Blur: Classic Or Dud

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.)