Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Milkman Of Human Kindness
2. To Have And To Have Not
3. Richard
4. New England
5. Man In The Iron Mask
6. Busy Girl Buys Beauty
7. Lovers Town Revisited

Disc 2:

1. Strange Things Happen
2. Cloth
3. Love Lives Here
4. Speedway Hero
5. Loving You Too Long
6. This Guitar Says Sorry
7. Love Gets Dangerous
8. Cloth
9. Man In The Iron Mask
10. A13 Trunk Road To The Sea
11. Fear Is A Man's Best Friend

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12527 in Music
• Released on: 2006-03-06
• Number of discs: 2

Customer Reviews

The Original And The Best
Life's a riot was a coming of age record for me and so this review is tainted with the sentimentality of adolescence seen from middle age.
Appearing during a low point in UK music history Bragg took the music back to basics - just him and an electric guitar. His broad Essex accent increases the coarse appeal and accentuates the reality of songs that dip into disappointment but never despair. It's all good - and in just seven songs it should be - and that's not something you can say about any subsequect BB album.
20 years on from its original release the songs are still good and the lyrics don't age.
If you like music cut back to the raw and full of emotion this is a great BB album to have.

A New England
It's hard to convey to people just how AUDACIOUS this record was when it was first released. Spandau Duran were spending tens of thousands of pounds on videos and then suddenly this big-nosed bloke with an unashamed Essex accent appears armed with JUST A GUITAR and nothing else.

Seething with anger and sexual frustration, Billy's songs spoke to the young and alienated for whom the Thatcher revolution meant nothing.

The opening song, 'The Milkman Of Human Kindness', is a 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' for the post-punk generation - "If you are lonely, I will call/ If you are poorly, I will send poetry."

'To Have And To Have Not' is a defiant and dignified anthem for the millions of unemployed at the time. Lyrically, it's unsophisticated but sheer conviction carries it through.

'Richard' is a razor-sharp riff on the arbitrary cruelty of young love -"Neil belongs to love/And love belongs to no man/How can he go on/When no one answers the adverts in his mind?"

The title of 'A New England' leads us to expect an impassioned 'state of the nation' polemic: Billy wrongfoots us though by making it a tender, very personal love song - he's NOT looking for a new England, just looking for another girl.

'The Man In The Iron Mask' is desolate and haunting, an unflinching portrait of betrayal - "The nights you spend without me, this house is like a dungeon/ And you only return to torture me more."

'The Busy Girl Buys Beauty' is a satirical song about the pressures placed on young girls by the fashion industry to conform and look beautiful, a debate still going on today.

The only disappointment is 'Lovers Town Revisited' which is way too short, almost an afterthought. Let it not colour your view of the album as a whole though. "Life's A Riot..." was a valuable and much-needed antidote to the prevailing musical and cultural values of the time.

And you never saw Billy sporting a mullet and a jacket with the sleeves rolled-up either.........

Life's a Riot With The Bard of Barking
`Life's a Riot with Spy vs. Spy' screams for attention with the same originality today as it did in 1983. The `Urban' folk music of Billy Bragg has never gone out of fashion, it was famously, never in fashion and this debut album is a timeless reminder of the electric troubadour who would later dub himself `Johnny Clash' arrived fully formed like the `Milkman of Human Kindness' personified.

The songs still stand up today particularly the classic `New England', The Busy Girl Buys Beauty', `Lovers Town Revisited' and `To Have and To Have Not' which is unfortunately as relevant now as it was twenty five years ago. That these seven songs were put out on `Utility' as the last defining act of Charisma Records before being assimilated into a major label shows the spirit of the time and I'm not convinced an act as unique as Billy Bragg would ever get out of the endless pages of MySpace these days.

The bonus disc adds to the beauty of the album with `A13' and the John Cale cover `Fear is a Man's Best Friend' being rescued from BBC sessions. Songs that failed to make the cut such as `Speedway Hero' are possibly too derivative to have been issued initially but the passage of time makes these essential listening. The original takes of `The Cloth' and `Strange Things Happen' are again essential, showcasing the drum machine Billy initially dueted with under the stage name `Spy vs. Spy'.

If I had to make a criticism of this re-issued classic it would be the re-mix of Barney Bubbles artwork which was a work of art and a classic design, the perfect wrapper to the perfect sampler.