Influences part 2

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 05 November 2006 09:07:58

I think I was about 13 when my dad gave me a copy of Talking With The Taxman about Poetry for Christmas. He had realised that I was borrowing his Dylan records and so, if I'm remembering how it all came about, gave me a Billy Bragg tape, (along with the over priced Beatles compilations I'd requested), because he knew I'd like it. I am almost sure that at that point I hadn't discovered Billy Bragg.

Whilst the memory gets slightly hazy after a couple of decades I can still remember the sheer delight that a slightly over-serious, politically minded, developing indie kid got when she listened to that cassette tape in her Walkman as she sat in her parents car that Christmas. Suddenly she had a soundtrack, relevant to her generation, to accompany her life.

The soundtrack has developed as I've grown older, and "Levi Stubbs Tears", "Help Save the Youth of America" and "There is Power in a Union" now play on the i-pod rather than the Walkman. However, the point is they remain, an ever constant in a changing world - challenging the cynical thirty something as to where the passion and idealism of that teenager disappeared to.