Blur #1

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Op donderdag 11 december 2008 15:58 schreef belsen het volgende:
Ik had eigenlijk liever gehad dat Graham Coxon weer met een goede nieuwe plaat was gekomen... Ik vraag me namelijk erg af of dit wel een leuke stuiptrekking wordt.

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Graham Coxon to release new album in May

Graham Coxon is gearing up to release a new album on the 11th May. It’ll be called The Spinning Top and will be released via Transgressive Records.

The album was recorded in London in Spring 2008 and features contributions from Robyn Hitchcock and Danny Thompson, amongst others. It was produced by Stephen Street.

A single ‘Sorrow’s Army’ will follow a week after the album, on May 18; a limited edition single ‘In the Morning’, available on etched 10″ vinyl as part of ‘Record Store Day’ will precede the album on April 18.

Graham will be performing at the Transgressive showcase at SXSW, as well as at selected other events within the festival. He also plays with Peter Doherty on his tour later in March. There are also plans to play several low key shows in May, with a full solo tour to follow in the autumn.

Graham says: “The album is mainly an acoustic journey although there is, of course, some explosive electric guitar action. I wanted to show how exciting acoustic instruments can be, how dynamic and rich and heart-thumpingly raw they can sound at a time when acoustic music seems either too cute or too soppy. Obvious influences here are the amazing Martin Carthy, the late, great Davey Graham and the late, great John Martyn”.

“There are some guests too! Robyn Hitchcock supplies some counter-attack guitar, Jas Singh plays dilruba and jori with his friends Gurjit Sembhi on taus and Jaskase Singh on esraj. Danny Thompson plays the legendary Victoria, Graham Fox gives plenty of swing on the drums and sizzle cymbals and Louis Vause tinkles the ivories”.

“My friend Lucy supplies the voice of the wife and Natasha marsh channels the voice of the Medea-like enchantress”.

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Op donderdag 4 juni 2009 16:36 schreef VeggieBurgerQueen het volgende:
Blur! Ik heb ze alleen op het Tibetan Freedom Concert gezien in 1999 alweer! Ik zou ze erg graag weer eens zien!

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Graham heb ik dan weer solo op Lowlands gezien in 2005 (als ik het goed heb).

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Op donderdag 4 juni 2009 18:25 schreef VeggieBurgerQueen het volgende:

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Ja! Daar heb ik Gray ook nog gezien...dat was 2004

Dat Tibetan Freedom liep toen nog zo onmogelijk uit...laatste trein gemist!

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Op donderdag 4 juni 2009 19:27 schreef belsen het volgende:

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Ze speelden toen 13 praktisch helemaal en na de toegift Blue jeans, volgens mij een van de mooiste Blur-nummers, op een drafje naar het station ja.

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Op donderdag 4 juni 2009 02:04 schreef emokid het volgende:
Vandaag bij het kopen van Parklife, de cd Think Tank erin gekregen. Later teruggebracht maar een Blur album meer kan nooit kwaad na het rippen.

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Op vrijdag 5 juni 2009 17:19 schreef tim. het volgende:

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Ik ben wel benieuwd naar je mening over "Think Thank", als je die dus nog niet kende. Graham vond er niet zoveel aan volgens mij, heeft laatst wel gezegd dat hij de nummers live wilt spelen.

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Exclusive footage: Blur rehearse Mellow Song

In the first of three intimate studio snapshots, Blur rehearse a track from their album 13 in preparation for their Hyde Park and Glastonbury headline shows

An exclusive interview with Blur will appear in Weekend magazine with this Saturday's Guardian

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The demons that nearly destroyed Blur

The story of their supposed re-formation is ultimately about Graham Coxon's exit and reconnection after battling the bottle

_{Blur rehearse Beetlebum, their second No 1 single, in advance of their forthcoming Hyde Park shows and headline slot on the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury Link to this video}

"The problem with our band," Dave Rowntree told me recently, "has always been founded on the fact that all four of us have got one sister and no brothers. We've become each other's surrogate brothers, and that brings with it an ability to understand each other very deeply – and an ability to push each other's buttons at will. That was always going to boil over at some point. But in the time we spent apart, we all grew up an awful lot."

That's the stripped-down version of Blur's six-year hiatus, given to me over lunch in a London Italian restaurant. Over the last few months, I've been lucky enough to observe the reconvened Blur – watching them rehearse (a clip of which you can see above), and doing long interviews with each of the four members, the results of which – an exclusive, if you must know – are in tomorrow's Guardian Weekend magazine.

The story is about all kinds of things: what success does to people, the strange, giddy and hedonistic culture of the 1990s, and what four singularly intelligent musicians chose to do once the party was over – not just in terms of Damon Albarn's wildly diverse musical projects, Graham Coxon's solo career and Alex James's writing and cheese-making, but also the fascinating path taken by Rowntree. It's probably some token of what makes Blur different that his tale is perhaps the most fascinating of all: he's now not only a prospective Labour candidate at the next election, but a trainee solicitor, who spends his Tuesday nights working as a "police station representative" for some of London's most vulnerable people. You cannot, it's fair to say, imagine one of Spandau Ballet doing that.

Blur's supposed re-formation (although they never officially split up) is actually the story of Coxon's exit and reconnection, most of which is in the piece. Some people may be surprised to hear that everything came to grief after – rather than before – he quit drinking, but that's apparently the way these things can sometimes work. "Quite often," Coxon told me, "dipsos are easier to deal with when they're pissed, not when they've sobered up. When they're sober, they tend to tell the truth a little more … And in the end, Chris [Morrison, Blur manager] said, 'Look – the boys don't really want you to go into the studio today.' And I said, 'Well, when then?' He said, 'Well, not really at all.' It did make my blood go a bit cold. I went into the loo, and I thought, 'Shit, man – this is like one of those [VH1] Behind The Music things."

He might be right, though as with most of their story, the sky-scraping quality of Blur's best music prevents what happened to them looking too like yet another cliched rock'n'roll melodrama. As to the most pored-over question of all, when I asked Damon Albarn if there'd eventually be new Blur music, he said this: "We'll see how we feel at the end of the summer. I've no doubt we could make a fantastic record together. It'd be very interesting."

But is new Blur material really a good idea? We'll let you decide …

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Op vrijdag 12 juni 2009 22:30 schreef belsen het volgende:
Volgens mij lag een groot deel van de breuk ook gewoon in het feit dat Damon steeds meer de touwtjes in handen kreeg en Blur zijn eigen projectje maakte, want hij was natuurlijk de grote pief als leadzanger en drijvende kracht achter Gorillaz.

Hij was degene die besloot dat Stephen Street eruit moest, eerst ten faveure van William Orbit, toen ten faveure van Norman Cook, terwijl de kwaliteit van de muziek dat absoluut niet ten goede kwam. Denk bijvoorbeeld aan het, toch wel redelijk verschrikkelijke, Music is my radar...

De uiteindelijke breuk kwam toen Damon het in zijn hoofd haalde om stel op sprong naar Marokko te willen om inspiratie op te doen (zoals hij al eerder in Mali zat) met Norman Cook en, de toch al grillige, Graham niet meewilde omdat hij voor zijn dochter moest zorgen, waarna Norman Cook doodleuk meldde dat hij uit de band was...

En natuurlijk speelt ook mee dat Graham ontzettend grillig is en het drankverhaal is ook een bekende. Daarnaast is Graham al sinds 1995 bezig met een solo-carrière, die hij door Blur ook slecht van de grond kreeg. Na Blur heeft hij dat op poten gezet, door weer bij Stephen Street aan te kloppen en een geweldig album uit te brengen. Het mag duidelijk zijn bij wie mijn sympathie eigenlijk ligt.

Enfin: 19 juni ligt het nieuwe soloalbum van Graham in de winkels.

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Blur, East Anglian Railway Museum, Colchester

Editors' Pick
By Stephen Ackroyd / Posted on Sunday, 14th June 2009

Artist: Blur
Venue: East Anglian Railway Museum
Date: 13th June 2009

10

It's 10pm on a Saturday night, and the sound of strings fill the Essex air. Hands are aloft, even the hardest heart can't help but crack the widest of smiles; Blur are playing 'The Universal'.

Gigs like this don't come around often, if ever. To set the scene with any plausibility is a challenge in itself. In a small railway shed, part of a tiny railway museum in quite possibly the smallest village we've ever visited, hidden up miles of winding country lanes, the most important band of their generation are making their long awaited return. Instead of the tens, even hundreds of thousands they'll play to over the next few weeks, here the audience numbers 150. Imagine finding Radiohead playing the back room of your local boozer and you're still a good distance off.

Rewind two hours and it's the floppy haircut and vaguely shoegazing strains of debut single 'She's So High' that mark Blur's return proper. There's no awkwardness, no suggestion that this was an idea best left alone; from the off it's as if they never went away. Alex James is no longer "that bloke with a farm who writes those columns and makes cheese", Dave Rowntree is a drummer, not a politician, Damon Albarn shows absolutely no signs of trying to introduce us to some African two piece experimental bongo choir, and Graham Coxon is grinning. So, it should be noted, is everyone else.

What follows is a dream-like procession of tracks, each more brilliant than the last. 'Girls & Boys' into 'Tracy Jacks', 'There's No Other Way' followed by 'Jubilee' and then 'Badhead'. These aren't songs from a generation ago; they're familiar yet new. 'Beetlebum', 'Coffee & TV and 'Tender', with it's refrain now rescued from the soul destroying gospel choir of 2003 and placed firmly back into the hands of Coxon, all manage to make a tiny outbuilding feel as huge as Hyde Park.

To cherry pick from a set list like this is near impossible. Both 'Country House' and 'Charmless Man' are reclaimed without the need for 'I Love The Mid-Nineties' style nostalgia. Any thoughts of subverting them seem cast aside; this is clearly a Blur comfortable with their lot, not running away from their own success. 'Colin Zeal', 'Oily Water', 'Chemical World' and 'Sunday Sunday' form the heart of 'Modern Life Is Rubbish', large swathes of which get an outing ('Advert' and 'For Tomorrow' will follow). 'Parklife' may not bring forth Phil Daniels, but seeing Albarn try and remember the words is better entertainment anyway.

If there's ever been one moment that defines Blur as a band though, it's been that guitar solo. The one two thirds of the way through 'This Is A Low', where at the end of quite probably the biggest album of their lives, in the middle of a song essentially formed around the shipping forecast, Graham Coxon plays a part of such building, crashing genius that it provokes emotions that don't even have words to go alongside them. Imagine how amazing that could sound, double it and it's still nowhere near the euphoria of it's set closing appearance tonight. If there was no encore, there'd still be a hundred odd lucky souls stood with their mouths open somewhere in deepest Essex.

An encore there is, though. 'Popscene' and 'Song 2' send the crowd mad, 'Out Of Time' and the haunting 'Battery In Your Leg' (the only nods to the almost Coxon-less 'Think Tank') space them out. 'Essex Dogs' tops 'Sing' in a vote of hands, then with an eye on the clock we're finally at 'The Universal'. To avoid the obvious is impossible; "It really really really could happen". After years of crossed fingers, it seems it finally has.

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Op zondag 21 juni 2009 23:43 schreef MCH het volgende:
Staan?