Ahead of their sold-out gig tonight at Malahide Castle in Dublin and the release of their new album, The Ballad of Darren, we present your very own click on and keep A to Z of Britpop kings Blur!
Also, check out the video above to listen to Alan Corr’s beginners' guide to Blur on Today With Claire Byrne on RTÉ Radio 1.
Ok, big breath . . .
A is for Albarn, Damon: Blur's driven and incredibly ambitious front man always knew he was special. "I always knew I was special" he told a Smash Hits journalist back in 1991 when Blur weren't remotely special. His dad Keith used to manage sixties jazz rock noodlers Soft Machine. His mum, Hazel, was a theatre designer. Damon’s first gig was an Osmonds’ concert when he was six.
B is for Britpop: Who put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp . . . er, Britpop? Was it The Auteurs? Was it Suede? We’d say it was The Beatles, The Kinks, The Jam etc but it wasn’t called Britpop back then, ya see? Music journalist Stuart Maconie coined the term circa 1993, and it was the sound of swinging Britain in the mid-nineties. Blur were the main trailblazers, and then trail burners of the scene. Even Mr Tony, aka Tony Blair, the trendy vicar of UK politics, got into it. Because Alastair Campbell told him to.
C is for Coxon, Graham: Blur’s nerdy, nervy, and brilliantly inventive plank spanker (ooer, missus!). Producer Stephen Street once called him the greatest guitarist since Johnny Marr. Graham probably looked at his shoes (battered Converse or scuffed desert boots) and got embarrassed.
D is for Darren: Blur release their new album on 21 July, and it’s called The Ballad of Darren. To Albarn, the record signifies "an aftershock, reflection and comment on where we find ourselves now", which is nice. But who the bloomin’ 'ell is Darren? Well, he’s none other than Darren "Smoggy" Evans, Blur’s former bodyguard, who currently works for Albarn. "Darren is many people. It is directly one person," Damon says. "There’s a picture of Darren in the album. Not on the front cover. It was going to be but then we put it on the inner sleeve because it’s not the sort of attention Darren will want."
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E is for Elastica: Back when Damon decided that Blur were the best new band in Britain, everyone else had already decided that Suede were actually the best band in Britain. Suede’s front man was of course Brett Anderson and he and Justine Frischmann were very much an item. Then Damon arrived on the scene and set his heart on stealing her away. Soon after, she formed her own band, the post-punky poppers Elastica, and in short order she and Damon were the flippin’ king and queen of Britpop. After they broke up, a moping Damon picked over the wreckage on Blur album 13 on songs like No Distance Left to Run and the smash hit Tender. She returned the favour on Elastica’s second album, The Menace.
F is for Féile: Blur played the Tipp music festival twice. In 1995, they frankly stole the show from under the noses of The Stone Roses and as Damon famously remarked from the side of the stage as Ian Brown casually murdered his band’s songs, "it’s not over till the flat laddie sings." Oh, Damon! You’re such a card!
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G for Great Escape, The: Blur’s misfiring fourth album in 1995 was a crashlanding cash-in on their epochal breakthrough Parklife the previous year. Sounding forced, soulless and slightly sneering, the band have pretty much disowned it. Apart from the sublime The Universal and Entertain Me, it’s pretty bad. Mr Robinson’s Quango, anyone? Thought not!
H is for happiness: Before they were successful, Blur were often an unhappy lot. They drank too much and sometimes came to fisticuffs. After they were successful, Blur were often an unhappy lot. They drank too much and sometimes came to fisticuffs. So, it’s very nice to see that older, wiser and without the pressures of being a BIG DEAL, the four members are much more at ease with each other. Now that they’re in their mid-fifties, the inter-band rivalries have dissipated and as a cautiously rekindled unit, they play carefully chosen shows and release music that always enhances their stature and sees them reconnect with their loyal fan base. As Alex James says, "For any long-term relationship to last with any meaning you have to be able to surprise each other somehow and somehow we all continue to do that." I’m not crying, you’re crying!
I is for Ireland: Blur are a quintessentially English band, but we seem to overlook 800 years of oppression, Cromwell, On The Buses, The Daily Mail, the one they call Farage, and Brexit (haha!) when it comes to our love for the cheeky scamps! In fact, Ireland had quite a role to play in Blur’s breakthrough. Irish journalist Leo Finlay was their earliest champion and back when they were called Seymour, Damon, Graham, Alex, and Dave played Leo and Jane Suitor’s wedding in King’s Inn in Dublin. Why do we dig the Blur? Maybe it’s because they have a mostly affectionate and satirical take on perfidious Albion or maybe it’s because their songs go (clears throat) "la la la" and "wooo-hoo!" and "Nrrrgggggg!"
J is for James, Alex: Blur’s wonderfully rakish bass player comes from the same elegant four-string lineage as John Taylor of Duran Duran and perhaps even the poised and gentlemanly Adam Clayton. When Blur broke up in 2003, Alex went off and bought a farm and made cheese. As well as his poppy basslines and GSOH, he’s also famous for spending £1 million on champagne in one year.
K is for Kinks, The. No Kinks, no Blur. No messing.
L is for Leisure: Blur’s 1991 debut album was a messy affair, but it did deliver a huge hit in the drum-loop monster There’s No Other Way. Sing is pretty good, too, but mostly this is a first effort that found the band under pressure from their label to sound Madchester and the band trying to shoegaze. Nice cover art.
M is for Madness. See K for Kinks.
N is for Nirvana: When the immortal grunge trio took a wrecking ball to the English music scene in the early nineties, it was a blessing in disguise for Blur. Alarmed by the Americanisation of his beloved Blighty, a disgruntled Damon, to quote The Clash, was so bored of the USA, and embraced an old and eccentric Anglocentric worldview. In 1993, they recorded their second album Modern Life is Rubbish and finally found a theme - the joy and sadness of city life, the loneliness of the long-distance commuter, and bored suburban dreamers. Madchester and shoegaze were out; The Kinks, The Small Faces and The Jam were in. Huzzah! It was the start of Blur’s imperial phase and signalled the starting gun on the Britpop era.
O is for Oasis: Ah, yes! The Rolling Stones (they wish) to Blur’s Beatles (they also wish). Way back in the Britpop wars (ask yer dad), these two very different bands - Burnage, chugging guitar rock; Colchester, chirpy guitar pop - were locked in a chart battle that did neither of them any favours. Country House (a terrible song) by Blur beat Roll With It (an even terribler song) by Oasis to No 1 and burnt by the whole media circus, Blur decided they’d had enough with the whole Britpop lark. Oasis are gone but at least two of them insist on releasing very ordinary solo records.
P is for Parklife: Oi! After laying the groundwork on 1993’s Modern Life is Rubbish, Blur hit the mother lode with Parklife, a belter of a record that still sounds marvellous - funny, serious, and bursting with greats tunes. It’s the ultimate definition of Blur world that established the band as not only a hit machine that zapped the zeitgeist but as serious artists. Madness-style knees ups and Kinksian social commentary delivered with a wink.
Q is for Quadrophenia: If Blur were a film, they’d probably be a less good Hard Day’s Night, but mod saga Quadrophenia is the flick that the young Blur were bonkers about.
R is for Rowntree, Dave: Blur’s drummer is the band’s oldest and smartest member. A qualified solicitor, he was also a Labour councillor and ran unsuccessfully for parliament in 2011. He put out his debut solo album, Radio Songs, a couple of years ago and he obtained his full pilot’s licence back in 1995.
S is for Seymour: Before they were called Blur (short, vaguely druggy band names were all the rage back then, pop kids!), Damon, Graham, Alex, and Dave laboured under the moniker Seymour, a name they took from a JD Salinger character. Naturally, their first record label, Food, hated it and drew up a list of alternatives, including The Shining Path (eeerrr . . . ) and The Government (love it!) from which the group decided on Blur. Food Records finally signed the rechristened band in March 1990 for the princely sum of £7000.
T is for Think Tank: The wheels were coming off the Blur machine by the time the band got around to recording this 2003 album. Graham Coxon had entered rehab and only appears on closing track, the heart-breaking Battery In Your Leg, and without their star player, Blur turned to more electronica and sketchy-sounding world music. It’s pretty, pretty good and features the No 1 hit Out of Time.
U is for U2: Back in the late eighties, schoolmates Coxon and Albarn used to have a running gag about forming a band and becoming as big as U2 - only not quite as er, obviously BIG. Later, circa 1988, when he was working at the Portobello Hotel in London, Albarn encountered U2. "One night Bono was rude to me, and I’ve never really forgiven him," he later recalled. "The Edge, on the other hand was always really polite."
V is for Villa Rosie: This little curio comes at the end of Modern Life is Rubbish and hints at some of the lyrical concerns (beer and skittles) that Blur would truly explore on Parklife. "Go form a queue at Villa Rosie every night, so tasty!"
W is for Weller, Paul: There’s no missing The Jam’s influence on Blur and Wellah even called the band’s second album, the somewhat overlooked Modern Life is Rubbish, his favourite record of 1993.
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X is for XTC: The musical Venn Diagram of XTC and Blur has always been there. XTC’s very English and very angular guitar pop was a big influence on Damon and da lads - and let’s not forget XTC front man Andy Partridge was the first producer hired to work on Modern Life is Rubbish. Sadly, it didn’t quite work out.
Y is for Yorke, Thom: The deadly serious, but possibly fun at parties, Radiohead front man truly arrived in 1997 with his band’s landmark album OK Computer, a record squarely at odds with the larks of Britpop and the sludge of Noelrock.
Z is for: the tricky bit on these ruddy lists.
Enjoy the gig!
Alan Corr @CorrAlan2
