So – Billy Bragg is coming to the Mariposa Folk Festival this year… a festival I have attended faithfully for the last number of years. When I read the announcement about Billy Bragg being added to the lineup I was launched on a wave of nostalgia.
The first time I saw Billy Bragg was back in the summer of 1985 at the Kingswood Theatre at Canada’s Wonderland. He opened for the Smith’s (an amazing concert that made me a lifelong fan of that band). I was trying to recall the first Billy Bragg song I heard. I think it was “A New England” – but I think I first heard the Kristy MacColl version of that (I believe it came out in 1984)… I think it probably led me to look into who this Billy Bragg guy was who wrote it. I’m fairly certain I was aware of who he was when I saw him… I remember some people in the crowd thought he was a roadie who just picked up a guitar and started singing… I had to set’em straight.
It was around that time that I was developing as a singer/songwriter. I played acoustic guitar exclusively… and was actually adamant about the fact that I did not want to play electric guitar… But the reverse is sort of true now (well I’m not really adamantly opposed to playing an acoustic guitar… I just gravitate to the electric and write songs starting with ideas on the electric… I used to exclusively use my acoustic guitar and try to emulate sounds I heard that were obviously produced by someone on electric… anyway… )… The point of this is that back then Billy Bragg was this lone guy who sang and played electric… I think there was some influence for me when I started doing a similar thing.
Anyway… I sort of hate doing straight cover songs… don’t like to sound like the original song… there’s no point… might as well listen to that.
I recorded myself playing this song “live” (on tape… as they used to say… or something like that)… I recorded it last week and after about twenty takes… and buggering up lyrics or guitar or something else… I was pretty much tired of the whole thing and thought it sounded like crap. Then yesterday I listend to the recording again and thought… “hmmm… actually I kind of like it….”. It’s a bit of a meld of Billy’s and Kristy MacColl’s version (without the additional lyrics)… with some Smiths-ish guitar influence (love that Johnny Marr…)
While I was hating it I sort of moved on and used some of the percussive/rhythmic guitar loop technique I was using here – to inspire a new song… which I will present here at some point… soonish…
Anyway… enjoy my cover of Billy Bragg’s “A New England”. Incidentally… if you are also a Billy Bragg / Morrissey fan you will probably enjoy THIS.
