Blur tracks poll - the RESULTS thread

yeah critics wise MLIR was pretty much a smash. good-to-great reviews everywhere. Dave Cavanagh at Select did a great full page piece about it and the Melody Maker gave them their first front cover in 12-18 months around the time of Sunday Sunday and also sponsored the Sugary Tea tour that followed. NME naturally enough was miles behind and didn't give em a cover again until Parklife.

your actual turning point was Reading 1993. there's a great blog here that has a copy. it's fantastic. http://blurliveaudioarchiveproject.blogspot.com/2009/10/show-reading-festival-august-1993.html

Many thx for that link to the Select piece, I'd entirely forgotten 'I'm All Over'!!!

I think I was at that Reading Festival. Did Blur play middle of the afternoon on the Saturday and Damon kept disappearing to throw up? Or perhaps that was an earlier Reading appearance?

A friend of mine got so drunk at Reading 92 that he jumped on stage and stole Damon's sunglasses and got chased around for a bit. Blur always describe that gig as their nadir so I like to think my idiot friend played a part in their creative rebirth by making a bad situation even worse.

nah Reading 93 was the following year; a headline slot in the evening where they packed out the small tent, The The were playing the Main stage at the same time. it's recounted as a turning point by the band in the official biog; Stephen Street talks of his shock at hearing the whole crowd doing the "..and then he.." bits in Colin Zeal, which are clearly audible on that bootleg recording above.

God I forgot 'Into Another' as well. Their B sides were just sooo good.

xp yeah the unoffical deluxe albums are all still available from the guys on the official forum.

Could someone clue me into the MLIR one?

yeah it's amazing they pulled it around in 6 months. come Summer 93 they were freaking incendiary even when supporting Duran Duran to a static crowd:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXN_9Uhiu80&feature=related

:-)

I really wanna watch Showtime again. Not seen it since I was about 16.

Apologies for the delay in the countdown. Real life intruding into poll time. Normal service will be resumed shortly...

http://computersafetytips.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/cars.jpg

okay i'm glad i'm not the only one who loves this :D

23. He Thought Of Cars
(10 votes, 181 points)

I own at least 3 Blur albums (the 'important' ones) and still feel like I hardly know any of the songs from the list. Where are all these coming from?

Really surprised and happy to see this so high. My second favourite song on The Great Escape.

apparently my 2nd favourite Great Escape song too

Somebody was raving about it a while back in a book. It might have been John Harris in this.

oh god me and John Harris sitting in a tree

anyway, on a sad bitter album its melancholy is at least a little less tinged with contempt, replaced with resignation and a clever unwinding vocal line in the verses. "The Universal" just tries too hard to wear its hope on its sleeve, whereas this one wants to drive off up the coast somewhere and disappear. also "Lottery winner buys the moon" :)

http://www.great-seo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/1way.jpg

lol

22. There's No Other Way
(12 votes, 189 points)

yeah if they'd only become a footnote after this it would've been a good footnote. better than the Stone Roses' entire career, fact fans.

The one 'baggy' moment where you felt the guitarist had listened to Dee-lite...

So the story goes that the whole group took E before performing this track for the first time on Top of the Pops. I think I saw a repeat of it on TOTP2 a few years ago, but couldn't see any telltale saucer eyes or gurning (though, iirc he was hitting himself on the head with a tambourine - not strictly a sign of anything in particular).

it's so snotty and bratty and pre-teen rather than the studied cool of the bulk of the Baggy bands, musically too it's like being jumped up and down on by a 12 year-old who's been drinking Relentless all day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyUYCjN2Tng

"High Quality" hahaha...

http://www.dispatch.com/wwwexportcontent/sites/dispatch/business/stories/2010/06/16/china-wednesday-art-gg08sl60-13-china-labor-woes---xeh802---large.jpg

21. Yuko & Hiro
(9 votes, 1 first place, 190 points)

Lovely.

I don't think I voted for this. Probably a mistake.

Don't tell Noodle Vague, he'll hunt you down.

nah i'll let you off.

this song never ever fails to make me cry. it may have been called "Japanese Workers" but really it's the global experience of dying under capitalism in 5 minutes. and it's got those synth gongs.

and obv i was that 1 first place. robbed.

Not robbed.

That one person that had their number one choice not even in the chart was robbed.

the song was robbed, not me

Me again. First time I heard this song I thought it was a joke – "lol blur has done an end-of-album lolz" type thing. How wrong I was. This song blossoms over time like nothing else on the album.

On the vinyl pressing of TGE, the solitary gong at the end of the song flows straight into the run-out groove, rather than going on for about 30 seconds. Consequently the Ernold Same carousel reprise is cut completely.

btw I really want to do exactly what Mr Brutish-Short has done here (right down to an image preceding each result) but with XTC songs. Has it been done? I couldn't find anything.

Yup, Dizzy was robbed! I named my cats Yuko & Hiro in high school, so I'm happy to see this one get a first place vote! Anyone have any idea what is sung at the end? Is that Japanese? French? It's so indistinct..

btw I really want to do exactly what Mr Brutish-Short has done here (right down to an image preceding each result) but with XTC songs.

I had the same though, except it was about Pavement, but then I realized I'm a big enough Pavement fan to care. I'd vote if someone else ran it, though.

I realized I'm a big enough Pavement fan to care.

idgi, wouldn't that make you the ideal person to run it?

Oops, I left out a very important "not" in there.

ahh righto

Daavid - Blur are well known among fans for their bsides. I treated their singles as mini events as a kid. They were the kind of band, like the Boo Radleys who I love for similar reasons, who used bsides to let off creative steam by experimenting, and a lot of fucking around and being silly. This let me into their world, their mindsets as much as big hits and albums. They were also highly prolific; often being forced to leave perfectly great songs off of albums to make room for slightly less good songs. God knows why something like young and lovely might be left off modern life.

Oh that was a response I started writing hours ago btw stupid iphone

often being forced to leave perfectly great songs off of albums to make room for slightly less good songs. God knows why something like young and lovely might be left off modern life.

I get why that happens. If it interrupts the flow of the album, or in some cases merely the narrative, it's out. For the life of me I can't think where Young & Lovely (cheers to the people who posted links & the youtube upthread btw) could be slotted into MLIR without buggering it up.

An album like Think Tank, on the other hand, is such a random munge of styles and themes that you could stick anything anywhere and nobody would notice.

http://thewholesalesupply.com/images/LCWM.jpg

20. Trouble In The Message Centre
(8 votes, 1 first place, 193 points)

one for the 'great demos' thread this one; the demo wipes the floor with the finished version.