Billy Bragg

Remember punk? Remember when the punkers became disillusioned and migrated into folk music, taking their socialist principles and politics with them? Billy Bragg was at the vanguard of that movement, running with the likes of The Men They Couldn't Hang, The Boothill Foot-tappers and Poguemahone (Gaelic for kiss my ass -later to become The Pogues).

That was in about 1983, and as things fall apart, so do things change. These days, Billy has found a new songwriting partner-a guy who, though he's been dead for 30 years, could write a pretty mean lyric in his day.

Last year, on the anniversary of Woody Guthrie's death, Billy went on a pilgrimage with Nora Guthrie, daughter of America's greatest folk legend, to New York's amusement park Coney Island. They visited Mermaid Avenue, where Woody spent much of his post-war life and wrote a mass of songs.

And so the name of the first album of songs comprising words by Woody Guthrie and music by Billy Bragg and Jeff Tweedy is Mermaid Avenue. Whether you are a fan of Woody Guthrie, Billy Bragg, or indeed of Jeff Tweedy's band Wilco, this album is likely to leave you startled.

"Billy's perfect," insists Nora about the album. "The writings and the thoughts totally transcend America and United States history. It goes further than that. It incorporates Dust Bowl and it keeps going. It's the ideas that are important, and I don't care what instrument anybody uses to express them. It goes way beyond folk music ..."

  -- SA CW