Billy Bragg: Live and Dubious: Help Save the Youth of America

Billy Bragg:  Live and Dubious: Help Save the Youth of America

1988

Elektra / Wea

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Help Save the Youth of America  2. Think Again  3. Chile Your Waters Run Red Through Soweto  4. Days Like These  5. To Have and to Have Not  6. There Is Power in a Union


For the longest time, whenever I glanced at this cover,  his hat always registered as hair to me...In my mind Billy Bragg had some giant haircut that resembled a weird pompadour or a parted afro....But last night, when I looked at the cover more closely, it finally clicked that it's one of those big, furry Russian hats...

Man, I'm retarded...

Anyway, this is a  live EP from Billy Bragg...I bought this about a year ago from FYE...I went in one day and they had this and a bunch of old Cure vinyl, so I picked it all up...To be honest, I think I listened to it maybe once and never re-visited it...

I checked it out again last night and ended up playing it a few times...It's a pretty cool record...Explicitly political, it goes so far as to include an insert featuring the name and location in every State where you can register to vote...The lyrics focus mainly on Cold War concerns, which makes sense, since the album sleeve indicates it was recorded live in Moscow and Washington D.C.

All the Cold War concerns may strike some as dated, with the talk of imminent nuclear devastation and all, but for some reason it doesn't feel like ancient history to me...Last I checked, Nuclear weapons are still around and as long as they exist their use is always a possibility...And tell me that all these news stories about Edward Snowden don't give you Cold War flashbacks?!

I lived through the 80's and have heard countless well-meaning pop songs about the subject of the cold war, but I don't think I've heard anything as direct and reasonable as "Think Again":

"Do you think that the Russians want war
These are the children of parents who died in the last one
Do you think that they want to go through that again
The destruction the bloodshed the suffering and pain
In the second world war, out of every three dead, one was Russian..."

Well, yea...When you put it that way it makes perfect sense...

As far as the music on the ep it's very stripped down, which is to be expected from this era of Billy Bragg...He would pump up his sound on the album following this, but for now it's just electric guitar and vocals...Hell, " Chile Your Waters Run Red Through Soweto" skips the guitar completely and features only vocals...

The only time other instruments pop up is on "There's Power in a Union" which has some country accompaniment...He gets a real hoe-down vibe going on this song...I kinda want to bust out my mouth harp and go "G-OIN-G! G-OIN-G! G-OIN-G!"



I'm happy the blog gave me the opportunity to check this one out again...I kinda forgot about it, and it's always a good time listening to Billy Bragg...So let's check out "Help Save the Youth of America"...Enjoy...