The Milkman of Human Kindness

Braggbox arrived!

Billy Bragg's first five records, remastered, with an additional three discs of demos, b-sides, and such, as well as two DVDs of early video appearances and concert footage. Funny how protest songs from the early 1980's can seem like they were written about our current administration.

This morning in the shower, I listened to a bluegrass version of "There is Power in a Union" with the Pattersons, which is every bit as good as the instrumental version of the same song on the bonus disc that accompanies Talking With the Taxman About Poetry: The Difficult Third Album. That same disc also features covers of Gram Parson's "Sin City," Woody Guthrie's "Deportees," and Smokey Robinson's "Tracks of My Tears." If you were to only get one of the remastered records, this would be the one to get: best Bragg record and, at least on first listening, best Bragg bonuses.

The new version of The Internationale e.p. (which comes with a DVD -- haven't watched it yet -- of either a concert in Russia or the film he did about the Russian tour) contains the above-mentioned work with the Pattersons, a British re-writing of "This Land is Your Land," and the American version of his own "Days Like These":

Days Like These (D.C. Remix)

It’s morning in America and you can be your best
If you have a valid credit card and can pass a urine test
It’s midnight in El Salvador, they’re spending dollars in your name
And it’s no bloody consolation that Reagan can not run again

They’ll trade with the Ayatollah if they can’t convince Congress
The only type of patriot is an anti-communist
And I shake my head and wonder what would Joe McCarthy say
If he could walk through downtown Washington DC today

The CIA on campus are taking down some names
Inviting folks to join them in their coke and dagger games
And does it ever prick your conscience, as "We are the world" you sing
When you know today we’re so far away from the dreams of Martin Luther King

The Brotherhood of the Elephant and the Party of the Ass
Are desperate for contestants to take part in the farce
And selling democracy down the tubes with the ad man’s expertise
The majority by their silence will pay for days like these

Peace, bread, work and freedom are the best we can achieve
And wearing badges is not enough in days like these.

Of course, you can't hear the cockney accent in the written lyric, but the rhyming of "ass" and "farce" offers a hint.

Then there's lines "Help Save the Youth of America":

They're already shipping the body bags down below the Rio Grande
But you can fight for democracy at home and not in some foriegn land
...
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
Omaha will burn with them
Los Alamos will burn them

You could contemporize the first couplet there by altering the rhyme from "Rio Grande" to "Iran," I suppose. It was also a bit chilling to think that, in the time since that song was released (on Taxman, 1986), American cities have in fact been burned a litte. Still, it's good to feel a little fire in the belly again, or at least remembered when I was younger and wore T-shirts with socialist slogans on them...

Some tidbits on Absinthe at Uisge Baugh.