Blur: Classic Or Dud

While they have produced some great pop songs, I would argue that they have failed to created one consistently great album (even the Best Of fell short of the mark). You could probably make a good cd-r worth of their music, but considering the number of albums they have put out that's hardly a glowing endorsement. Modern Life is Rubbish *probably* comes closest, but even that's far too problematic to warrant classic status. Parklife, which is the one that normally gets bandied about when talking about classic albums, is killed by too many little england-isms.

And just like the little girl from nursery rhymes: when they are bad...they are *horrid*. So, so bad that they cancel out the good:

Everything Damon has ever said.

The smug and irritating character songs.

The Country House video.

Bang.

The sad "take us seriously indie kids! We were never serious about wanting fame and fortune!" noodling of the last couple albums.

They *do* change from album to album, trying to anticipate what trends will catch on with the kids like any good marketing student would. This is not a crime; Bowie was great at it during the 70's, Madonna in the 80's and they were both classics. But with Blur it always reeked of desperation a bit too much.

And yet despite all this I do own some of their albums. Go figure.

Not living in the UK, I'm not exposed much to Damon Albarn's alleged bad personality, but his easy-target songs do grate - we get it Damon, you're SO superior to Americans, people who like the US, and middle-class normals. Jerk.

It's also the case that he's obviously quite good at doing pop (cf the Greatest Hits), so when he doesn't do pop but does other things worse you get annoyed.

If that's the case, I think I need some explanation... I mean, I don't dislike the song, in the context of the album it's a cute diversion, but it's SO not a single - just some dork babbling about getting an enormous sense of well-being from something or other, with a blah undistinctive chorus. It's not even silly enough to be a real novelty song. What is the appeal of it ?

If Bowie is taken at all seriously it's because of the startling, inventive things he did with pop in the 70's, not because he's rich - after all Rod Stewart is also rich. BTW what *are* Damon Albarn's extra-pop aspirations (other than sub-Sting do-gooding)?

re 'Parklife':

I can't stand the song, but its mass appeal does boil down to it having a very strong chorus (admittedly a very retro-British one), plus the novelty of Phil Daniels' voiceover.

re Blur in general:

The thing I've always disliked most about them is the air of smugness that seems to pervade everything they do. That and the fact that the chord sequences they use generally don't move me.

"Dear Damon, Please stop with the "la la la" thing. It gets on my last damn nerve. Thanks a bunch.

Sincerely, K"

The Great Escape includes some of their most execrable songs ever along with, frustratingly, two of their best: "The Universal" and "Yuko and Hiro" move me no end. But in retrospect it quite amazes me that that album was hailed at the time as a great leap forward from the parochialism of Parklife; what were all those cheesy little character sketches about, then?

They're essentially a singles band and therefore the Greatest Hits is their best album. At best, they've given us "For Tomorrow", "To The End", "End Of A Century", "The Universal" and, at a pinch, "Beetlebum". I love all the above, though "Tender" always did make me sick. I adore "This Is A Low", and I think "Trouble In The Message Centre" is OK as far as tongue-in-cheek cod-Numan goes, as well. But, in the final analysis, DUD.

Parklife may sound a bit twee now after Britpop exploded everywhere, but the fact that it was SO different in 1994 made it a hit (only #10 though - the biggest hit off the album was Girls & Boys at #5).

I was 14 when Parklife came out. I remember so clearly what the common room stereo was playing beforehand - Nirvana, Lemonheads, Smashing Pumpkins, even Guns 'n' Roses, NOTHING that had any relevance to what was going on with me or anyone I knew.

Parklife is the first new album I really remember having an impact on me; at last, you didn't have to sit in your room and slash your wrists to be cool, you could just go to the park with your mates and feed the pigeons (and sometimes feed the sparrows too). I also believe Girls and Boys is responsible for kickstarting Britpop, as without that disco beat no song had a chance of hitting in 1994, although I suspect something else would have come along anyway (Common People maybe?)

Blur are also really the only band who managed to be political and say it in a popular way (you could perhaps say Pulp and Manics, but I would say Blur are better known outside of the indie scene than those two). It's no surprise that Damon hid himself away during the height of Britpop, seeing as everything he was saying ironically on Parklife had been embraced and celebrated.

It's a shame that they went inside themselves for Blur and 13 and stopped writing about what was going on in the world. We need more bands like early Blur, who write about not only what's happening, but also how to deal with it. My biggest disappointment about Kid A was that Thom doesn't seem to have progressed at all from OK Computer; in fact, he's just withdrawn even more. It feels like we're right back in 1993 again.

I nave nothing good to say about their career up to Parklife, which I half like, but can rarely sit through. 'The Great Escape' sounds oddly clean and dated, yet apart from the whiff of self parody mixed with ripping off the Kinks TOO much ('Charmless Man', for example), it's an album that I still enjoy.

For me it got interesting round about 'Blur' and '13' is, apart from 'Tender is the Night', magnificent. Sure, there's nothing here that hasn't been done before, but the run of tracks 7-13 from 'Battle' to 'Optigan 1' is just plain classic.

So classic it is.

Anyway...reasons for being classic: "For Tomorrow". "Boys & Girls". "This is a Low". "Parklife". "Country House". "To The End". "Tender". Alex James's looks. "Pop Scene". The video for "Song 2", which features Damon being satisfyingly hurled against a wall repeated.

Reasons for being a dud: Damon Albarn.

Hrm.

I stick to my belief that _The Great Escape_ is actually their best album, because they looked like Japan circa 81 or so on the back cover. That's reason enough, really. Then they had to go and record a bad Pixies/Bush rip-off. Dear god in heaven!

As for all the purported greatness of _Modern_/_Parklife_ and its 'trenchant' observations, etc. -- hm. It's just a bunch of XTC songs with "Girls and Boys" standing out as the exception to the rule. And I *love* XTC and all that, I'm just noting that I can't feel too attached to what Blur did with it per se. _English Settlement_ feels younger than _Parklife_ ever will.

Blur's May 1992 show at the Palace in LA was fantastic and the best of the three times I ever saw them; they seem to have gotten steadily worse on that front over the moons. The funniest thing, though, was that when Damon ambled out on stage, his gait, open shirt and haircut made me think of Morrissey. And right after I thought that, about half the people around me started calling out, "Morrissey!" He looked annoyed.

No doubt everyone else spotted this ages ago.

But don't you think that had more to do with Oasis overtaking them in terms of sales and as a cultural phenomena? I sincerely doubt that that Damon would have hid himself away had the Great Escape sold more records than What's the Story (Morning Glory). That's part of what makes Damon so annoying, he tries to cover up Blur's failings with talk of high-minded ideals that don't really exist.*

*I don't really believe that Blur selling less records than Oasis is a failing, but I will bet a dollar to a donut that Damon did at that time.

in 1990 i was nine years old. i haven't ever been to reading, and i don't know who nick grant is. do i look like him, or something?

You're right; I didn't make my point very well. It just seems to me that Parklife has been misinterpreted over the years. Damon's ambiguous criticisms were taken as celebrations, which perhaps explains The Great Escape's more direct approach on songs like He Thought Of Cars, Best Days and The Universal. But who wanted to hear any miserable shit like that in the autumn of '95?

This doesn't make The Great Escape a good album or What's The Story a bad one. I just appreciate Blur's attempt to say a little with their 60s/70s influences, rather than just celebrate them as Oasis do. If they fail to achieve their ambitions, so be it, but I think there's enough worthwhile and enjoyable songs here and there over their albums to justify their existence. The fact that Damon's an idiot doesn't really bother me.

Most of the discussion has centred on 'Parklife'/'Great Escape'. What does anybody else think of 'Blur' and especially '13'?

As for me, a benighted American youth with almost no knowledge of British pop culture beyond a typical obsession with Black Adder, Red Dwarf and Monty Python -- I really like Blur. Their songs sound good to me. I like their (metaphorical) love affair with Syd Barrett, with Pink Floyd or solo. I think all their albums, except for the first (which I've not heard) are quite good, verging on great. "Tender," "It Could Be You," and "Coffee & TV" are particularly sublime, in my estimation.

BTW, what's "pomo" or "po-mo" ?

apart from that: the debut is dog-food, the self-titled fifth is patchy, but with some good tunes. 13 was spoiled by orbit's over-elaborate production. the new one is a step back in the right direction, but not back to their best.

no i haven't just been listening to crap, thanks snarkers.

("13" >>>>>>>>>>>>> "Kid A", obv.)

i wish mr coxon would get back to some of the guitar work he was up to at that point...

Blur are probably the most consistent guitar band of the last decade (or fifteen years, whatever).

in my high school anglophile days I would've said classic without hesitation. now? well, more on the C than the D side. at least the good tunes still slay most of the other britpop awfulness.

1. Parklife
2. Modern Life Is Rubbish
3. The Great Escape
4. Blur
5. 13
6. Leisure
...
Think Tank

No, I won't.

Hey Wogan Lenin, name one time Blur did Bugman "already, but better about a million times before"

Thanks.

For kind of obvious reasons, this album pairs nicely (shuffled or played back-to-back) with M's Ray of Light.

Movin On, No Monsters In Me, Come Together, Song 2, Coping, London Loves, Globe Alone, Chinese Bombs...

Actually, I'm listening to it again and it's a bit better than I remembered it. I always filed it under "token Blur-go-noisey" track. BLUREMI is the worst (x) offender though.

Classic of course. My opinion on their albums is that they're all roughly the same quality(except Leisure, which is shit apart from 2 songs). They've never made a perfect 5 star masterpiece, and the fact that they don't seem to be trying for it is a huge part of the appeal to me. It's like they approached every record like it was their White Album.

Here is as good a place as any to post this. Alex on the new album:

I haven't seen any of Blur very much this year. I did run into Damon on
the Portobello Road last month. He was doing wheelies on his BMX. Graham
I bumped into in The Groucho Club the month before, with his new gang. He
has motorbikes now. He used to like skateboards. He didn't turn up to the
studio this week, despite telling the Rabbi he would. Dave, who is an
aeroplane man, I've seen once this year, at Buckingham Palace. Times have
changed. Dave got the Rabbi involved to smooth things out with Graham and
the three of us. Lawyers had tried, but they are the worst people to
resolve arguments. The Rabbi got us all together and found the love in
the room. He was immense. He just wanted us to be friends again. It
nearly happened, but I think this record is going to be just the three of
us. It's a shame. I'd like to show Graham my tractor.

We'd had a couple of jams over the summer in a rehearsal joint called The
Premises on the Hackney Road. We used to go there, all together by bus,
before we had a record deal. There's an agreeable whiff of big-beard jazz
and 'JCB Song' about The Premises. It's oddball muso heaven. The café has
all the clients' press photos on the walls, and no one has drawn funny
beards on them. The menu has gone caffè latte-pain au chocolat since the
80s, and no longer features eggy specials. We used to like those. I think
Dave may have been briefly involved with the eggy-specials lady, but
she's long gone.

The management were keen for us to use their new, big, posh flagship
studio. They said we wouldn't have to pay for it. We wanted to be in one
of the little cells, like before, though. We rocked our socks off and
recorded everything on a cassette through one microphone. 'Cassette' is
practically a swearword these days. Never say 'cassette' to a sound
engineer. They can't handle it. I'm not sure where we're heading with
digital clarity and bit resolution. The nastiness of cheap, loud pop
music is often part of its appeal. Safe to say, the music of the
revolution will not be in 5.1 digital surround sound. In Studio 2, the
leads were noisy, the drum kit was junk, the vocals were going through a
nasty guitar amp, and the bass and guitar were turned up to 10. Producers
aren't comfortable with things on 10. They like eight.

Anyway, it was all wrong, except that when we listened to the tapes last
week, it sounded brilliant. We tried re-recording the first track with
posh mics, preamps and vintage compressors, but it sounded a bit polite
compared with the 50 quid's worth of gear in Hackney. What the hell?
We're going to be working with the Hackney Vibe. It rocks!

I guess we're back in business. The Foo Fighters are going to wet their
pants when they hear this stuff, and they've just built a huge studio.
But everyone's buying old gear now " new's seen as a bit semi-pro. I
think crap equipment could become fashionable next. Thing is, if you've
got a good tune, you can whistle it in the bath and it'll catch on.

I still like the odd track on their albums. For instance, I really liked "Coffee And TV". None of them ones on "Think Tank" stick out in particular, on the other hand, the worst tracks aren't as awful as the worst ones on "13" and even "Blur".

Should have been a single instead of the dreadful "Song 2" I'd rather say. "Look Inside America" is better anyway though (in spite of awful and untrue lyrics)

Why does everybody hate Damon Albarn?

(Besides, aren't there reasons enough posted on this thread?)

-- Mr. Snrub (mistersnru...), September 16th, 2006.
Two words: Mali Music

It can be, I've never heard it, but Albarn's struggling to atone for being the flagship of a movement considered 'racist' in the past is so evident. He's still a good songwriter though, and as I liked 'Demon Days', I would rather like him to use his traditional songwriting skills.

WHEN WILL IT END? I WILL FIST FIGHT EVERYONE IN THIS BAND AND EVERY ONE OF THEIR FANS. HAS THE NEW ALBUM FALLEN THROUGH YET? I WILL FUCKING FIGHT YOU.

I am amazed Leisure has been mentioned only three times. It hasn't aged well but I remember listening to "There's no other way" for the first time and thinking it was amazing and really exciting? I mean, who sounded like Blur whan Leisure came out?
For me it's Blur before Parklife = classic. Dud after that.

"There's No Other Way" will always be a party anthem, and "Sing" will alway be beautiful. But Leisure isn't an album in the way Parklife is an album. It's a foetal, baggy Blur. It's a band who are quite obviously influenced by the Mondays, the Roses and the Charlies. Arguably, every album is informed by some kind of zeitgeist, but then you could counter the argument by saying that Blur were actually riding the wave, not chasing it.

Andi, chill out.

Oh totally, anyone who understands Blur understands that the first album was foetal, embryonic. Even Damon said he was embarrassed by the lyrics on that later on. If you choose that as your fave Blur, you might as well take it and refuse to own the rest of their career.

Which is perfectly fine.

I heard "There's No Other Way" in early '92 and thought, "This is my favorite baggy anthem."

If those two Kaiser Chiefs albums were Blur albums, I would have ranked them as their fourth and fifth best albums, behind "The Great Escape", "Parklife" and "Modern Life Is Rubbish", but ahead of the rest.

13 RULES

"who sounded like Blur whan Leisure came out?"

LOTS OF BRITISH INDIE BANDS IN 1989-91

...like the Sandkings, Cud and even the Charlatans at the time.

THIS IS THE SOUND OF RADIOHEAD BEING BEATEN AT A GAME THEY WEREN'T EV...oh fuck it, i'm drunk

I would say no one sounded quite like Blur in 1991, as Blur were sort of trying out stuff in the middle ground between My Bloody Valentine/Slowdive/Ride/Jesus & Mary Chain on one side and Happy Mondays/Stone Roses/Charlatans on the other one. The best stuff usually leant towards the latter, with snippets of what was to become their mid 90s style thrown into songs like "Bang!" (easily the best song on that album)

Blur didn't sound anything like MBV/Ride etc. in 1991. They might well have liked that stuff and danced around with various people from that 'scene' at Syndrome, but they weren't making that kind of music themselves. They didn't sound anything like the Stone Roses or Happy Mondays either (and those two groups didn't sound anything like each other), but they did fit in to that 'baggy'/Madchester set of groups of that time who were riding in the wake of those two (Inspiral Carpets, The Charlatans, Northside...).

I saw Blur on the Rollercoaster tour in 1992. They were bottom of the bill with Dinosaur Jr, My Bloody Valentine, and Jesus & Mary Chain. At the time, everyone thought 'what the fuck are they doing on this bill?' because they were just seen as an indie-pop group (well, worse than that, an indie-pop group who had had their fifteen minutes of fame a year ago and were going nowhere while the world turned to grunge). The nearest Blur came to that kind of 'shoegazing' sound would be Oily Water on Modern Life Is Rubbish, but they didn't sound like that on Leisure.

I dunno; "She's So High" has touches of shoegaze, perhaps the more 'rocky', trad-psych end (think 'Falling Down' by Chapterhouse, which amusingly enough Blur were later to kinda rip off...10 points for whoever can tell me what with), but the layering of guitars and wordless yodels in the middle-eight is straight out of the shoegazing textebook if you ask me. And that's before I get onto the backwards bit...

Anyway, Blur invented Shoegaze 2.0 with '1992'.

Agree about "She's So High" and also some of the lesser known tracks on the album. Not so much in song structure as in production.

"Popscene" was kind of shoegazing-influenced too. Then, on "Modern Life Is Rubbish" they discovered Kinks and XTC.

"Popscene" was kind of shoegazing-influenced too.

the hell, boy.

they discovered XTC and then told him to fuck off

Nasty, Brutish and Short is right to point to "Oily Water" as an example of Blur's better, shoegazer side in those days. But if read into the band's history (esp. helpful was an article Select magazine did in '95 imitating the Revolution in the Head book on the Beatles - i.e, track-by-track) there was an album they mostly had completed in '92 which was rejected by Food and consisted mostly of their more experimental stuff. "Pressure on Julian" is other obvious example, but there's a few other B-sides to point to.

'13' - if you take out the relatively simple songs, "Tender," "Coffee and TV," "BLUREMI," and "No Distance Left to Run" - would be a quite coherent, totally freaked-out electronic-pop record that makes a lot of the comparable stuff of the time seem like the trite young-yuppie BS it was.

I can't seem to decide if they really sounded like other bands of the time when they released their first album Leisure or not. I'm leaning only slightly towards not. At the very least it was clear upon hearing their first 12" that at least they were talented, which was not exactly always the case with these Brit indie bands of the time. As ludicrous as it is to say Popscene was inspired by shoegazing, I do think it's true She's So High was.

Also, people who don't like 13 can't be my friend. Sorry.

'13' - if you take out the relatively simple songs, "Tender," "Coffee and TV," "BLUREMI," and "No Distance Left to Run" - would be a quite coherent, totally freaked-out electronic-pop record that makes a lot of the comparable stuff of the time seem like the trite young-yuppie BS it was.

Sounds more industrial than electronic to me.

'Trimm Trabb' is actually a cover of a little-known KMFDM b-side

graham's guitar is the one redeeming feature of 'leisure' and the one distinctive thing about 'there's no other way'.

if that's shogazey or late 80s US indie-y, i don't know.

"She's So High" has touches of shoegaze, perhaps the more 'rocky', trad-psych end (think 'Falling Down' by Chapterhouse, which amusingly enough Blur were later to kinda rip off...10 points for whoever can tell me what with), but the layering of guitars and wordless yodels in the middle-eight is straight out of the shoegazing textebook if you ask me. And that's before I get onto the backwards bit...

The thing is, when 'She's So High' came out (in about Sept 90 IIRC) there was no such thing as 'shoegazing' for Blur to have been influenced by. We'd had the early Ride EPs, some stuff by Lush, an album by the Pale Saints, and that was about it. People only started talking about some kind of scene in 1991. There hadn't been any 'wordless yodelling' at that point (Polar Bear was probably the first instance of that) or backwards guitar that I can think of. If 'She's So High' was influenced by anything it was probably the backwards Stone Roses tracks, especially 'Don't Stop'.

"Popscene" "Sing" was kind of shoegazing-influenced too.

Fixed.

xpost: Yeah, that's a great shout. I think SSH is more overtly 'psychedelic' and riff-loaded than Don't Stop, which strikes me as being more of a blissful, jam-based loop, but I can see where the comparison comes from. Both are excellent songs. Actually, Second Coming's increased reliance on Squire's psychedelic guitar licks may have been a response to Coxon's technicolour displays of aptitude, but that's only wild conjecture for now.

Trimm Trabb' is actually a cover of a little-known KMFDM b-side

Enter Tarantino film mode:

Puts gun to your head:

"Name it. Name the KMFDM b-side. NOW."

The thing is, when 'She's So High' came out (in about Sept 90 IIRC) there was no such thing as 'shoegazing' for Blur to have been influenced by.

Holy shit! Dude is right!

xpost: "Wehrmacht Deserters"

THIS IS THE SOUND OF RADIOHEAD BEING BEATEN AT A GAME THEY WEREN'T EV...oh fuck it, i'm drunk

-- Just got offed, Saturday, July 14, 2007 7:47 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Link

lyrics:

I wanna know you
This country
Will force a war
Come closer and I'll make you work it
Ranks of citizens
Dance with rage

They have deserted us
They have averted us
From war
I wanna see you scream
If this is love then give me Goering
All lined up in parade
The men all laugh at your execution

I wanna know you
This country
Will fuck you up in war
Come closer and work me
Ranks of citizens
Dance with rage

I'm a workman with my bare hands
On your bare ass
Honey
Don't worry, I'm armoured

Which song is that??

"Wehrmacht Deserters", of course. Have you not heard it?

No I don't think so, kind sir. But I will look it up pronto.

Currently I'm blaring the Peel Session version of "On Your Own" and thinking Blur were the greatest band ever, even if I know that is a total illusion.

AKA "Leisure lovers can go fuck themselves"

The thing is, when 'She's So High' came out (in about Sept 90 IIRC) there was no such thing as 'shoegazing' for Blur to have been influenced by.

Not the term, no, but MBV's first album was released in 1988, and Jesus & Mary Chain debuted as early as 1986. Both typical examples of the more song-oriented kind of shoegazing that Blur's debut was influenced by.

That's not MBV's first album.

AND J&MC WERE NEVER SHOE GAZERS!!!!

Has anyone else read "Bit of a Blur" by Alex James?

I mean, no real surprises there, but he's a lovely and engaging writer.

how could i forget...one of my very favourite blur songs, 'resigned', has a stunning 3-minute shoegazey outro :-D

Actually, Second Coming's increased reliance on Squire's psychedelic guitar licks may have been a response to Coxon's technicolour displays of aptitude, but that's only wild conjecture for now.

-- Just got offed, Monday, July 16, 2007 1:42 AM (21 hours ago) Bookmark Link

nah.

geir is right -- also spacemen 3.

I saw Blur on the Rollercoaster tour in 1992. They were bottom of the bill with Dinosaur Jr, My Bloody Valentine, and Jesus & Mary Chain

They may have been bottom of the bill that night, but when I saw them in Glasgow D Jr were first on. I'm sure the running order changed at each venue with JAMC headlining each night.

> Not the term, no, but MBV's first album was released in 1988, and Jesus & Mary Chain debuted as early as 1986.

by 'as early as 1986' do you mean '1984'?

Hmmm. Their first album was in 1985, and there may have been a single before that too.

koogs, plz collect yr 50 credos

xpost. Upside Down (1984), Never Understand and You Trip Me Up (both 1985) were all released as singles prior to Psychocandy.

That's not part of the Blur story anyway, except for a loose connection via the indie-sphere. When Blur debuted I recall there being a lot of buzz about what a great live band they were, at a time when most bands were pretty bad entertainment. They definetely had a superior reputation right from the start.

I'm just wondering what direction they'd have gone in if it weren't for Britpop, the whole Oasis stigma, and the rest of that crap. They were always vastly superior to 99% of their peers at any given time; there's a case to argue that they were sucked into a battle for popular supremacy rather than artistic integrity, which in turn sparked such violently creative reactions as Blur and especially 13. Their populist work still bears the hallmark of quality, as they were far too good a band to release crap, but I markedly prefer their more individualistic, exploratory material.

Here's one for you, Everything: would they have gone in the direction of Cardiacs, a band Damon Albarn has self-confessed love for? Except with crazier guitar effects?

hmmmm. Well, they do have one or two pronky moments, though I can't remember them at the moment. A couple of songs/b-sides on Parklife and The Great Escape I remember crediting to a Cardiacs influence, but this was mostly because I was aware he was a big fan. Like most of Blur's emulations, it becomes very vague when filtered through their own creativity, lyrics etc (they are probably the most talented and creative pop band of their time imho). "Ernold Same" could be maybe considered as being inspired by a mid-80's Cardiacs track for example but it's really nothing like it.

Had they done a full-on, messy indie-prog double album with 10 minutes long tracks etc, it would probably have been amazing. But I doubt that would have ever happened. I don't think Coxon's into it so much, and Damon's always got an eye on the mainstream. He's very similar to (pre-1985) Paul McCartney - cherry-picking genres and commercializing them with a hefty dose of his own style and marketable reputation to make something that transcends the original in terms of commercial appeal.

Without Britpop, they would not have made 13, as it was a concious, "violent" move away from all that, and hammered a few nails into it's coffin. For which we can all be truly thankful.

Had they done a full-on, messy indie-prog double album with 10 minutes long tracks etc, it would probably have been amazing.

don't torment me!

although i'd prefer it to be a single album. 70-75 minutes, 10-12 tracks.

i'm going to make this album myself one day, so i don't know what i'm complaining about.

i mean, the problem with most 'epic' albums w/10-minute tracks is that they get lost in their own import and forget a) how to surprise and b) how to have fun. albums that combine surprise, fun, epic, and ambition (and then execute it well) are ftw.

(and i think blur would do it more or less like that, being my point)

don't worry folks, i'm off on hols tomorrow morning, so this overposting will be compensated for!

p.s. pronk-influenced blur song off 'the great escape' = "dan abnormal"? one of my favourites, that.

I've got to hear that album again. My cassette of The Great Escape got melted on the dashboard about 5 years ago and I haven't heard it since (though I've still got the box for some reason). It's got some of their best stuff. I realise I have no Blur albums at all now. I traded in Modern Life Is Rubbish, never owned Parklife except from taping it from a friend (tape got left at a restaurant I used to work at) and lend the b-sides compilation to someone that I never see anymore.

I remember three things about Blur's apperance on the scene:

Them getting hassle from some university student unions/feminists groups because of the cover art for She's So High.

Them being described as remniscent of Syd-era Pink Floyd.

Ian McGlashan coming into our 6th form common room the morning after their TOTP appearance and scoffing at "the lead singer of that band rolling his eyes around and pretending to be on drugs."

I'm just wondering what direction they'd have gone in if it weren't for Britpop, the whole Oasis stigma, and the rest of that crap.

If there was no such thing as Oasis, then Blur would still have been playing roughly the same style they did in the mid 90s.

(I don't remember anyone thinking they came from anywhere near the same place as MBV or JAMC)

xpost

haha 'you're so great' just came on and i thought it was guided by voices

There's a new reality show on the BBC called Maestro, in which celebrity contestants including Alex James learn how to conduct an orchestra! I won't lie, I downloaded the first episode so I could check it out..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/musictv/maestro/

Yeah, I watched that on Tuesday. Go Goldie go!

If there was no such thing as Oasis, then Blur would still have been playing roughly the same style they did in the mid 90s.

-- Geir Hongro, Tuesday, 17 July 2007 21:25 (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

This is wrong. What Damon did/does has nothing to do with Oasis.

yeah i don't agree with this. MLIR came out well before Definitely Maybe and was the benchmark of their sound. Anything else that came after was entirely independent of what Oasisever did.

I can sort of see why he thinks this: The whole Oasis escapade could make someone run a mile from making more 'commercial stuff, but Damon's always been a musical butterfly really.

If there was no such thing as Pavement, then Blur would still have been playing roughly the same style they did in the mid 90s.

-- Geir Hongro, Tuesday, 17 July 2007 21:25 (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

fixed!

...I kid, I kid..

I love them. The Great Escape was a bit disappointing, but apart from that, I think they were brilliant.

Of course you do, even your username is a Blur song! :D Who am I to talk, my email is based on Theme From An Imaginary Film.

The Great Escape is a very, very good album in my view, and I'm infamous for preferring their more experimental stuff. It knocks the spots off MLIR and Parklife. I'd even prefer it to "Blur" these days.

To me, The Great Escape, apart from The Universal, epitomised Britpop at its very worst. The lyrics are weak, the melodies barely register, and the songs lean too heavily on horns and other production flourishes. Maybe I need to listen to it some more, but as it stands, it's the only Blur LP I cannot stand.

Fake Louis.

Well, it was A Blur Album, with all the constituent parts in place, including the 'character' pieces a'la Ray Davies and so on. But the buttons being pushed were all worn out.

That 'pavement' fix comment isn't so far away from the truth.

Quelle bullshit. It might still be their best album. But really you had to be there at the time.

Well, I was! Why call bull?

I like other albums more. Five, off the top of my head

multixpost
The Great Escape is the dark heart of britpop and presciently is infused with disappointment and rage. Almost as if they new what was to come post Blair's election. If you can't see past some of the more outre production touches then that's your loss.

Thank you sir.

By being "there at the time" I also meant "being in West London" which obviously everyone couldn't be but I'm just saying that when you experienced the environment every day TGE was very easy to understand and grasp.

OK, I can go with that.

there are too many total turkeys on it for me, but the highlights on it are some of their best.

xpost Oh, I do, I do. I'm not saying it's a bad album.

(thinks: Was I in West London then? mmmm... Yes. I was.)

hmmmm bhmm hummmh hummmmmnh humnn hbmn hjm hm mhm hm DUD

Asa 16 year old in Devon it didn't really do it for me.

The Great Escape was the last Blur album I discovered; I'd been holding out on it for fear it was the cliched Britpoppy sell-out disaster I'd been promised. What I got instead was this vast, dark, nauseous treaty on the rottenness of Middle England, with some cracking tunes and genuinely original arrangements. I think it's fab. Although not my favourite song, the key to the album is probably "Fade Away". To many it sounds tacky. To me it sounds fabulously diseased.

Blog this, Louis. Blog Blur.

I haven't heard the B-sides :(

I don't care.

I want 500 words on The Great Escape.

OK! I might incorporate all the other albums, tho, just for context...

No, just this one. Mention them not no exegesis.

All done. Editors out there, here's a dude who works to schedule. ;-)

The production really doesn't bother me, except in the sense that it's only there to hide a bunch of sub-par songs. And I was there, though I suppose I was too young to fully appreciate the context of the record and all that. To me, "Country House" is just a relic of the 90s, like "wannabe" or the first Britney Spears record. I love Blur, but TGE is just shite.

not one word on ilx about the hyde park show next year! my, times have changed...

is this a one-off gig or is this a "we're back" type of show?

They said this is going to be one of some other shows. They're already rehearsing. My, I really wish they'd come to America.

Discussed it already on the 'Cooler. Came to the conclusion that, after the first "oh wow, Graham's in..." reaction, we weren't that bothered.

Pretty much the least surprising reformation ever, isn't it? Though I've no idea (other than "for money") why Graham and Damon would want to re-saddle themselves with those two other pricks. They are much more fun on their own.

I dunno, it's nice for people to go have a good day out, see band, smile, etc.

If they want to make more new music, then we'll celebrate.

They're doing the 'hey we never actually split up' bit at the moment, so we'll see...

TGE is the weakest of their 3 Britpop albums, certainly, but it does have that quality of the emptiness at the heart of the 90s party. Coxon's guitar was always the best part of them, for me, and the Country House solo one of his finest moments.
Yes, they're character actors, media chancers who never made an original sound, but they did it with some panache.
I will still listen to Modern Life is Rubbish and parts of Parklife and later albums.

I've no idea (other than "for money") why Graham and Damon would want to re-saddle themselves with those two other pricks.

"Word" on the "street" is Graham's skinto and has had to flog his country pile (how big is it? etc), and so has been compelled to get in line. I must admit to a real shiver of excitement the first time i saw the new D&G arm-in-arm pics. They're a cracking team, no matter how much (or of course precisely becuase) they wind each other up.

I'd imagine there's also a degree of now-extremely-wealthy Damon helping out his evidently-gifted-but-chaotic/mentally iffy mate in a time of need.

If they want to make more new music, then we'll celebrate.

we will?

for sure! another non-graham blur album would be perhaps a little pointless, but sticking them back together for another pop will at least be interesting.

they were pointless and boring the first time round. NO MORE esp not for these awful nostalgia fests which are at least providing me with a template on how not to be when i am old.

but if you won't remember danity kane who will?

the brainwasher

see, calling blur pointless is one thing, but srsly lex if you actually think they're *boring* i can only assume you've only heard singles?

dude, don't...

argh! too late...

"boring" is lex-ese for "i don't like it"

Christ almighty.

Anyone fancy a "Blur:Are Shite Once Again" T-Shirt? (Read the following in a General Crozier style Metalocalypse voice, to yourself obviously. If you don't know what Metalocalypse is, then it's your own fault and this will be even less funny than it already is)

It seeeeeems as if the seminal britpop band called Blur want to get back together again to make astounding new music. This could have catastrophic effects on our youth and middle-aged citizens. As the world's 4th biggest economy, Blur's surprise re-union could have destabilizing ramifications which are too legion to be properly explained here. Only Patrick David Xavier McMeneman-McHanarahan, our specialist re-union specialist, can even start to describe the disastrous potency of this formative party's re-grouping on the world's already dangerous pre-apocalyptic position. He says, "Their imperial designs know no bounds and we will have to use all of our vigor and guile to disperse this potential doomsday-making scenario else we sprint toward a life-ending britalocalypse". He added: "Damon Albarn-Taller than a Chinese tree; Graham Coxon: Not a bumblebee; Dave Rowntree: Diddy Doo Diddly Doo Labour loser Doo Diddly Doo; Alex James: Cheese master in more ways than one."

http://mogwai.co.uk

Well I don't care what anyone else thinks, I'm happy about it. Whatever happens can't possibly suck the way Think Tank did.

You reckon? Think Tank is a repulsive album but this is already sounding like an epic disaster.

this is already sounding like an epic disaster.

Care to explain how? I mean, it isn't as if they've announced reunion shows on the moon or a comeback space rock opera album. They've announced some shows. Bad idea? Maybe. Epic Disaster? Come on...

Fair enough.

reunion shows on the moon or a comeback space rock opera album

Either of these things would, actually make me THE HAPPIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD!!!!

Haha, so I totally picked bad examples.

Anyway, back on topic, I'm pretty ambivalent about this since I knew it was bound to happen sooner rather than later. I would like another decent Blur album though.

I think Blur are boring too... not without merit/ideas/execution obviously, but if I subtract the feeling that nothing they have ever done has felt even remotely exciting to me personally, that is actually what's left.

and no I DON'T CARE about listening to their post-Britpop lost albums AT ALL. They still have Damon on so not even going there.

Gorillaz > Blur.

rationally it makes no sense 'cos Blur... loads of pop tunes, in loads of different styles.. zeitgeisty I dunno but just MEEEEH x 10 always really.

Coffee and TV though. That was alright. And that anti-war song off Think Tank was kind of touching in a minor way.

think tank is really good! it's the only blur album i've heard, but it makes me interested in hearing a new one.

HEAR ANOTHER ONE HEAR ANOTHER ONE

IT DOESN'T EVEN MATTER WHICH ONE JUST ANY ONE BUT THAT ONE

Used to be a lot more into them, but always more into selected songs/singles than entire albums. Modern Life is their best all around, and even that is spotty. Maybe being from the States, I never really got all the Britishisms and character songs. I'm still more into Oasis even now. They've really faded for me in the past few years, I haven't really liked anything they've done since Coffee and TV.

Between this and the Goth Box Poll thread, Kate seems to be on a major truthbomb/OTM roll on ILX today.

Why does Mogwai hate Blur with such inordinate passion. I mean, the original batch of T-shirts was a clever, if overly mean-spirited, one-off gimmick (I still own mine). But to espouse the kind of vitriol posted above, especially after their own uncomfortable transition into Senior Band years, seems more than a little pathetic.

In essence - Blur: Who Really Gives a Shite; Just Go To the Shows If You Feel So Inclined

ilx is doing a crap job of the lx part lately

i find this sweet:

http://www.nme.com/news/blur/41563

my good friend is flying out to this show from missouri o_O

she's got a blur tattoo tho

I'm probably going, tbh.

The thing is, if it were halfway around the world, I would probably buy a ticket and book a flight and make it AN EVENT. Because it's happening so close to home, it's like... nah, can't be bothered.

that's silly kate, let's make it an event anyway

fancy dress

etc

If you come to London again, Roxy, it will be an EVENT TO END ALL EVENTS!!!!

(Let's form our own ILX supergroup that will put Blur's reformation in the shade. I'll let you be Alex if I can be Graham...)

time to get a new haircut

Time to get new glasses!

What fancy dress will you wear? Something like this maybe?

http://www.manze.co.uk/images/people.jpg

theyd love that

i find this sweet:

http://www.nme.com/news/blur/41563

― rox qua rox (roxymuzak), Friday, 12 December 2008 09:29 (1 hour ago)

I saw a similar thing on Primrose Hill about a year and a half ago, someone had written half the lyrics to 'For Tomorrow' across the path on the way up.

yeah, i saw that too

"and the view's so nice"

That Primrose Hill graffiti has been there for at least 10 years now!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v136/primrosehill/blurdate.jpg

Oh fuck it, I was only like 19 or 20 years old or some shit:

Look how long Damon's hair is! LOLOLOL

I was in England when that was a hit. My friend and I traveled down from Manchester to see them in London. I remember a cab ride afterwards and that's about all. Damon used to climb on all the monitors and stuff. It was a great show.

Great song, great video, my first memory of Blur either

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/first-night-blur-rough-trade-east-1706909.html

I wanna know if they played anything from 13...(other than Tender, Coffee And TV or No Distance Left To Run)

they played a 13-song set that included all the hits plus a handful of rarely heard, firm fan favourites

...doesn't sound like it

Blur @ Rough Trade East, London.
Setlist for June 15th, 2009

She's So High
Girls And Boys
Advert
For Tomorrow
End Of A Century
Beetlebum
Coffee And TV
Tender
Out Of Time
Popscene
Song 2
Parklife
This Is A Low

Blur @ East Anglian Railway Museum
Setlist for June 13th, 2009

She's So High
Girls And Boys
Tracy Jacks
There's No Other Way
Jubilee
Badhead
Beetlebum
Trimm Trabb
Coffee & TV
Tender
Country House
Charmless Man
Colin Zeal
Oily Water
Chemical World
Sunday Sunday
Parklife
End Of A Century
To The End
This Is A Low
Popscene
Advert
Song 2
Out Of Time
Battery In Your Leg
Essex Dogs
For Tomorrow
The Universal

They were probably under orders for the Rough Trade one. Encouraging to see Essex Dogs and Trimm Trabb on the rota. Not encouraging to see Bugman, Swamp Song, 1992, Battle and Caramel all off it :(

Also a real and present lack of the good Great Escape material, of which there is much.

Given how fucked they were meant to be when making TGE, they may not look back in it with that much affection.

But they're playing all the boring big obvious singles like The Universal and Countryhouse and Charmless Man, and not the awesome melancholy stuff like Best Days, Fade Away, He Thought Of Cars, Entertain Me, Dan Abnormal or Yuko & Hiro!

They should do "Ernold Same," Ken L.'s got the time.

But they're playing all the boring big obvious singles like The Universal and Countryhouse and Charmless Man,

..and look! they're promoting a singles comp!

It needs promoting. I didn't even know it was out until I saw a microscopic ad for it in Saturday's Guardian Guide! Probably why it'll be lucky to sneak into the Top 30 if the midweeks are anything to go by. Still, "Popscene" is on there and it's good to have that back in UK CD circulation after 17 years' absence.

They should have re-released Popscene as a single to promote the concerts (or vice versa), since most casual fans would think it to be a new song.

Actually, that's not a bad idea:

CD Single:

a) Popscene
b) Don't bomb when yr the bomb
c) Wassail song

Not encouraging to see Bugman, Swamp Song, 1992, Battle and Caramel all off it :(

― gosh I actually dig this shit (country matters), Wednesday, June 17, 2009 8:33 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

dude, i know you'll take this the wrong way but... just no. no.

Oh, by the way, they really should do "Out of Time", it's damn good. Graham can have a rest if he feels strongly...

xpost Totally, Blur are a business now, not a band. Won't stop me foregoing PRodigy to see them at Glasto this year.

I also object to their compilation being called "MidLife" - ugh!

anybody see that video they did with david shrigley? funneh stuff!

Is there any band who isn't, by definition, a business?

yeah, was gonna say.

It's more about how back then, if Damon wrote something, it got shaped towards Blur or it wasn't done. Presumably, the temptation now would be to keep the 'Blurish' stuff for Blur, and the more experimental stuff for the other projects.

Could be wrong, of course...

I object to the "Midlife" title as well. It's just dumb.

Is that an assassination threat?

Goodness no, are you just making some kind of bad joke or something? No offense, but I don't get it.

If they'd had an album or song called "Young Life" or something earlier in their career, I'd have no problem with the title.

Oh, by the way, they really should do "Out of Time", it's damn good. Graham can have a rest if he feels strongly...

― Mark G, Thursday, 18 June 2009 09:43 (3 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I'm with you on this. One of his sweetest melodies

Judging from the gig yesterday at Brixton, they are doing it as part of their set, along with nearly every single apart from Bang and On Your Own.

ah good.

I see "Crazy Beat" is the only Thinktank single not on the comp.

yeah, it's rub.

those are two of their better singles xp

"on your own" anyway, love that song.

"bang" along with much of "leisure" is hella underrated

i mean it's their second-worst classic line-up album, but such is the quality of the others that it could hardly be anything else. parklife ftl.

PL>MLIR>BLUR>GE>13>LEISURE>TT

get rid of the last two and flip the arrows around imo

my go:

BLUR>MLIR>13>TT>PL>GE>LEISURE

MLIR > ... don't really like the others but i guess PL > BLUR = TGE > LEISURE > 13 > never heard THINK TANK, never going to

They meant a lot to me in the mid-1990s, but I think I'd find them hard to listen to now - except maybe 'she's so high' which I always adored.

I sorta understand, Pinefox - I loved them a lot more in the moment than afterwards. Like, Great Escape was a fantastic album, but I never felt the need to pull it out after that initial run with it.

I had a strange experience listening to Midlife where I couldn't tell if the stuff had been heavily remastered and how much it was just that I mostly listened to their first three records on cassette.

If they'd had an album or song called "Young Life" or something earlier in their career, I'd have no problem with the title.

― Subway to Idaho (Bimble), Friday, June 19, 2009 9:08 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Consolation: Parklife?

Once one of them dies they can release an "Afterlife" or maybe "Parklife II: Sitting on a bench, complaining about kids these days"

Watching Glastonbury and Albarn's voice has completely gone to shit. Like a cross between Henry Rollins, Jamie Oliver and an inebriated plasterer. This Hyde Park concert is going to be abominable if it's anything like this.

Maybe he's just got a cold, or something.

was about to bump this thread!

everything else seems in order except the SLIGHTLY unoriginal setlist choice

they're certainly going for it

stop playing songs from parklife srsly

your manic energy is great but maybe applied to something a little less mid-period?

full choir indicates that 'tender' may be imminent

It's Glastonbury, all they're going to do is the hits.

Really looking forward to Albarn brawling his way through 'This is a Low' at the end, though.

^^^me too

and yeah, here we go

To be fair, they did play 2 songs off Parklife which weren't hits!

Beetlebum and TNOW the highlights so far

LET'S GET RETARDED IN HERE, HEAVY HIT AFTER HEAVY HIT AFTER HEAVY HIT

am sitting in sullen silence

They are right, it's definitely more retarded in here.

why, bbc

that's better

If you're referring to this mentally overspeedy version of Parklife, this is not "better". Oh, maybe compared to BEP, it is.

too bad Phil Daniels couldn't leg it over to help them out with 'My Humps'

Now that I would have watched.

full choir indicates that 'tender' may be imminent

― the funk soul custos (country matters), Sunday, June 28, 2009 9:27 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Did I see the camera catch Alex flat out laugh at the expression Damon affected while singing this song, or is that just the default face of Alex?

ailsa, was referring to sunday sunday

i'd forgotten how kickass keith flint and maxim were XD

and i did not see that bit, sadly, although i did see aj's sweat patches

if anything, a double bass is a more laughable affection amirite

zane's going audiovisual on us

oh you teases i thought this was gonna be one of your arty ones

probably not the thread for it but wtf at the bbc pimping for bruce springsteen? i honestly don't know when springsteen became a thing, but on top of neil young it kind of reminds me why i liked the britpops at the time. ie it wasn't earnest americans being earnest. the boss moar liek the DROSS.

NOW PLAY THEME FROM RETRO

kinda get whatcha sayn nrq but apparently he was rly good so whadda i know

Bruce was good unlike most of the shite on offer. it would pain me to say it for fear of sounding like a boring old git but considering most of the line up is boring old gits it aint a thing.

Ha, I was about to say similar, perhaps I have become a boring old git. There was a time when I'd have been going mad for Blur and wouldn't have pulled the curtains to watch Bruce Springsteen if he'd been playing in my garden, but somehow I've done a total 180 in the last ten years or so. I watched his set earlier, he was great.

(Prodigy also old gits, but not exactly boring)

For Tomorrow still a cracker, and off-form weird-voice Albarn can't ruin it.

bad closing choice imo

best one was either beetlebum, countryhouse or there's no other way, badhead surprisingly strong considering i don't rly like the song much

for tomorrow not so good this time for some reason

Best bit was Badhead and Beetlebum back-to-back (seeing as those are probably my two favourite Blur songs anyway). Re: above, I can't stand Bruce Springsteen, never could, and what with you-know-who dying the other day this weekend I've been feeling like I've been transported back to the 80s and forced to listen to loads of music I hate.

Yeah what am I talking about, Beetlebum was the highlight. Coxon really let go for 30 glorious seconds. More of that plz.

Loads of revered kinda-conservative american stuff getting an airing but if it's convincingly performed I got not much of a problem

i checked in my parents' guiness book of hit records and the so-called 'boss' never had a hit in this fair isle before 1985. no 'born to run', no nothing. but i meet people my age who are like brooce! legend! wv ppl.

damon's voice was always blur's weak spot.

To be fair, he had a bunch of big hit albums over here by then, but yeah.

OMG, imagine people liking someone who hadn't troubled the charts much. that's never happened ever.

They played "Girls & Boys" ("Boys & Girls"??) last night at the club. It was a fucking classic gay pride moment that happened to intrude on a goth night. What a song! I remember playing that on college radio in the early 90's.

Damon's never been able to sing, wtf are people talking about.

Seeing the reformed blur play glastonbury reminded me what excited and irritated me about them in the first place.
Damon's whole persona, that got-it-all believe-in-nothing little squirt, was such a sharp contrast to springsteen, whose passionate sermonising I would have hated a decade ago, but seemed to speak to our times on this occasion, and connected with the crowd.
On the plus side, for Blur, there's the songwriting and coxon's guitar playing. So yes, I missed them, but there's an emptiness about them too.

Damon's 'frontman' act is the same as when they played small places.

Damon's whole persona, that got-it-all believe-in-nothing little squirt, was such a sharp contrast to springsteen, whose passionate sermonising I would have hated a decade ago, but seemed to speak to our times on this occasion, and connected with the crowd.

imo you are over-mythologising, or at least reading a slightly false narrative. dudes got different styles.

Springsteen can be blues for white people who don't partake of OG blues (call and response breaks were pretty cool) but is better than that whole shite shite Van Morrison universe that I'm thinking of when I cite BFWP.

Damon had quite a few moments where he sounded like he was turning into Billy Bragg, and fastfastparklife *sucked*. Perhaps Alex James has been on Atkins; he put them all to shame by stepping effortlessly back into that haircut.

yr not telling me Graham Coxon is fat?

Aside from looking like indie/aspie Serge Gainsbourg, I thought Graham had perhaps aged best.

We stood next to Ant from Ant 'n' Dec as he was buying ice creams during Vampire Weekend.

The day itself was all very artless but well worth the cost of admission. The best bit would have been the little speech Albarn gave about Britpop and reforming and hinting about whether the band will continue before launching into 'Death of a Party', if only that had been the last song and they'd left the stage without saying another word.

"Death of A Party"! Oh man, that's great stuff.

It was great when they played it though, about two songs from the end and you can almost feel the majority of the crowd's attention going onto other things, like their mobile phones or planning the bus home or throwing more bottles at people in front of them.

Still think they should have brought Phil Daniels out, with everyone expecting 'Parklife' but the band instead plays 'The Outsider', that bizarro-Parklife off the last album.

ain't that called "me, white noise"

Friends emailed a picture from the concert last night. Way to rub it in guys. :-( JEALOUS.

spotify has "me, white noise" incorrectly labelled as "the outsider"

Yeah, I couldn't remember what it was called and looked it up.

Also:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJaUu7IyEf0

There's a live version of that song I got on a free CD which kicks the original's ass. Totally smokes it, even. And the recorded version's pretty good.

at whatever recent Leeds festival Blur played there was a fat old cockney guy standing in front of me bellowing "ME WHITE NOISE" throughout every single gap in Blur's set, like properly trying to get the band's attention to force them to play the song, for about an hour solid, and he kept striking up conversations with us and people around us about whether they would play Me White Noise, and then eventually he got really frustrated and left, and then about five minutes later Phil Daniels turned up and they played it

Damon was really, heroically inane at the first Hyde Park show

Went to see them on Thursday, it was great, except for the people who kept throwing half empty bottles of beer around the place. As one of my friends said after the Bruce Springsteen gig on the Sunday, just by looking at the number of bottles of beer on the ground at £3.50 each, someone is making a lot of money from these shows.

I thought it was a really great mixture of songs, from the ones that everyone could sing along to and the quieter moments. With all the 'hits' it felt like being at the biggest indie disco.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3569/3683290696_e739ae8a1a.jpg

nice foto!

thursday at hyde park was the best outdoor live show ive seen in a good half decade and one of the slickest 'events' that i've ever experienced in terms of organisation, facilities, etc. the atmosphere was blinding down the front, the weather was beyond perfect and the band were flatly fantastic.
if it had been in a movie on tv you'd have switched over because it was too unrealistic.

Setlist still a bit too straightforward for my tastes. We got Trimm Trabb, Oily Water and Death Of A Party but they were just about the ONLY concessions to avant-Blur.

Dream Blur setlist:

Battle
On Your Own
Slow Down
Best Days
Bugman
Ambulance
He Thought Of Cars
Blue Jeans
Chemical World
Beetlebum
I'm Just A Killer For Your Love
1992
Dan Abnormal
Birthday
Resigned

*encore 1*
Trouble In The Message Centre
Caramel
This Is A Low

*encore 2*
Clover Over Dover
Essex Dogs
Yuko & Hiro

Strongly doubt Dave Rowntree would be able to play Slow Down these days. Really strongly doubt it.

jesus for a second I thought that was the actual setlist

i dunno the crowd could take the excitement of the classic

I'm Just A Killer For Your Love
1992
Dan Abnormal

run. i mean god, give them a chance!

If Blur played that exact set I would be, shall we say, somewhat elated

Dud. However, I wanna fuck Damon Albarn if that counts.

So Dud: http://www.holymoly.com/news/random/couple-dry-hump-crowd-blur-gig18749.html

FIND MORE STORIES ABOUT: BLUR | DAMON ALBARN | DRY HUMPING | SEX

That would be a great gig, Louis, but I'm not really a fan of 1992. Replace it with 'Mellow Song' and I'll be there.

:o

Mellow Song is great as well but we're talking Coxon's finest hour, Damon's descent into the abyss, my own personal 13 joint-favourite (along with Battle, Caramel and Bugman; the four songs together represent Blur reaching a level so heroically elevated from their expected standard that I boggle now as to how they did it)...

I mean I can see why some people think it's a tuneless dirge but for me it's transcendent. And surely Sing is the natural replacement? :P

Glad you like the rest of the gig mind. Always thought Blur were at their most exciting when playing around slightly, or allowing subtlety into their songwriting, as my choices attest. Blue Jeans for instance is a beautiful little song but doesn't have the 'pop chops' of the far inferior For Tomorrow. Occasionally, Blur managed to balance great musical values with a fucking massive, populist tune (Beetlebum, Chemical World, On Your Own, This Is A Low) but for me they suited sophistication. Or mentalism.

dream setlist: anything at all, played in Toronto! I saw them 6 times as a teen.. I need more..

Blur's album Blur: Classic.
In recording their follow-up, Blur (1997), the band underwent another reinvention, influenced by the lo-fi style of American indie rock bands such as Pavement. "Song 2", one of the album's singles, brought Blur brief mainstream success in the US. -wiki
prolly shoulda left of that essex dogs track tho

prolly shoulda left of that essex dogs track tho

My dear fellow.

best opener: ambulance >>> beetlebum >>> stereotypes >>> she's so high >>> for tomorrow >>> tender >>> girls & boys
best closer: essex dogs >>> yuko & hiro >>> resigned >>> wear me down >>> optigan 1 >>> battery in your leg >>> lot 105

Are we talking about this anywhere?

There are sooo many Blur threads.

if you need to dance you can go to the gay bar next door

― steamed hams (harbl), Sunday, October 4, 2009 9:33 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark

hahaha wow. wrong c+p. this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iYxdghpJZY

we can talk about either, really

okay that looks pretty great. weird how there's nothing pre-the great escape on the soundtrack to the trailer though.

While browsing a local record store, I came across this Playstation car game. Something about the design of that logo looks a bit familiar.....

http://img353.imageshack.us/i/blur.jpg/

http://i.clevver.com/fullphoto/216966/500/950/blur-game-poster-1.jpg

Yeah, must be new then, I saw it just last week.

I'm not a gamer so it might well be older.

There's a night of Blur/Britpop on BBC4 tonight, folks.

I like the newest song quite a bit... "Fools Day."

Celebrity chef and journalist Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has been confirmed as a special guest at Harvest, the new food and music festival hosted by Alex James.

Due to take place on the Blur bassist's Cotswolds estate, the event will run from Friday September 9th to Monday September 12th.

A statement on the festival website described Fearnley-Whittingstall as "one of our Harvest heroes" and "an inspiration to the Harvest story".

Further information on the precise nature of the 46-year-old's involvement will be released nearer the time.

The musical line-up for Harvest includes Scottish songwriter KT Tunstall and newcomer Benjamin Francis Leftwich, as well as DJ sets from Gilles Peterson and Jo Whiley.

Tickets for the festival are now available online, priced at £105 for the full weekend.

Alex James is 43.

Would go if Fearnley-Whittingstall was DJing and Whiley was doing the cooking.

yeah, I bet she does a mean barbecue

/sexism

http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lud1kkduWQ1qc1ge6o1_400.gif

AWESOME!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WPKXPgMkbc

holy shit

i quite like that

Blur have accepted the invite to headline the Olympics' Closing Ceremony Celebration Concert in Hyde Park on 12th August #blur

Bah, should've been N-Dubz.

https://p.twimg.com/AmIq5hVCMAEDx8R.jpg

I mean I know but that's the poster and they're the supporting acts and it's 1995

Mmmmmmmmm

Wow, the amount of nostalgia for the very recent past expressed in that poster "It's still the 90s! Cool Britannia!" and just... no. I was going to say it makes an improvement on 60s nostalgia or "we won the war" 40s nostalgia but actually, no, it really doesn't.

The song (and I never thought I'd say this about a Blur song) bored me. I say this as a former Blur obsessive so I'm not just hating for the sake of hating. I'm just having to come to accept that even though much of their work holds a deep and special place in my life, I have to add Blur to the long list of bands I used to love, but can no longer bring myself to care much about any more.

It's like every few years, Damon has a bit of a nostalgic, melancholy kind of day, and writes a song about sitting in West London feeling nostalgic and melancholy and he reunites Blur to record it, but the magic is gone because there isn't everything else surrounding them to support those moods - so the song is just kind of... there.

but

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb3iPP-tHdA

(£55.00 Ticket + £6.00 Fees)

Nice to see London 2012 attempting to make a profit.

WCC, yes I know what you mean. The thing with Blur is:

Back when they were extant, they were Damon's number one outlet for all his thoughts, tribulations and personal matters. Alongside the 'everyman' anthems, the private thoughts and personal doubts, bis brances into differnt musical styles, all squeezed out of that Blur nozzle.

Now he has as many outlets as he likes, the 'cartoony' stuff via Gorillaz, the 'srs' via GoodBadQueen, his affectations to 'world' music via his contact list. And the stuff that sounds a bit like Blur via, um, Blur.

I managed to 'obtain' all the Smiths' remasterd tracks, but was really unmoved by hearing them again.

Whereas hearing the J&MC stuff again sent me straight back to Reverie Street.

Yeah, I quite agree. Except all of that stuff was squeezed through the nozzle of those specific four people, some of whom often actively fought his worse tendencies and stamped their own personalities and aesthetics onto the music. And I think that I found that nozzle more interesting than anything inherent about ~Damon~.

The concert's free isn't it?

WCCC mostly OTM. Though I admit to shedding bit of a tear when the boys played To The End on their Glasto reunion, I'm a different person to the teenager who obsessed over their back catalogue and bought all their singles. It's all too easy to feel cynical about their music now I understand the many many points of reference in their music (whereas before I hadn't really heard much by the Kinks, the Specials, Syd Barrett, Pavement or Wire), whereas now it's fairly obvious they were the Harry Potters of Britpop - a carefully arranged conglomeration of past influences, all wrapped up in a nice neat package.

Haven't heard the new song yet, but as WCCC says, there's something unnatural about getting a band together to try and recreate the spirit of something they no longer have. That said, I'd be overjoyed to be able to see them with NO and the Specials at Hyde Park, so...

I haven't heard this new one, I did hear "Bad Day", it's OK as far as it goes. If it was the 'first track heard from the new album' then yes I'd be interested. But at the moment, it's like a series of 'square one on the snakes and ladder board's where what I really want is to be taken up to 63 and fall to 49 and so on.

I got the 'Monkey' Cd for a pound (I think, might have been three) in Fopp a while ago. We (royal we there) were quite interested in seeing the show, but couldn't get tickets. After hearing the album, she said "well, I guess you had to be there, really"...

What's the Monkey CD?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey:_Journey_to_the_West

and the album is pretty shite to be honest ..

for my 40th i got a litho of one of the artworks for the show which is fantastic, but still not been able to listen to the album in one sitting.

The concert's free isn't it?

Closing Ceremony Celebration Concert @ Hyde Park
•12 August, 5.30pm-midnight
•Featuring Blur, The Specials and New Order
•Tickets £55+booking fee
◦on sale to BT customers 9am, Wednesday 22 February
◦on general sale 9am Friday 24 Februaryhttp://www.londonlive.bt.com/

funnily enough, neither did we. (xposT)

Fifty Five Quid? pssh

Then again, for three decent bands.

Still...

£55 is excellent for three bands of that calibre, isn't it? Or am I just used to paying the Australia tax on everything?

I know, it's been a long time since I went to a gig...

But, I've seen Blur a couple times, I've seen New Order, not seen the Specials but the music I know well...

It'd be a braw day out, the girls would love it, etc...

I'll have to try to win some in a comp...

What? I was told it was free but you had to register. I'm not a BT customer so... This seems horribly horribly corporate, but I guess that's the way of the world.

i do wonder though, will there be a constant stream of medal adorned athletes on stage turning it into a "T4 on the Beach" type of affair but with gurning cyclists instead of tv presenters goading the baying masses into a last night of the proms type of insanity ?

yeah probably. i'd almost expect this kidn fo thing from Blur, but the Specials? NEW ORDER? Seems VMOOC.

FUCK YOU BRITAIN

New Order possibly not the best example of a band who are above getting TV presenters on stage to inanely goad the crowd

yes i would be pretty shocked if they allow sports people anywhere near their music OH WAIT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWr3xMhm0ig

We are going!

Last night they were absolutely terrible. Well, Damon specifically, I guess the other guys played the songs pretty well.

The sound was abysmal.

Oh come on. The sound was not so bad. It's Blur, they're fucking terrible now, whatever they used to be.

Damon couldn't really sing live in the old days, so he must be awful now.

That Hyde Park thing is probably just going to be a big gig, right? I'd assume any athlete or politician worth their salt will be at the proper closing ceremony.

Blur were fucking great when I saw them in Hyde Park last time, have a good day out Mark G.

Yes and they were fab at Glasto in '09. Hopefully last night was a slip up.

my favourite blur stuff was always the melancholy and nostalgic songs, tbh. loved glasto 09, tho I only watched it on telly.

massively exceeded expectations for me but i think that was as much to do with a fuckload of people in field having a singalong as it was their performance, which i can't really remember. (although if it worked on tv it probably was more than that.)

Blur did maudlin surprisingly well, and it's a shame the irksome "La-da-dah" anthems ended up outshining their reputation as good balladeers. 'To The End' and 'End of A Century' are much more gratifying songs than 'Parklife' and 'Girls & Boys'. What often winds me up about Blur's critics is their overuse of the mockney knees-up strawman, which pretty much derives from Phil Daniels' performance on 'Parklife' (who is an actor and also a Cockney, so can't really be blamed for posturing). Other than that, Blur had few other Chas'n'Dave moments save a handful of deliberately tongue-in-cheek B-sides.

^^^ i'd say exactly the same goes for Madness

^^^and the Small Faces

Philip W. "Phil" Daniels (born 25 October 1958, Islington)

Previously.. (with Gary Kemp)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWIU_J7ShVQ&t=12m52s

Blur did maudlin surprisingly well, and it's a shame the irksome "La-da-dah" anthems ended up outshining their reputation as good balladeers. 'To The End' and 'End of A Century' are much more gratifying songs than 'Parklife' and 'Girls & Boys'.

The doomier songs are what I still end up playing, their poppier numbers seem to have gotten more annoying as the years have past.

What often winds me up about Blur's critics is their overuse of the mockney knees-up strawman, which pretty much derives from Phil Daniels' performance on 'Parklife' (who is an actor and also a Cockney, so can't really be blamed for posturing). Other than that, Blur had few other Chas'n'Dave moments save a handful of deliberately tongue-in-cheek B-sides.

i really am not into blur so this is maybe not the thread for me but re: the above, i kinda think the resonance of the mockney tag is similar to the thing that got discussed in the politics thread, of certain things just serving as neat synecdoches of bigger trends - so romney left his dog on the roof of a car is a small irrelevant instance but captures a lot about the way he more generally gets it wrong/is not a real human being, &c&c&c. and the mockney thing maybe only encapsulates a small era of blur (does it though? isn't it at least a little bigger than parklife, cf at least drastically, cynically insincere shit like country house), but it refers more broadly to the weird-interchangeable-identity thing that was kinda marked, with them (maybe more accurately 'him', idk) having convenient, fluid & au courant tastes & personae.

obscuritants and b-sidists might be interested in taking a gander at this rundown that came out today http://thequietus.com/articles/08056-blur-brits-beyond-the-hits

Graham Coxon just retweeted that link!

The first 5 tracks listed there are in my all time Blur top 30 easy. 'Inertia' is wondrous.

That's the side of Blur that made me put up with "Blur" for so long. And that's the side that's got completely lost now that "Blur" is something Albarn does every few years when he has a "Blur" track to record.

watching through the brit performance now. 1) girls and boys went on for too long. 2) song 2 sounds way too clean.

blur should've recreated this imo. and left it at that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy8RqNLgH7c

There is a rumoured to be a cover of it (Young & Lovely) by Saint Etienne too (just imagine that. Ooooh).

I would kill to hear this.

I think it's funny that people say stuff like 'Country House' is cynically insincere. I truly believe that when that song was written and recorded that the band, or rather Damon, truly meant it. In the case of that particular song, it's not as if the song is an imagined scenario either, it literally is about someone Damon had a touch of bile for. I know that people, even the band, have said that The Great Escape was some kind of effort to make a Parklife II, but sometimes when you're writing songs and recording, the general mood/human element of things which one really has no control over can invade the whole process and help to give the album a character all of its own. So on the surface, while it is a sort of Parklife II, under the surface it's something very different. That album speaks more to me than 13 does.

I recall British journalists at the time using the phrase 'Darklife' wrt The Great Escape.

Ugh.

Apparently that was one of the proposed titles for the record. I recall it mentioned in an interview once that they tried to get 'life' into the title somewhere. Sex Life was another one, I think.

I suppose one way of looking at The Great Escape is that it's kinda like a 'sister' record to Parklife, rather than a 'follow-up', in the same way that Queen followed up A Night At The Opera with A Day At The Races. I'm thinking about the way 'Entertain Me' comes across as a weary, more negative version of 'Girls & Boys'. Although, unlike the Queen album, The Great Escape and Parklife seem to be on opposite sides of the same coin - partly because it's intended to be, sure, but also partly because that was the general mood in the Blur camp at the time and I don't really think that's something one can falsify.

I recall British journalists at the time using the phrase 'Darklife' wrt The Great Escape.

have no problem with that. the message at the heart of that record, and its best tracks, seems to be: "We've made it, and 'it' is pretty shit when you get there, actually."

^ stevie otm.

The general theme of the album is escapism, hence the title The Great Escape, virtually every character in every single song on that record is either wanting to escape, has escaped or is in the process of escaping, either mentally or physically, from a particular situation or place. They're attempting to escape using many different means also. Again, I think this is partly intentional, but I do think it's also a reaction to having made it and having to deal with the more negative things that come with fame.

Country House and the whole Great Escape isn't cynically insincere - it's just being sincere about a bunch of rich white boy issues that NONE of us can actually relate to. Songs about your morning jaunt through the local park, sure, songs about the kind of over-entitled twats who inhabit private drinking clubs utterly beyond us mere mortal's ken? Fuck off.

I don't hate the Great Escape, I will still occasionally defend it as some of the album tracks are v good, but of all the albums, I *relate* to it the least.

So you don't relate to feeling stressed/strained/under pressure and wanting to escape from it, or escapism at all? Fair do's.

I mean, it doesn't particularly matter to me that I haven't had the existence that most of those characters have... I don't live in a country house, I don't own a fleet of buses and newspapers, and I don't drink in private members clubs... but what I can relate to is the feeling of wanting to escape.

And to say that the album is ALL about those type of people is simply false: the taxi driver in 'Best Days', the person who wants to win the lottery desperately in 'It Could Be You', everyone on anti-depressants in 'The Universal'. Everyone knows at least ONE spoilt brat that Damon is getting pissed off at on 'Globe Alone', and life is so hectic these days that it ain't too much of a stretch to relate to 'Fade Away' or 'Yuko & Hiro' either.

So yes, I relate to the feelings, even if I don't relate to the characters. Stress, pressure, wanting to escape and depression can happen to anyone, as well as getting pissed off with spoiled brats and taking the piss out of people who live in country houses.

No, it's not that I don't feel those things, it's that the rarified atmosphere that Damon builds creates such a barrier between my emotions and his.

I'd pin its problems on a (sometimes hideous) curdling of a certain songwriting style rather than fame-is-shit whining - This Is Hardcore or Mezzanine are far more in that headspace. I don't need to relate my own circumstances to characters in songs as long as they're persuasively drawn - you don't have to be a dissolute aristocrat to enjoy Sunny Afternoon. But most of the characters on The Great Escape are cardboard. That's the barrier I hit anyway.

It's really funny to be dissing this album when I'm usually the one defending it.

I think also, it's Damon's most wordy, and trying too hard to be clever and failing at actually capturing anything - when I never really listened to Blur for the lyrics.

x-post and also what DL said, cardboard. It's all about how Damon feels about the characters (usually sneering and bad) but the characters themselves never get to speak in any meaningful way.

xxpost:

I can see why that may be a problem for some. For me, it enhances the record because it shows that you yes, you may have your country house, and yes, you may have your fleet of buses and your newspaper, and yes, you may be "somebody" in some company somewhere... but you can still be one immensely miserable unhappy fucker that can't completely deal with whatever shit is being flung at them. Again, as said earlier, "We've made it! And 'it' is pretty shit when you get there, actually!", and it's comforting to people who will probably never get there that maybe there is something to be said for being happy with your lot. I don't envy any of the characters on The Great Escape at all.

I really want to have it on record that I think 'Top Man' is an immense pile of shit, though. I've never liked that song, and I always skip it. But I have a hell of a lot of time for the rest.

The song "Stereotypes"

1) That way of nicking an old title and writing a new song (See also "Universal", and various Teardrop Explodes lines..

2) The verses are "here's another bunch of characters, laugh along" and the chorus is "ah, I have to do better than this I know I can" admonishing himself for writing easy stuff.

3) Sequel: "Ernold Same", written in 10 seconds flat because Ken Livingstone happened to pop into the studio. Song = "I really can't do these 'character' things anymore" - And funnily enough he never has.

There's a bunch of 'tossed-off' songs on "Great Escape", they are not always the worst ones on it.

fame-is-shit whining - This Is Hardcore or Mezzanine are far more in that headspace

is Mezzanine 'about' something as a whole?? granted it's been a while

speaking as someone who was in their mid-teens (which would account for a decent chunk of their fanbase I'd've thought) when both of those albums came out, it never really crossed my mind to try and 'relate' to either of them

Huh, I never noticed that about Stereotypes, that the whole "there must be more to life than stereotypes" could be about his songwriting process as much as the people he's sneering at. Maybe, finally, it clicked, that he was reducing people to cardboard instead of writing about himself.

It's odd, though, with Damon, I've got so used to him writing third person character sketches, that even when he is blatantly and clearly writing about himself, I never believe him. Like the weird inverse of a certain other songwriter who creates and inhabits characters so completely when he writes and sings songs that everyone believes that they must be him, must be about him, even when they're observations about other people or ~lyfe~ around him.

(those albums = Parklife and TGE btw)

...and x-post but oh god can we please not have the "we should listen to music ~objectively~" vs "we should try to ~relate~ to art" argument one more time. Both are equally valid approaches, both can and should be used in an evaluation of art, and neither excludes the other.

xp The title track, Risingson and Inertia Creeps are all about going out of your mind in bars and hotel rooms. That paranoia and isolation also feeds into Group Four and Man Next Door. It's not about fame so much as caning it, which I guess is relatable even if they're doing it in nicer bars.

Thinking about it, few if any of Damon's character songs are truly persuasive - even the ones I love from MLIB & Parklife - so it wasn't a huge loss when he dropped them. He could never get the details right. Whereas Jarvis could write fantastic, meticulous character songs and therefore came undone for a while when fame distanced him from the people he was best at writing about.

Reading this, I'm hearing a few parallels between The Great Escape and the Beach Boys' album Surf's Up.

Both came at a transitional point in each bands' careers. The titles also. 'Surf's Up' has a split meaning - 'Surf's Up' in the positive, "hey dudes, let's surf" way vs "Surf's finished, it's over, we're defeated". Very similar to the Great Escape - the cover depicts a kind of holiday brochure image of what it might be like to escape (juxtaposed with the back cover with Blur as business execs, manipulating this dream); and yet on the record it's all about people wanting to escape from their depressing, humdrum existences.

I really haven't heard "The Great Escape" enough (irt I have heard "Parklife" too much, then again the kids like it a lot..) so I will have to.

btw, TGE is £1 in aye£1 at the moment (well, last time I looked)

It's terrible. Damon was always, to me, the least interesting member of Blur.

I suppose what's happened is, as the members of Blur that I did find interesting have become more and more gigantic cunts, I've stopped being interested in Blur at all.

(If I've said this once, I've said this a million times on ILX - that what I liked best about Blur was the tension between wanting to be a completely polished and immaculate pop band on one side, and wanting to be anarchic Cardiacs style punks on the other, at the same time. How each side of the band would attempt, in the course of the music, to rip the other to shreds, but neither would ever completely dominate. But the tension was so interesting to listen to.)

OTM. I like Think Tank as a Damon album but it's not really a Blur record.

I think that's the main problem that I have with Think Tank in all honesty. Parts of it sound fine, and the songwriting is definitely up to snuff for the most part, but you very rarely get a glimpse of the personalities in the band that aren't Damon. The rhythm section on 'Moroccan People's Revolutionary Bowls Club' stands out, but moments like that seem few and far between.

Some of the best bands in history have this rock/pop rough/smooth ego/id dichotomy between lead members. Goes without saying that both Graham and Damon were brilliant at quality controlling each other's excesses and often having to dovetail their ideas into other areas. In another universe, Damon would have been in a boy and while graham would have been in some shortlived garage act that only released a couple of ltd 7"s, but instead they ended up being in a band that was best at genre-study, inhaling and exhaling any influence they saw fit. Funny you never really got a lot of bands who came after whom people said 'sound like blur' (as opposed to the myriad oasis copyists) - this is probably because Blur sounded like so many other bands without completely ripping them off or laboriously copying them. They were the best magpies in the business, and to my inexperienced ears this came off as eclecticism.

xp:

There are some loathsome moments on that record though, for me at least. I'm not even talking about 'Crazy Beat' here either.

*in a boy band. Hilarious iPhone

They were the best magpies in the business, and to my inexperienced ears this came off as eclecticism.

don't see why one thing should cancel out the other there - I think (again I'm just drawing on my teenage fandom here) that it only becomes a pernicious state of affairs if it leads you to believe that 'being eclectic' is a virtue in itself

Everyone seems to talk about Damon as a lyricist or a songwriter or a frontman, but nobody ever seems to talk about his keyboard/piano playing, some of which is genuinely lovely. I'm thinking about the organ on 'Badhead', or the harpischord on 'Clover Over Dover'. To say that Graham Coxon has his own very unique and idiosyncratic way of playing goes without saying, so I won't spend too much time talking about that. I've always found it remarkable, though, how Alex James managed to improve as a bass player very quickly... his bass playing on a lot of the tracks on Leisure is pretty rote, to be honest, but then on Modern Life Is Rubbish you've got some amazing bass work on 'Colin Zeal', for example. I know his basslines are dictated by Damon's chord progressions for the most part, but a quick analysis of his basslines reveal some odd choices of notes here and there, often great (and melodic) uses of dissonance, and dare I say it, some of it is quite funky.

don't see why one thing should cancel out the other there - I think (again I'm just drawing on my teenage fandom here) that it only becomes a pernicious state of affairs if it leads you to believe that 'being eclectic' is a virtue in itself

At the time, eclecticism was def something I prized very highly and I loved albums with really incongruous styles rubbing up against each other - Ill Communication, Giant Steps, Parklife etc. But also, I wasn't so conscious of Wire, XTC, The Specials, the Kinks, Pavement, Syd Barrett, so to me it was "WOW, these guys never do the same thing twice!". It's harder for me to feel quite that way now, especially when in retrospect, Blur's "eclecticism" tended to repeat itself album to album (the punky track, the comedy instrumental, the character song, the knees-up, the ballad etc).

Saying Damon should have been in a boy, or boy band, or whatever, is a bit of a disservice as he has always been prodigiously talented, musically. His lyric writing has improved, however.

He was in a 'boy duo' before Blur/Seymore was a thing.

Turrican OTM - Blur's saving grace was that they were all very accomplished musicians. I'd love to get a guitar lesson off of Coxon, and he's certainly a guitar hero, which for an indie guy is saying an awful lot. Also right about the piano and keyboard playing, which is def an underrated sound.

http://www.willkay.com/DOMAIN_FORWARDERS/blurtalk.com/htdocs/images/database/General/Mojo/twosacrowd.jpg

There we go, "Two's A Crowd" ...

I heard Food were sceptical about even letting Alex stay in the band when they were first signed.

Oi! I won't have a word said against Alex's bass playing! Even in the Leisure era, it was obvious that those Peter Hook inspired melodic, soaring basslines were something quite special. One word: SING. Written around Alex's incredible bass part. So shut it, Alex-haters. Or rather, hate on Alex for his Cameron-fluffing cheese-making ways, but his basslines? Never.

Alos, yes, Damon's keyboard playing was an integral part of what made the music amazing. Except, well, when they toured, Damon would be up at the front gurning and singing and all of them would be filled in by a session player. A very good session player, and it was a relief to see this incredibly competent woman stopping the whole thing from being a total sausage party. But maybe that's why I don't rate Damon's keyboard playing abilities - because I never saw him play them.

xpost:

Food were skeptical about a lot of things. Modern Life Is Rubbish even.

Oh der blimey. It reminded me of Frank Zappa's contention of:

"In the older days you had old guys who would say "Hey, I don't understand it at all, but maybe the kids do... Let's put it out and see", whereas later on there'd be some hippy dude who would say "Listen, I know what the kids like, and they won't go for this."

Fast forward, and it's "I know what this band should be doing, I was in the Teardrop Explodes!"

http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/9333/tumblrlsx3l5xbyl1qi71lo.jpg

http://www.challenge.co.uk/pointless_support.jpg

"And that's a Pointless Answer!!!"

xp Although he was wrong to resist the new direction on MLIB, Dave Balfe also told them they needed to go off and write a couple more singles. They came back with For Tomorrow and Chemical World. That's not bad A&Ring.

Says something about Damon's skill and ambition that instead of throwing his toys out of the pram he conceded to Balfe's demand with exceptional results. A band led by Graham would have told him to fuck off.

Yeah, I'd like to hear how MLIR Mk1 would have been like. Probably pretty rubbish. Starshaped was going to be a single, IIRC.

'Star Shaped' was gonna be a samba if Andy Partridge of XTC had had his way!

I completely agree that there were some good things that came out of Blur's relationship with Food Records, but the impression I get is that I don't think they truly understood what they had in Blur until Parklife started selling.

The scrapped version of Blur's second album (which was meant to appear in 1992), I imagine would have had some tracks on it that got demoted to B-sides, such as 'Bone Bag' for example.

Dug out Modern Life Is Rubbish for a listen earlier and enjoyed it immensely after not listening to it for a fair while. I love the way that Damon puts his chord progressions together - oftentimes he'll throw a chord in that doesn't seem to quite 'fit', but his vocal melody will make it fit. I always like the slightly uncomfortable way that the chorus for 'For Tomorrow' ends on G major, and the verse starts on C# minor, for example... but it works. Also, those verse chords to 'Star Shaped' strike me as being slightly unusual, as well as the chorus to 'Villa Rosie'...

The chords to Coffee & TV seem to be all over the place

Coffee & TV was not written by Damon, natch.

</pedant>

Coffee & TV was a co-write between Damon & Graham. Damon wrote the chord changes, and Graham wrote the lyrics. I remember Graham admitting as much in an interview around the time Blur did that gig where they played all of their singles in order.

And yeah, 'Coffee & TV' is another one of those where you look at the chord progression and think "this shouldn't really work", but it does! Quite unusual, that one.

Who wrote Best Days? Was that Graham?

god, listened to TGE yesterday at work, and all the sad songs - fade away, best days, he thought of cars, yuko & hiro - slayed me.

watched the doc a couple of nights ago on itv4 - the last hour of it anyway - and thought it was marvelous. loved damon's comment at one point about oasis, that they seemed like bullies, like they'd been in more fights than damon & co had at school, and thought that was a choice observation. and they spoke a lot about how TGE sparked such a backlash. i remember it at the time, and it seemed to me that a lot of that backlash had to do with that record somehow breaking the covenant of pop at the time - they'd made the 'big time', and yet their next LP was a set of songs about how "success" (on various different levels and of various different kinds) can be really alienating and depressing. in context to the destructive effect of the Britpop phenom on music at the time - redefining "success" for indie bands as having to have some kind of commercial success quotient, now that nominally "indie" bands were scoring chart hits - it seemed a pretty potent step against the prevailing trends - like, 'we made you big, how dare you say yr not enjoying it' [thinking specifically 'other people break out in a cold sweat / when you say that these are the best days of our lives'. i really love those songs for that reason, i think, though whether thats because i'm a glum old 'success-has-made-a-failure-of-our-family-home' type glummer i don't know, but there's something vulnerable and wonderful about that record that surfaced only rarely in Oasis, and maybe only in the champagne supernova.

Here's something - Britpop always gets slated as a self-congratulatory New Labour bandwagon, but Labour weren't voted in until '97 - way after Britpop was over and done with. So Cool Britannia's a false collective memory in many ways. Blur had moved on to set their sights on America by '97. So really this goes to prove that the Life trilogy was as much a critique of British life - not the jingoistic celebration bands like Blur often got accused of.

As I remember it, Britpop died when everyone took their copies of Oasis' Be Here Now home on release day in August 1997, put it on their CD player for the first time and immediately went through all the stages of grief.

That's about how it happened for me:*(

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/apr/07/damon-albarn-gorillaz-heroin-blur
Interesting

Sorry, Damon, even taking heroin can't make you interesting.

i don't think taking heroin has ever made anyone interesting, but i thought that was a great feature.

But wasn't that the hook of the story, though? Ooh, Damon went through some kind of artistic epiphany in the late 90s. That's when Damon was taking heroin. Heroin caused the epiphany and made him, y'know ~interesting~. Except it didn't, it just made him self-indulgent in a different kind of way.

I suppose I should just not read interviews with that man, because I am that bitterest thing - the Ex-Blur fan.

the hook of the standfirst isn't the same thing as the hook of the story - for one thing, it was probably written by a sub-editor, and not john harris, and if i were subbing the piece, i would definitely have put it in the standfirst as it is definitely a kinda 'big deal' revelation that's new and news. but yeah, aside from some woolly talk about it 'opening him up artistically' there wasn't much to it.

do you still hate all of em, kate? even lovely wee graham??

Really good interview, I thought. Harris gets knocked here, but I think the problem was that he'd ceased to be engaged by much music long before he'd made the transition from music writer to politics writer. Give him a music subject he's passionate about and he writes a fantastic piece.

1) DON'T. USE. THAT. NAME. You're getting a flag post for that, because I have asked about 50,000 times for people on this board not to use that name so at this point I'm not buying "Oh I didn't know" any more.

2) can't fucking stand that child-man

i'm gonna reserve my observations on Harris for the John Harris RIP thread

Of all the Britpop characters I think I hate Damon the most. Even more than Noel and Liam and their hard lad-isms. Even more than Brett and his bisexual fop act (which he's thankfully dropped). Even more than Jarvis's constant self doubt and guilt. Even more than (non Britpop example) Bono, because at least Bono's still arrogant so I can take his BS with pinch of salt.
We've all met students who've taken a year out to go travelling, and come back just completely full of shit. Damon is like the ueber example of that:

"It's shocking in the sense that you think, 'This is really hard work.' But it's very practical. And extremely honest, and very productive. And if you could translate that humility, and ingenuity – well, there are lessons for all of us."

Fuck you Damon. People trying to scrape a living by sorting through the often toxic and harmful waste generated by the First World is not 'honest' or 'productive'.
For once I would like an interview where Damon stands up and shouts "YES I TOOK HEROIN!!! I WAS BORED AND/OR STRESSED OUT!!! BUT IT WAS A STUPID THING TO DO!!!". The only thing more boring than listening to a junkie is listening to an ex-junkie trying to come up with excuses why he became a junkie. Excuses that somehow skirt around the central point that he decided to take heroin.
And all this 'last ever gig' shit? Trust me, Blur are going to be chugging along like Status Quo. Except nowhere near as exciting.

apologies mb, hadn't read any of the threads where this has come up or i wouldn't have used the name. flag away though, i really don't give a shit.

there's nothing in here that's new is there re the smack phase? there was an Observer piece that Miranda Sawyer wrote way back in 1999 that covered the whole Bettelebum/ 13/ Heroin thing. even in the No Distance.. film the interviewer starts off by saying the heroin stuff is 'well documented'. re Gorillaz; seems he can never be Graham's mate AND Jamie's mate at the same time.

oh really? i wasn't previously aware that damon had done smack too... and i missed the first ten minutes of no distance when i saw it on tv (what a great movie, though.)

i remember reading '3862 Days' (blur biography) around the time of 13 and thinking it gave the impression they were grown up and no longer drank/did drugs. but i guess denial is fairly common w/ addicts. that narduar vid of them from 2003 made it fairly obv. they were off their face.

So, I give him my interpretation of what changed his approach to music: that he had an experience common to a lot of musicians from bohemian backgrounds. For all its grave dangers, that drug – perhaps in moderation, if such a thing is possible – sometimes opens up a side of them that they didn't know existed.

"That's an astute observation on your part," he says, "and I wouldn't disagree with it." For some reason, he then shakes my hand.

tsschhhhhh, what a pair of bawheids

the self titled blur album is quite good tho iirc, probably the only thing of theirs i could listen to

snoball otm

Take your meds, "MB"

I was hoping they might do one last tour, it's a shame. Can't make it to Hyde Park though I'd love to! Canada used to get so much love - alas.

Not OK.

Look, FFM, that is SERIOUSLY not an OK thing to say to anyone. That's beyond offensive, beyond insulting and just seriously, not an OK thing on any kind of a level. How dare you, how ablist, how derogatory, and just generally a hugely asshole thing to do.

You have no right to make the kind of assumptions that you just made in that post. Not OK on any level.

And no, this is not me being "mentally ill" - this is me being genuinely angry that someone, in 2012, can make that kind of a red-flag mental-health-shaming ablist post, about me, or about anyone. I can't even tell you how out of order and out of line that was.

Just based on my own experience, when my Dad decides he doesn't need his meds we all get a lot less "hey could you please not use my name?"s and a lot more ANGRY. TYPING. YMMV of course. You can call me whatever you like, I encourage mentally ill people to take all the advantages given to them.

Cunt.

All you keep doing, when you keep making these kinds of posts, FFM, is exposing your own bigotry.

Your attitudes towards mental illness are clearly what are colouring your perceptions of my actions. About whether I'm annoyed because I'm asking a reasonable request for the 50th time, or if it's because *you* have decided my annoyance is ~clearly~ evidence of mental illness and my need to be ~medicated~ to have my behaviour suit you. You do not have the right to make that diagnosis.

Using your knowledge of someone's disability in order to delegitimise their stated preferences, with a nice side order of condescending insult, that's Daily Mail territory of bigotry and disablism.

That hurt. You might be the kind of person that would be *proud* to know that you had actually caused me to spend half an hour crying and shaking with anger, because this kind of disablist attitude is something that has fucked my life over and again. But that's what happens when you use that kind of language and that kind of disablist attitude casually and carefully. You genuinely hurt people. And that makes you the asshole here.

Not me, asking for the 50th time for people not to use government names on the internet.

You have every right to think I'm a horrible person or an asshole or whatever - but when you start bringing people's disability into it, that makes you a fucking bigot, and this kind of bigotry has no place in this forum.

Boom, I've seen you ask people not to use your name - and I don't. I suppose Stevie hadn't. You overreacted, again. There's nothing logical to debate. I do apologize for the pills comment, it was out of line. But so is your insistence of believing everyone sees every post you make. I don't believe he did that out of malice and I do believe after several years posting under your real name/several aliases between which there is one common thread by which people think of you, and you'll need to exercise more patience in getting your message out.

I'm not sure what business of yours it is, how I talk to my friends (especially as Stevie doesn't seen to have taken offence) and you don't seem to have come on this thread to do anything else except take me to task for not conforming to your politeness police ideas of what constitutes an "overreaction" or not. So you're right. It's not logical of *you* at all to be on this thread except for some beef.

But you have shown your colours, in terms of, all the things you could have said - that I was curt, that I was short-tempered, or impatient, that I might even have been rude, all things that might be true, depending on how you look at it - but you didn't choose to say any of those things. You chose to make a deliberate slur against a disability.

So, having displayed such flagrant bigotry, I hardly think that you have *any* right to lecture me on politeness or how to react to people.

(what's going on?)

(oh i see its one of those things I don't get as i only
look at ilm and not other boards on ilx. okay kids carry on)

McNormal and Chips to thread please

1) DON'T. USE. THAT. NAME. You're getting a flag post for that, because I have asked about 50,000 times for people on this board not to use that name so at this point I'm not buying "Oh I didn't know" any more.

fucking blur thread

fwiw that Grauniad article is hugely worth reading, and shines an obvious light on 13 that tbh I'm ashamed I never picked up before. As an added bonus I didn't know Rocket Juice & the Moon (a) was a thing (b) had been released before seeing that article, so cheers Brutish.

i thought it was common knowledge him and justine had indulged in smack

~as had others in elastica hence the reason one of the band once clean discovered god ~

also, that article just confirmed why i was not overly keen on plastic beach.
i.e. not enough jamie h involvement for me.
this became all the more obvious once a real band was formed to tour the album.
however, as for the videos not working, i would disagree.
the video for the last gorillaz track (the one for the shoes), is a gorillaz trainspotter joy.

McNormal and Chips to thread please

― Morrissey & Clunes: The Severed Alliance (PaulTMA), Saturday, April 7, 2012 10:28 PM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

LOL!!

i thought it was common knowledge him and justine had indulged in smack

y but I didn't consider that 13 would be that explicitly about heroin

Justine F's take, from (yikes!) 10 years ago http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2002/mar/10/life1.lifemagazine4

ace, thanks for that

i recommend this blog where a dude reviews all the blur songs individually: http://blursongs.wordpress.com/

"Most people I know would probably rather spend time sick in bed, crying for England and listening to the shipping forecasts than being on the receiving end of Peggy Mitchell’s sexual fury, but Blur were always different."

he is not a v good writer but it is funny (imo)

I am naturally all over this - thanks roxy! I wondered if it was Veikko then saw the link to Veikko's Blur Page at the bottom. A classic lyric source in the late 90s!

im reading the last party atm. these people were fucked up. can't really hear joy in any of the music anymore tbh! feel sorriest for justine f. got the short end of every stick

oooh, never heard of that but it looks fascinating. I do have some idea of how poorly it all went for Justine, which is bullshit. They were the last wave to really be able to hide reality from their fans, weren't they? The internet has destroyed thosse rose coloured glasses!

ca. the great escape, justine's dad bought a big house for her and damon. justine was on tour for ages at the time, and damon lived in it alone for 6 months. when she came back he had furnished it with a bed, an ashtray and a tv on a box, and there were papers everywhere, nothing else, "not even a chair to sit on." weird life. how angry and ugly that album is.

justine also talks about how brett expected that when they graduated, she would get a job at an architecture firm and he would stay home and make food for her while she supported them both. that's when she dumped him tbh. then damon apparently pressured her to go along with an "open" relationship, ie he just kinda fucked everybody

also, sorry to harp on last party tidbits, but damon basically bossed justine into dating him, lol. he called her under the pretense of setting up a gig and then told her she was the one and they were to be married and she had "no choice in the matter." typical

They were the last wave to really be able to hide reality from their fans

so true. i never knew so much of this stuff. i feel like justine's been out of the game long enough that she's really open about it all. her interviews are really crushing

Hah! I'd never heard that. To date the purchases my husband have made (that I didn't suggest) were a TV and a couch, so that sounds about right. But woah @ the Brett/Damon control tactics! What the fuck, dudes.

Keep going, I love the anecdotres! You may need to transcribe this book as it is ~$40 Canadian on Amazon! (I might pick it up used.)

(I also like anecdotes..)

This is the most recent thing I read from J, which puts less of the blame on the men w/r/t her relationships - ie - "For a while, she was still living with Anderson while seeing Albarn. " but that might just be lazy writing
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2002/mar/10/life1.lifemagazine4

haha i got it from the music library at school.

justine says that when she wanted to break up with damon (after going to iceland where he had been staying and seeing that even comedy sketch shows on tv were referencing the fact that he was sleeping around w/ everyone[!!]), he was like "no, youre depressed. you want a baby and havent come to terms with that". she was in such a bad state she just kind of believed him for a period and just did a lot of heroin and slept a lot. horrible. when they finally did breakup she says she felt that damon still wanted a baby to have something to show for eight years otherwise wasted. makes me depressed!

alex is a well-known boor but all rumors i'd read said that damon was a flirt but had no sex drive whatsoever. a little surprising to read about what a shithead he was in that relationship. the media really made it look like she made a cuckold of him or something.

another anecdote: the first thing brett ever said to justine was "what's wrong with your mouth?" she really knew how to pick them

yeah i think she was still playing in suede briefly while seeing albarn, but not actually living with brett. at any rate i think it was her house, so he might have just been lagging in moving out, but im not sure.

justine also talks about how brett expected that when they graduated, she would get a job at an architecture firm and he would stay home and make food for her while she supported them both. that's when she dumped him tbh. then damon apparently pressured her to go along with an "open" relationship, ie he just kinda fucked everybody

I've never read this, I'll need to check it out. Tbh Brett has always struck me as a lazy person so this doesn't surprise me.

He wrote a certain song for a reason.

oh lordy! you can tell just by looking at him that Brett is a dick but Damon definitely had that broader appeal. As I've grown up I have met Damon types and know now what his type is *probably* like. But Justine was younger than I am now when she met all these people! We all have the loser boyfriends we picked when we were young and dumb, hers just happen to be famous. I am a bit surprised about the 'you just want a baby' BS though! Jesus.

Alex, however.. boor or not, I'd still hit it. And have him feed me cheese.

xp I don't recall hearing 'I'm A Horrible Git Who'll Expect You To Pay For Everything While I Do Eff All' - was probably a b-side.

See also Damon's 'Charmless Man'.

I tried to make a good joke out of a random Suede song title, but I was far too Lazy.

Hmmmm. What can I add? That J's (by all accounts terrifying) dad condescendingly referred to D as 'that popstar' and not ever by name? When she first started Elastica she was living in a flat in Kensington and her (dull) brother had the flat next door. At the time I remember her telling me that in comparison to Kensington, you could get a lot of house for your money in Notting Hill (the house they got was right by a huge bus stop on a busy road, and I think her dad was the guarantor but she made enough to pay for most of it from her publishing deal). Interviewed Brett last year (at his gorgeous house in the same area); he's turned into Mr Focused On Business but this maaaaaay have something to do with him not doing drugs and being married to a nutritionist now.

Justine was the one who put it around about D's low sex-drive; this was a public lie to put younger women off throwing themselves at her boyfriend. Damon definitely did want a kid and when he got with his current partner IIRC they were expecting in very short order. And it could've been worse (pop culturally) for J if she'd stuck with her very first boyfriend: GUY RITCHIE.

xpost -- You and me etc.

And it could've been worse (pop culturally) for J if she'd stuck with her very first boyfriend: GUY RITCHIE.

So glad I wasn't drinking anything as otherwise the spit-take would have covered the monitor (and rendered Murry/Djokovic rather wet).

he's turned into Mr Focused On Business but this maaaaaay have something to do with him not doing drugs and being married to a nutritionist now.

Mm, right, fitter, happier, etc.

Imagining Brett and current wife as Marshall and girlfriend number two from AbFab

why in hell do ya wanna read about pop stars? Aside from the music all I need to do is apprec how great they looked.

And it could've been worse (pop culturally) for J if she'd stuck with her very first boyfriend: GUY RITCHIE.

But then we'd have been spared Madonna in 'Swept Away'.

xp b-b-but I love reading about, say, Bowie keeping his piss in a refrigerator, or Brett throwing Bernard's guitars out of the second floor studio window into the street, or Damon saying how much he enjoys "hanging out in Africa" without realising how much of a massive wanker it makes him sound.

Me too, it's fun.

Suede's Love & Poison book is full of great anecdotes, especially from the Head Music period when Brett was addicted to crack and smack.

Here's a choice one:

"It was a quiet Saturday afternoon, certainly summer, I was in Suede's office stealing CDs when the phone rang. It was Brett desperate to know if there was £800 in cash in the safe because he didn't know how to use a bank card. Next thing I knew we were in a cab to West London on a mission of great importance and some secrecy. The cab pulled up outside Brett's flat and the curtain twitched and shortly an ordinary looking man in a baseball cap and shades climbed into the front seat. 'Alright mate,' he said. It was Brett in disguise. Within moments we were briefed on our mission and the cab drove some fifty yards down the street and pulled up outside a hi-fi shop. David went in with cash and it was my job to lift the smallest stereo known to man into the boot of the cab. To this day I don't think anyone saw us. Fifty yards later, Brett was unloading the stereo. 'I'd invite you guys in,' he lied, 'but the flat's a bit of a mess.' 'Is that it?' asked the taxi driver, agog. 'Yes,' I replied. It was a day I'll never forget."

Suzy! queen of amazing tidbits

And as far as reading abt popstars- honestly I want to read about everything

Suede's Love & Poison book is full of great anecdotes, especially from the Head Music period when Brett was addicted to crack and smack.

Yes, it is an interesting book! Brett comes off as a real piece of work.

I like the bit where he's so high during a vocal take, he bursts into Cyndi Lauper's 'Time After Time'.

omg

Haha.

Revived a Suede thread for this but for those missed it:

http://thequietus.com/articles/09986-suede-recording-new-album

And yeah, that's a great book. Met David shortly after it was soft-released via the ICA, he's a character.

I remember the biog getting middling reviews, though that may have stemmed from the whole "oh for fuck's sake Suede, just go away" era. I thought it was interesting in that it was clearly written by a fan, a fan club 'president' no less, who doesn't hold back the punches from the Head Music era onwards. Was the updated 2nd edition worth seeking out?

wow thats one expensive book

My favourite bit in the book is where they're working on a test version of 'Savoir Faire' with Steve Osbourne, for when they were trying out producers for Head Music...

"I (then) had the misfortune to witness Brett bouncing into the room, dressed only in what appeared to be a hideous pair of shell-suit bottoms. His torso, while muscular, had the consistency of wet putty. I was finally treated to an exclusive preview of a new song, 'Crack In The Union Jack', which halfway through turned into 'A Chas and Dave* Britpop special!' with Brett riffing away frantically, repeatedly shouting 'Oi!' while headbutting the nearest wall. All this time, Steve Osbourne looked on with the bemused air of Tim from The Office. Incredibly, he was officially enrolled as Suede's new producer only days later."

*(Brett refers to Blur as 'Chas and Dave' throughout the book).

I remember the biog getting middling reviews, though that may have stemmed from the whole "oh for fuck's sake Suede, just go away" era. I thought it was interesting in that it was clearly written by a fan, a fan club 'president' no less, who doesn't hold back the punches from the Head Music era onwards. Was the updated 2nd edition worth seeking out?

― Supper's Burnt (PaulTMA), Tuesday, September 11, 2012 2:32 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I only have the 2nd edition, which adds a chapter after the split of the band, and I don't think the book is well worth re-buying just to have that chapter. However, I would definitely recommend the book to anyone who is into Suede; like yourself, I thought it was very interesting the way that it's written by a fan, but goes into far far more detail than a load of other biogs would. You would never expect Blur to put out a book anything like this. Alex James' 'A Bit Of A Blur' book is an incredible waste of time by comparison, in my opinion!

a bit of a blur is luckily only a waste of a couple of hours. it makes alex look terrible and everyone else in blur look cartoonishly great. i dont really believe anything he says

I do love those new blur reishes!

I should read this boom too I went trough a heavy britpop phase back then

Book

Yeah, Bit Of A Blur was a comic book, basically, I wasn't expecting it to be anything else, it made Alex seem like a complete twunt, but still he managed to make being in Blur sound hilarious. It did finally manage to put the boot in my Alex crush, which had survived an awful lot up to that point. (And even though there was not the internet, there was still the grapevine of fandom, and I'd heard an awful lot of how awful Alex could be through it.)

Really, really tempted by Love and Poison. I love rock biogs that show how nasty rock stars can be. This sounds like it may be the "Up And Down With The Rolling Stones" of Britpop.

Book book shake shake the rook!
Ticm ticm ticm ticm book!

still he managed to make being in Blur sound hilarious.

The problem I had with that book was that being in Blur wasn't hilarious - like the bit in that early docu where an either hungover or still drunk Damon throws up on some concrete steps. Seeing that was kind of proof that being in Blur had a lot more in common with hanging around with 1st year undergrads who couldn't hold their ale.

it was like he was just trying to make short, choppy, "witty" sentences regarding something that approach rarely suited. he doesnt come across well in the written word

he comes across very well in photographs, however

See, I find that hilarious. Hilarious, as in, laughing AT them (not laughing with them.)

Watch Blur get hit by taxies while stumbling around drunk! Ha ha hahahahah!

I remember hearing that Damon Albarn was really worried when he heard that Alex was doing the 'A Bit Of A Blur' thing; but then he later complained (sounded relieved?) that it didn't go into very much detail. I dunno, the guys in Blur seem very very careful about the way they project themselves; way too careful in that respect to put out a 'warts and all'-style biography at least. I mean, it didn't come out that Dave was still a cokehead around the time of Think Tank until very recently, when someone decided to challenge him on his prickish behaviour towards Nardwuar in an old interview.

prickish behaviour towards Nardwuar needs no defense. I'd do coke if they'd let me at him.

Yeah, but Dave Rowntree wasn't a guy that was (publically known, at least) for prickish behaviour. Out of all of the members of Blur, he always came across as the 'balanced one'. As it turns out, he was just the 'mostly quiet' one.

Brett Anderson: 'I owe the rest of Suede a huge apology'

Frontman reveals regrets over recording sessions

http://www.nme.com/news/suede/59137

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkNvk2MgiCc

This Suede studio footage is circa Head Music, I think...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zebiIu2B0WM

Don't suede have enough threads to chat about them in?

Well yes, but it shouldn't be surprising that Suede crop up in Blur discussions, or for people to have Blur discussions that find themselves in Suede territory for a brief spell.

^^^ I think most of those Suede threads have Blur digressions, so it evens out.

Yeah... in all fairness, the two bands are linked in numerous ways whether they'd like it or not. I'd be more concerned if people were discussing Ocean Colour Scene in the Bob Dylan thread!!

I get that, and shouldn't complain (I derail shit all the time), but since I always thought Suede were crap I'd rather it was elsewhere. Personal preference.

I'm guessing it's Brett's voice that turns you off, eh? That's the usual complaint I hear. I was a big fan of both back in the '90s, although I can see why one would be a fan of one and not the other.

I don't have an issue with Brett's voice in particular, but I never found it or their music appealing.

The big difference between them, for me, is that both Brett and Damon were colossally self-centred narcissists, but Damon's the one who's managed to post-rationalise his behaviour, either as "oh that's what rock stars do, Guv", or some kind of "tormented artiste" BS. Whereas Brett has been a lot more honest and just said "yeah sorry, I was a bit of a tit back then".

and FTR I still listen to Suede, but wouldn't really ever think of putting on a Blur record ever again, so maybe I'm a bit biased.

Basically, all of the feelings I still have for Blur are pretty much nostalgia-based, while Suede, I do actually think that Brett was just the more interesting rock star (and more fucked-up human being, these may or may not be causally linked.)

I wonder how much my being Stateside effects my opinions on the two bands. I was completely outside the hype and hysteria and coverage of their every move so I just had the records to judge them by. And Suede I didn't listen to until long after the fact, except for the debut and a few songs here and there.

Yeah, Blur are pretty much entirely a Britpop timepiece, perhaps even more so that Oasis. Suede's music works outside of that context as the first album is sort of pre-Britpop, and the subsequent albums are all trying to get away from Britpop.

I was still a teenager when I heard their first single, so it's embarrassing to admit how obsessed I was. Not that I stole anyone's cell phone or anything like that, but still.

Snoball - I don't get that reading. Blur's first record is pre-Britpop too, and then the last three aren't Britpop either. Again, from the States, Britpop as a thing didn't mean shit here.

But from a UK perspective, the Britpop era was when Blur were absolutely massive, to the point where only Oasis were really big enough to challenge them, and even they couldn't. Blur are pretty much some guys sitting in bathtubs singing 'Country House', in the same way that The Beatles are four guys with 'taches in multi-coloured quasi-military/brass band uniforms.

Yeah, Blur are pretty much entirely a Britpop timepiece, perhaps even more so that Oasis. Suede's music works outside of that context as the first album is sort of pre-Britpop, and the subsequent albums are all trying to get away from Britpop.

― Emeritus Professor of LOLology (snoball), Tuesday, September 11, 2012 8:59 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, Suede was kinda pre-Britpop, and I've never seen Dog Man Star as really being a Britpop type of album either. I think Coming Up was Suede's 'Britpop' album (and their biggest selling overall), with Head Music and A New Morning both being flawed attempts to move away from that.

xp Also Blur's first record wasn't as big as Suede's debut. Best comparison I can think of is that Blur's debut is like the first two Bowie albums - known about but not really considered part of the story.

I think There's No Other Way is slightly more part of the story than The Laughing Gnome.

Both are pretty transparently imitative of their inspirations.

It's all about Damon's hair here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJzCYSdrHMI

on loan from the Inspiral Carpets

It blows my mind when I think back to all this. For a stretch of time (roughly from winning all of those Brit Awards for Parklife up to the release of 'Wonderwall'), Blur were absolutely massive in the UK. I'm talking about 100% bona fide pop stars in the UK - in the same way as like, for example, Madonna is (only on a smaller, national scale of course). Everybody, including those not necessarily interested in music, knew who they were. Their gigs and fanbase were full of teenage girls. They were never out of the tabloids. When What's The Story (Morning Glory)? took off for Oasis, the focus switched to them, although it seemed to be far far more intense with Oasis.

When 'Beetlebum' came out, they did retain a large audience. However, it was a large audience of music fans, rather than an audience of music fans + a large audience of teenage girls (who ended up moving onto, I dunno, buying Boyzone records).

its interesting to me that damon says he just woke up one day depressed and had no idea what was happening, like legitimately had never experienced depression or even periods of sadness or being down. justines dad bought him therapy or w/e but he refused drugs ("they made it seem as if the world was coming out of a transistor radio") and then we got the great escape. wonder how things would have been different if he had trusted therapy

what's a decent Blur bio?

'There's No Other Way' was a big hit, but there was no indication that Blur were going to end up doing what they did. That song was the first time I'd ever heard of Blur, and I remember liking it a great deal. I would have been 8 years old at the time, and remember it getting quite a great deal of radio play. Then I didn't really hear/see them again until they did 'Parklife' on Top Of The Pops, 3 years later. These were pre-internet days and with me only being 11 at the time, it took me a while before I actually figured out they were the same band.

Given the number if serious music fans, talking about about music on a music messageboard here, who happen to be - y'know - women who got into Blur when they were teens - can we seriously just give the "OMG teenage girls liked them!" thing a rest? That shit is really tired and worn out

(was not a teenage girl by only a matter of months when I first heard them)

Those that read the music press at the time (which of course, I didn't - that started when I was about 13/14) would have been more than well aware of Modern Life Is Rubbish and the change in sound. But for those that didn't, Parklife was the first time since 'There's No Other Way' that the band got any kind of recognition outside dedicated music fans.

Given the number if serious music fans, talking about about music on a music messageboard here, who happen to be - y'know - women who got into Blur when they were teens - can we seriously just give the "OMG teenage girls liked them!" thing a rest? That shit is really tired and worn out

(was not a teenage girl by only a matter of months when I first heard them)

― Atomow dhe Kres? MY A VYNN, mar pleg! (White Chocolate Cheesecake), Tuesday, September 11, 2012 9:31 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well, no. Because it's true: their audience was full of teenage girls at that point, and teenage girls that weren't necessarily into music. Granted, some of them may have turned into SERIOUS MUSIC FANS (I don't wish to tar ALL teenage girls with the same brush here), but for a lot of them Blur may as well have been Take That.

Remember that wisecrack Alex James made to Q Magazine around the time of the Great Escape tour?

"What's 50 ft. long, has no pubic hair and goes 'ahhhhhhh'? The front row of a Blur concert."

At 10 I found the the There's No Other Way video highly disturbing as grimaced as it climbed the charts.

That video is all about the end with all the flashing colours... and Damon's 'do as well, of course.

*and

I think it was just stuff with food that would freak me out

Bizarrely apt, given that they were on Food Records don'tcha think!? :D

Shouldn't have put Mandrax flakes on the trifle...

Quoting notorious sexist cock, Alex James, in defence of your sexist statement is really NAGL.

Being a band of that stature requires attracting a lot of casual fans, some of whom may like Take That, or other equally non-cool bands beloved by teenage boys, but when it's only the female ones that get singled out for derision, that's sexist crap and the kind of thing I've spent 20 years on the Internet fighting. Knock it off.

There were a load of blokes that bought and sang along to "Parklife" while being in pubs with their mates and that, but when it was "Great Escape" vs "Morning Glory" they left Blur for Oasis and never went back. And didn't buy "Be here now" because they already had Wonderwall and didn't need another one.

xpost

Well, no. Because it's true: their audience was full of teenage girls at that point, and teenage girls that weren't necessarily into music. Granted, some of them may have turned into SERIOUS MUSIC FANS (I don't wish to tar ALL teenage girls with the same brush here), but for a lot of them Blur may as well have been Take That.

Remember that wisecrack Alex James made to Q Magazine around the time of the Great Escape tour?

"What's 50 ft. long, has no pubic hair and goes 'ahhhhhhh'? The front row of a Blu

but, Turricgan, Blur WERE at the level of Take That. They scored loads of top tens in England. They Were Cute.

Bizarrely apt, given that they were on Food Records don'tcha think!? :D

As a Smash Hits reader I knew the name of their label, it was all too much for my fragile eggshell mind

xxxpost to White Chocolate Cheesecake:

Indeed, that's what I was getting at; and yes, the audience does include teenage boys too. Was I singling teenage girls out for derision? Hardly, since I distinctly recall writing above (and you'll recall it too if you scroll up and look), that I wasn't tarring all teenage girls with the same brush. It was sharing an observation of how big Blur were at that time, you know nothing about my personal beliefs and attitudes towards gender equality, and nevertheless, it does remain fact that Blur's audience at that particular time was full of them ;)

Anyhow, it would seem like SOMEONE on the internet is spoiling for a fight; in which case, WHO should knock WHAT off?

tl;dr? Lighten up.

here we goooooooo

their audience was full of teenage girls at that point, and teenage girls that weren't necessarily into music.

c'mon dude, this is condescending

There were a load of blokes that bought and sang along to "Parklife" while being in pubs with their mates and that, but when it was "Great Escape" vs "Morning Glory" they left Blur for Oasis and never went back. And didn't buy "Be here now" because they already had Wonderwall and didn't need another one.

― Mark G, Tuesday, September 11, 2012 9:54 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Didn't Be Here Now sell something like 600,000 copies in its first week, though? I'd say a lot of people who weren't necessarily SERIOUS MUSIC FANS went out and bought it!

c'mon dude, this is condescending

― stop swearing and start windmilling (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, September 11, 2012 10:10 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

All that has needed to have been said on this matter has been said. Moving on...

Bizarrely apt, given that they were on Food Records don'tcha think!? :D

As a Smash Hits reader I knew the name of their label, it was all too much for my fragile eggshell mind

― Supper's Burnt (PaulTMA), Tuesday, September 11, 2012 10:02 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hahahaha!!!

Blur took off heaps late in Aus. I remember being stoked to find Parklife in a cut-out bin for $10, in 1994 ffs.

(CDs were easily $25-30 back then)

When did they start taking off in Aus? Around the time of Blur/'Song 2' or even later than that ('Coffee & TV')??

"full of them"

Song 2 went berserk here (iirc Great Escape picked up some momentum, though I can't think why or off the back of which song)

so yeah, commercially it was Song 2

Ah, I had a feeling it would have been 'Song 2'!

Which incidentally is one of the few Blur songs I could actually say that I'm utterly sick of.

I came for the good looks as a teenage girl, stayed for the badass music.

I had my iPod on shuffle the other day while cleaning and Hollywood Lives (? Come rescue, rescue me..) by Suede came on and I was happy my husband wasnt around to mock them. I still enjoy the occasional tune from time to time, but I get embarrassed trying to convince friends to listen to them in the year 2012. Sorry, Suedeheads. I have been lovingly busting out the Blur box on weekends of late. Look Inside America with that scratchy vinyl sound... So lovely.

i love blur but damon's lyrics legit embarrass me on look inside america

"drink pepsi, good for en ARR gy" - lol, line does not work dude

i think hes a naturally talented writer of melodies and tunes but has to struggle hard with lyrics, esp verses, and sometimes just gives up

Haha yes, definitely. I haven't really tried to foist blur on anyone either - but the music & vocal delivery goes down a little easier. The lyrics were not always perfect but the vibe was usually well done.

yeah they def kicked ass at vibe

Hmm. That awkwardness always sounded quite deliberate to me. Def one of the things I dig about his vocals!

it was kind of formative for me listening to blur when i was young, its the first time i remember thinking about a band i liked "wow, i wouldnt have let that lyric pass"

xpost its obv deliberate, doesnt make it a good lyric!

well, it ain't poetry, but...it's elevated by the performance and melody to me! :)