Billy Bragg in Canada – Mick Jones coming to the States !!

Although the recent scope of North American dates by Billy Bragg was somewhat limited I’ve read a number of impressive comments. reviews and blog entries.

Seems the nearly 50 year old Billy (I can’t believe he is 50 in December…how did that happen?) is still mixing the banter and brilliant back catalogue to amazing effect. It’s also great to read that he has included 4 or 5 new songs on the mini-tour which apparently will see a new year release. My main reason to write was to direct Bragg fans to a great audio recording of a recent show by CBC. About seven songs are available online and the sound quality is really first class. Tracks include really radical reworkings of “A New England”, “Valentine’s Day Is Over”, “Sexuality” and the almost 80% reworded “Great Leap Forwards” my favourite line being “I don’t believe you can defeat no axis of evil by putting smart bombs in the hands of stupid people”.

Anyway – check out the link to the songs, the article is good also.

In other news I was very excited to read Carbon Silicon (Mick Jones of the Clash-B.A.D & Tony James of Gen X) are going to be playing their first ever dates in the U.S.

Concerts have been announced for Los Angeles Dec 3rd and New York Dec 5th. I really hope to get to the Los Angeles concert and will write more afterwards. Hopefully it’s a test the water situation to gauge the interest in the States as their debut album ‘The Last Post’ (after working together for 2.5 years) has just been released). If you are in L.A. or NYC try and get to the shows as these two are legends who need no introduction – not to mention that the new stuff sounds pretty good. One idea Mick…..the CSi band tee-shirts will have people in America thinking that you watch too much primetime TV – not that you are following an iconic band from London !!

Cheers for now