Bit of a Blur

It has been almost a year now that I am completely absorbed by the music of Blur, the british rock/pop band.  I don't recall being interested in a band in this way and for this long; usually one listens an album a lot, finds some new stuff and moves on, and eventually revisits the old albums. Of course, not that I didn't know Blur:  I had a vague idea of their music, and I was aware of hits such as Song 2, Coffee and TV, and Girls and Boys. Back in 2002, I  had even bought and enjoyed their album Think Tank. However, it was only after watching their Glastonbury gig last year that I really got into Blur's music. I was in Grenoble and many things didn't seem to make sense, or so I thought.

So that concert really triggered something in me. I immediately got all of their albums, and read lots of information about them and the band. By now I have an awesome series of Blur-related memories. I would bike to/from work listening to Blur; that's at least one hour of music everyday. That's a lot of Blur. I remember walking in Paris, after doing visa-related bureaucracy, while singing Tender. I also remember walking around Kuala Lumpur, trying to forget about AH1N1 paranoia while listening The Great Escape over and over, and even singing He Thought of Cars (perhaps my favorite song in that album) in the fast train connecting KL and Putrajaya. During those days I would actually alternate between The Great Escape and Parklife, as I really like Tracy Jacks, London Loves, and most specially, Badhead, which was really amazing in the Glastonbury gig.

I find Blur's music intricately simple, as contradictory as this might sound. Lyrics are good (and sometimes brilliant) and in the music nothing appears as excessive or pretentious. What I probably appreciate the most is the fact that Blur as a band always cared to evolve, to push their creative boundaries, which is something I deeply admire in any music group. I find boring bands that always play the same song. Good examples of this desire of evolution in Blur's discography are 13 and Think Tank, the former aiming at exploring electronic music, and the latter being a good attempt of surviving without guitarist Graham Coxon (who left the band because of his problems with alcohol).

As you might guess, I haven't limited to listening and trying to make a high-level idea of their whole discography. I have tried to understand also the solo efforts by Graham Coxon and singer Damon Albarn. I recommend to everyone Coxon's The Spinning Top, a rather conceptual album that accompanied me during the first weeks in Grenoble (he has other albums, more Blur-like, but I haven't listened those yet). The obvious ramification of this exploratory strand is going through the music of Gorillaz, the amazing virtual band of Albarn and Jamie Hewlett. (Gorillaz deserves its own post, really.) The Good, The Bad, and The Queen, another effort by Albarn is warmly recommended, as I mentioned in this post.

Then it comes as no surprise that I've bought and watched several times No Distance Left To Run, a documentary of Blur's reunion last summer (see the official trailer). It is an extremely cool documentary: the story of the band is explained, including their up and downs, their fights and reconciliations. They appear as a group of friends, and the band reunion appears as a long postponed friends reconciliation. It is very well directed and I like it a lot. The DVD documentary comes with a recording of one of their gigs at Hyde Park; the concert is cool, but I like the Glastonbury gig better.

To conclude, these days I am reading Bit of a Blur, the autobiography of bassist Alex Jones. It is such an enjoyable reading; commuting time from/to my work here at Lisbon just flies reading that book. I am only at the beginning, though. Surprisingly, the book reveals that She's So High, one of my favorite songs from Blur, was the first song they ever wrote, at a time when they'd call themselves Seymour. She's So High is probably the simplest song ever (in fact, the lyrics are a little bit more than "I think of her / Everyday / I think of her / It doesn't help me") and yet it makes a great rock song. In fact, the Hyde park concert that appears in the DVD opens with a superb performance of She's So High. Do watch it here.