“There’s always the back catalogue…”

Blur have recently come back onto my music radar at the moment. After announcing in December of 2008 that they would be reuniting for a Hyde park concert in the summer of 2009 I began to get all nostalgic, recalling memories of seeing many blur hits such as Parklife, Song 2 and Coffee and TV on the old music video channels. Those were the good old days.

After hearing no news of new material to be released I was slightly downtrodden, disappointed and annoyed. Everybody has a right to be annoyed, but there’s no point in being annoyed, it won’t accomplish anything. So i kept my eye on when and where they were doing gigs, knowing that if they would be doing a gig close to where I lived then I would try to go and see them. As I was not old enough to appreciate them back when they were big, hell i didn’t even start going to actual live gigs until the middle of last year. It had just never occurred to me that I could do that. I think it could have been partly because of the way that I was raised. Anyway, they weren’t doing anything near me so I sort of forgot about them again, after listening to their back library of songs again of course.

It would appear that one of the reasons for this reunion was to mend the broken relationship between Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon. And it seems to have worked, they are back on good terms with each other, i don’t know what happened between them back 10 years or so ago, but it’s great that they are back together. The possibility of more music from bands I thought had kicked it is always something which I can get excited about.

It then came around in about June of 2012 that i started to hear the song ‘Under the Westway’ playing on radio 2, and I thought, ‘this sounds quite like Blur,’ and alas it was. Under the Westway is a not bad song in my opinion and it’s good to see that Blur are actually releasing new material. Their other song ‘The Puritan’ I have not yet heard, but with these 2 singles now out will we see Blur return with a studio album to follow?

Well it would seem that they did start sessions recording a new studio album some time around March/April of 2o12. But sessions were cut short by Damon, but could still possibly be restarted at some time in the future. It was after this that they announced they would be performing at the Olympic closing ceremony, which could have been a reason to halt recording for the full album. Get the gigs out-of-the-way and then finish the album.

Now that the Olympics are over Blur have 13 gigs coming up in 2013, in 3 locations. Annoyingly I found out the other day that my brother luckily got to see them after a friend offered him a ticket to go and see them. I was pretty gutted at that. Ah well, there’s always the back catalogue to listen to all  over again!