I’ve started transferring our cassette tapes to digital – since we don’t have a tape player any more they are basically sitting in drawers decaying slowly. One of the first tapes had a whole bunch of Billy Bragg tracks which prompted me to pick up Back to Basics, a compilation of his first three releases.
I was surprised to find I didn’t actually own any Billy Bragg music. He’s one of those artists that’s so much the fabric of my personal audio foundations that there’s just an assumption that I must own some, even if it’s not something I listen to on a regular basis.
I picked Back to Basics rather than a “best of” because it’s got most of The Billy Bragg Songs and even those that I don’t know have a familiarity. The next stop of familiarity would be Don’t Try This at Home with Sexuality and The Few.
There’s some crackers on here but really you could just listen to the last three tracks and then go and smash capitalism.