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"This country's finest rock poet" - NME.

Acclaimed English singer-songwriter Billy Bragg re-releases four albums with an extra disc in each. Dating from 1988 to 2002 - up to, but not including his work with Wilco and The Woody Guthrie Archive on the Mermaid Avenue project Billy Bragg Volume 2 is a boxed set companion to the much-applauded Billy Bragg Volume 1 set, released back in March.

"A valuable addition to our cultural lives." - John Peel.

Over the last two-plus decades Billy Bragg has gained an elevated reputation - among those prepared to look beyond the agit-pop-busker caricature – as a man who writes sublime bitter-sweet love songs alongside an awareness of the world's woes. The latest box set features a massive eight CDs and one DVD with a wealth of rare and previously unreleased tracks – all four albums are also available as individual (double disc) releases.

While the four albums featured in Billy Bragg Volume 1 concentrated on the first decade of Bragg’s career - his campaigning during the Miners' Strike and concerts and travels in the former Soviet Union, Volume 2 takes up the story with the release of his fourth album; Workers Playtime, in September 1988. More focused on matters of the heart than political issues, that album also saw Bragg move away from the sparse arrangements that had characterised his earlier work. The public approved – the album was a Top 20 hit in the UK.

Personal

In 1991 Bragg issued the critically acclaimed Don’t Try This at Home, which reached number eight in the UK chart. With musical contributions from such stellar talents as Johnny Marr and, from REM, Peter Buck and Michael Stipe, the album ranged in themes from personal tragedies to a strident condemnation of racists and football hooligans. Among the songs was the hit single, Sexuality.

A long time was to elapse before Billy Bragg made another album. One of the reasons for his absence was fatherhood – Bragg took time out to concentrate on his family. When he did return, in 1996, the resulting William Bloke album showed Bragg balancing his political and personal commitments, an unsentimental examination of his life and values.

The album also marked a return to the stripped-down Bragg, often no more than Billy and his guitar. William Bloke, a Top 20 UK hit, was to be the last album of Bragg’s own songs in the Nineties.

Before the end of the decade, however, he had returned to road fronting Billy Bragg & The Blokes in a 1999 UK tour. Among the band members was the legendary Ian McLagan, the keyboards player with the Small Faces and its later Rod Stewart incarnation, The Faces.

That tour worked so well it was inevitable that The Blokes would be a permanent band, playing with Bragg in the U.S. and Europe. The Blokes also worked with Bragg when he returned to the recording studio for his first album of the new millennium, England, Half English. The album, which explored Bragg’s notions about identity and Englishness, was released in March, 2002 – by sheer coincidence the precise 20th anniversary of Bragg’s first-ever solo gig, the Sociology Disco at North London Polytechnic on March 1982.

The box set comprises:

1. Workers Playtime – Billy’s fourth album originally released in 1988, together with a bonus CD featuring 12 extra tracks. Workers Playtime is also being released separately, as a two-CD set.

Disc One (Original Album)

She's Got A New Spell
Must I Paint You A Picture?
Tender Comrade
The Price I Pay
Little Time Bomb
Rotting On Remand
Valentine's Day Is Over
Life With The Lions
The Only One
The Short Answer
Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards

Disc Two Bonus Tracks

The Only One (Demo)
The Price I Pay (Demo)
Love Has No Pride
That's Entertainment
She's Got A New Spell (Alternative Version)
The Short Answer (Alternative Version)
Little Time Bomb (Alternative Version)
Bad Penny (Demo)
Reason To Believe (Live)
Must I Paint You A Picture? (Extended Version)
Raglan Road (Live)

2. Don’t Try This at Home – the original 1991 album and a bonus CD with 14 additional tracks. The album is also being released separately, as a two-CD set.

Disc One (Original Album)

Accident Waiting To Happen
Moving The Goalposts
Everywhere
Cindy Of A Thousand Lives
You Woke Up My Neighbourhood
Trust
God's Footballer
The Few
Sexuality
Mother Of The Bride
Tank Park Salute
Dolphins
North Sea Bubble
Rumours Of War
Wish You Were Her
Body Of Water

Disc Two (Bonus Tracks)

Party Of God
North Sea Bubble (Demo)
Sexuality (Demo)
Just One Victory (Alternative Mix)
Everywhere (Alternative Version)
Trust (Demo)
Bread & Circuses
Cindy Of A Thousand Lives (Demo)
The Few (Demo)
Revolution
Tighten Up Your Wig (With The Athenians & DJ Woody Dee)
MBH
This Gulf Between Us
Piccadilly Rambler

3. William Bloke – Bragg’s 1996 album plus 11 extra tracks on a bonus CD. William Bloke is also being released separately, as a two-CD set.

Disc One (Original Album)

From Red To Blue
Upfield
Everybody Loves You Babe
Sugardaddy
A Pict Song
Brickbat
The Space Race Is Over
Northern Industrial Town
The Fourteenth Of February
King James Version
Goalhanger

Disc Two (Bonus Tracks)

As Long As You Hold Me (Demo)
Who's Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet? (Demo)
Sugar Daddy (Demo)
The Space Race Is Over (Demo)
Goalhanger (Demo)
Upfield (Demo)
The Fourteenth Of February (Demo)
Qualifications
Never Had No One Ever
Thatcherites
All Fall Down

4. England, Half English – Billy’s 2002 release and a bonus CD containing 13 extra tracks. The album is also being released separately, as a two-CD set.

Disc One (Original Album)

St. Monday
Jane Allen
Distant Shore
England, Half English
NPWA
Some Days I See The Point
Baby Faroukh
Take Down The Union Jack
Another Kind Of Judy
He'll Go Down
Dreadbelly
Tears Of My Tracks

Disc Two Bonus Tracks

Billericay Dickie
Mansion On The Hill
Glad And Sorry
He'll Go Down (Demo)
Yarra Song
You Pulled The Carpet Out
Mystery Shoes
Tears Of My Tracks (Demo)
Take Down The Union Jack (Band Version)
England, Half English (12-inch Remix)
1 2 3 4; Dry Bed (Band Version)
Danny Rose
She Smiled Sweetly

5. If You’ve Got a Guestlist – an in-concert DVD featuring Billy Bragg & The Red Stars at London’s Town & Country Club in 1991 plus Billy Bragg at the Broadway Barking, the singer’s hometown show on his 'Hope Not Hate' anti-fascist tour.

Billy Bragg & The Red Stars Live At The Town & Country Club (November 1991)

You Woke Up My Neighbourhood
The Saturday Boy
The Marching Song Of The Covert Battalions
The World Turned Upside Down
Dolphins
Valentine's Day Is Over
North Sea Bubble
Body Of Water
Levi Stubbs' Tears
A Lover Sings
She's Got A New Spell
Cindy Of A Thousand Lives
Accident Waiting To Happen
Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards
Tender Comrade; Tank Park Salute
The Warmest Room
Sexuality

Billy Bragg Live At The Broadway Barking (May 2006)

A Lover Sings
The Price Pay
Debris
Tank Park Salute
All You Fascists
Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards
A13, Trunk Road To The Sea

For more information on Billy Bragg - including an excellent free-to-download podcast series of documentaries - visit his official site: www.billybragg.com ot the boxed set and book micro site: www.braggbookandbox.com

The themes that pervade England, Half English have been further amplified in The Progressive Patriot: A Search For Belonging, Bragg’s first book, which was published by Bantam Press the same day Billy Bragg Volume 2 is released. The Progressive Patriot is part autobiography and part polemic on the meaning of national identity in modern Britain. The writer of such great songs as Help Save The Youth Of America, A New England, Levi Stubbs Tears, St Swithins Day and Must I Paint You A Picture – deserves a collection like this like few singer songwriters of the last twenty years. Essential listening and viewing.

"Tim and Dawn from The Office could be characters from a Billy Bragg song. It's the same sentiment" - Stephen Merchant, co-creator of The Office.

Billy Bragg - Volume 2 is in the shops now, as is the book: The Progressive Patriot: A Search For Belonging. The CD boxed set - along with volume 1 and the previously released Essential Billy Bragg collection - is issued by Cooking Vinyl.

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