Go! Discs/Elektra
1988
Help Save the Youth of America EP: Live and Dubious
About This Album
The "value for money" debate that preoccupied '80s audiences and labels made the EP become a relevant format (especially in the U.S., where it had lain dormant since the '50s and '60s). Budget-priced EPs (or "mini-albums") became a convenient way of plugging the gap between two- and three-year album-release cycles. Help Save the Youth of America EP: Live & Dubious, then, captures Bragg's growth from hectoring one-man troubadour to multi-faceted roots music explorer. Not surprisingly, the unadorned moments work best: "Chile Your Waters Run Red Through Soweto" is an a cappella tour de force, while "To Have and to Have Not" remains a rousing indictment of the decade's oily uber-villain, the yuppie. (Bragg didn't preach to the converted, either, judging by the countless open-mic night versions heard by this writer.) The title cut is also energetically done (though it loses something without the shimmering acoustic guitars that buoyed the studio version).

Time has inevitably dated the hard-charging slant of "Days Like These," with its references to the El Salvadoran civil war and Ronald Reagan not being constitutionally permitted to seek a third presidential term.
Track List

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