Blur: Classic Or Dud

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.

It was great when they played it though, about two songs from the end and you can almost feel the majority of the crowd's attention going onto other things, like their mobile phones or planning the bus home or throwing more bottles at people in front of them.

Still think they should have brought Phil Daniels out, with everyone expecting 'Parklife' but the band instead plays 'The Outsider', that bizarro-Parklife off the last album.

ain't that called "me, white noise"

Friends emailed a picture from the concert last night. Way to rub it in guys. :-( JEALOUS.

spotify has "me, white noise" incorrectly labelled as "the outsider"

Yeah, I couldn't remember what it was called and looked it up.

Also:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJaUu7IyEf0

There's a live version of that song I got on a free CD which kicks the original's ass. Totally smokes it, even. And the recorded version's pretty good.

at whatever recent Leeds festival Blur played there was a fat old cockney guy standing in front of me bellowing "ME WHITE NOISE" throughout every single gap in Blur's set, like properly trying to get the band's attention to force them to play the song, for about an hour solid, and he kept striking up conversations with us and people around us about whether they would play Me White Noise, and then eventually he got really frustrated and left, and then about five minutes later Phil Daniels turned up and they played it

Damon was really, heroically inane at the first Hyde Park show

Went to see them on Thursday, it was great, except for the people who kept throwing half empty bottles of beer around the place. As one of my friends said after the Bruce Springsteen gig on the Sunday, just by looking at the number of bottles of beer on the ground at £3.50 each, someone is making a lot of money from these shows.

I thought it was a really great mixture of songs, from the ones that everyone could sing along to and the quieter moments. With all the 'hits' it felt like being at the biggest indie disco.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3569/3683290696_e739ae8a1a.jpg

nice foto!

thursday at hyde park was the best outdoor live show ive seen in a good half decade and one of the slickest 'events' that i've ever experienced in terms of organisation, facilities, etc. the atmosphere was blinding down the front, the weather was beyond perfect and the band were flatly fantastic.
if it had been in a movie on tv you'd have switched over because it was too unrealistic.

Setlist still a bit too straightforward for my tastes. We got Trimm Trabb, Oily Water and Death Of A Party but they were just about the ONLY concessions to avant-Blur.

Dream Blur setlist:

Battle
On Your Own
Slow Down
Best Days
Bugman
Ambulance
He Thought Of Cars
Blue Jeans
Chemical World
Beetlebum
I'm Just A Killer For Your Love
1992
Dan Abnormal
Birthday
Resigned

*encore 1*
Trouble In The Message Centre
Caramel
This Is A Low

*encore 2*
Clover Over Dover
Essex Dogs
Yuko & Hiro

Strongly doubt Dave Rowntree would be able to play Slow Down these days. Really strongly doubt it.

jesus for a second I thought that was the actual setlist

i dunno the crowd could take the excitement of the classic

I'm Just A Killer For Your Love
1992
Dan Abnormal

run. i mean god, give them a chance!

If Blur played that exact set I would be, shall we say, somewhat elated

Dud. However, I wanna fuck Damon Albarn if that counts.

So Dud: http://www.holymoly.com/news/random/couple-dry-hump-crowd-blur-gig18749.html

FIND MORE STORIES ABOUT: BLUR | DAMON ALBARN | DRY HUMPING | SEX

That would be a great gig, Louis, but I'm not really a fan of 1992. Replace it with 'Mellow Song' and I'll be there.

:o

Mellow Song is great as well but we're talking Coxon's finest hour, Damon's descent into the abyss, my own personal 13 joint-favourite (along with Battle, Caramel and Bugman; the four songs together represent Blur reaching a level so heroically elevated from their expected standard that I boggle now as to how they did it)...

I mean I can see why some people think it's a tuneless dirge but for me it's transcendent. And surely Sing is the natural replacement? :P

Glad you like the rest of the gig mind. Always thought Blur were at their most exciting when playing around slightly, or allowing subtlety into their songwriting, as my choices attest. Blue Jeans for instance is a beautiful little song but doesn't have the 'pop chops' of the far inferior For Tomorrow. Occasionally, Blur managed to balance great musical values with a fucking massive, populist tune (Beetlebum, Chemical World, On Your Own, This Is A Low) but for me they suited sophistication. Or mentalism.

dream setlist: anything at all, played in Toronto! I saw them 6 times as a teen.. I need more..

Blur's album Blur: Classic.
In recording their follow-up, Blur (1997), the band underwent another reinvention, influenced by the lo-fi style of American indie rock bands such as Pavement. "Song 2", one of the album's singles, brought Blur brief mainstream success in the US. -wiki
prolly shoulda left of that essex dogs track tho

prolly shoulda left of that essex dogs track tho

My dear fellow.

best opener: ambulance >>> beetlebum >>> stereotypes >>> she's so high >>> for tomorrow >>> tender >>> girls & boys
best closer: essex dogs >>> yuko & hiro >>> resigned >>> wear me down >>> optigan 1 >>> battery in your leg >>> lot 105

Are we talking about this anywhere?

There are sooo many Blur threads.

if you need to dance you can go to the gay bar next door

― steamed hams (harbl), Sunday, October 4, 2009 9:33 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark

hahaha wow. wrong c+p. this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iYxdghpJZY

we can talk about either, really

okay that looks pretty great. weird how there's nothing pre-the great escape on the soundtrack to the trailer though.

While browsing a local record store, I came across this Playstation car game. Something about the design of that logo looks a bit familiar.....

http://img353.imageshack.us/i/blur.jpg/

http://i.clevver.com/fullphoto/216966/500/950/blur-game-poster-1.jpg

Yeah, must be new then, I saw it just last week.

I'm not a gamer so it might well be older.

There's a night of Blur/Britpop on BBC4 tonight, folks.

I like the newest song quite a bit... "Fools Day."

Celebrity chef and journalist Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has been confirmed as a special guest at Harvest, the new food and music festival hosted by Alex James.

Due to take place on the Blur bassist's Cotswolds estate, the event will run from Friday September 9th to Monday September 12th.

A statement on the festival website described Fearnley-Whittingstall as "one of our Harvest heroes" and "an inspiration to the Harvest story".

Further information on the precise nature of the 46-year-old's involvement will be released nearer the time.

The musical line-up for Harvest includes Scottish songwriter KT Tunstall and newcomer Benjamin Francis Leftwich, as well as DJ sets from Gilles Peterson and Jo Whiley.

Tickets for the festival are now available online, priced at £105 for the full weekend.

Alex James is 43.

Would go if Fearnley-Whittingstall was DJing and Whiley was doing the cooking.

yeah, I bet she does a mean barbecue

/sexism

http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lud1kkduWQ1qc1ge6o1_400.gif

AWESOME!!