Blur: Classic Or Dud

"bang" along with much of "leisure" is hella underrated

i mean it's their second-worst classic line-up album, but such is the quality of the others that it could hardly be anything else. parklife ftl.

PL>MLIR>BLUR>GE>13>LEISURE>TT

get rid of the last two and flip the arrows around imo

my go:

BLUR>MLIR>13>TT>PL>GE>LEISURE

MLIR > ... don't really like the others but i guess PL > BLUR = TGE > LEISURE > 13 > never heard THINK TANK, never going to

They meant a lot to me in the mid-1990s, but I think I'd find them hard to listen to now - except maybe 'she's so high' which I always adored.

I sorta understand, Pinefox - I loved them a lot more in the moment than afterwards. Like, Great Escape was a fantastic album, but I never felt the need to pull it out after that initial run with it.

I had a strange experience listening to Midlife where I couldn't tell if the stuff had been heavily remastered and how much it was just that I mostly listened to their first three records on cassette.

If they'd had an album or song called "Young Life" or something earlier in their career, I'd have no problem with the title.

― Subway to Idaho (Bimble), Friday, June 19, 2009 9:08 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Consolation: Parklife?

Once one of them dies they can release an "Afterlife" or maybe "Parklife II: Sitting on a bench, complaining about kids these days"

Watching Glastonbury and Albarn's voice has completely gone to shit. Like a cross between Henry Rollins, Jamie Oliver and an inebriated plasterer. This Hyde Park concert is going to be abominable if it's anything like this.

Maybe he's just got a cold, or something.

was about to bump this thread!

everything else seems in order except the SLIGHTLY unoriginal setlist choice

they're certainly going for it

stop playing songs from parklife srsly

your manic energy is great but maybe applied to something a little less mid-period?

full choir indicates that 'tender' may be imminent

It's Glastonbury, all they're going to do is the hits.

Really looking forward to Albarn brawling his way through 'This is a Low' at the end, though.

^^^me too

and yeah, here we go

To be fair, they did play 2 songs off Parklife which weren't hits!

Beetlebum and TNOW the highlights so far

LET'S GET RETARDED IN HERE, HEAVY HIT AFTER HEAVY HIT AFTER HEAVY HIT

am sitting in sullen silence

They are right, it's definitely more retarded in here.

why, bbc

that's better

If you're referring to this mentally overspeedy version of Parklife, this is not "better". Oh, maybe compared to BEP, it is.

too bad Phil Daniels couldn't leg it over to help them out with 'My Humps'

Now that I would have watched.

full choir indicates that 'tender' may be imminent

― the funk soul custos (country matters), Sunday, June 28, 2009 9:27 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Did I see the camera catch Alex flat out laugh at the expression Damon affected while singing this song, or is that just the default face of Alex?

ailsa, was referring to sunday sunday

i'd forgotten how kickass keith flint and maxim were XD

and i did not see that bit, sadly, although i did see aj's sweat patches

if anything, a double bass is a more laughable affection amirite

zane's going audiovisual on us

oh you teases i thought this was gonna be one of your arty ones

probably not the thread for it but wtf at the bbc pimping for bruce springsteen? i honestly don't know when springsteen became a thing, but on top of neil young it kind of reminds me why i liked the britpops at the time. ie it wasn't earnest americans being earnest. the boss moar liek the DROSS.

NOW PLAY THEME FROM RETRO

kinda get whatcha sayn nrq but apparently he was rly good so whadda i know

Bruce was good unlike most of the shite on offer. it would pain me to say it for fear of sounding like a boring old git but considering most of the line up is boring old gits it aint a thing.

Ha, I was about to say similar, perhaps I have become a boring old git. There was a time when I'd have been going mad for Blur and wouldn't have pulled the curtains to watch Bruce Springsteen if he'd been playing in my garden, but somehow I've done a total 180 in the last ten years or so. I watched his set earlier, he was great.

(Prodigy also old gits, but not exactly boring)

For Tomorrow still a cracker, and off-form weird-voice Albarn can't ruin it.

bad closing choice imo

best one was either beetlebum, countryhouse or there's no other way, badhead surprisingly strong considering i don't rly like the song much

for tomorrow not so good this time for some reason

Best bit was Badhead and Beetlebum back-to-back (seeing as those are probably my two favourite Blur songs anyway). Re: above, I can't stand Bruce Springsteen, never could, and what with you-know-who dying the other day this weekend I've been feeling like I've been transported back to the 80s and forced to listen to loads of music I hate.

Yeah what am I talking about, Beetlebum was the highlight. Coxon really let go for 30 glorious seconds. More of that plz.

Loads of revered kinda-conservative american stuff getting an airing but if it's convincingly performed I got not much of a problem

i checked in my parents' guiness book of hit records and the so-called 'boss' never had a hit in this fair isle before 1985. no 'born to run', no nothing. but i meet people my age who are like brooce! legend! wv ppl.

damon's voice was always blur's weak spot.

To be fair, he had a bunch of big hit albums over here by then, but yeah.

OMG, imagine people liking someone who hadn't troubled the charts much. that's never happened ever.

They played "Girls & Boys" ("Boys & Girls"??) last night at the club. It was a fucking classic gay pride moment that happened to intrude on a goth night. What a song! I remember playing that on college radio in the early 90's.

Damon's never been able to sing, wtf are people talking about.

Seeing the reformed blur play glastonbury reminded me what excited and irritated me about them in the first place.
Damon's whole persona, that got-it-all believe-in-nothing little squirt, was such a sharp contrast to springsteen, whose passionate sermonising I would have hated a decade ago, but seemed to speak to our times on this occasion, and connected with the crowd.
On the plus side, for Blur, there's the songwriting and coxon's guitar playing. So yes, I missed them, but there's an emptiness about them too.

Damon's 'frontman' act is the same as when they played small places.

Damon's whole persona, that got-it-all believe-in-nothing little squirt, was such a sharp contrast to springsteen, whose passionate sermonising I would have hated a decade ago, but seemed to speak to our times on this occasion, and connected with the crowd.

imo you are over-mythologising, or at least reading a slightly false narrative. dudes got different styles.

Springsteen can be blues for white people who don't partake of OG blues (call and response breaks were pretty cool) but is better than that whole shite shite Van Morrison universe that I'm thinking of when I cite BFWP.

Damon had quite a few moments where he sounded like he was turning into Billy Bragg, and fastfastparklife *sucked*. Perhaps Alex James has been on Atkins; he put them all to shame by stepping effortlessly back into that haircut.

yr not telling me Graham Coxon is fat?

Aside from looking like indie/aspie Serge Gainsbourg, I thought Graham had perhaps aged best.

We stood next to Ant from Ant 'n' Dec as he was buying ice creams during Vampire Weekend.

The day itself was all very artless but well worth the cost of admission. The best bit would have been the little speech Albarn gave about Britpop and reforming and hinting about whether the band will continue before launching into 'Death of a Party', if only that had been the last song and they'd left the stage without saying another word.

"Death of A Party"! Oh man, that's great stuff.