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RFI: Blur's "Parklife" (the song) -- What the fuck?

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Listening to it now at the wife's behest (she's a Brit, I shoud point out). I have to say -- I'm a big fan of Phil Daniels (thanks only to "Quadrophenia") and vintage Blur always rated in my book (I actually think Leisure is their best!), but it struck me.....what the fuck is this song about? It's not about the Vorsprung Durtch Technique nor about those joggers who go `round and `round. So, what is "Parklife" anyway?

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Wednesday, 30 April 2003 23:02 (7 years ago) Permalink

it's the english 'da dip'

― James Blount (James Blount), Wednesday, 30 April 2003 23:09 (7 years ago) Permalink

it's about retired people, I think.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Wednesday, 30 April 2003 23:36 (7 years ago) Permalink

Dog racing, right? (note: I've never heard the album or the song, but i've seen the cover haha)

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Thursday, 1 May 2003 01:28 (7 years ago) Permalink

I always figured it was about being a bit of a luxurious art prat sitting about being eccentric and living the non"mundane" life.

― Ally (mlescaut), Thursday, 1 May 2003 02:36 (7 years ago) Permalink

I'ts about the British version of "chilling out", Alex, about coming off of the hamster wheel. I didn't know your wife was British! One of us, one of us, one of us....

― Nordicskillz (Nordicskillz), Thursday, 1 May 2003 05:11 (7 years ago) Permalink

Freaks, the lot of you.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Thursday, 1 May 2003 05:18 (7 years ago) Permalink

pd : 'it's not about your vorsprung dur-dur- frung frong...erm...
and another thing...'
albarn : 'what the f- are you talkin about'
pd : 'i dunno (laughs)'

glastonbury, nme stage, sunset, sunday late june '94.

― piscesboy, Thursday, 1 May 2003 10:52 (7 years ago) Permalink

confidence is a preference to the obitual (or is it 'habitual'?)voyeur of what is known as...

so Phil is saying he likes to feel smug/superior when observing the folly of modern life and the riff-raff ratrace?

and morning soup can be avoided by taking a route straight through what is known as...

i'm not sure what he meant by morning soup...but i suppose he means 'avoid the rat race, live longer' or similar

john's got brewer's droop, he gets intimidated by the dirty pidgeons, they love a bit of...

impotency?

then there's that bit where he says 'pork life' - that's a really feeble pun, what's the point of it?

― stevem (blueski), Thursday, 1 May 2003 10:59 (7 years ago) Permalink

Songs are about things?

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Thursday, 1 May 2003 11:31 (7 years ago) Permalink

blur songs are. (generally to their detriment)

but anyway
i always thought it was 'morning suit' meaning er, wearing a suit in the morning i.e. going to work or 'mourning suit' meaning er, dying

and 'Vorsprung Durtch Technique' is a quote from an audi advert which inexplicably became a catch phrase in the late eighties

rover tried something similar with a smug german bloke saying 'britisher architect' at the end of an advert.

i didn't have quite the same resonance but did inspire the i ludicrous song 'this is the year of the britisher architect'

but yeah, parklife is mainly about being smug because you are a pop star and can go and sit in the park while other people are at work.

― adam b (adam b), Thursday, 1 May 2003 11:33 (7 years ago) Permalink

I think it's significance is akin to that of their other hits , ie. zilch. Blur write songs which can sound significant but actually have no or very little content. Listen to 'Country House' or 'The Universal' and try a scrap of content beyond either Madness-style jollity or ennui and disengagement. Think of the line in 'End of the century' when he says for no discernible reason 'two thirty'. It's just marking time until the four minutes are up.

I've nothing against nonsense pop songs but I think that Blur have always been a triumph of marketing hype over content, in much the same way as we've witnessed Radioheads' desperate attempts to find Someything To Say. Both groups became popular with fairly anodyne and very generic 'indie' music, and since their initial success Blur have done just enough to keep themselves commercially viable, while Radiohead have devolped musically into quite an interesting group.
Both Thom Yorke and Damon Albarn both talk endlessly in interviews about their their fear of being exposed as frauds, annd at least in the case of Blur with very good reason.

― Gatinha (rwillmsen), Thursday, 1 May 2003 11:41 (7 years ago) Permalink

**i ludicrous song 'this is the year of the britisher architect'**

Yay!!

― Dr. C (Dr. C), Thursday, 1 May 2003 11:43 (7 years ago) Permalink

actually have no or very little content

not true, blur = an interesting response to english identity in the 90s. obviously their version of it is at least as influenced by *previous* responses (kinks jam smiths blah blah blah) as it is by any external notion of 'englishness' per se - is this the 'fakeness' you detect? anyway, could probably be argued that this assimilation of a mess of cultural reference points into a vague, disengaged whole is actually a valid representation of the english and their relationship to their own cultural heritage at the end of the century?

would imagine albarn's fear of 'being found out' is more about his suppressed middle-classness and his unconvincing stabs at avant-gardism.

― pete b. (pete b.), Thursday, 1 May 2003 11:50 (7 years ago) Permalink

My point is that even their very best efforts are little more than repetetive jingles of familiar tunes, as you suggest the Kinks, and also Madness. The main virtue of this stuff is that it sounds 'English' in the sense of any easy lazy signifier of what being English used to mean. But I don't detect in their music anything other than these stale reference points (excluding, of course, their forays into fairly generic American 'alternative' music). It's interesting to compare 'Park Life' (the song) with the Streets, I guess that they were trying to come up with something akin to any of the songs on Original Pirate Material, but lack the cultural and musical references as well as the imagination.

― Gatinha (rwillmsen), Thursday, 1 May 2003 12:07 (7 years ago) Permalink

it looks like The Streets will stay on a certain side and not completely saturate the media like Blur did...this is comforting as I wouldn't want to look back on 'OPM' in the same way I look back on 'Park Life'

― stevem (blueski), Thursday, 1 May 2003 12:13 (7 years ago) Permalink

ok, the musical reference points are stale, backwards-looking, hackneyed etc. but it's a realistic reflection of the lifestyle/attitudes they are describing! the album expresses a confused sadness - ie, great, here we are at the end of the century, looking back, and what have we got? memories, received ideas, third-hand experience. everything is synthetic, nobody relates to each other, everyone defines themselves in relation to the past. i'm not saying this is all deliberate, just that some people do think this way and parklife is quite eloquent about it.

nb i don't think the people described in/listening to parklife and OPM are at all the same!

― pete b. (pete b.), Thursday, 1 May 2003 13:24 (7 years ago) Permalink

nb i don't think the people described in/listening to parklife and OPM are at all the same!

probably because Blur are perceived as intrinsically middle-class whereas Mike Skinner, with the whole 'Barrett Home' thing, is seen as at least 'lower middle class' and also in touch more with the notion of 'black music', rave culture etc.

― stevem (blueski), Thursday, 1 May 2003 13:29 (7 years ago) Permalink

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