Blur: Classic Or Dud

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".

I forgot tickets went on sale today, I checked in two hours later and it was sold out.

My wife got two pit tix. She plans to take our son, for his first concert experience…

The show more or less sold out in minutes. Pit tickets were priced at $125 plus fees but quickly shot up to $400, $550, and then $600 per ticket (plus fees) via "AXS Premium" (the equivalent of Ticketmaster's Platinum). Later some single loge seats popped up for around $550 each, plus fees.

Unreal.

Wow… sounds like she lucked out

That's awesome morrisp, they should have a blast.

Watched the entire Brit awards thinking they were perfoming ;/

"So, in the spirit of clarity and truth. This is probably our last gig. And obviously the last time we play this song."

Damon Albarn at Coachella. April 20, 2024

Tender

I stand by what I posted upthread 12 years ago - that Blur will still be chugging along like Status Quo. Except Quo actually had a sense of humour about themselves.

Don't know if they did really, remember when they sued radio 1 for not putting them on the playlist?

Didn't one of their singles get put on the Radio 2 playlist instead of the Radio 1 playlist, and Damon had a shitfit about it?

I suspect he got his former bandmates together last year to 'Blur-ify' what was essentially a solo album, and now they've made enough money from the tours to sustain their lifestyles, Blur will go on indefinite hiatus again.

Speaking as the biggest Blur fan I know, I thought the last two albums completely sucked.

I have it on good authority that the first reunion in 2009 and the shows in Hyde Park etc were mostly organised to help Dave Rowntree out as he was financially in a bit of a state.

Dave has been selected as a Labour candidate at the next election, not an easily winnable seat but a chance he'll be busy with that quite soon.

I wish him nothing but all the worst luck he can possibly encounter on the campaign trail, hope he gets eaten by a dog!

Looks v unlikely he'll win even in a landslide - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid_Sussex_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s

yep, he's wasting his time. 3rd place behind the LibDems even in '97.

he's just so excited by the possibilities of Starmer Labour that it means a lot to him to at least give it go

my spouse said Alex James used to be cute but that now he looks like a guy who poops on the street in the Tenderloin

Electoral Calculus currently has Mid-Sussex as Tories 29.6%, Labour 28.2% and Lib Dems 27.8%. He could win.

Speaking as the biggest Blur fan I know, I thought the last two albums completely sucked.

I've never listened to either of them in their entirety, but I wasn't interested in any of the bits I heard

Another comeback documentary.

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

Dave Rowntree finished third in Mid Sussex, all the Tory voters went to Reform or Lib Dems who won. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2024/uk/results

Sussex Life Is Mid

End of a campaign, ohh..

Solo Coxon threads on here seem slight (at least the ones I found) so here we go

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwQnEn5ELKQ

Was really surprised by how much I liked the first Waeve record, glad to see they've got another one coming!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMwEw1MCcdc