I posted about the Gorillaz single “Feel Good Inc” the other day. I did a little looking into the Gorillaz and found that it is a “virtual band” put together by Jamie Hewlett, the creator of the Tank Girl comic, and Damon Albarn, who was the lead singer of Blur.
Blur was a Britpop band that never really made it big in the US except for two singles that only did okay: “Boys and Girls” and “Song 2″. What is interesting is that they had a big rivalry with Oasis which they had the upper hand on a number of times, but Oasis made it big in the US while Blur never amounted to anything over here. You may remember Oasis’s album “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?” or the fun arguments between bandmate brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher.
I remember hearing Blur’s “Song 2″ in the computer video game FIFA 98: Road to the World Cup (which also introduced me to The Crystal Method). A buddy of mine at the U, Matt Suchomel, was a big Blur fan and let me listen to one of Blur’s albums, “Parklife”, which had hit #1 in the UK. I thought the album was quite good and ended up buying a copy of my own. I still own it and still enjoy listening to it. It is one of those albums where I like nearly every song.
This was my junior year of school and I lived with a member of the swimming team. This basically meant that I was friends with what seemed like half of the swimming team, both the guys and girls. I know it probably wasn’t that many but Gary and I had his team members over all of the time. For a few of the ladies a popular entertainment was listening to me sing “Boys and Girls” in my best British accent. They’d ask me to sing it all of the time, either I’d be singing it or we’d have the album playing on the stereo. My buddy Matt often wondered aloud “Where were these kinds of fans when the album was released and later when they were crushed by Oasis?”. Alas for fans of Blur.
So that’s one of my random memories from college. Singing Blur songs to a bunch of female collegiate swimmers.

Wow, that was quite the swing from the Gorillaz to signing Blur songs.
Incidentally, I didn’t particularly care for much of the rest of the new Gorillaz album. A few good songs, but most were only average. Although I wasn’t a huge fan of the first cd, so YMMV.
Comment by Steve Eck — Wednesday, July 13, 2005 @ 9:23 am
I have to agree with your assesment of the album, Feel Good Inc is great (in my opinion) and the rest of it is unspectacular. I hadn’t heard any of their earlier work.
The swing from Gorillaz to Blur isn’t that great, that’s the thing. Only one degree of separation. If it had been Oasis songs that I had been singing to female swimmers and I made the connection of: Gorillaz->Damon Albarn->Blur->BritPop Rivalries->Oasis->Singing “Wonderwall” to college swimmers. That would have been a little crazy.
That Noel though, he’s something else. I wonder if NewPlanet remembers this comment about Kylie : “I don’t hate Kylie but I hate her music with a passion - it’s just unbridled filth, it’s disgusting.”
Comment by Brenden Johnson — Wednesday, July 13, 2005 @ 9:49 am
actually, matt blur matt (the other one) was the bigger blur fan, i was just a brit pop pretender.
anyway, so what’s up with you?
matt
Comment by matt suchomel — Wednesday, April 19, 2006 @ 1:45 pm