Life's A Riot is a 12 inch EP with seven songs lasting around 16 minutes in total. Confusingly it was to be played at 45rpm rather than 33, and somehow it qualified for the album charts rather than the singles chart. As it says on the cover, pay no more than £2.99 !
I never agreed with Bragg's politics but I liked his songs, with clever, obsevations on ordinary lives and great tunes. The EP consists of just Bragg's foghorn voice and electric guitar, and possibly all recorded in once take. There is nothing added so the producer must have had an easy job !
The first track "The Milkman Of Human Kindness" is a bitter sweet love song. "If you are lonely, I will call. If you're poorly, I will send poetry. I love you, I am the milkman of human kindness, I will leave an extra pint"
"To Have And To have Not" covers youth unemployment. "Just because you're better than me doesn't mean I'm lazy. Just because you're going forwards, doesn't mean I'm going backwards".....""the factories are closing and the Army's full, I don't know what I am going to do. But I've come to see in the land of the free, the future is only for the chosen few".
"Richard" is about the uncertainties of growing up "there will be parties, there will be fun, and hey, hey, hey here come's Richard".
"New England" was huge hit for Kirsty McColl who added another verse and sang the personal love song from the girl's point of view, but it is packed with great lines. "I was 21 years when I wrote this song, 'Im 22 now but i won't be for long. People ask me when will I grow up to be man when all the girls I loved at school are already pushing prams" and "I loved the words you wrote to me but that was bloody yesterday, I can't survive on what you send every time I need a friend. I saw two shooting stars last night so I wished on them but they were only satellites. Is it wrong to wish on space hardware, I wish I really wish you'd care". I was 23 when I first heard this !
"The Man In The Iron Mask" is the only slow song but the tempo picks up again with "The Busy Girl Buys Beauty", a satirical take on fashion and the pressures on teenage girls to conform. "the busy girl buys beauty, the pretty girl buys style, and the simple girl buys what she's told to buy", "what was Anna Ford wearing, what did Angela Rippon say".
The final song, "Lovers Town Revisited" is just over a minute long but social commentary this time is on youth violence. "Fighting in the dance hall happens anyway, sometimes it makes me stop and think, sometimes it makes me turn away.....but most times it makes me run away"
Ignoring that the "Bard of Barking" now lives in a Dorset village, many of the points made by Bragg in the early 1980s are still relevant today. And the songs are still good and still worth listening too.
Track Listing :
1. The Milkman Of Human Kindness
2. To Have And To Have Not
3. Richard
4. A New England
5. The Man In The Iron Mask
6. The Busy Girl Buys Beauty
7. Lovers Town Revisited
Released 1983
UK Chart Position : 30
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