Mixing Pop and Politics - Billy Bragg Quiz

Answer: Barking

From askoxford.com: "barking, adjective Brit. informal, completely mad". Sure he might be a bit of a dag ("dag: noun Australian English Informal, a person who looks unattractive or who behaves in an unattractive way" - dictionary.cambridge.org), but he wasn't born in Dagenham. And as to mucky or foul, well, it's in the eye of the beholder, really, isn't it?

If you're interested in the "born Stephen William Bragg on 20 December, 1957" kind of information, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Bragg is a good place to start. Also, billybragg.co.uk is the official site and has lots of great stuff.

Answer: T-shirt away

The title for this quiz comes from "Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards", too:

"Mixing Pop and Politics he asks me what the use is
I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses.
While looking down the corridor
Out to where the van is waiting
I'm looking for the Great Leap Forwards

Jumble sales are organised and pamphlets have been posted.
Even after closing time there's still parties to be hosted.
You can be active with the activists
Or sleep in with the sleepers
While you're waiting for the Great Leap Forwards."

It's nice there's an option for the lazy revolutionary too!

Answer: Mary

The song is "The Short Answer", again from the album "Workers' Playtime". In it we find an example of Bragg lyrics which unkind people might call nonsense and a feeble attempt to make laboured rhymes. Others might see the deft use of "common" language and references as indicative of the "everydayness" of love (don't try to look that one up, that little gem of literary criticism is all mine!)

"What happened in the past
Remained a mystery of natural history.
She should have been the last
But she was just the latest.
If she wanted to be a farmer's wife
I would endure that muddy life
I would dig for victory.

...While you and I sat down to tea
I remember you said to me
That no amount of poetry
Would mend this broken heart
But you can put the Hoover round
If you want to make a start."

By the way, the Hoover (upright vacuum cleaner) was not invented by American William Hoover, as popularly believed. The inventor was his wife's cousin, James Murray Spangler, from whom Hoover bought the patent. Somehow it just doesn't have the same ring: "Quick, the Archbishop's on his way, do the Spanglering".

Answer: The Delivery Man of Human Love

Mr Collins makes the comment in the liner notes to the 2003 compilation "Must I Paint You a Picture?: The Essential Billy Bragg". "The Milkman of Human Kindness" originally appears on "Life's A Riot" (1983).

In the original, the lyric is:

"I am the milkman of human kindness
I will leave an extra pint."

Mr Collins tells us the Japanese version is:

"I am the delivery man of human love
And I will leave an extra portion."

He goes on to comment "which is nice". You'd have to be a hard person to disagree.

This song shows more of Bragg's earthy romanticism (another one of mine!):

"If you're lonely, I will call.
If you're poorly, I will send poetry.

...If you're sleeping, I will wait.
If your bed is wet, I will dry your tears."

Ooh, if I weren't already married...I'd still have no chance with him...sigh.

Answer: Phil Ochs

The song is called "I Dreamed I Saw Phil Ochs Last Night", and I think Billy sums it up best on the liner notes to "The Internationale".

"New Bob Dylans were ten a penny in the late sixties but there was only ever one Phil Ochs. Both artists came out of that same Greenwich Village protest music scene but when Dylan became a rock star in 1966, Phil stayed true to the political tradition of Woody Guthrie...When he died in 1976 his FBI file was 410 pages long. America has yet to produce another songwriter like him."

Phil Ochs wrote a tribute song to Woody Guthrie ("Bound for Glory", 1963). In turn, Bob Dylan and many other artists have written and recorded tributes to Phil Ochs. To complete the circle, Billy Bragg has his own very special link to Woody Guthrie, which we'll look at more closely in Question 6.

"The Internationale" is a workers' song which has itself worked very hard. Written by Eugene Pottier in 1871 after the fall of the Paris Commune, it was set to music by Pierre Degeyter in 1888. It served as the National Anthem of the Soviet Union until 1943, and has more recently surfaced in the mouths of Chinese students during the infamous demonstrations in Tiananmen Square (1989). Again Billy says it best in his liner notes from "The Internationale".

"...Pete Seeger asked me to sing the Internationale with him at the Vancouver Folk Festival. I told him I thought the English lyrics, whose translator is unknown, were archaic and often unsingable. He agreed and suggested I write some new lyrics to Degeyter's stirring tune."

The original translation was pretty tough going in places, and some lines might not give quite the desired impression of the struggle.

"And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We'll shoot the generals on our own side."

The new kinder, gentler Socialism is perhaps better served by the Bragg version:

"In our world poisoned by exploitation
Those who have taken, now they must give
And end the vanity of nations
We've but one Earth on which to live."

Answer: Ingrid Bergman

One of the problems in writing about someone who is himself such a great writer is that no matter how I try to describe something, I find that Billy has done it better! So, again in his own words, this time from the release notes to "Mermaid Avenue".

"[Nora Guthrie] runs the Woody Guthrie archive in New York city and offered me access to over a thousand complete lyrics of her father's that are in her care. Hand-written or typed, often bearing the date and place where they were written and sometimes accompanied by an insight into the process at work, they offer us a broader picture of a man who over the past sixty years has been vilified by the American Right whilst simultaneously being canonised by the American Left. In her original letter to me, Nora talked of breaking the mould, of working with her father to give words a new sound and a new context.

The result is not a tribute album but a collaboration between Woody Guthrie and a new generation of songwriters who until now had only glimpsed him fleetingly, over the shoulder of Bob Dylan or somewhere in the distance of a Bruce Springsteen song."

The song in question is called simply "Ingrid Bergman". Quote from billybragg.co.uk

Answer: Lead singer of Motown group The Four Tops.

This song tells the sad tale of a beaten woman in a loveless marriage who keeps herself going by listening to Motown music. The song references other Motown greats:

"Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong
Are here to make everything right that's wrong
Holland and Holland and Lamont Dozier too
Are here to make it all okay with you."

Whitfield and Strong were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2004 for their penning of such classics as "I Heard it Through the Grapevine", "Papa Was a Rolling Stone", and Edwin Starr's "War" (what is it good for - huh!). Sorry, couldn't 'hep' myself with that last one, which segues seamlessly into the song-writing team of Holland, Holland and Dozier. Brothers Brian and Eddie Holland and Lamont Dozier wrote The Temptations' hit "Can't Help Myself", as well as "Bernadette" for The Four Tops and The Supremes' "Stop! In the Name of Love".

Levi Stubbs - cousin of another Motown legend, Jackie Wilson - turned to acting in 1986, providing the voice of Audrey II (the enormous vampiric, man-eating plant) in "Little Shop of Horrors". Maybe that's why he was crying...

Answer: The Three Degrees

The Three Degrees were a Philly Soul group who underwent a number of line-up changes throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s (I feel like a bad commercial radio station - "all the hits of the 80s, 90s and mid-90s"). Their most high-profile fan appears to be Prince Charles, as they performed at his 30th birthday party and were guests at his first wedding (no record of them being invited to the second).

The Nolans (or the Nolan Sisters, or variants on the theme) were and are an Irish family group who hit it big before the Corrs were even born. Their website - nolansisters.com - gives us the following bio info:

The pop phenomenon known as The Nolans came into blossom during the late 1970's after a succession of highly popular TV & variety show appearances...Tommy and Maureen Nolan were the singing parents behind off springs Tommy Jnr, Anne, Denise, Maureen, Brian, Linda, Bernadette and Coleen.

Bernie is currently starring as Sergeant Sheelagh Murphy in ITV's popular Police drama, "The Bill"."

Off springs?

The Pixies Three also had a number of different names during their career, all based on the Pixies theme (note: do not confuse with The Pixies of "This Monkey's Gone to Heaven" fame). Again their website - thepixiesthree.com - gives us this info:

"In 1963, three high school friends (Midge Bollinger, Debby Swisher and Kaye McCool) from Hanover, Pennsylvania, signed a recording contract with Mercury Records."

How could you go wrong with names like that? They were also part of the Philly Sound, and had links to Leon Huff and Kenny Gamble, who wrote "When Will I See You Again?" (note: only consider going to their website - gamble-huffmusic.com - if you enjoy waiting for gimmick-filled pages to load, which then yield little or nothing of interest).

Olivia Newton-John (or, as "The Goodies" called her, "Our Livvie") doesn't belong on this list for a number of reasons. To begin with, she is the grandchild of a Nobel Prize Winner (maternal grandfather Max Born, Physics, 1954). She also distinguishes herself with success in ventures outside music, while still recording and performing regularly *and* maintaining a level of dignity appropriate to her age.

Bonus piece of Olivia Trivia: her mother, Irene, left us in 2004, but you can visit a bench the family dedicated to her in the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne, Australia.

Answer: Riff Raff

"Riff Raff - The Singles 1977-1980" was released in 2002 to mark the 25th Anniversary of the release of the band's first EP.

Two of the names are just plain silly, but the Diggers were an important group in the history of international Socialism. Not so much a rock group as a collection of dissatisfied English peasants, they fought oppression in 1649-50, and were led by Gerrard Winstlanley and William Everard. Winstanley wrote the ballad "Levellers and Diggers" about an incident at St George's Hill in 1649. This was later updated by English folk singer Leon Rosselson as "The World Turned Upside Down (Diggers)", a version of which appeared on Billy Bragg's "Between the Wars" EP in 1985. An overview of the Diggers and their offshoots is at diggers.org.

Answer: Leaves That Are Green

Rather disappointingly, all I can find on the specific subject is a fan's opinion that Bragg has owned up to stealing the lines. Not the kind of deep significance I was after. Just good lines I guess.

However, further research opened up a veritable Pandora's Box o' worms and interesting titbits:

- The Paul Simon incident isn't the only example of Bragg being accused of plagiarism, albeit informally. Most seem content to excuse his habit of "manual sampling" as "paying tribute" to the artists involved.
- Paul Simon played several songs with George Harrison on "Saturday Night Live" in November 1976. In September of that year, Harrison had been charged with "subconscious plagiarism" in one of the most famous cases in music history. The problem was over similarities between his 1963 song "My Sweet Lord" and the Chiffons' 1962 hit "He's So Fine".
- Another Paul Simon (1928-2003) was a Senator from Illinois. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic Presidential Nomination in 1988, a year many from the Party would still like to forget. The controversy revolved around front-runners Michael Dukakis and Joe Biden. Dukakis' campaign manager, John Sasso, accused Biden of plagiarism in a speech, producing a video tape of British Labour Party Leader, Neil Kinnock, delivering the same words some time earlier. This led to revelations that other elements of Biden's résumé weren't exactly truthful, and he pulled out of the race. Dukakis eventually won the nomination, but not the election.
- Quite possibly the most used, least accredited quote on the internet is this one, attributed to American writer Walter Mizner (1876-1933): "Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research."

So what does this tell us about Billy Bragg? Possibly nothing, possibly it points to a divine piece of poetic justice: Fellow English singer Kirsty Maccoll's version of "A New England" gained greater commercial success than his!