Sunday, March 25, 2007

Will YouTube give MTV the sack*

Regular readers may have noticed I'm a Billy Bragg fan. I am - although I resent the fact that he hasn't toured New Zealand since I became a fan (which is a long time - I'm almost 29 and I once sang 'A New England' and meant it). Anyway in a recent YouTube excursion (a rare treat for me, since I don't have YouTube at home). I found a copy of Billy Bragg and Bill Bailey singing Unisex Chip shop (Bill Bailey's Billy Bragg parody). I can't recommend it highly enough - the gherkins and tigers are perfect:



There's lots of Billy Bragg fun on YouTube. My favourites included Between the Wars from his first appearance on Top of the Pops - he's so serious. I also loved this video for There's Power in a Union, but I couldn't decide if I thought the images of women were tokenistic (I'm leaning towards 'no they're representations of a gendered workforce')

Then there's videos for Sexuality, Great Leap Forward, Boy Done Good. Just a warning that they're a tad smurfy - what is it about folk singers and extremely literal music videos?

*From a recent live versions of Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards.