Let's all have a dis-co.
- Blurb: So I kind of get the impression that you keep going back to Blur because you've got an emotional attachment to it.
- Damon: Yeah, exactly. I have. I totally have. It's part of my life. On paper I'm more successful now than I've ever been - but that's never been my modus operandi. I do feel commitment to everything related to Blur and I won't let the whole thing disappear, you know, because I believe in happy endings. I do.
- -Damon Albarn | Blurb 32 (2005)
May 2012
21 posts
Yr so Great
juliusseizure writes about her top ten blur tracks, including:
You’re So Great
1997, Blur
Blur was undeniably the album Coxon had been Jonesing to make for years, and so it is only fitting he get to voice his own track to close off the first side of their self-titled cassette. It would be a few years yet until Coxon checked into The Priory for a dry spell, an event prefaced with his declaration of “Sad, drunk and poorly”, an idiot savant soaked in every conceivable type of alcohol to a point beyond saturation. Having dragged four albums across America, having waged war with various groupies, singles charts, press, and a juggernaut of self-loathing; the antithesis of Albarn’s swaggering, optimistic self was going to sit down and record his own lo-fi song with all the borderline religious fervor of a walking fire hazard. For all of that self-destructive weight, ‘You’re So Great’ comes across as startlingly innocent and courageous, even childlike. A totem of doubt and pessimism, capped off with deadpan lyrics like “City’s Alive/And Surprise/So am I” and set to two sets of strings – one clear and true, the other with just a little bit of grunt. Crackling, fragmented and unsteady, this is the sort of unbarred creative loveliness that can only emerge from a locked room.
- Interviewer: Noel Gallagher’s big mates with Paul Weller now. He was a bit of a childhood hero wasn’t he?
- Damon: No, of Graham's. Weller’s a huge fan of Graham. He recognizes him as a great guitarist.
- Graham: He never talks to me when I go and sit at his table. It’s always Steve White his drummer, that talks to me.
- Damon: He’s embarrassed that’s why.
- Blurb 1995
“The name Blur is the simplest way of describing the whole feeling that we have. I.e. sort of not very clear. It’s just that certain blankness your faced with everyday. It’s the right word for us.”
—Damon Albarn, 1991 (via damonalbarn)
“
I tell him that I’ve just read a memoir by Tim Burgess of the Charlatans, in which the band members blow coke up each other’s bums. Coxon looks astonished.
“Really? We never did anything like that. I mean… blimey. We were far too proper. We wouldn’t even be able to watch each other go to the loo. In America, we’d play in these little clubs where there were no doors on the loos and we’d be horrified.”
“Damon reappears, only a towel around his waist. “Oy,” says Graham, “let’s see your knockers.” Damon flashes his behind. “He’s got a journalist here,” Graham shrieks. “What the fuck is he doing?”
Graham and Alex are already wearing Lacoste t-shirts. They were sent them free. Damon returns in one, so it is decided he should lend Dave one to complete the set. He gets one off his laundry pile – It’s the one he’s used at the gym. It doesn’t look too clean. “Have you used it as a fucking spunk rag or something?” asks Graham. Dave wears it nonetheless.
Damon sits next to me, putting his shoes on. The crotch of his jeans is slightly ripped. Graham tells him to put some knickers on. “I haven’t got any fucking knickers,” he says. “I threw them away, didn’t I?” Once Damon has fed the cats, we walk off down the road, myself and the Lacoste quadruplets.” —The Face, 1995 (via damonalbarn)
Graham and Alex are already wearing Lacoste t-shirts. They were sent them free. Damon returns in one, so it is decided he should lend Dave one to complete the set. He gets one off his laundry pile – It’s the one he’s used at the gym. It doesn’t look too clean. “Have you used it as a fucking spunk rag or something?” asks Graham. Dave wears it nonetheless.
Damon sits next to me, putting his shoes on. The crotch of his jeans is slightly ripped. Graham tells him to put some knickers on. “I haven’t got any fucking knickers,” he says. “I threw them away, didn’t I?” Once Damon has fed the cats, we walk off down the road, myself and the Lacoste quadruplets.” —The Face, 1995 (via damonalbarn)
“Well maybe a couple [new Blur songs performed in August.] We are gonna do some more recording next week or the week after.”
—Damon Albarn today on The Andrew Marr Show. (via damonalbarn)
