On the Turntable: “Workers Playtime” by Billy Bragg (1988)

On the Turntable: “Workers Playtime” by Billy Bragg, Elektra Records, 1988. Rating 9/10

The other night, my friend Jan and I were comparing notes on folk music. I’d mentioned that the folk music my Dad loved was mainly the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul, and Mary. But also that there was a folk movement happening when I was in high school led by folks like Indigo Girls and Tracy Chapman. And I should’ve mentioned Billy Bragg because I love him. And this one is my favorite of his. 

An outspoken anti-capitalist with a big romantic heart and a healthy sense of humor, Bragg was post-punk in the sense that he arrived at folk music via both Woody Guthrie and The Clash, and his earliest records were very much solo affairs where he’d just bang out his little songs on an electric guitar. He writes love songs and he writes furious screeds and calls to activism. And sometimes he writes furious love songs that are also calls to activism. 

By the time he released Workers Playtime, his sound had expanded to include more varied instrumentation and full band arrangements, but this album still retains the live-in-the-studio sound, the intimacy and immediacy of his early records. And it’s got a bunch of his best songs and performances - “Must I Paint You a Picture”, “The Price I Pay”, and “She’s Got a New Spell”, the gorgeous, solo a capella “Tender Comrade”, and the rollicking album-closer “Waiting for the Great Leap Forward”: “So join the struggle while you may, the revolution is just a t-shirt away.