sound of the suburbs

I hope there is no need for me explain today's choice of music, which come from long time personal favorite, Billy Bragg. Little side track here as I'm actually quite excited, and I'm not sure that this is good at my age, as in a few weeks I'll be off to Barcelona where I'll be catching Billy live at the Primavera Festival, the last time I saw Bragg live was during the days of the GLC and the first reign of Ken Livingston over London. The Music is taken from Billy's 1990 mini album of traditional political and workers songs that took it's title from his rewritten version of 'The Internationale' and also included a stirring version of the British Labour party's traditional song 'The Red Flag' played to it's more upbeat original tune. I was rather surprised when re listening to the title track to the similarity, in musical terms, between this and Monty Python's 'Every Sperm Is Sacred'! Over at Billy's blog he is up to part 7 of his ongoing podcast detailing his history and as chance would have it this latest posting is where he discusses the making of 'Internationale' and the period of change, well worth a listen, even I have learnt little tit bits of information such as Billy having been banned from East Germany just 6 months before the Berlin Wall came down due to his outspoken support for the imminent changes.
I don't know about you but I've always been a sucker for Russian art work, and all that it inspired such as the rich collection of posters from the Spanish civil war, well if you feel the same way as me there's a nice site here that includes as well a the usual revolution art a series of Russian anti alcohol propaganda.