Glastonbury Festival

Billy Bragg Review

Something to Bragg About

Left Field Tent

Life should be a party and on the last night of the Glastonbury Festival there’s no better place to find one than the Left Field. Although still a baby amongst the Festival fields, this is a venue with a fast growing sense of direction, tradition and unashamed trendiness.

So in keeping with the above, Billy Bragg once again played his final night set to an eager and ever growing audience. No one here would be sneaking out halfway through to catch Mozzer on the Main Stage. They’d come to see their inspiration, partisan disciples of Braggism and proud of it no matter the level of guitar craft or vocal virtuosity – they were here for their guiding light and socialist advisor – and the night was all the better for that.

Ok, so it wasn’t the most clinical of performances from a technical point of view – a ragged old distorting Marshall replaced Bragg’s long time amplifier after an incident with a punk band earlier in the week and the voice suffered from a more than usually gruff glottis – but that didn’t matter. This was fun, this was clowning with friends, missing the strings, messing the vocals and generally lauding the roll of Lord of Misrule.

All the old favourites came out to play from “Saturday Boy” (almost twice before he remembered he’d already performed it), “Power in a Union”, “Between the Wars” and his signature “To Have and to Have Not”, all still able to evoke a passion here or emotion there. And everyone was happy, singing along to every syllable like an old time musical sing-a-long.

“Mixing pop and politics, they ask me what the point is?” Bragg once sang in “The Great Leap Forward”. Well, if a trip to the Left Field doesn’t answer that question for you then there’s probably something intrinsically cynical in your cold, dark heart that no amount of psycho- restructuring could fix. For the Left Field - and tonight’s inimitable host - personifies congeniality, brotherhood and the very spirit for which Glastonbury is renowned worldwide. Long may it last.

Jon Andriessen

Leftfield's Website

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