In the sixth form common room everyone was listening to Black Sabbath, Queen, Led Zeppelin or rubbish forerunners to today's R&B monotony. I was into Billy Bragg at the time and even my closest friends thought I'd gone mad. I remember 'Between the Wars' on the radio and my fellow students putting hands over ears, laughing up their sleeves and looking genuinely bewildered. Was this really the future of popular music?
Well they're not laughing now are they? Thirty years on a Billy's still going strong, even if he is a bit of a silver fox these days. Now a mainstream artist with a host of albums behind him, it's easy to forget how revolutionary one man, a guitar and some quality lyrics could be in the wilderness of the early eighties.
'The Saturday Boy' describes a universal experience to near perfection. A nailed on certainty for the folk hall of fame and the lovely horn tooting away is a bonus. Sadly, it looks like the record company block this song on YouTube, so you'll have to do without as I'm not using a sub-standard live version from a mobile phone.
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