Blur: Classic Or Dud

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.

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