Back to Basics (Billy Bragg album)

Infobox Album |
Name = Back to Basics
Type = Compilation album
Artist = Billy Bragg


Released = July 7 1987
Recorded = 1983-1985
Genre = Folk
Length = 57:53
Label = Cooking Vinyl
Producer = ???
Reviews =

Last album = "Talking with the Taxman about Poetry" (1986)
This album = "Back to Basics" (1987)
Next album = "Workers Playtime" (1988)

"Back to Basics" is a 1987 collection of Billy Bragg's first three releases: The albums "Life's A Riot With Spy Vs. Spy" and "Brewing Up with Billy Bragg" and the EP "Between The Wars". This collection did not contain any new material, but did document Billy Bragg's early "one man and his guitar" approach. The songs collected on this release demonstrate major recurrent themes in Bragg's work: highly critical commentary on Thatcherite Britain, laced with poetic love songs. The collection was re-released in November 1993 on the Cooking Vinyl label.

Track listing

#"The Milkman of Human Kindness"
#"To Have and To Have Not"
#"Richard"
#"Lovers Town Revisited"
#"A New England"
#"The Man in the Iron Mask"
#"The Busy Girl Buys Beauty"
#"It Says Here"
#"Love Gets Dangerous"
#"The Myth of Trust"
#"From a Vauxhall Velox"
#"The Saturday Boy"
#"Island of No Return"
#"St Swithin's Day"
#"Like Soldiers Do"
#"This Guitar Says Sorry"
#"Strange Things Happen"
#"A Lover Sings"
#"Between the Wars"
#"World Turned Upside Down"
#"Which Side are You on"