Brutality and the Economy Are Related

Album: Billy Bragg, Workers Playtime, 1988

Acquired: I probably received this a birthday or Christmas gift in 1988. While I can't remember who I came this, I do remember my dormmate Barry telling me that I really I needed to add it to my collection when we first saw the video for "Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards," which wasn't this one.

Best Track: Tie: "Little Time Bomb" and "Valentine's Day Is Over"

Lasting Memory: Trying to convince former official of the American Communist Party and then-grad school classmate that Billy Bragg's songs about love were better than his songs about social justice while we were all having too many pints at The Cellar in the fall of 1994.

Bragg devoted most of Workers Playtime to love songs that are in no way, shape, or form playful. He was probably having us on with the title since he does seem to be one of the very few prominent socialists with a sense of humor and a love of sport. Still, he did subtitle the album Capitalism Is Killing Music, so he was serious about something.

On the political side, Bragg gave voice to his pacifism by including "Tender Comrade," which an a cappella rendering of a traditional song about soldiers trying to reenter society after returning from the battlefield. He also had disparaging things to say about the British prison system in "Rotting on Remand," and he upbraided shopping mall revolutionaries in "Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards." In that song, which closes the album, Bragg sings "Join the struggle while you may/The revolution is just a t-shirt away." (Maoism in Peru is a great idea! It could yet work, and nobody'll get hurt.)

Bragg has way more interesting thins to say about love and its pains, though. He loves one woman so much, he'd "walk a mile with a stone in his shoe." The Saturday Boy is now a bookstore clerk whom Mary, who he places "between Marx and marzipan in the dictionary" tells "You know honey it's such a shame/You'll never be any good at this game/You bruise too easily."

Not that love would ever last if it could be found. The two best songs on Workers Playtime describe breakups. The first is how breaking up can just break a man. The second is about how a breakup can make a woman. I can never figure out if one of the letters the man in "little Time Bomb" is reading is the letter the woman in "Valentine's Day is Over" left tacked to the door of the flat. You make the call.

"Little Time Bomb"
One of them's off her food
And the other one's off his head
And both of them are off down the boozer
To drink a toast
To the one that he hates most
And she says there are no winners, only losers

Well if there are no winners
Then what is this he thinks
As he watches her complete a lap of honour
And he sits in the stands
With his head in his hands
And he thinks of all the things
He'd like to bring down upon her

Revenge will bring cold comfort in this darkest hour
As the juke box says 'It's All Over Now'
And he stands and he screams
What have I done wrong
I've fallen in love with a little time bomb

In public he's such a man
He's punching at the walls with his bare and bloody hands
He's screaming and shouting and acting crazy
But at home he sits alone and he cries like a baby

He holds your letters but he can't read them
As he fights this loneliness that you call freedom
You said this would happen and you were not wrong
I've fallen in love with a little time bomb

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"Valentine's Day Is Over"
Some day boy you'll reap what you've sown
You'll catch a cold and you'll be on your own
And you will see that what's wrong with me
Is wrong with everyone that
You want to play your little games on

Poetry and flowers pretty words and threats
You've gone to the dogs again and I'm not placing bets
On you coming home tonight anything but blind
If you take me for granted then you must expect to find
Surprise, surprise

Valentine's Day is over, it's over
Valentine's Day is over

If you want to talk about it well you know where the phone is
Don't come round reminding me again how brittle bone is
God didn't make you an angel the Devil made you a man
That brutality and economy are related now I understand
When will you realize that as above so below there is no love

For the girl with the hour glass figure
Time runs out very fast
We used to want the same things but that's all in the past
And lately it seems that as it all gets tougher
Your ideal of justice just becomes rougher and rougher

Thank you for the things you bought me thank you for the card
Thank you for the things you taught me when you hit me hard
That love between two people must be based on understanding
Until that's true you'll find your things
All stacked out on the landing, surprise, surprise

Listen to clips from "Little Time Bomb" and "Valentine's Day Is Over"

Up Next: Billy Bragg, The Internationale, 1990

Word Count to Date: 12,155