The Great Escape? Is it really that bad...?

haha x-post, sorry.

I remember liking "Globe Alone" and the slashing guitar intro to "Stereotypes," but it remains the Blur album I play the least (not that I really play any Blur all that much anymore).

Like "It could be you" for example.

when i was younger, i thought it was quite witty, but i've decided that the lyrics are not particularly sharp. i think it falls into the category that the pinefox talks about on the infamous sleeper vs the strokes thread - (another one for any newcomers to ilx to dig out) - lyrics written by people who are *straining* to be camp, witty, observant, and think that they are succeeding because they write character songs about people with funny, posh british names etc - aping the style of a good lyricists like morrissey and j.cocker, without really bringing anything new to the party.

musically it's very rich and fun and varied and colourful and basically parklife version 2.0.

my favourite track? "he thought of cars", which i wrote about on stylus once: http://www.stylusmagazine.com/feature.php?ID=977

Good / Great: Stereotypes, Mr Robinson's Quango, He Thought Of Cars, It Could Be You.

Happy never to hear again: Country House, Ernold Same, Charmless Man (though I did like this at time), Globe Alone (ditto).

Dan Abnormal and Entertain Me have grown on me very slowly. It took me about five years to realise Dan Abnormal was an anagram.

the theme or idea or what have you is good mind, u know a concept album about how terrible,dreary,doomed everyday lower middle class 2.4/'nother-day-at-the-office life is but the *tunes*, crivens.

the lazy-ass lack of scan in the second verse of 'charmless man' makes it sound like a first take where mr a's making it up as he goes.

globe alone is a bad/dreadful 'bank holiday'.

the look on his face when he pullls that fake smile in the middle of 'the unversal's video made me want to belt him.

the would be kinks-y ooh look at us lifting the lid off of normal lives and saying summat clever ("she wears a low cut tshirt runs a little b n b/ she's most a-com-o-datin-when-she's-in-her-lingerie/ wife swapping is the fewtcha...") on 'stereotypes' eurg...

no. terrible. easily their worst, and god it goes on and on forever.

it's true to say that as a 21 year old after i heard this lp, having seen the parklife tour 3 times, i came home and tore my 7 foot high poster of them down off the wall and threw it in the bin out of fury.

'fade away' is ace though.

So do I!

This is like saying you'd rather wear a dress than have your testicles torn off by wild dogs.

"Country House" is fairly inoffensive -- it is/was obvious (both in hindsight and at the time) that they really wanted to have a #1 single from their new album, so it was all "OK, let's churn out a Britpop-by-numbers song" and that was that.

Like others have said, the more indefensible tracks are the ones where they cribbed the formula straight from "Parklife", e.g. "Bank Holiday" -> "Globe Alone", "Tracy Jacks" -> "Mr Robinson's Quango", "Girls and Boys" -> "Entertain Me", etc. -- ALL the photocopies are of lesser quality than the original, in many cases significantly so. Compiling an album the way one would cast a reality show = bad idea.

"Stereotypes", "Yuko and Hiro", and "Best Days" are all fantastic. "The Universal" might be my favourite Blur single (and the exception to the "photocopy" rule re: "To The End").

Now I enjoy latter-day Pearl Jam far more than Blur.

It's not Blur's best album but it has it's place. I actually really like Country House and the Universal. Not so hot on Stereotypes and Charmless Man ("He went na na na na naa na naaaaa" is probably the orst chorus in the world). I'd agree with what Damon said about it being a "depressed" rather than "depressing" album and in some ways it preceded Radiohead's OK Computer in its display of pre-millenium tension.

As I remember, it was actually 'Stereotypes' that was all set to be the lead single off the album, but 'Country House' went down even better at their Mile End Stadium show...and the rest is history etc

I can empathise here. When some really skanky girl came into school wearing a "DAMON" necklace and proclaiming that the Great Escape was like brilliant I sold all my albums and singles. I slowly reacquired them some years later when the hysteria died back down and they released On Your Own.

Can I just say, though: TEN FRICKIN' YEARS AGO? Jeez. I wrote a rabidly enthusiastic review at the time; mind you, I also wrote with passion and commitment about Shed 7, so what the fuck did I know?

genuine is sometimes overrated, sometimes underrated. in the ironic mid-nineties, it was underrated.

I concur on this.

And yeh, Parklife really is the best one really.

Ha! I thought maybe it was a b-side I didn't have.

I actually witnessed Albarn recording the intro to that song. he was standing in front of JA Spirits in Goldhawk Road next door to the Townhouse Studios hammering the door and yelling. This was about 7:15 on a Tuesday morning. I passed him by and said for shame alkie Albarn etc. but he explained it was only sound effects for the album. I still think that Peter Wyngarde would have narrated it better than "Red" Ken, mind you ("Neville Thumbcatch" etc.).

1. Girls And Boys - Entertain Me
2. Tracy Jacks - Mr Robinson's Quango
3. End Of A Century - He Thought of Cars
4. Parklife -
5. Bank Holiday - Globe Alone
6. Debt Collector - Ernold Same
7. Far Out - Fade Away
8. To The End - The Universal
9. London Loves - Top Man
10. Trouble In The Message Centre - It Could Be You
11. Clover Over Dover - Best Days
12. Magic America - Country House
13. Jubilee - Dan Abnormal
14. This Is A Low - Yuko And Hiro

Fair enough?

I always remember thinking that song was dumb from the opening line "Oh Mr Robinson... And his quango..." etc... It pissed me off because this line was basically the title of the song and I found it so devoid of imagination that as a 15 year old I could have written better lyrics. Also the line about herpes. And "ooooh ah'm a naughtay boyyy/Owwww ah'm a naughtay naughtay boooy" is SO annoying.

boy, i must hear that track again.

I can't remember the exact details, but IIRC they were a load of regional semi official organistations, many of which were shut down by thatcher in the eraly '80's as a kind of populist move, b/c qango had become synonymous w/profigat govt spending at that point.

Yes. Three times, like St. Peter.

This is also true.

http://www.nme.com/news/blur--2/59677

This may well be the best Blur album ever.

nice to hear about that! man, I love this album so much, though I can understand why people find it too obnoxious, over-the-top etc. Damon Albarn at his most sarcastic, I guess.

'The Great Escape' is a good album. I don't think Blur ever made a great one - the closest that they came was 'Parklife' IMHO. Most of their albums suffer from being at least quarter of an hour/three or four songs too long. Tracks which, if they were cut, would have made the albums just that little bit stronger. I've never had a problem with the 'The Great Escape' though. When it's 'on' (which it is most of the time), it's fabulous. When it's 'off', it's the pits.

"Best Days" is an obscenely fantastic song, I will say that much. There is some rather slight stuff on the album as well, though.

Country House seems to define a moment; in the middle of all this ironic Benny Hill 90s lads comedy, and that great scribble of a guitar solo, it all stops while the singer tells us how depressed he really is. Then its back to the page 3 girls and the coke...

Pretty much every track has something going on musically, a great riff, killer hook, good idea in the arrangement, to recommend it, and almost every song is catchy as hell. But there are some awful, awful, hateful lyrics and vocals.

^^^^ yep

Has anyone ever hated humanity as much as Damon did on this album?

Damn, twenty years old.

xpost, yes, Damon Albarn now.

Pretty much every track has something going on musically, a great riff, killer hook, good idea in the arrangement, to recommend it, and almost every song is catchy as hell. But there are some awful, awful, hateful lyrics and vocals.

― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Sunday, 18 March 2012 22:37 (3 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

100x yes. It would be such a great record if it hadn't been for the lyrics.

In a weird sequence of events, we decided to watch The Krays movie the other night, which promptly lodged the lyrics to 'Charmless Man' in my head. The next day, we sang it as we walked up the hill to a pub quiz where, during the music round they played 'Charmless Man' in reverse. To add to the coincidence, just as I was writing this post, I went to Google something completely unrelated and the first result was about the Kray Twins, but not what I was looking for.

Did anyone see B-Roads *finally* leaked yesterday? Maybe it was a private obsession for us Blur forum vets but it's rather like Carnival of Light has come out.

People were very weird about this. Mods demanding it must not be discussed. Show-offs who had somehow seen it informed the rest that it wasn't much cop and no one else needs to see it, yet describing every scene in great detail

B-Roads? What's that?

Late 1995 tour film / documentary, mentioned in the music press as something that was in the works. The band decided they didn't want it to come out and was quietly shelved. There wasn't too much fanfare/hype about it to begin with, but it slowly became something of a holy grail. The version that leaked could be just a rough cut, not sure

Wow. Thanks for this. I had Starshaped on video back in the day. It's odd seeing Matt Lucas in the tour party.

https://vimeo.com/774782708

on YouTube too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYX7s_5MnTY

Links seem to keep getting yanked all the time. At least it's out there now

Oh wow you couldn’t even *mention* it on the old Blur forum without the mods getting their knickers in a twist. It’s meant to be really boring.

It’s a fun piece of fluff. I like the scene with Alex James splayed out on the floor of their green room and Damon’s deadpan encounter with a local news reporter. It veers into some Song Remains the Same territory, but it doesn’t feel like a real glimpse into their minds a la True Stories or Return to Waterloo

I really quite love it, it's a real curate's egg. The Best Days bit is genuinely quite poignant.

Pretty good tbh. Refreshing actually, after all the hyper-curated retrospective docs of recent years, to see a contemporaneous effort like this, warts and all.

I found the endless aestheticised poverty kind of gross, but the lack of easy Camden/London-stuff is quite appealing. It’s a lovely document of “what things looked like”.

Graham is the good looking one it turns out (when he’s not wearing his glasses)

Wow yeah I was expecting it to be pretty lairy but this is really quite sweet, especially considering what a collective headfuck they must have been experiencing at the time. The interviews with the public remind me a bit of Pulp’s mini documentary about the making of the This Is Hardcore video, that was also shot on film, possibly by the same people. The Best Days bandstand bit is great yeah, I love that song, and Damon’s bit about the rings at the hotel was a bit of an unexpected choker. Baffling this was blocked/banned for so long.

This film sounds interesting. I know nothing about it but hope to watch some time.