BILLY BRAGG
Supported by Mick Thomas
SAT 26 JAN @ 7:30PM
SOLD OUT
- Price
- $66 + bf
- Bookings
- 02 9550 3666
- Mode
- Concert - General Admission
- Tickets
- On sale now @ metrotheatre.com.au
- Buy tickets online
Buy tickets online:
07.45pm – Mick Thomas
09.00pm – Special Guest Performance
10.15pm – Billy Bragg
Some artists transcend the generation gap. Others are such a part of the musical fabric it’s hard to tell which generation they belonged to in the first place. In 1996, BILLY BRAGG sang for the first generation of BIG DAY OUT goers. In 2008, he’ll sing for a whole new generation of BIG DAY OUTers – and probably a few who were there last millennium, too.
Just one month before heading our way this summer, BILLY BRAGG, known to some as the Bard of Barking, will turn 50. He has spent at least 35 of those 50 years belting out songs on his guitar, songs about politics, love and the common man, some wildly funny, others stridently socialist, more than a few that bring a tear to the eye. Songs including You Woke Up My Neighbourhood, She’s Leaving Home, New England, Between the Wars and England, Half English.
“(BRAGG’s) ineffable blend of blokiness, touchingly poetic imagery, and fierce political commitment has made him a fully-fledged national treasure.” (thisislondon.co.uk, December 2006)
A folkie propelled by the passion of punk, BRAGG has also spent his career speaking up – supporting striking miners and forming the Red Wedge collective in the ’80s, and bringing music and meaning to inmates with his latest initiative, Jail Guitar Doors.
Just as The Clash inspired him, BRAGG is now a beacon for young British musicians. Street-wise Londoners Hard-Fi, for example, have declared one of their new songs was inspired by BRAGG’s 2006 novella, The Progressive Pilgrim. The book is about his nation’s search through the ages for ways to enshrine fairness and justice, fighting racism, upholding punk ideals, and what “British values” might be. “I’ve been re-energised by writing it,” BRAGG has said of the book.
Inspiring – and reinspired. BRAGG says the fire is still burning inside him. “Since the process of selling CDs has become more volatile, live music is having a resurgence, which I think is good,” he recently told the Evening Standard. “If you can do it live, if you can move an audience, then you’ve really got something, and maybe you don’t have to go and work in an office or in a car factory.”
