Bragg

Featuring 38 Classic tracks compiled from the BBC archive spanning 1983 to 2019. Fully remastered many previously unreleased. Includes selected highlights from sessions for John Peel, David Jensen, Janice Long, Phill Jupitus, Bob Harris, Tom Robinson & more.

Billy Bragg has been the crown prince of pop (and country and "anti" folk) politics—though the Englishman would certainly hate the elitist leanings of that title—going on four decades. His 13th album has no shortage of sly, damning takes on politics; but it's also full of beautiful life lessons. "Should have seen it coming but I didn't understand/ That hubris is the enemy of best-laid plans," he sings on the slow-Sunday-morning soul song "Should Have Seen It Coming," imbued with warm Hammond as well as both pedal and lap steel. Written during the pandemic lockdown, it's one of many songs that reference the personal instabilities triggered by isolation.

Billy Bragg - The Internationale - Special Reissue Bonus Edition (2006) {Warner orig rel 1990}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 386 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 148 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 66 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1990, 2006 Billy Bragg / Warner | 5101134952
Rock / Alternative / Folk / Folk Rock

The Internationale With Live & Dangerous EP & Bonus Tracks. This is the definitive collection that represents all that went into making the original album. The world is indeed an great big onion which can make you cry or if you fry it it'll make your mouth water. Isn't Mother Nature amazing? And as the inhabitants of Esperantovia say, Se vi povas legi ĉi tiu tiame vi estas vere internacia kaj vi havas gajnis la rajton je aĉeti ĉi tiu albumo. Billy Bragg's albums have always contained material with the strong political slant of classic folksingers in the Woody Guthrie/Bob Dylan mold. This release shows him at his most muckrakingly fervent and angry. Only "The Marching Song of the Covert Battalions" has music actually composed by Bragg – and that selection contains a lengthy quote of the tune "When Johnny Come Marching Home."

Billy Bragg - Mr. Love & Justice (2008) {2CD Cooking Vinyl COOKCD452X}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 430 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 181 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 28 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2008 Billy Bragg / Cooking Vinyl | COOKCD452X
Rock / Alternative Folk / Folk / Folk Rock / Singer/Songwriter

It's both significant and troubling that Billy Bragg's best albums since releasing Talking with the Taxman About Poetry in 1986 were the two Mermaid Avenue volumes, in which Bragg set Woody Guthrie's unpublished lyrics to new music with Wilco serving as his collaborators and backing band, suggesting that this former one-man band suddenly needed plenty of help to communicate with his audience. Bragg sounded confident and all but unbeatable on his first few albums in the '80s, but political and creative uncertainty have dominated much of his work since then. Which is why Mr. Love & Justice is a pleasant and encouraging surprise – while hardly perfect, it's easily Bragg's best and most consistent solo effort since Don't Try This at Home, and finds him coming to terms with maturity and the changing face of the world, two bugaboos that have been dogging his muse for some time.

Billy Bragg - Live At The Union Chapel London (2014) {CD+DVD9 NTSC Cooking Vinyl COOKCD601}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 408 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 161 Mb
DVD9 -> 7.14 Gb | All Regions | NTSC 16:9 | Dolby AC3, 6 ch / LPCM, 2 ch | ~ 151 min | ISO Image
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 175 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2014 Billy Bragg / Cooking Vinyl | COOKCD601
Alternative Folk / Folk / Folk Rock / Singer/Songwriter / Urban Folk / Anti-Folk

If you weren’t fortunate enough to make it to this concert - or even if you were - this has to be one of Billy’s best gigs and one of the best documented. None of that holding your mobile over your head and annoying everyone else behind you, then missing it all and having a wobbly, screechy video that no one wants to see again. This is a multi-camera epic recorded in stunning 5.1 surround sound make you feel like you were sat in seat 3B and that if you shout ‘Play A New England’ loud enough, Billy might hear you - he’d still ignore you but it’s the thought that counts.

Billy Bragg & Wilco - Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions (2012) {3CD+DVD5 NTSC, Nonesuch 7559-79626-0}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 1.04 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 384 Mb
DVD5 -> 3.94 Gb | All Regions | NTSC 16:9 | English (Dolby AC3, 2 ch) | ~ 88 min | ISO Image
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 431 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2012 Nonesuch Records | 7559-79626-0
Rock / Alternative / Alternative Folk / Protest Songs

The two volumes of Mermaid Avenue, released in 1998 and 2000 and named after the New York street where legendary folk artist Woody Guthrie lived in the 1940s, were collaborations between cult American alt-country/avant-garde rockers Wilco and revered British protest singer Billy Bragg, on which they set to music previously unreleased lyrics by Guthrie. This exhaustive four-disc set features both releases together with a whole new album of previously unreleased songs and the documentary Man in the Sand, which chronicles the project.