Blur at 21 : The box set, the reissues, the what.

*gunshot noises*

Got yer.

Got my Blur box. Silly excited.

Dropped major hints that this would make a great birthday present, but I have a month to wait...

I dropped a bunch of the same (my 30th is in NOvember) but then decided it wasn't good surprise/keepsake birthday material (it's my 30th birthday and first as his wife, damnit, I want jewelery) and mentioned to A that I was going to buy it for myself and he exploded: "Damnit, Lex! I keep trying to dodge your hints so that it would be a surprise.." Anyway, it's on its way and I will be more sentimental over a nice necklace or pair of earrings.

That makes sense, its my 36th so not really a special one and I'm usually really bad at giving people ideas, so... this.

It's an early 40th birthday present for me.

yeah, I'm really hard to shop for so I thought the box was a good idea too, but I was far too antsy about having to wait six months. A month is doable!

cd box was just delivered to my doorstep. listening to "leisure" now. remastering was done really well. flipped through the book real quick... just a bunch of pictures of dudes, which is not really my thing. might read through it later. it's nice to have "sing" on a cd that isn't the trainspotting soundtrack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYOYvKUJO6I

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

Argh. Is that one of the fan club gigs?

that was a show for the bbc tonight

Oh wow! I wish Toronto was more Blur-friendly. Thank god for YouTube!

6Music set:
Jubilee
The Puritan
Caramel
Trimm Trabb
Young and Lovely
Under The Westway
Intermission

Radio 2 set:

Tracy Jacks
Beetlebum
Out of Time
Young and Lovely
End of a Century
Mr Briggs
Tender
This is a Low
Under the Westway
Popscene
For Tomorrow
The Universal

wow. what a strange and awesome setlist.

The remaster job on the early records is outstanding. Stunned by how much there is to explore in the box; I've never heard many of the b-sides, let alone the rarities discs.

The book is nice, though the "new interview" doesn't shed much light on things.

think tank b-sides are a lot stronger than i remember them being.

I got mine last night. Unfortunately I had to go out so couldn't sit around all night listening but I gave 'Blur' a spin. Hoping that the download codes that came with it include the b-sides - I could use a nice, complete collection! (Some are rips from ~2001 from my friend's Special Collector box)

yeah, both the the cd and vinyl boxes come with downloads of the b-sides/rarities discs. wish i knew that before buying the cd box.

Could you return it, maybe? I figured either way I could burn a CD of the rarities. Wish they were on vinyl though! Ah well.

are there any gems on the rarity discs? or is it mostly yeah-i-see-why-they-left-that-off stuff?

Bought MLIR at the weekend. Very pleased with the package on the whole, but the mastering - it's almost too clear, makes it sound strangely synthetic in places, like a MIDI version of the originals. Also, listening to MLIR all the way through for the first time in a good while reveals it to be a very different record to Parklife whereas I'd always previously heard them as being two peas of the same pod. There's something very urgent and punk-rocky about MLIR whereas Parklife is much lusher, more poppy, bigger arrangements and a more focused concept.

Love the bonus online thing - I had no idea Young & Lovely was influenced by Scott Walker, but there you go.

there's a few that folk are saying are stand-outs

also..

http://www.spin.com/articles/blurs-21-box-set-21-key-rarities-you-need-hear?utm_source=spintwitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=spintwitter

Blur were the band who made me believe, as a young lad, that it was common practice to print guitar chords as well as lyrics on CD inlays, and I was disappointed to realise this was not the case.

yeah almost no one does that come to think of it.

Young And Lovely has been played on all the small tour dates this summer and looks like it'll be played at the Hyde Park Olympics gig. amazing really, they never even played it on the Modern Life.. or Parklife tours bitd; they've realised after 2 decades that it's one of their best ever songs! i think the official Blur forum has a lot to do with that too (Graham C is often on there).

They've always known..

They used to do that thing where if the label liked a particular song, they'd ignore it and put it out as a b-side at most.

Happily, I tracked down a Jap copy of MLIR which includes it.

21 tracks on that Spin thingie and no mention of the "Far Out" demo?

Anybody use the download code yet? Is there good extra stuff that isn't on the discs?

there's a rumour going round that a certain ex frontman of a Manchester band is going to guest with them on Beetlebum (always his fave Blur song)at Hyde Park. i SO hope that's true.

yeah i did. there's a reproduction of their fanmail letters from the era and an audiofile in the form of a YouTube including a snippet of an interview. You get 10% off at the Blur store... err... I think that's mostly it...

Thanks for the info, dl!

a certain ex frontman of a Manchester band is going to guest with them on Beetlebum (always his fave Blur song)

Tom Hingley?

I saw Tom Hingley do an acoustic set above a pub a little while ago - really low key thing and he was actually bordering sensational.

He puts up wallpaper too?

well he's a jack of all trades, but I wouldn't trust him to fix your carpets.

Others too have recounted Albarn’s pivotal meeting with Graham Coxon at school and discovery of Alex James at London’s Goldsmiths College, as well as the band’s early uncertain steps. It is worth briefly considering the band’s first name, Seymour, however. For decades, historians have entertained themselves by asking whether Adolf Hitler could have come to power and the horrors of WW2 unfolded if he had still gone by his family’s original name of Schicklgruber. Would the German nation have really been able to embrace the cry of “Heil Schicklgruber”? Similarly, could Blur have really become such a deep and engrained part of our pop life if they’d been called Seymour, could that name have been chanted across Hyde Park on Sunday instead of Blur?

http://poplifer.com/2012/08/16/sometimes-i-wonder-if-im-here-blurblog-2-leisure-time-to-modern-life/

the Andy Partridge version of 'Coping' is the best 'new' Blur track i've heard since Tender in 99. usually those here's-one-we-made-earlier abandoned sessions that bands put out on a box set or re-issue have a charm perhaps and maybe you'd even play them more than once or twice before putting them back on the shelf forever. but this.. this is incendiary, especially for the british guitar pop of that era. i can't believe how much better it is than the album version nor what they were thinking not putting it out as it was; baffling that it's been sat in a can for 2 decades.

I like it a lot but prefer the structure and revised lyrics of the final version, though there is definitely the bias of being familiar with it for 18 years.

So, yeah, my wife did get me this box for my birthday. I just opened it, so I haven't dug in much, but it looks wonderful.

Congrats! It is awesome.

And Happy Birthday, whenever that may be.

Today, actually. For another 90 minutes anyway.

I like that you can download PDF versions of all the copies of the Blurb newsletter, nice touch.