Billy Bragg - March 21 2023 - Sydney

Finally, the last of the pandemic postponements. I bought these tickets in 2019 and I can no longer remember how many times the date was pushed back. I do recall that Billy’s “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back Tour” was suppose to have commenced in Australia. By the time we finally saw it, he’d taken it right around the world and was in the middle of doing another tour. It had been a little difficult maintaining the bubbling excitement over so many years. Yet that is how I felt when I first read about this tour. I was an early Billy Bragg fan, loving the folk singer with the punk attitude. Unfortunately, I never got to see him back then so the opportunity to see him performing songs from his first three albums was too good to miss. He ‘chopped and clanged’ his way through 20 songs, just him and two guitars, except for a couple of songs when he was accompanied on keyboards.

The Myth of Trust (00:20)
It Says Here (03:55)
Greetings to the New Brunette (06:20)
The Man in the Iron Mask (09:47)
Levi Stubbs’ Tears (13:41)
A New England (19:50)

It had certainly been a long wait, but as the man himself said, he probably performs those early songs better today than when he was just starting out. A wonderful journey back to the early 80’s.