Billy Bragg rallies troops at entertaining show

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Initially,

Billy Bragg's gig Wednesday at the Music Box appeared as if it was going to be a drag. Before the Brit punk-folk vet hit the stage, attendance was so sparse that the balcony was closed.

But a funny thing happened during Bragg's nearly two-hour set. As he delivered his songs -- and between-song patter that was stand-up comedy, history lesson and political rally in equal measures -- the crowd became more engaged and enthusiastic. By the show's end, Bragg had fans singing along to his Kirsty MacColl-covered Brit hit "A New England" with such verve that it felt like the room was filled to capacity.

More than 20 years after Bragg emerged from the U.K. as a one-man tour de force, the singer-guitarist is now a gray-haired elder statesman, and is back to his one-man-band approach after experimenting with the Blokes and Wilco after the "Mermaid Avenue" albums. He's left the majors for the indie Yep Roc, also home to fellow Brit vets

Paul Weller and

Robyn Hitchcock.

Like those two artists, Bragg is too British for mainstream American consumption. Despite the fact he hasn't issued new material since 2002, he retains a cult following, stoked by reissues and two new boxed sets. In his time away from the studio, he wrote a book, "The Progressive Patriot," in which he examines his Britishness.

Bragg's patter, like Hitchcock's, is nearly as important as the music. After opening the show with the politically minded rants "To Have and to Have Not" and "NPWA (No Power Without Accountability)," Bragg riffed on his love of tea and the thought of Starbucks offering "tall skinny espresso enemas."

After the romantic reminiscences of "A Lover Sings," Bragg spoke about how he discovered his Britishness at the age of 12, thanks to Simon and Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair." Later in the set Bragg joked about how, after losing his voice from yelling at a Morrissey concert, he developed an alter ego, "Johnny Clash, the man in black and red," to accommodate his limited vocal range. Under that guise, he played "Old Clash Fan Fight Song," an amalgam of recycled Strummer/Jones riffs containing the couplet, "The people are moving on/

George Bush will soon be gone," which garnered boisterous cheers from the crowd.

As the show wore on, the jokes became fewer and Bragg became more impassioned. He ripped into Woody Guthrie's "All You Fascists" after an extended monologue that noted it was the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, in which a multicultural group of Jews, Irishmen and unionists stopped fascist Blackshirts from marching through London's East End.

An acoustic set followed, including Leadbelly's "Bourgeois Blues" recast as "Bush War Blues," with Bragg proving he still remains inspiring and relevant more than two decades on. The only pity is that at this point he's preaching to the converted.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter