You can be active with the activists or sleep in with the sleepers

Continuing my journey across the output of The Bard Of Barking...

Workers Playtime (1988)

This album is (along with TWTTAP) half of the compilation album Victim Of Geography which is how I own it - I remember it's got some decent tracks on it, but very few of them come to mind without looking at the tracklist. So let's check it out, shall we?

A Side

1. She's Got A New Spell
Like the last album, we start with a lovely jangly opener with some great lyrics - "One minute she says she's gone to get the cat in - the next thing I know, she's mumbling in Latin".  This is another of my all-time favourite Billy tracks - it's nicely quirky.

2. Must I Paint You A Picture
Billy obviously likes this track because it's the title of his best-of - I like the lyrics, but I can't say it's one of my absolute favourites.  It's a bit sad as well.

3. Tender Comrade
Another slower track with nice lyrics, but not one of my favourites.  It's another song about relationships - but, for a change, between army comrades.

4. The Price I Pay
And we're back to more usual troubled relationships for another slower track - but I actually quite like this one!

5. Little Time Bomb
We've upped the tempo again and this is another one I really like. It's got an intriguing opening stanza - "One of them's off her food and the other one's off his head - and both of them are off down the boozer". Which is followed by a load more interesting lyrics and I've absolutely no idea what they mean!

6. Rotting On Remand
For Billy, it's taken us ages to get round to our first political track of the album but this is a corker with some poignant lyrics - and I knew next to nothing about remand prisoners when I first heard it, so it's educational as well.

B Side

1. Valentines Day Is Over
Back to Billy on troubled relationships - "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". It's a downer, but it's a good downer.

2. Life With The Lions
This is the first one on the album I don't remember without listening to it even though it's got such a romantic start to it - "I hate the arsehole I become every time I'm with you". It's OK, but not the best track.

3. The Only One
Another troubled relationship track - I'm not sure Billy was a happy bunny around this time...

4. The Short Answer
...and I think Mary might have been the problem - "between Marx and marzipan in the dictionary there was Mary". None of the tracks on this second side are bad, but I wouldn't have minded a bit more variety.

5. Waiting For The Great Leap Forward
And finally, there it is!  I really like this one and it's got some great lyrics to it - "mixing pop and politics he asks me what the use is - I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses" and when he plays it live because he updates the lyrics to be extremely contemporary. It's also interesting because it features Phil Jupitus and Michelle Shocked on backing vocals - this was before she (somewhat impressively) committed career suicide by ranting against same-sex marriage during a gig in San Francisco.

Assuming we're going for a four track album like we've done for everything so far, then this is an easy one for me - "She's Got A New Spell", "Little Time Bomb", "Rotting On Remand" and "Waiting For The Great Leap Forward". If I was to pick another one, I'd go for "The Price I Pay", "Valentines Day Is Over" or "The Short Answer" and part of me feels that I should because the selections I've picked aren't really that representative of Billy's mood on the album. But making it a five track album feels like I'm sending the message that this is better than the rest and I don't think that's the case - it's very much in the same vein as the previous one but, for me, not quite as good (mostly due to his moping!),

Wikipedia has a very random selection of facts about the album - the subtitle "Capitalism is killing music" obviously relates back to the BPI's "Home taping is killing music" campaign which feels very dated these days! The original album cover also told us to "pay no more than" £4.99 for the vinyl or cassette versions but a weighty £7.99 for the CD version. Which are particularly weird numbers compared to today when you look at the prices for eg Billie Eilish's latest on Amazon - £8.99 for digital, £12.99 for CD and £33.99 for vinyl! Back to this album, it got to #17 in the charts but only managed four weeks - his albums are losing their longevity.

I like a lot of this album, but I'm not entirely convinced it works for me as an album - it's just a bit too self-pitying at times.  It also doesn't display any growth from the previous album, which isn't the end of the world, but does somewhat break his run.

Talking With The Taxman About Poetry - even more instruments!
The Internationale - one for completists only