Billy Bragg "Talking With the Taxman About Poetry" Review
WORKERS OF THE WORLD - RECITE! BILLY BRAGG Talking With The Taxman About Poetry ( Go! Discs ) SUBTITLED 'THE DIFFICULT third album', this is Billy growing into a Big Boy. Decorating the sleeve with Mayakovsky's poem, Bragg takes seriously his role as poet in a workers' land - the minstrel, gleeman, troubadour, retaining certain community traditions yet sending counter-myths crashing. Poetic rhymes are a "caress, a slogan, a bayonet" . Alternate scourge and diplomat, he moves from the more confessional, awkward bitterbrashness of 'Brewing Up' to general observation, an amplification of feeling - no less pointed, with those slices of detail more assured. Not just one man and his guitar, friends, including Johnny Marr and Kirsty MacColl, are enlisted to give wider range and a touch of frivolity, as on the madly urgent version of The Count Bishops' 'Train Train'. Ms MacColl adds muted, pleasant harmonies to the opening track 'Greeting