Tom Robinson - Living In A Boom Time (1992)

Tom Robinson (b.1950) is a UK songwriter & broadcaster first known in the 70s as an anti-racist and LGBT campaigner. He released 19 albums between 1975-2001 with various bands and has co-written songs with Elton John, Peter Gabriel, Dan Hartman and Manu Katché. He's an award-winning presenter at BBC Radio 6 Music, and released "Only The Now" (his first album in 19 years) in October 2015.

Tom Robinson seems to have been forgotten by the musical mainstream. The Tom Robinson Band were one of the great early punk bands, with an enormous following. The band split up after two albums and seem to have been forgotten, although Tom Robinson briefly returned to the charts in the early 80s with War Baby.

Tom Robinson continues touring and producing albums. "Living In A Boom Time"  - a solo acoustic album, recorded live at club gigs in Ireland - is one of his best albums and demonstrates the powerful mix of musical talent, wit and anger at the world's injustices that makes Tom one of my favourite artists. It captures the spirit of a Tom Robinson solo show around the beginning of the 1990s.

It starts with a brief intro, which comments ironically on Tom's transition from Punk Rocker to the more acoustic style of this album. Most of the album contains new material. "Living in a boom time" is an attack on the get rich quick culture of the early 90s and "Yuppy Scum" comments ironically on the transition from young rebel to middle aged pillar of the establishment that many people go through. My own favourite is "Rigging it up, Duncannon" inspired by the tragedy of the explosion on the Piper Alpha Oil Rig. "More Lives Than One" is better than the original, and "Castle Island" is unavailable on any other album. The album finishes with new versions of the classic tracks, "War Baby" and "Back in the Ould Country".

"Across eleven tracks, recorded live on tour in Ireland earlier this year, Tom Robinson reinvents himself as a solo folk singer. But where some faded rock stars may clutch desperately at the acoustic guitar, as a straw to save them from the harsh realities of life without chart positions, our Tom would appear to have made a sound and successful career move.

Shorn of the obligatory bass, drums and electric guitars', Robinson reveals a bite at the bottom of his voice-and a dozen more tonsiliary textures besides which will come as a considerable surprise to those who remember only the one-dimensional, weak and watery sound of his singing on the likes of '2-4-6-8 Motorway' and 'Glad To Be Gay'.

Standing alone and vulnerable like this, Robinson still manages to infuse his material with a strong sense of meaning, without having to resort to the blatant sloganeering which has often blighted his writing since the late '70s.

But then, with the possible exception of 'Yuppie Scum', Robinson's own translation of Jacques Brel's inflammatory 'Les Bourgeois', the songs here are uniformly less angry and embittered than they were back in his heyday as a pinko Punk.

Robinson's subject matter on 'Living In A Boom Time', 'My Own Sweet Way', 'Rigging It Up Duncannon' and 'The Brits Come Rolling Back' is still everyday social injustice in the post-AIDS, post-Thatcher era. But he now handles his themes with a weary resignation which, paradoxically, pushes the message home all the more effectively. And entertainingly.

Such a shift in emphasis may well prompt the agitprop fraternity to accuse him of going soft politically but, for the rest of us, Living In A Boom Time is Tom Robinson's most appealing album in years." - Chas de Whalley , VOX Magazine         

Tracklist:

1 Intro 1:00
2 Living In A Boom Time 3:55
3 Blood Brother 4:31
4 More Lives Than One 2:44
5 Yuppie Scum 3:05
6 My Own Sweet Way 4:10
7 Castle Island 4:24
8 Rigging It Up, Duncannon 3:26
9 The Brits Come Rolling Back 3:18
10 War Baby 4:31
11 Back In The Old Country 3:40

Tom Robinson - Living In A Boom Time (1992)
(320 kbps, cover art included)