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Mar. 28th, 2006 10:54 amBilly Bragg was in fine form last night, at least as far as humor and ranting go. It was the last night of the tour, and he did close to a solid two hour set. He mentioned having left his upper register in Austin at SXSW after "70 gigs and 1000 interviews", although he seems to have recovered mostly by last night. One of the many, many laughter-provoking bits involved a discussion about what crap the tea in Texas was -- it had ice in it! Not that there are high expectations for American tea anyway, but you'd at least expect it to be warm (not like the beer). In revenge, next time he's got an American visiting, he vowed to give them a boiling hot Coca-Cola. "See how you like it!"
The bit about being run down and pinned up against a pie stall by a stampede of Coldplay fans -- all on their cellphones telling friends they thought they just saw Gywnyth -- at Glastonbury while trying (unsuccessfully, thanks to the rampaging horde of aforementioned fans) to get over to see The Go! Team also got a big laugh. Apparently SXSW would've been almost exactly like Glastonbury if they'd only hauled in six tons of mud and covered the area with it and then stampeded a herd of longhorn cattle down the main street. ;)
In response to "The World Turned Upside Down": (paraphrased) "I'm always amazed at the great reaction this song gets in America. Your grasp of 17th-century English history is impressive." ;)
A few tracks from "Mermaid Avenue" were played, including my favorite, which made me happy. There was also a track written during the sound check in Ann Arbor, without a title as of yet but described as "an old Clash fan's fight song", an extended version of "Bush War Blues" (the original version can be downloaded from his site at that link) and "The Lonesome Death of Rachel Corrie" (downloadable from The Guardian) along with older songs like "Sexuality" (the opener, if you don't count his coming out to join Jill Sobule at the end of her set for "All the Young Dudes"), "A Lover Sings", "To Have and Have Not", and "There Is Power in a Union". For his encore he performed "Life's A Riot With Spy Vs Spy" in its entirety, finishing up with a sing-along of "A New England".
Even if he may have not quite entirely recovered his voice (although as he said his manager pointed out, "People don't come to hear you sing, Billy."), it was a great show. My one complaint is that I think the Birchmere is not the best venue for him: the show is entirely seated, there's no place to get up and dance, they try to enforce a "silence during the performance" policy, and I think that makes the energy very different than it might be at a more club-like venue.
The bit about being run down and pinned up against a pie stall by a stampede of Coldplay fans -- all on their cellphones telling friends they thought they just saw Gywnyth -- at Glastonbury while trying (unsuccessfully, thanks to the rampaging horde of aforementioned fans) to get over to see The Go! Team also got a big laugh. Apparently SXSW would've been almost exactly like Glastonbury if they'd only hauled in six tons of mud and covered the area with it and then stampeded a herd of longhorn cattle down the main street. ;)
In response to "The World Turned Upside Down": (paraphrased) "I'm always amazed at the great reaction this song gets in America. Your grasp of 17th-century English history is impressive." ;)
A few tracks from "Mermaid Avenue" were played, including my favorite, which made me happy. There was also a track written during the sound check in Ann Arbor, without a title as of yet but described as "an old Clash fan's fight song", an extended version of "Bush War Blues" (the original version can be downloaded from his site at that link) and "The Lonesome Death of Rachel Corrie" (downloadable from The Guardian) along with older songs like "Sexuality" (the opener, if you don't count his coming out to join Jill Sobule at the end of her set for "All the Young Dudes"), "A Lover Sings", "To Have and Have Not", and "There Is Power in a Union". For his encore he performed "Life's A Riot With Spy Vs Spy" in its entirety, finishing up with a sing-along of "A New England".
Even if he may have not quite entirely recovered his voice (although as he said his manager pointed out, "People don't come to hear you sing, Billy."), it was a great show. My one complaint is that I think the Birchmere is not the best venue for him: the show is entirely seated, there's no place to get up and dance, they try to enforce a "silence during the performance" policy, and I think that makes the energy very different than it might be at a more club-like venue.
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