the bathroom is a Latin America thing, you probably wouldn’t understand, but basically it’s drainage from the cock fighting arena upstairs.
All of Bragg s acoustic folk songs are just great punk songs waiting to happen.
Texas gave birth to same great music. Unfortunately, some dreadfully shitty self-promoting bloggers also live there, so some points must be deducted.
Gavin’s chiding Billy about “using caffeine” as a vice? Man’s going soft!
What is this albus oil? It isn’t even on Wikipedia. I think that this is just the second word of a two word name for a plant, As albus means white in Latin.
this was the best tracklist so far. i actually listened the whole way through without fast forwarding to the talking
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