Billy Bragg wants the bands to be political again! In an interview with Sabotagetimes.com, the political singer-songwriter talks about the need for people to express their anger and to hear it from bands, live, not on the internet:
‘What’s lost in the Internet is the idea of people coming together. The first time I played Never Buy The Sun at a little festival in a place called Garforth just outside of Leeds was the day before the News of the World closed and it was the week in which the revelation of the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone had become news. And when I sang the first verse people cheered – when I sang the second verse people cheered. The fact that they cheered wasn’t that it was a great song – the reason they cheered was that the anger they felt about what had happened had been anger in isolation. They probably hadn’t had a chance as a community to express their anger – so my singing that song gave them a chance to do something you can’t do on the Internet which is be with your community and together express your anger about something. That’s the thing I’m trying to remind people of.’
And about Occupy Wall Street protest?
‘You know who needs to be there in London? I’ll tell you who needs to get his arse down there – a 20-year-old Billy Bragg.’
He really wants new songwriters to write the right songs, the fighting ones, since, for Billy Brag, music is much more powerful than any facebook group or twitter account:
‘You are in danger of becoming the first generation since the war to grow up worse off than your parents so now it’s back to fighting time and we need to hear some fighting songs.’
I agree, there is a need for a new Billy Bragg generation, but haven't the recent revolutions started on twitter?