Blur with Chris Ryan

As one of the first Britpop bands, these college blokes from Colchester started out making shoegaze and baggy jams in the Scene that Celebrates Itself before writing a genre-defining album that romanticized British life and paved the way for an indie explosion. They were the UK’s favorite band, that is, until they weren’t. They may have lost the Britpop war, but their third act was brilliant nonetheless. The Ringer’s Chris Ryan joins us to talk about the band who turned toward Britain and solidified a scene, and the ways they ultimately broke out of their own (Brit) box. Follow along as we trace the band’s breakups and makeups, while exploring their sonic evolution from shoegaze to Britpop to alt-rock. SKIP AHEAD: 7:22 – Band formation 45:51 – Sign to Food Records; ‘She’s So High’ single 1:03:59 – Leisure 1:31:04 – Modern Life is Rubbish 1:45:19 – ‘Girls & Boys’ single 1:54:27 – Parklife 2:25:40 – Chart Battle 2:36:25 – The Great Escape 2:51:14 – Blur (self-titled album) 3:04:01 – Britpop dies 3:05:40 – 13 3:15:49 – Think Tank 3:24:19 – The Magic Whip 3:28:03 – The Ballad of Darren EPISODE PLAYLIST: Listen to songs we detail in the episode ⁠HERE⁠ CREDITS: Host: Yasi Salek @yasisalek Guests: Chris Ryan @crashactivated Producer: Liz Sánchez @lizbetsanch Audio Editor: Adrian Bridges Additional Production Supervision: Justin Sayles Theme Song: Bethany Cosentino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 2:17Yasi Salek?

  Hello and welcome to Bands Plane. I am your host, Yasi Salek. This is a show where I invite an expert guest on to help me explain a cult band or iconic artist. Today's episode is Blur. If you've never heard Blur, get ready to feel heavy metal and be pins and needles. Not on pins and needles, be pins and needles.

• 2:40Yasi Salek?

  Before I introduce my guest today, if you're not watching this and you can see him, I'd like to give a warm welcome to R-CR Heads. Thank you for joining us. I know you're here. My guest today, you guys, is Sir Christopher Ryan. Welcome to the show, Chris.

• 2:53Speaker 04

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 2:55Yasi Salek?

  Chris, before I'm gonna ask you, why Blur? Because that's how we need to start. I just would like to get out of the way the disclaimer that we are American. We are two American people.

• 3:06Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 3:06Yasi Salek?

  Who, born and raised in America and experienced this music through the lens of American people.

• 3:14Speaker 04

  Of shopping malls.

• 3:16Yasi Salek?

  Of shopping malls, McDonald's, all the things that Blur hated. And we are gonna try to make sense of something that's fundamentally British. But I just would love you guys to give us some grace.

• 3:27Speaker 04

  Can I make a disclaimer on the disclaimer?

• 3:29Yasi Salek?

  Please.

• 3:30Speaker 04

  It's okay to talk about Blur through an American lens because Blur often found themselves recoiling and then lunging back towards American culture, especially music one.

• 3:38Yasi Salek?

  I knew you were the right person.

• 3:39Speaker 04

  So it's like, their resistance to being part of like, the American alternative rock movement and trying to go full, I got my brolly in the park.

• 3:48Yasi Salek?

  Sure, my Lori and the...

• 3:50Speaker 04

  Years later, being like, it turns out Jay Mascis was right. Like, we were here and we're waiting and it's always a welcome home here in my night states of America.

• 4:00Yasi Salek?

  Just like the Statue of Liberty said, babe. All are welcome here. Bring us your tired and...

• 4:05Speaker 04

  Jay Mascis was right.

• 4:06Yasi Salek?

  And your British. And it says on smaller font, Jay Mascis was right, which is an evergreen statement, honestly. Tell me why, when I came to you, hat in hand, Christopher, I am, please come on Bands Plan. I know we've had some hard times before. I know it takes 40 hours, but which band do you want to do for the season that is British? Why did you choose Blur?

• 4:28Speaker 04

  So when I first got introduced to Blur's music, it was around 1994, 95, 96. So I use that wide range because I think I was aware of Girls and Boys. And I was kind of starting to become aware of like the Britpop wars around that time. And the Trainspotting soundtrack that they feature on.

• 4:46Yasi Salek?

  That was 97, I think.

• 4:47Speaker 04

  96, I think. Yeah. So like, all that time period is essentially an era when like, I found myself being drawn more and more to British music and British culture. And I think for not dissimilar reasons why we get into a lot of the subcultures we get into, especially at that time, was that it felt so tactile and yet so foreign. So you could go to Barnes and Noble and if you were so inclined, pick up Melody Maker and NME. And you used to just feel like you were getting this like little peek into a completely different universe, where a band like Blur was somehow the biggest band in the country of, in England. And even in the mid 90s, as we were kind of coming out of the alternative rock phase, or maybe in the peak of it,

• 5:31Speaker 04

  that felt like an alternative to the alternative.

• 5:33Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 5:34Speaker 04

  And it felt like you were learning a whole new language, even though it was still English. And you were learning about all these different cultural references and touchstones where like the kinks were somehow like this massive influence on people, this totem that like in America, nobody really like ever referenced the kinks like in their music or in their interviews or anything like that. So it was like learning this whole, about this whole new world. And I just dove in and they are arguably with Pulp, probably the most British of the Britpop bands, I think.

• 6:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think so. You were in high school.

• 6:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, end of high school.

• 6:07Yasi Salek?

  End of high school.

• 6:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, but and Girls and Boys was like an alt-rock radio staple, if I remember correctly.

• 6:15Yasi Salek?

  Yes. That was probably my, my first introduction to Blur because Kerouac, I think, played the shit out of that song.

• 6:24Speaker 04

  And I thought they were like one-hit wonders. Like I thought, like, just, I think if I remember correctly, like when I was in high school, I was like, this song is crazy good, but like, I don't know anything about them before. And I don't remember like another song from Parklife hitting that year for me, or like in 95, until like I fully got into Blur as an entire totality and got into Parklife and realized what Parklife meant to people.

• 6:48Yasi Salek?

  Right. I think, you know, something we have in common is that we both identify as lads.

• 6:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:54Yasi Salek?

  Laddie.

• 6:54Speaker 04

  Lad culture.

• 6:55Yasi Salek?

  Lad culture.

• 6:56Speaker 04

  Lad bibles.

• 6:56Yasi Salek?

  I am a lad. You are a lad. It's genderless, really. And again, this is not to set us off on a negative foot, but I think, A, I wasn't that familiar with Blur somehow. Again, the first three albums, I think, were pretty contained to Britain. Like, until we got like a little-

• 7:16Speaker 04

  You had to be like a Anglophile, like Brit pop-

• 7:18Yasi Salek?

  Right. You had to be working at like, you know, a record, independent record store and be like, you know, a college-aged man who was doing like college radio and like very interested in the successors to the Stone Roses or whatever.

• 7:32Speaker 04

  When I moved to Boston in 96, I started working at Newbury Comics pretty quickly afterwards. And that was when I first, although in Philly, there was also this store called Repo where this happened too, where I was introduced to the concept of like a Brit pop fan who's like, I take my money.

• 7:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 7:49Speaker 04

  All of it. And I spend it on CD singles.

• 7:52Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 7:53Speaker 04

  From England.

• 7:53Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 7:54Speaker 04

  Like, import CD singles that are like $12 for two songs.

• 7:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 7:58Speaker 04

  And that's my identity. And that was like a real like, wake-up call for me. And then you get into like, there were Brit pop nights at clubs and stuff like that. And it starts to like, the American interpretation and relationship to British pop is fascinating.

• 8:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. You heard that, kids? We used to be a proper country and you had to spend $12 on two songs. Just like, you'll never understand what it's like. Okay, well, let's just dive in. Let's get into it.

• 8:24Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 8:25Yasi Salek?

  We're gonna start with Damon Albarn, obviously.

• 8:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:28Yasi Salek?

  He's an OBE. Do you know what that means?

• 8:29Speaker 04

  It's like he's the Order of the British Empire?

• 8:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Is that like?

• 8:32Speaker 04

  King Arthur comes out of Camelot.

• 8:35Yasi Salek?

  Takes the sword out of the stone.

• 8:37Speaker 04

  And blesses you by St. George, yeah.

• 8:38Yasi Salek?

  Okay, gorge.

• 8:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:40Yasi Salek?

  Okay, as a known Anglophile, I do love that, like, those parts of like the archaic leftover that they still have within their culture.

• 8:49Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 8:50Yasi Salek?

  Like, like, nighting people or whatever.

• 8:52Speaker 04

  It's, the oldness of the country is both like the coolest thing about it, the funniest thing about it, and the saddest thing about it.

• 8:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, for them, maybe most, in some ways, the most embarrassing. He's an Aries.

• 9:02Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 9:02Yasi Salek?

  March 23rd, 1968. A real go-getter. He's born in Whitechapel, London. His father, Keith Albarn, was an artist and also just like, kind of like, a bohemian success story. It's what it sounds like to me, right? Like, he was on TV a bit as like, some sort of arts show presenter on like BBC's late-night lineup.

• 9:27Speaker 04

  The best, yeah.

• 9:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, he managed Soft Machine.

• 9:29Speaker 04

  Arts show presenter? Can you imagine?

• 9:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, like, I'm like, I don't know, I don't know, really know what I mean. Like, about the arts, I guess, or whatever. Definitely some British person's already like, off. They don't understand what BBC's late-night lineup is. We're out. But yeah, he managed a band. And then he had this art gallery where the claim to fame is that he put on Yoko Ono's, I think, one of her first, if not first, art shows. And also, that's where John Lennon met Yoko Ono, was at Damon Albarn's father's art gallery.

• 10:01Speaker 04

  Sick.

• 10:02Yasi Salek?

  Sick, yeah. Also, they're Quakers.

• 10:04Speaker 04

  I am not a Quaker, but I went to Quaker school for 13 years.

• 10:08Yasi Salek?

  Wait, did we talk about this already?

• 10:09Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 10:10Yasi Salek?

  I'm obsessed with Quakers.

• 10:11Speaker 04

  You think, you're down?

• 10:12Yasi Salek?

  I'm so down.

• 10:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:13Yasi Salek?

  Well, Dave and Matthew is already the best person alive, so there's your testament. But I've heard that, like, well, you just went to the school, but I've heard they're like- Church is like so unchur- like-

• 10:24Speaker 04

  Meeting for worship, yeah.

• 10:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's just like, there's no leader, you sort of just like sit around. It sounds kind of like a 12-step meeting in like the best way possible.

• 10:32Speaker 04

  You sit in silence for like 40 minutes and if you are moved by the spirit, you can stand up and say something, which for my cohort usually was like, my turtle died.

• 10:43Yasi Salek?

  It couldn't be like, Blur's not that good. The spirit moved me to get up and say, actually Blur's not that good.

• 10:49Speaker 04

  I can't imagine anything more insufferable than meeting for worship, but Banzplane, where people are like getting up and being like, you're living all over me is overrated.

• 10:57Yasi Salek?

  Literally, can you imagine meeting for worship, but it's r-banzplane?

• 11:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:01Yasi Salek?

  Absolute six the ring.

• 11:03Speaker 04

  Banzplane, I don't know why-

• 11:04Yasi Salek?

  What's the difference?

• 11:05Speaker 04

  Uh, well Reddit is r slash.

• 11:07Yasi Salek?

  Okay, fine, r slash. For those that don't know, I'm like not a super Reddit person. And I've been sober off the Banzplane Reddit for-

• 11:16Speaker 04

  Good for you.

• 11:16Yasi Salek?

  Many, many months, over a year. I should get a chip, honestly.

• 11:20Speaker 04

  Phenomenal.

• 11:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I bring up his background because it's important, right? He makes a lot in many interviews about the fact that he lived in London till he was nine.

• 11:34Yasi Salek?

  It was a little bit funny to like, to sort of posit that actually who you are is where you lived till you were nine and not like maybe the most formative time of your life, which is arguably nine to 18.

• 11:47Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 11:48Yasi Salek?

  Which is, they moved to Colchester, which is a part of Essex. What do you know about Essex?

• 11:56Speaker 04

  I know that the only, the only way is Essex is a reality show.

• 12:00Yasi Salek?

  Right, kind of like Jersey Shore.

• 12:02Speaker 04

  I think it sounds kind of like, from what I understand, it's like a Tony suburb. It's like a rich suburb.

• 12:07Yasi Salek?

  It's, so I got to the bottom of this. I did some, you know, boots-on-the-ground research, meaning I texted some British friends.

• 12:14Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 12:15Yasi Salek?

  Now it's kind of changed because of its proximity to East London, which is very cool.

• 12:20Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 12:20Yasi Salek?

  There's more cool people that live there, but in the 80s and 90s, it was essentially like a New Jersey, where it's like, it has fancy parts, like where there are ritual, but it also is New Jersey. So it has not so nice parts, like, but it's, it's definitely not like cosmopolitan in any sense.

• 12:39Speaker 04

  So can I just jump in really quick to say, one of the things that I think is either a make or break for people with Blur?

• 12:46Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 12:46Speaker 04

  Which is the code switching.

• 12:48Yasi Salek?

  Of the Cockney.

• 12:49Speaker 04

  It's everything.

• 12:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 12:51Speaker 04

  Essentially, understanding that this guy is a performer at heart.

• 12:55Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 12:56Speaker 04

  Has an acting background, I think we'll probably mention. His father was obviously in the arts. I think he comes from a middle class, upper middle class, but like with translating it from America to England is always a little complicated.

• 13:09Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 13:09Speaker 04

  Because of family money stuff. But ultimately, like, I think what you see over the course of Blur's career and over the course of Al Barnes' career is a very easy kind of like, we're Manchester ravers, actually, we're chimney sweeps, actually.

• 13:24Yasi Salek?

  Actually, we're chimneys.

• 13:25Speaker 04

  Actually, we're into pavement, you know what I mean? And actually, like, I've always been into world music and now I will write the single most catchy song of all time.

• 13:33Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 13:33Speaker 04

  You know, like, the kind of like constantly flitting between identities, code switching his like lang- like his accent, his vocabulary, like.

• 13:41Yasi Salek?

  His interests.

• 13:42Speaker 04

  Some people find that.

• 13:43Yasi Salek?

  I like dog racing now.

• 13:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, and some people find that to be off-putting. And at the height of the like Oasis-Blur conflict was this like authenticity versus rich kids play-acting thing. That I think Long Tail wound up benefiting Blur because they were like, we can make different kinds of music. And Oasis was kind of stuck.

• 14:05Yasi Salek?

  So, yeah, they weren't so hemmed in by their identity because their identity was sort of amorphous.

• 14:12Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 14:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 14:13Speaker 04

  Yes, they could be shoegaze and they could be, they could be like a sort of Beatles-esque pop band. And like, they tried all these different hats on over the course of their career. And some people find that a bit frustrating, or they have their favorites, but like Oasis was always Oasis and is always Oasis.

• 14:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and we'll get into the Oasis of it all, obviously, there's no, for better or for worse, there's really no way to talk about Blur without talking about Oasis. I think you've already identified one of the major themes that, for me, was super interesting in the Blur story that is, I think, can be, you know, extrapolated to like any kind of music, which is people's obsession with authenticity.

• 14:54Yasi Salek?

  And why it's okay sometimes for people to tell stories and sometimes not.

• 15:00Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 15:01Yasi Salek?

  Because like Nick Cave tells stories, right?

• 15:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:04Yasi Salek?

  PJ Harvey tells stories.

• 15:05Speaker 04

  Southern Gothic.

• 15:07Yasi Salek?

  He's not from Appalachia.

• 15:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, he doesn't drive a carriage.

• 15:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. But no, I do think that this is where we are at a disadvantage because like I, someone, someone said that you have English roots.

• 15:18Speaker 04

  I do, my father is from England, yeah.

• 15:20Yasi Salek?

  It is giving. Yeah. So you have sunscreen.

• 15:23Speaker 04

  My complexion is given, yeah.

• 15:25Yasi Salek?

  But it's lovely. You have that old blood, that old good English blood. I think if it was our world being masqueraded or that it felt that way, we might have a different.

• 15:38Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 15:38Yasi Salek?

  Because like you love hardcore, you know, like the other kinds of music that I know you to love are like pure authenticity.

• 15:44Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 15:45Yasi Salek?

  So it's interesting that then you also are like, no, these guys, that's fine, that they're just doing theater.

• 15:49Speaker 04

  The thing that they have going for them is they have the songs.

• 15:51Yasi Salek?

  They have tunes.

• 15:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:52Yasi Salek?

  They got tracks.

• 15:53Speaker 04

  Yes, but I completely agree. And I think that this is also often on ban splain because of the eras that we're talking about.

• 16:00Yasi Salek?

  It was a consider, it was a strong consideration in the 80s and 90s.

• 16:03Speaker 04

  And you also had a little bit more leeway to mess around with this because there was lack of, less documentation. So you may have a 2,000 word article about you in Select, but you didn't have like a constant stream of photos, documentation, like video, everything.

• 16:21Yasi Salek?

  We found his birth certificate.

• 16:23Speaker 04

  Yes, in fact, he didn't make this much money that year.

• 16:25Yasi Salek?

  His bank statement, yeah, totally.

• 16:27Speaker 04

  Right.

• 16:27Yasi Salek?

  I think it's basically anything that came post punk was subject, if it's in the lineage of punk, which was built on the foundation of stripping away, you know, artifice, then it was subject to be held to those standards.

• 16:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:43Yasi Salek?

  And it makes sense.

• 16:43Speaker 04

  And I think also Blur did a thing, take for a more contemporary example, Arctic Monkeys.

• 16:48Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 16:49Speaker 04

  So they go from. Fast, snotty pub punk.

• 16:54Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 16:54Speaker 04

  To like Scott Walker lounge singing over the course of like a decade or whatever. You know, like they, and now have like reimagined themselves so many times. But on a class arc, it's like they never played down. Like they never were like, we're rich kids who are pretending to be on the dole and betting on Greyhound races.

• 17:14Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 17:14Speaker 04

  You have to basically stay in one direction up the class chain.

• 17:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, because people are rooting for upward mobility.

• 17:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:23Yasi Salek?

  From someone who comes from like a working class background that might not have any other options or seem they have in their.

• 17:27Speaker 04

  Well, and also like.

• 17:28Yasi Salek?

  That story. They don't like this story.

• 17:30Speaker 04

  The exploration that they're doing is like, well, we're trying on all these different like, what if I slicked my hair back?

• 17:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 17:35Speaker 04

  Became like this biker bar Sinatra guy.

• 17:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 17:39Speaker 04

  Instead of like, what if I like chipped my tooth?

• 17:42Yasi Salek?

  What if I put a gold tooth in and wore a Fila tracksuit? Actually, we're going to get into it. You've now touched on the second huge theme. The level to which fashion plays in to the signaling of British music is so fascinating to me. And it's not that it doesn't in America. It does, but there's so many more layers in British music and in British fashion culture that I just find so fascinating.

• 18:08Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 18:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 18:10Speaker 04

  Especially for these guys and especially for this era, there are certain groups that have a timeless kind of like, this is the uniform.

• 18:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 18:17Speaker 04

  And then there are certain groups that wear costumes.

• 18:19Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 18:20Speaker 04

  And they switch those costumes from album to album. And you know, like I honestly like for people who would say, oh, Blur, there, there's no fixed blur. They're constantly like doing this different thing on every record. And it's there's something kind of like touristy about it. I argue that Radiohead does like a very similar kind of switching up of things like going from this totally sincere alt rock guitar band to being like Aphex Twin.

• 18:44Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 18:45Speaker 04

  You know, accolades to.

• 18:46Yasi Salek?

  We like it when bands progress.

• 18:50Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 18:51Yasi Salek?

  You've also touched on a third thing that I'd love to talk about is that like, Radiohead was there. We never talk about them in the context.

• 18:59Speaker 04

  Of Britpop.

• 18:59Yasi Salek?

  Of Britpop. And it's not a genre thing. And we'll get into it. We did get an amazing song from Radiohead because of some Britpop key players.

• 19:08Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 19:08Yasi Salek?

  Karma Police.

• 19:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 19:15Yasi Salek?

  Well, now that we've set the opening paragraph of our essay in this, in our TED Talk, we will, when they moved to Colchester, Damon is bullied. Because he's, he said, "I was the weirdo, posh, stroke gay. I was always getting called gay." Here's what, there's a book called 3,862 Days of Blur by Stuart McConie, who's a British rock journalist, and here's the paragraph, because I just have to read it because you're like, oh, he got bullied, and then you read this. "At the time, he was pretty, vaguely if unconventionally bourgeois, read Karl Marx, played the violin, was keen on drama, and wore an earring and glass beads his mother had made him." And I'm like, I'm sorry, babe, what do you, what were they supposed to do, not bully

• 20:00Yasi Salek?

  you?

• 20:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:02Yasi Salek?

  You're reading Karl Marx, you were 10.

• 20:05Speaker 04

  It's also, who's telling that story? It's like Damon probably like

• 20:09Yasi Salek?

  He had.

• 20:10Speaker 04

  inventing his childhood.

• 20:12Yasi Salek?

  Totally. I'm like, did you read Karl Marx? I'm 10 years old. But most importantly, he did theater, and you touched on this, like, I think one thing to keep in mind throughout every way that we understand any Blur album is that Damon Alburn is an actor. He is a theater kid. He even went to theater school. I think he ended up dropping out a little ahead when he goes to London because they, it was like very method, and they were like, "You should live on the streets as a hobo for two months." And he was like, "Yeah, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna live on the streets as a hobo for two months." Not committed to his craft. But him doing theater is how Graham Coxon first came across him. Graham Leslie Coxon, a Pisces, no surprise, emotional, sensitive, young lad. His dad was in a, um, a British Army band.

• 20:55Yasi Salek?

  He was a clarinet player, the bandleader, so they moved around a lot. He has music in his blood. Graham was also into acting in musicals, but he was not as successful as Damon. And when he was 11, he saw Damon as doing something in West Side Story. And he said, "I just could not get over the confidence of the bloke. It was unbelievable. His coolness, coupled with his brilliance as an actor and performer, blew me away." Here's a fourth topic I want us to think about while we're going through the Blur story, Damon and Graham. I think that relationship and also that artistic interaction, the polarities of these two people.

• 21:34Yasi Salek?

  Has so much to do with what makes Blur blur.

• 21:38Speaker 04

  I'm not romantic about that many things in the world, but I am very romantic about British frontman guitar player duos.

• 21:46Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 21:46Speaker 04

  And that is-

• 21:47Yasi Salek?

  Mick Jagger and Keith.

• 21:48Speaker 04

  Morrissey and Marr.

• 21:49Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 21:50Speaker 04

  You know, Noel and Liam, like Bernard Butler and Brett Anderson. Like, there's so many examples. And it is one of the most reliably fascinating, awesome dynamics is like the way the guitar player is like, I fucking tool everything.

• 22:06Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 22:07Speaker 04

  Reason this is good. And then the frontman is like, I'm a genius.

• 22:10Yasi Salek?

  But it also, it changes back and forth in all these dynamics. Like, some are like, the guitarist is like, I'm besotted with the singer, you know? Or some, it's like, like in the Keith Richards example, Keith Richards was low key the cool one. Like, he was the one living the cool, fun life. And Mick Jagger was like, damn, he's so cool. I'm gonna write songs about him.

• 22:28Speaker 04

  Keith Richards still talks shit about Mick Jagger's solo records. You know what I mean? Like, he's like, there's always this like little brother, big brother thing. There's always this chip on their shoulder. And there's also always the like, if you could have done this, you would have done it. Like, you would have invented Facebook. Like, you needed Damon Albarn to do it.

• 22:49Yasi Salek?

  Right, exactly. Yeah, Graham Coxon is not, I'm so fascinated by Graham Coxon because at any given point, whatever Blur is doing-

• 22:57Speaker 04

  He hates it.

• 22:57Yasi Salek?

  He hates it. And he is like, if you look at him, he is like so ahead of his time aggressively, like manic pixie dream boy, low top Converse, cardigan, you know, East Williamsburg hipster.

• 23:11Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 23:12Yasi Salek?

  Like, from the beginning to the end, that's just what he's doing in the corner, where everything else around him is like something totally different. And he just doesn't change. It's so interesting to me.

• 23:21Speaker 04

  And I'm sure you're about to get into the origins of the band itself, but like, it's important to state that, especially in this era and probably all the eras before that- We were living in a much less connected world.

• 23:32Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 23:32Speaker 04

  And it wasn't that uncommon for bands to find themselves put together and like, maybe not actually like the music that they're making.

• 23:39Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 23:40Speaker 04

  Because it's just like, well, I joined this band.

• 23:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, like that guy had a drum kit.

• 23:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:43Yasi Salek?

  We needed him.

• 23:44Speaker 04

  And so like, you know, exactly. And so that's how you find this band where it's like, I don't know that these guys would have spent 30 years being friends had it not been for Blur's success. And Blur's success is primarily based on those four guys pulling in opposite directions.

• 24:01Yasi Salek?

  Totally, the tension of it.

• 24:03Speaker 05

  Damon said one day on the tube, he'd quite like, one day it involved brass instruments and I was quite horrified. I don't know, we were only 19 and I was kind of a bit of an indie purist. Probably am a little bit still.

• 24:16Yasi Salek?

  I mean, it is very sweet to me that like, Graham and Damon formed their kind of musical identity together. Like Graham was like super into The Jam. So he kind of like puts Damon onto The Jam and Two Tone, the specials. There's a, there's a long history in Blur of other people putting Damon onto music that he starts to understand. At first it was Graham. So being into Two Tone, you already know he's wearing brogues, babe. And the classic story, how does he first meet Damon Albarn? Damon Albarn nags him.

• 24:46Speaker 04

  Are you serious?

• 24:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, he comes up to him and he's like.

• 24:48Speaker 04

  Wow, the bully has become the bullied, you know?

• 24:50Yasi Salek?

  Yes, here's what Cox said.

• 24:51Speaker 04

  Rap verse that.

• 24:52Yasi Salek?

  The first time Damon spoke to me was to point out the crappiness of my shoes. The most sought after footwear at the time was a pair of black leather soled brogues, like the Skaw Boys wore. I tell you where your trouser hem quite high with white socks and black brogues visible underneath. Side note, that still looks cool as hell. That's never stopped looking cool. I just want you guys to all know. I asked for some brogues for my birthday. We weren't a very well off family, so what I received was a pair of oil resistant industrial black clogs with a rubbery plastic insole. He approached me unprompted and made a snide comment about my ugly shoes. Then he flounced off, adjusting his hair in the mirror and leaving me.

• 25:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:28Yasi Salek?

  Took his marks, flipped his hair, leaving me feeling humiliated, which I must say, and of course he had the nice brogues, of course, because his family was more well off. And his hair was bleached blonde, but I'm just like dying on like this, like. You literally negged him. You did the classic thing where like you wanted him to be your friend, so you negged him. So he was like, then like, who's that?

• 25:49Speaker 04

  Basically, yeah.

• 25:50Yasi Salek?

  It's very romantic. Cause then he came looking for him a couple of days later and was like, you play saxophone, right? I need someone to play saxophone. Cause he was already composing music.

• 25:58Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 25:59Yasi Salek?

  He was a young, little prodigious music composer. So they start recording music together, like 12, 13 years old. Damon played piano, so he was composing on piano. And he's, Graham said, Damon was super delighted with the results of our like first session and we would be friends forever after that. The band was called Real Lives. It sounded apparently like King Crimson mixed with Lionel Richie.

• 26:22Speaker 04

  I gotta admit, like if I was 12, I could not come up with a better band name than Real Lives.

• 26:25Yasi Salek?

  Real Lives is pretty good.

• 26:26Speaker 04

  I'd be like G.I. Joe and his friends.

• 26:29Yasi Salek?

  King Crimson mixed with Lionel Richie, though, it's gonna be a hard pass for me. I don't ever wanna hear that. I'm glad I couldn't find any examples.

• 26:37Speaker 04

  Prodded Lionel Richie would be tough, yeah.

• 26:39Yasi Salek?

  Too much. So they would play like, you know, charity events, school assemblies. So here's what Damon Albarn said, and I just wanna read one line of it, cause I think it's important. "We were a jam fanatic who couldn't play saxophone," I suppose he's talking about Graham, "and a bad actor into Kurt Veil and American theater, the 40s and 50s musicals."

• 26:56Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 26:57Yasi Salek?

  Rough, rough artistic well to draw from, yeah.

• 27:03Speaker 04

  It almost, if you're gonna lie about other things, just be like, we were a punk band.

• 27:06Yasi Salek?

  100%.

• 27:07Speaker 04

  Just be like, we were a bad punk band and there's no tapes. But trust me, like, we were, it sounded like the Damned.

• 27:12Yasi Salek?

  We were really good. It's cute also because Damon's parents were these like bohemian artists and Graham, Graham was really into art. Like that was his thing. He would like draw and paint. And they're the ones, like, he never thought like I could do that as a career. And they were like, no, you can. Like, you should have played art school. And like, he would hang out with Damon's mom, who was an artist, and like help her with canvases and stuff. After they finished school, Damon went to the acting school, East 15 Acting School, but he dropped out because he didn't wanna be a hobo for two months on the street to be method. And he got like an inheritance of like 2,000 pounds from like a grandma or something, and a job at a place called Beat Factory Studios, where, this is, I couldn't totally understand this. It's like, they just like bust out demos and try

• 27:56Yasi Salek?

  to get signed? Is that kind of the, did you read about this at all?

• 28:00Speaker 04

  They would basically like be the studio for bands that were up and coming and then get like a percentage of like if the band got signed.

• 28:05Yasi Salek?

  He had like a manager. Yeah, so.

• 28:09Yasi Salek?

  All that to say, yeah, he would write songs there and he had these managers and they're probably just trying to sell the songs.

• 28:13Speaker 04

  Watch this space because their economic woes come up quite soon.

• 28:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. He also worked at a place called Le Croissant.

• 28:18Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 28:19Yasi Salek?

  Which was, and-

• 28:20Speaker 04

  Is that like an Obon pan?

• 28:21Yasi Salek?

  Sounds like an Obon pan. He was also a barman at the Portobello Hotel and I only bring that up because one time, it was like celebrities would go there and one time Bono was very rude to him and he said, "It's something I've never really forgiven him for." This was like, this was like in like 1998. I don't know if modern day Damon Albarn has forgiven Bono. I don't know if they hang out. I don't know if they're friends, but around 1998, he had not forgiven Bono.

• 28:44Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 28:44Yasi Salek?

  The Edge was nice though. Okay. He was in a two man synth pop group called To The Crowd. Guess what? I did find it. Do you want to hear just a few bars?

• 28:55Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 29:01Speaker 04

  Sounds like Beverly Hills Cop music.

• 29:03Yasi Salek?

  It was 80s. Anyways, that was what Damon was up to musically. Meanwhile, Graham Coxon went to art school. He went to North Essex School of Art and then he wanted to like, basically him and Damon had made a promise to each other that if either one of-

• 29:16Speaker 04

  If neither of us get married by 40.

• 29:17Yasi Salek?

  If neither of us get married by 40, we're gonna hold hands and jump off a bridge. They were like, if either of us do anything in music, have any band, the other person always has a place in it.

• 29:26Speaker 04

  That's cool.

• 29:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it was sweet. And now that Damon was doing To The Crowd synth pop music, Graham was like, "Well, I want to, I want to make music with Damon. I'm gonna try to get to London." So he like kind of hail mary applied to Goldsmiths College in London, which was like a really good art school and he got in. Like this is where Damien Hearst went and Sam Taylor Wood and all these like luminaries of British art. And also a French student named Alex James. Stephen Alexander James, to be exact. He was born November 21st, 1968. Of course, this member of Blur is the one studying French. Like he is probably like smoking French cigarettes and like drinking red wine and wanting to talk about like philosophy and ideas or whatever.

• 30:09Speaker 04

  Unambiguously seems to have the best life of any pop star I've ever seen.

• 30:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 30:14Speaker 04

  Has never gained a pound.

• 30:15Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 30:15Speaker 04

  Eats cheese constantly.

• 30:16Yasi Salek?

  Incredible cheekbones.

• 30:17Speaker 04

  And just smokes and stinks. Hands on the monitor and plays little funky bass lines.

• 30:22Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 30:22Speaker 04

  For their tunes.

• 30:23Yasi Salek?

  He did good for himself, yeah. He comes actually from like a seaside, like a small seaside town called Bournemouth. And he was very popular. He was really into football.

• 30:36Speaker 04

  Bournemouth has a big football club.

• 30:37Yasi Salek?

  Soccer, you guys, just so you know. And gained 13 O levels, which is a lot of O levels. Once again, one thing I just absolutely refuse to do is educate myself on the, the system of education.

• 30:50Speaker 04

  I don't remember, I think O levels, I mean, it's like, they take tests to basically determine what you should study.

• 30:54Yasi Salek?

  But you don't have, O levels are like advanced, like you don't have to, like Liam and Noel Gallagher probably have zero O levels. I don't, I'm serious. Happy Mondays, zero O levels. Like, they didn't do that. They, you, you used to be able, okay, baby, I know more than I, against my will, I know more than I should. You used to be able to stop school at 16.

• 31:13Speaker 04

  Yes. And you would go to a trade school or you would read, you would go to college, yeah.

• 31:17Yasi Salek?

  He didn't study music at school, Alex, because, quote, "The music teacher was a buttock fondler."

• 31:23Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 31:26Yasi Salek?

  He credits-

• 31:26Speaker 04

  What a portrait of the British school system we're getting.

• 31:29Yasi Salek?

  Well, I'm also like, I guess you didn't love music that much, if that was like, because you weren't that committed. Damon wouldn't be a hobo for two months and you wouldn't go with the buttock fondler teacher just to learn your craft. He credits the Beatles with inspiring him to pursue music.

• 31:43Speaker 04

  Cool.

• 31:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that's pretty classic. And he, his first band was called Age of Consent.

• 31:48Speaker 04

  I like that.

• 31:49Yasi Salek?

  He was into New Order.

• 31:49Speaker 04

  For New Order.

• 31:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 31:50Speaker 04

  Yeah. Not buttock fondling.

• 31:52Yasi Salek?

  Not buttock fondling. Not unrelated to the previous statement that I just made. Here's what Graham Coxon said. "Living in the halls and the level beneath me was a good-looking French language student with a lampshade hairstyle called Alex James. He played bass and guitar, so we hit it off. Our music tastes were a little bit different. He was in a New Order, who I hadn't followed so closely. But we ended up bonding over Joy Division's live album, Still. I was pretty heavily into noisy guitar rock, like Dinosaur Jr. and My Bloody Valentine. It was the year Isn't Anything came out, which is the first My Bloody Valentine album, which was a massive deal. Graham always had the coolest music taste."

• 32:24Speaker 04

  He really, really does.

• 32:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. It's really good. Actually, in the Blur documentary, there's actually several Blur documentaries, but the No Distance Left to Run. Alex says actually the first person he ever saw in London was Damon. He like saw Damon's parents dropping him off in London and getting out with like a guitar case. And he was like, that guy's cool. I want to be in a band with him.

• 32:43Speaker 04

  Huh.

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• 33:48Yasi Salek?

  So Graham and Alex start hanging out. They're jamming, they're getting drunk. Alex said Graham would play the song called "I've Lost My Balls Inside My Computer." The lyrics were "Not meant to be a big hero, wanted to die for a piece of shit that he called his country."

• 34:03Speaker 04

  Nice.

• 34:04Yasi Salek?

  It's anti-war.

• 34:05Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 34:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. He also says if there's a genius in the band, it's Graham, no doubt about it.

• 34:10Speaker 04

  Interesting.

• 34:11Yasi Salek?

  And I think that's true.

• 34:12Speaker 04

  What if that bothered Damon? Much like Bono's poor tipping at the Portobello Hotel.

• 34:17Yasi Salek?

  That he held on, he's held... I don't know. I think Damon was maybe as much in awe of Graham as Graham was of Damon. At the very least, musically. Damon puts together a band. He's like, "I'm not gonna act anymore. I'm making a band. It's called Circus."

• 34:33Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 34:34Yasi Salek?

  It's my friends from drama school, Eddie Deedigan and Dave Brolin. And then also, this gets very confusing and doesn't really matter, but Dave Roundtree was in the band before Graham was. But Dave Roundtree was friends with Graham from Colchester.

• 34:49Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 34:50Yasi Salek?

  He's five years old and that's why they call him Uncle Dave. Dave Roundtree is really, he's a real salt of the earth because some of the things that the British press said about him, I would never recover.

• 35:01Speaker 04

  Just in terms of him being like a, an old ginger or whatever?

• 35:04Yasi Salek?

  Literally just that he was like, not hot. Everything was like, and they have three hot guys. Can you believe there's three good looking people in this band? Like, and I'm just like, wow, UK. But I, I do think back then it wasn't such a value as it is now. I mean, it's always a value to be good looking. Yeah, I, I mean, it was like, you, you had to have some hot guys in your band. I mean, but those are the happy Mondays, you know? But it was like, I don't, and I, I can't speak for this, I wasn't there, but it just like, from the vibe that you get from like, even like British movies and television, like, it was of course a value, but not the value. Like it is now or like it is in America.

• 35:43Speaker 04

  Also worth noting, England compared to America, very, very small.

• 35:47Yasi Salek?

  That's why every band is like, yeah, we were the enemy album of the week. Like, I was like, you made your band fucking two weeks ago.

• 35:52Speaker 04

  Well, one of the reasons why I think I was so intoxicated by the British music scene, but also is because it felt so foreign. Where a lot of my favorite bands in the States were basically like, I don't know who these people are or what they look like. I don't know who's in Pavement. I don't know who's in Bedhead. I don't know who's in God by Voices.

• 36:10Yasi Salek?

  Because there was no press. You couldn't like open Rolling Stone and see them.

• 36:13Speaker 04

  It was an act of rebellion against like image consciousness anyway. Like to be, make, and just to have like, here's an ad in the back of forced exposure. That's the only thing you'll get. In England, the coolest band, the band that was like, seven people are at our Camden pub show. It's our third show ever.

• 36:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 36:29Speaker 04

  Could be like, someone styled these guys. Someone picked the font that their band name is gonna be. That someone has like completely identified everything that they're gonna say to the press.

• 36:41Yasi Salek?

  In two weeks.

• 36:41Speaker 04

  And there is like a manufacturing machine, even for at this time, like, shoegaze bands to be on television.

• 36:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 36:49Speaker 04

  And then like, four million people or whatever are watching it. It's just crazy. It's so different in that sense.

• 36:55Yasi Salek?

  I always chalk it up to the, the two reasons. One, which you already said is it's, the pool is just much smaller. But secondly, the UK cares about guitar rock music. They care very deeply about music in general, but guitar rock music. They are the-

• 37:10Speaker 04

  They're still hanging on to it. Yeah.

• 37:11Yasi Salek?

  They were, and they were always the biggest, you know, proponents of it. Like, they would, what they essentially did was come here, take some stuff we were doing, take it back, and then make the Beatles.

• 37:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:21Yasi Salek?

  And make the biggest band in the world. And come here, take it, blow it the fuck up. Like, and it's cool, and even, I mean, not to get into like education, but it's also like they have music education.

• 37:31Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 37:31Yasi Salek?

  They value the arts, you know, like, you couldn't, Mike Lee's movies were funded by the BBC in the beginning. Like, this is, this is, this is a culture that really values the arts, whereas like, America was like, not quite on that same.

• 37:46Yasi Salek?

  I, I'm a US citizen. Anyways. So, Dave Roundtree, David Alexander de Horne Roundtree, he's a Taurus, makes total sense. This band, I know, I don't know who listening still cares about the astrology of all, but this band, of all the bands I've researched, every person is so exactly their star sign. Like, Taurus is like salt of the earth, the reliable, the loyal. Aries is like the go-getter, like impulsive, you know, that's Damon, also like likes attention, childish, they're like the childish sign. Pisces is super sensitive.

• 38:16Speaker 04

  That's Graham.

• 38:17Yasi Salek?

  Artistic, that's Graham. And Scorpios are like the devil. Not in a bad way, but Scorpio, Taurus and Scorpio get along really well. Scorpio's like, kind of like into the darker things of life, like, likes to have fun, like, it's, there's a lot of good qualities.

• 38:32Speaker 04

  So that's Alex?

• 38:33Yasi Salek?

  That's Alex.

• 38:33Speaker 04

  No shit.

• 38:34Yasi Salek?

  It all makes so much sense, right? They all kind of really, it never usually lines up this perfectly. Anyways, he had played percussion since he was like a small child.

• 38:43Speaker 04

  Dave?

• 38:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Dave. He went to like a music school on the weekends as a child, like, he played in a brass band, and he had played drums in a band called Idol Vice. And he was also in this band called Hazel Dean and the Carp Eaters from Hell.

• 38:59Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 39:00Yasi Salek?

  Which Graham played saxophone. And so, that's kind of how he got in the mix of Graham, and thusly when Damon was, you know, doing his band, he needed a drummer.

• 39:09Speaker 04

  So these guys are all kicking around London at the same time, at the same schools, playing in each other's bands?

• 39:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Dave has a computer science degree, and he was literally a computer programmer at the time. He was, I think, commuting though, because I think he still lived in Colchester. Then they bring Graham in, and then they need a bassist. They play the demo for Alex before he's in the band, and Alex says, "This sucks. This is shit." On meeting Damon, he said, "I thought he was an idiot, a pompous, big-headed, fucking moron with a shit band." Damon was like, "Wow, okay." And then they went back to him and they were like, "Do you want to be in the band?" And he was like, "Yes."

• 39:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:45Yasi Salek?

  I think he said in the interview, like, "I knew I could make it better," or whatever. And I was like, "I think you just..."

• 39:48Speaker 04

  Want to be in the band.

• 39:49Yasi Salek?

  I think you were also nagging just so that you could be like, "I don't think this is good." They call their band Seymour.

• 39:55Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 39:56Yasi Salek?

  This is the first annoying thing that they do.

• 39:58Speaker 04

  Because they name it after a J.D. Salinger story?

• 40:00Yasi Salek?

  And I'm saying this as a person who did name her two cats, Franny and Zoe.

• 40:04Speaker 04

  Oh, that's nice.

• 40:06Yasi Salek?

  Perhaps I'm just triggered by my own annoyingness. 2009.

• 40:11Speaker 04

  Okay, so how old were you then?

• 40:13Yasi Salek?

  Twenty-seven.

• 40:13Speaker 04

  So you were older than these guys were when they named their band Seymour. You named your cats Franny and Zoe.

• 40:18Yasi Salek?

  Right, so I'm more annoying is what you're saying. Yeah, that adds up. Okay, have you heard of this band, The Cardiacs?

• 40:24Speaker 04

  No.

• 40:25Yasi Salek?

  This was a key influence on this band.

• 40:28Speaker 04

  On Seymour?

• 40:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and ultimately Blur, you know?

• 40:31Speaker 04

  And so when Seymour is going, is Manchester happening yet? Is like, baggy shit happening yet?

• 40:36Yasi Salek?

  Yes, because it's the spring of 89.

• 40:38Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 40:38Yasi Salek?

  So yeah, it's happening. It's pretty much like just then, I think, happening. Eighty-nine is the year that the first Stone Roses album came out. But I mean, the Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays have been putting out music since like the mid-eighties, like singles and stuff.

• 40:52Speaker 04

  The reason why I even asked is because Blur, or Seymour, which turns into Blur, comes into being at another high point for British music, where like there is an export. There is this thing that's happening in the country. There are these big bands. Stone Roses and Happy Mondays are practically a religion. And this is the first thing that Blur is like, "Will be that."

• 41:16Yasi Salek?

  A hundred percent, a hundred percent. I mean, I think in many ways, although they don't talk about it as explicitly as Oasis does, the Stone Roses in particular, like, reinvigorated a generation to be like, "Oh, we can be in a cool rock band." And like be on, be famous and be on the cover of the NME.

• 41:33Speaker 04

  And the way they dressed.

• 41:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 41:34Speaker 04

  And that it was okay to go out and dance because ecstasy was there, like, you know, the whole thing.

• 41:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but The Cardiacs.

• 41:41Yasi Salek?

  I don't know like how to describe them. They combine like punk and psych music, but also like artsy comedy. Like, I'm thinking like of like Google Burdock. They were, they were like funny. It's, it's not good, is what I'm saying, in my humble opinion. But it's theatrical. And it makes a lot of sense to me why that might be the artiness of it. And the like theater-ness of it makes a lot of sense to me. Why that would be an influence.

• 42:16Yasi Salek?

  Their first ever show is in the spring of 1989.

• 42:19Speaker 04

  Seymour.

• 42:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Damon's father's 50th birthday. A real, a real swanky event. Their second ever show was at the Goldsmiths, like, graduation show or whatever.

• 42:30Speaker 04

  I'm glad I don't have kids so that my children aren't playing my 50th in a few years.

• 42:34Yasi Salek?

  Because you think their band would be bad?

• 42:35Speaker 04

  Not like, yeah, it's not how I'd want to do it.

• 42:37Yasi Salek?

  Who do you want to play your 50th? You want, you want Blur? That's interesting. I think we could make it happen. Are you guys listening? You should come, you should come on and play. But yeah, their second show was at the degree show, which is Damien Hirst's graduation show. Pretty cool. This, at this show, apparently Damien Hirst told Graham Coxon that Seymour were the best band he'd heard since The Beatles.

• 43:00Speaker 04

  That's good.

• 43:00Yasi Salek?

  Can't, not possible. Given what we've heard from Seymour at the, I'm just saying, it's like, I think he, I just like, I feel that that was generous. So they start getting shows around town. According to Graham, they're elbowing themselves on the bills. And it was Damien's amazing confidence that like helped that to happen. The first shows sound crazy. Like, here's what Coxon said. "There was a lot of jumping about, puking, dangerous falling over, and spinning of guitars in the air. We hardly ever reached our last number without Damon being sick." Damon like puked at every show.

• 43:34Speaker 04

  Because he was nervous or because he was drinking so much?

• 43:35Yasi Salek?

  I think it's because it was drinking. They're a big drinking band. Yeah. And to your like point that you just made, they were kind of baggy. Like, that was, that was their influence. Specifically, they don't name check the Mondays or the Stoners. They name check Jane.

• 43:49Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 43:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Who? James is such an interesting band because James has been everything. I mean, James opened for The Smiths.

• 43:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:56Yasi Salek?

  James is like, has been around in like every, they're still, they just put out an album this year. So they've put out music in like every iteration of time of British music.

• 44:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:08Yasi Salek?

  I find them very fascinating.

• 44:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, and they've like been a college rock band.

• 44:12Yasi Salek?

  They had a huge hit in America.

• 44:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:13Yasi Salek?

  They're like a one hit wonder in America, but like in England, they just went on tour opening for Johnny Marr. Anyways, the album that they were really into is called Stutter. It's pretty good. I hadn't heard it.

• 44:23Speaker 04

  This James record?

• 44:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 44:24Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 44:24Yasi Salek?

  It's weird. It's like kind of experimental. I don't want to say shoegaze, but little, a little shoegazy. It's just weird.

• 44:39Yasi Salek?

  Coxon said, "I was listening to Dinosaur Jr. and The Pastels, and I was mad on The Pixies. And Alex was into New Order and Prince, and Damon was on a Karl Orf kind of thing, and his Oompa Oompa Kurt Vales stuff."

• 44:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:52Yasi Salek?

  There's some conflicting stories about how they get signed, right? Because they get signed quite early, which does happen often in England. Yeah.

• 44:59Speaker 04

  Especially this time when there's a lot of independent labels that then can like upstream stuff.

• 45:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 45:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:05Yasi Salek?

  They had a demo, okay? Now, how this demo made its way to Food Records? One story is that the management of Damon, these two people are the ones that got it there. One other story is that Andy Ross just happened to see them at a pub. They had shopped the demo. According to Graham Coxon, the A&R person at Creation Records told Damon to leave when they showed up. I did some boots on the ground research on this, and actually Creation Records did not have an A&R person at this time.

• 45:38Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 45:38Yasi Salek?

  So it might have just been like-

• 45:40Speaker 04

  Alan McGee?

• 45:41Yasi Salek?

  The intern, like, yeah, no, or like whatever, the marketing, it could have been anybody, but it was, there was no A&R person. But anyways, they do end up getting seen by Andy Ross, who is part of Food Records, which is headed by David Belf, who was in The Teardrop Explodes.

• 45:57Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 45:58Yasi Salek?

  Another kind of major slash minor Englishman.

• 46:01Speaker 04

  And a theatrical kind of psych rock band.

• 46:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 46:04Speaker 04

  Julian Cope is the frontman.

• 46:06Yasi Salek?

  Important to, in some circles. They were sort of like contemporaries of Echo and the Bunny Man.

• 46:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:19Yasi Salek?

  They had signed a couple of bands Zodiac Mindwarp, Voice of the Beehive, and Jesus Jones.

• 46:25Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 46:26Yasi Salek?

  Who we are familiar with here in America. Balf saw them play this show and "You're Talking Heads meets The Cardiacs." So Cardiacs were a reference point for other people except us who have never heard of them. But he's basically saying, "You're like an art fuck man meets an art fuck band." You know, that's like what they were giving. Later, when he was interviewed, he was like, "Alex and Damon were very good-looking and they had the right hip attitude." Again, rude. It's rude to the others. "They all went mad onstage, all except for Alex, who had that strangely loosh vibe that no one's been able to pull off like that since Brian Jones. But to my horror, it still wasn't that far from shoegazing."

• 47:05Yasi Salek?

  I wanted to bring this up because shoegazing is very new as a term during this time. From what I researched and learned, it was actually coined by Andy Ross.

• 47:17Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 47:17Yasi Salek?

  From Food, because he was friends with this band Moose. Honestly, kind of good.

• 47:22Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 47:22Yasi Salek?

  Like a forgotten...

• 47:23Speaker 04

  Lush, My Lady Valentine-type band?

• 47:25Yasi Salek?

  Yes, and in that same, in those same circles.

• 47:27Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 47:28Yasi Salek?

  Well, with Lush anyways, because they were a London band. And they hung around with Blur. They were friends with, like, Chapter House and Ride and Swerve Driver and Slow Dive. And he basically was like, "I was just like, if I can look at their shoes and play that." And so he kind of coined it. But according to what I'm reading here from Balf, that was not what he was looking for. He was like, "I don't want that. That sucks." Meanwhile, their music was kind of shoegazy in the beginning.

• 47:53Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:54Yasi Salek?

  "She's So High" was on the demo tape.

• 47:57Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 47:57Yasi Salek?

  Which is kind of a shoegaze song.

• 47:58Speaker 04

  That is the first sort of signature Blur song.

• 48:01Yasi Salek?

  Yes, yeah.

• 48:09Yasi Salek?

  Anyways, Food Records is like, okay, we'll sign you. Importantly, they are a subsidiary of Parlophone, which is part of EMI. So they are an indie, but they're not an indie.

• 48:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think there was a little bit less of a headache about that in England. Like, there would be indie records, but it would be like more of a sound than it was, like an economic relationship.

• 48:28Yasi Salek?

  Right, right. They signed a horrible deal.

• 48:33Yasi Salek?

  Tale as well as time. I think it was like five grand or seven grand for seven albums.

• 48:38Speaker 04

  I will say it's worth noting, keep, keep an eye on this because as was the case for many bands in the early 90s and, and stuff is that the nature of their contracts spurs a lot of behavior, whether it's over extensive touring,

• 48:53Yasi Salek?

  Oh my gosh.

• 48:53Speaker 04

  rushing out records.

• 48:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 48:55Speaker 04

  Having to redo records, having to go back in the studio with a new producer. What we probably think of now is like, like really like more for the like the highest, highest of pop star who's like constantly tinkering with their thing to make it a big hit. This was like for bands that had just started. They were like, no, go back in with this person. No, we don't hear a single. No, we want you to do this.

• 49:15Yasi Salek?

  Totally. And it is, it does mark another big difference between Oasis and Blur. Because then on the other side, there's these labels like Factory, like Creation, who don't have any beholdenness.

• 49:29Speaker 04

  To a major.

• 49:30Yasi Salek?

  To a major. And they're very like, I mean, honestly, so major, like so magical. They were just like, it's art. What do you need? I'll pay for it. Like this is like kind of beautiful, like vibes only thing that really did allow so much great art to happen.

• 49:46Speaker 04

  It's crazy because it's like Factory to me has such a defined visual aesthetic.

• 49:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 49:51Speaker 04

  And that visual aesthetic almost makes me feel like a lot of the music on Factory is similar when it's not.

• 49:56Yasi Salek?

  It's literally not. Yeah.

• 49:57Speaker 04

  And then Creation, you say that, but Alan McGee is as domineering and as hands on and vocal as many.

• 50:05Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 50:05Speaker 04

  Like, I don't think he's in there remixing teenage fan club records, but he's like, I have a vision for what I want.

• 50:10Yasi Salek?

  But he wasn't about the art. Like, he never was like, go make this again. Go, go like, I don't hear a single. Like, that wasn't his vibe. He, he would find raw talent and just believe in them. And like, same with Tony Wilson, you know, like the stuff that he let the Happy Mondays do. But yes, this, this will come up a lot. Another part of their deal was that they were like, um, Seymour is an absolutely disgusting and horrible name. You're gonna have to change it. Here's a list of potential names. Pick one from here.

• 50:37Speaker 04

  And that was where Blur was?

• 50:39Yasi Salek?

  Here are some of the other ones. Would you like, actually what Andy said. Was Seymour's a pretty crap name in our opinion. It makes you sound like an Indian Iraq band, a gay Indian Iraq band. And then he was like, wait, are you good or any of you guys gay? And he was like, he thought he might have put his phone in his mouth. And they were like, no, but okay, we'll change it. The government was on that list. The Shining Path. That's right. It's the Sndera Luminoso Maoist Guerrillas of Peru. That's who the Shining Path are.

• 51:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, we were a little loosey goosey with band names back then.

• 51:08Yasi Salek?

  And then Sensitize and Whirlpool, which actually Food really liked those names because they did make two other bands of their signings later have those names.

• 51:16Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 51:16Yasi Salek?

  So there are two bands that got signed Sensitize and Whirlpool. Anyways, they chose Blur, I think a good choice.

• 51:21Speaker 04

  Great choice.

• 51:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 51:22Speaker 04

  But specifically because of the font that they chose.

• 51:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 51:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I thought it was very funny when they first got signed, they got a check. They had no, they're like 19 years old, right? They're very young.

• 51:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:33Yasi Salek?

  18, 19 years old. The check said pay Blur and Damon just like took it to the bank and he almost got arrested because they were like, we can't, who's Blur? Like, you're not Blur.

• 51:42Speaker 04

  I thought you were Seymour.

• 51:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, like what is going on? They called the police because they thought he stole it from Blur.

• 51:47Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 51:47Yasi Salek?

  And then his aunt, who was an accountant, was like, okay, now you need to go and open an account under the name Blur. And they're like, okay. Dave said, we didn't keep accounts or anything, which was very prophetic, as it turned out. We'll get into that. It's not good when a young band with no manager signs with a major.

• 52:04Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 52:05Yasi Salek?

  And then signs with a manager.

• 52:06Speaker 04

  It's bad when they have a manager, yeah.

• 52:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. One of their first shows after they get signed is opening for the Cramps.

• 52:11Speaker 04

  Hmm. Okay.

• 52:13Yasi Salek?

  I just found that fascinating.

• 52:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:15Yasi Salek?

  You used to really be able to just see the most bizarre.

• 52:19Speaker 04

  Music.

• 52:19Yasi Salek?

  Groupings.

• 52:20Speaker 04

  And lineups.

• 52:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And then right away, basically, so this is top of 1998. In May, they go in the studio to make their first album.

• 52:27Speaker 04

  To make leisure.

• 52:28Yasi Salek?

  I thought this is interesting too. This is, it doesn't seem like something that people do anymore. I don't even know what people do anymore. Everything's so confusing with streaming, but you would go in the studio and while you're working on the album, you would put out a single. The album is not done.

• 52:40Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 52:40Yasi Salek?

  But you would like identify a single and just put it out.

• 52:43Speaker 04

  Yes, and also. Some of the most important British artists are ones that essentially have no downtime. Like, they put out a record and then two months later, there's a single that's not on the record. So the jam, Elvis Costello, this is like a huge thing where people are like constantly putting out records, putting out a holiday single, like whatever it is. I wish we still did that more.

• 53:06Yasi Salek?

  Me too, and because you have to buy it. So it's like, it didn't, like, you did this, I did this. Like, there would be a B-side on the Japan-only, you know, single, single. So you'd be like, I'll have to buy the fucking Japan-only single. Because otherwise I can't own that music. It's not anywhere else for me to listen to.

• 53:23Speaker 04

  And then when they would put out a collection of their B-sides, you'd be like, yes, sir.

• 53:26Yasi Salek?

  I'll get that as well, correct, yeah. My favorite Nirvana, Incesticide, still my favorite. So it's October of 1990 when they put out the "She's So High" single.

• 53:36Speaker 04

  Recorded where they recorded Fool's Gold, Stone Roses.

• 53:38Yasi Salek?

  Correct, and they were very excited about that. It doesn't, it's, no, Fool's Gold is a million times better.

• 53:44Speaker 04

  Let's, let's just be honest here. Early Blur is a challenge. I want you to say it. Do you, are you reticent to say it?

• 53:51Yasi Salek?

  No, it's not even a challenge. It's just like, this first album to me is sort of just uninteresting.

• 53:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, except for one song.

• 54:00Yasi Salek?

  There's no other way.

• 54:01Speaker 04

  No.

• 54:02Yasi Salek?

  Which is a Happy Mondays song. Basically, the important things about this was they wanted the A-side to be "I Know", because to them it sounded more baggy, and baggy was like hip then, but they kind of fought for "She's So High". The cover is a pop art painting by Mel Ramos from 1967. It's a naked woman on a hippopotamus, which did cause some kerfluffle.

• 54:21Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 54:21Yasi Salek?

  Amongst the feminist groups on college campuses who did do some protesting around it.

• 54:26Speaker 04

  Can I just say something really quickly about baggy, to the extent that it is what it is?

• 54:30Yasi Salek?

  You don't like it?

• 54:31Speaker 04

  It's so close to spin doctors.

• 54:35Yasi Salek?

  How dare?

• 54:37Speaker 04

  It's spin doctors with like, they don't know they sound like spin doctors?

• 54:41Yasi Salek?

  That's not even close to true.

• 54:43Speaker 04

  Do you think it's rude to spin doctors? It's got that like, dun, dun, dun.

• 54:45Yasi Salek?

  No, I think it's rude to baggy.

• 54:48Speaker 04

  I think it has a similar, like, what I, what I remember about these bands is being like, and this is just like a few beats away from Blues Traveler.

• 54:58Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 54:59Speaker 04

  I thought so.

• 55:00Yasi Salek?

  No, I feel like Blues Traveler and Spin Doctors are straight up pop rock. Whereas like Baggy is like libidinal. It has like a drug and dance.

• 55:11Speaker 04

  What's like, you're introducing an alien to Baggy. What's the song you played to them?

• 55:16Yasi Salek?

  God, maybe Kinky Afro or, I mean, Step On is probably the most famous one that Happy Mondays, 24 Hour Party People.

• 55:23Speaker 04

  That stuff is a little bit more, to me, that's more Madchester like dance pop.

• 55:27Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 55:28Speaker 04

  I guess we're getting into semantics.

• 55:29Yasi Salek?

  Indie dance. Yeah, I think we're getting, but they were, they were definitely Baggy.

• 55:32Speaker 04

  When I listen to these.

• 55:33Yasi Salek?

  You're thinking of the Charlatans?

• 55:34Speaker 04

  A lot of these leisure songs, Charlatans, I'm like, this is so, so close to like Wetlands hippie rock. It's so funny to me that this is like, kind of almost happening in parallel universes.

• 55:47Yasi Salek?

  Much like all other genre names, it's fake. So it's like, does it even mean anything?

• 55:54Speaker 04

  Maybe I'm gonna get roasted for that opinion.

• 55:55Yasi Salek?

  No, no, it's, I mean, who, who alive in 2024 feels so passionately about Baggy that they're gonna roast you about that? I mean, I'd love, actually literally bang my line. If you're that person, I do want to talk to you.

• 56:07Yasi Salek?

  Cause I, I don't know her. I get what you're saying. I'm, I don't want to retread old grandma. To me, it's the same thing where I'm like, Stone Roses and Happy Mondays could not sound more different and they're lumped together. That's Madchester. I'm like, is it? Like the Stone Roses are like, were the Beatles, but like a little more psyche. And the Happy Mondays are like, we're mentally ill and we're dancing on ecstasy. It's awesome. We're back to She's So High. It only had 48 in the UK singles chart.

• 56:30Speaker 04

  Which is a tough beat, cause like, there's only so many bands in England.

• 56:32Yasi Salek?

  That's what I'm saying. Like, who, who isn't 1 through 47? But they had, but they had no name recognition.

• 56:38Speaker 04

  Like Carl Orff.

• 56:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's Carl Orff, it's Kurt Vale. They had played like four shows.

• 56:44Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 56:44Yasi Salek?

  And again, this is like so antithetical to America, right? Like in America, like you don't just play four shows and then put out music. Like, these bands would be like, yeah, we like toured around the country or whatever, or we self-released.

• 56:55Speaker 04

  Right.

• 56:55Yasi Salek?

  But they got press. Like, NME called it the single of the week. They said, "If some backwards Simon Napier Bell," Enemy loved to be like, "Oh, you don't know as much as we do about music. Go look that up. Go, there's no Google. Go figure out who that is. It's the man who drove the yard birds, in case you were wondering, "has decided to put together a calculatedly post-Rose's record with just the right prepubescent psychedelic feel. It would sound like this, but a lot crapper," which I think is a compliment.

• 57:23Speaker 04

  I can't tell.

• 57:24Yasi Salek?

  You can never tell with Enemy, but I love them. That's what made me want to be a music writer. And then Sounds called them "the first great group of the 90s" in their review. It's 1990s, though.

• 57:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, they got lucky because it's right.

• 57:37Yasi Salek?

  They came right in. And they went on TV. Jukebox Jury.

• 57:41Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 57:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Jukebox Jury was basically like, they had like recurring jury members and then guest ones. Like, the guest one on this one is Black Francis from the Pixies. And they watch a video and they like give their opinion.

• 57:56Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 57:57Yasi Salek?

  Black Francis said, he liked it, and he said, "I like their t-shirts." The rest of the people had mixed opinions.

• 58:02Speaker 04

  That would have been tough for Blur.

• 58:04Yasi Salek?

  What if he was like, "This sucks." Graham Coxon, "It's over, babe." He's like, quits. This is important, not just because of that, because it's a fun story, but this is where Stephen Street first sees them. Because he's watching it with his wife and he's like, "I love this." Stephen Street, for those of you that don't know, does end up producing most of their albums, but had also produced The Smiths.

• 58:23Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 58:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Damon Albarn did do some interviews with Enemy where he needed to talk about how he's really into the theater of cruelty.

• 58:33Yasi Salek?

  To which Enemy said, "At no point did Arto ever say we could purge Western society of its repressive duality by playing crappy, tinny psychedelic riffs for ages." Sounds gives them an early live review that says, "They're fine, but doubtless they could do much better." That's the main line from it.

• 58:49Speaker 04

  There's room for growth.

• 58:50Yasi Salek?

  There's room for growth. They don't have a manager, right, up until this point? And then, I think they were annoyed about something, an interview or something, and their label guy was like, "That's what a manager is for. Go get a manager." So he set them up with two managers to interview with. Chris Morrison, who was very established, he was like an old-school manager. He had managed Thin Lizzy. This guy, Mike Collins, who was younger and had managed Wire. Basically, Mike Collins, they loved Wire, and Mike Collins took them to a fancier lunch with like more drinks and was more expensive. And they were like, we like that guy. They signed with him. It turns out to be a small mistake. They do sign with that guy. At the end of 1990, Blur plays a show with Suede. Suede opens for them at this show because Suede was a little behind them. Like, they hadn't put out music yet.

• 59:35Yasi Salek?

  But this is where Damon Albarn first meets Justine Freshman, who is in Suede at the time, playing second guitar. She asks him for a Blur poster. And you know what he says? Fucking buy one then. The nagging, babe. This is his approach. But guess what? What did he do after that? Just like with Graham, he became infatuated with her and he hunted her down. He called her every day. She was like still with Brett until she finally was like, I mean, was falling apart with Brett. And she was like, fine, I'll go out with you. And such an interesting, it seems to work. Maybe I'll try it. Here's what Justine said. They finally start going out the next year, February of 1991. He had about three tapes. One was Janis Joplin. He didn't have a clue. He didn't buy any records.

• 1:00:18Yasi Salek?

  And basically, she had a crazy collector. Like, she was, she was very into music and had incredible taste. I just wanted to say that. And I'll say that in every episode that involves Elastica, Suede, or Blur. Justine Freshman is a really important part of this story. She's a muse, babe. And what does a muse do? She inspires.

• 1:00:37Speaker 04

  She also made two amazing albums.

• 1:00:39Yasi Salek?

  Two amazing albums.

• 1:00:40Speaker 04

  Probably like, in my formative years, I was like, that is the perfect couple. Like, that is the coolest couple in the world. More than Kurt and Courtney. I was just like, Damon and Justine are like so powerful.

• 1:00:53Yasi Salek?

  I don't know that anyone looked at Kurt and Courtney and was like, that's the best couple.

• 1:00:56Speaker 04

  No, but like, I was like entranced by Justine and Damon, the way people were like entranced by Kurt and Courtney. You know what I mean?

• 1:01:02Yasi Salek?

  Totally. I really love that couple because of the like, sort of playing with gender. Like, like the, the like, the masculinity and femininity, like where Damon's like super pretty. And Justine's like, kind of, kind of butch. Like so hot and like they're the same height. Like it was just like that so much about it that was like very intriguing.

• 1:01:26Speaker 04

  Plus, it's like a phenomenal love triangle.

• 1:01:28Yasi Salek?

  She said about the rest of Blur, I found them quite hard to get on with. I thought they were a bit R-word. We can't say that word here. They were like children. Bernard Butler had been a bit odd, but Matt and Brett were really cool, very bright, very easygoing. But Blur weren't childish, drunk, not scary, just pathetic. I loved Graham's guitar playing, but I thought he was a prat. But Damon was sufficiently interesting to keep me going. I thought the band were really good. I thought they were more musically gifted than Suede. I thought the songs were stronger, the guitar playing was better, and the harmonies were there. I think that's very interesting.

• 1:02:01Speaker 04

  That she's basically like Suede are nicer guys, but this is a better band?

• 1:02:04Yasi Salek?

  That she like kind of foresaw that Blur would be more successful.

• 1:02:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:09Yasi Salek?

  You know, like she was very shrewd. I think a big thing about that with her is not just the taste. It's like she really could see what was going on, you know? And they were really young. They they were giving young. Like when we talk about the story, like the stuff that they do, you're like, oh, these are kind of childish.

• 1:02:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was reading interviews about with them from the first few albums. And often, because they got so much access back then, the journalists. It's like these guys rolling around on an art gallery floor, three wine bottles deep. Like kind of kissing, but also fighting. And I'm like, it's kind of weird. You know what I mean? Like you wouldn't, like you just don't see that much anymore as much outside of like YouTube videos.

• 1:02:47Yasi Salek?

  Right, totally. They all partied together at a place called Syndrome. And it was like Blur and Justine and Lush and Sword Driver, Moose, The Forvention. They called them the scene that celebrates itself because they would put on their own records. While they hung out at Syndrome, and they're all in bands.

• 1:03:06Speaker 04

  I do that with the watch at bars and so like.

• 1:03:08Yasi Salek?

  You you make them put on like the episodes, not the video, just the just the audio for everyone. Your joke, but like literally if you did that, like 100 dudes would come to that night. They would be there at 5:00 PM when the doors open and it would be like Punisher Palooza.

• 1:03:27Speaker 04

  Not after I disparaged Baggy by comparing it to the spin doctors.

• 1:03:35Speaker 06

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• 1:04:05Yasi Salek?

  We have to talk about "There's No Other Way" as a single.

• 1:04:07Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:04:07Yasi Salek?

  To your point, I know it's kind of tedious, but it's important because this is how stories were built at the time, especially in England. Like, singles were really important. "There's No Other Way" was really important. This was produced by Steven Street. It was their first Top 10 in the UK. This was like when they really hit a very early peak of success. I think they hit number eight on the singles chart, not just the indie chart, like...

• 1:04:31Speaker 04

  The singles.

• 1:04:31Yasi Salek?

  The singles chart.

• 1:04:32Speaker 04

  For "There's No Other Way."

• 1:04:33Yasi Salek?

  For "There's No Other Way." And it even broke the Billboard Hot 100 in America.

• 1:04:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:37Yasi Salek?

  '82, not huge, but still.

• 1:04:43Yasi Salek?

  And they did "Top of the Pops." Did you watch it?

• 1:04:45Speaker 04

  I did, and it seemed very like they were not enjoying themselves.

• 1:04:48Yasi Salek?

  David Balf gave them all ecstasy right before they went on.

• 1:04:52Speaker 04

  That makes sense.

• 1:04:52Yasi Salek?

  And you can really tell, especially with Damon, who looks literally high as a kite.

• 1:04:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:56Yasi Salek?

  This makes them pop stars. The album hasn't come out yet. They're literally pop stars. They're on children's television, they're in smash hits, they're getting tons of press. And then they put out "Bang," the next single. How do you feel about "Bang"?

• 1:05:09Speaker 04

  I don't like it very much.

• 1:05:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Neither did the UK. It hit number 24.

• 1:05:22Speaker 04

  One of the things that's kind of fascinating about them is that you will hear things that they are trying out in their earliest days, like on this first record, that pop up again on 13. Or "Think Tank." You know, like moves, gestures, whatever. At the same time, I think if you played someone... End of a Century from Parklife.

• 1:05:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:44Speaker 04

  In 1991, you're like, this is the band that's doing There's No Other Way. They would be like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, how is that possible?

• 1:05:50Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:05:50Speaker 04

  The amount of ground they cover artistically and musically, while also kind of always sounding like Blur, is really fascinating to me.

• 1:05:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:57Speaker 04

  They always sound like, it's like quintessentially like it's Damon Albarn, but he's like from There's No Other Way and She's So High to Tracy Jackson's And This Is A Low in like four years is pretty nuts.

• 1:06:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. It is kind of like that kind of actor where like no matter what part they play, they're still a little bit like, that's that actor.

• 1:06:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, but he's writing his own scripts. That's the thing that's cool.

• 1:06:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:18Speaker 04

  You know what I mean? Like, it's not like, oh, I was in action movies and now I'm like playing Hamlet. It's like, no, I just decided to be a crazy, good observational like character writer.

• 1:06:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Well, Leisure, which we can talk about now, August 26, 1991. Leisure is very much to my ears like a band that has not yet any musical identity. And they're sort of just like sponging up what's around them. Like, There's No Other Way could literally be a Happy Mondays song. It's like that.

• 1:06:49Yasi Salek?

  It's a good song. I like it. I mean, it's a very not Blur song as far as their oeuvre. Like, I mean, I hear Damon in it, but it's, it's just like if like you put into ChatGPT, make me a Happy Mondays song.

• 1:07:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:02Yasi Salek?

  But like a little poppier or whatever, with a little more melody.

• 1:07:12Yasi Salek?

  They have a bunch of B-sides that are really shoegazed. They have A-sides that are shoegazed.

• 1:07:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:16Yasi Salek?

  Slow Down?

• 1:07:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:18Yasi Salek?

  Good song.

• 1:07:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:27Speaker 04

  The reason why I even ever went back to Leisure was because of Sing.

• 1:07:32Yasi Salek?

  Because it was on the train.

• 1:07:33Speaker 04

  Because it was on the train.

• 1:07:34Yasi Salek?

  Sing is actually really good.

• 1:07:35Speaker 04

  And Sing is incredible.

• 1:07:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:36Speaker 04

  And it sounds kind of like, kind of a krautrock thing, but also like slowed down and shoegazed out and...

• 1:07:43Yasi Salek?

  It's where the theater works, because I think it's very cinematic. Like, it really is like you can imagine that it's the soundtrack to something, which makes sense why I ended up on the train spotting soundtrack.

• 1:08:00Yasi Salek?

  It's a little elevated for this album.

• 1:08:02Speaker 04

  Yeah. It makes more sense weirdly on the Trainspotting soundtrack.

• 1:08:06Yasi Salek?

  Well, this is just like an uneven album. I think part of that is because they had three, four producers? Stephen Street, Steve Lovell, Steve Power, and Mike Thorne, who had worked with the Sex Pistols.

• 1:08:17Speaker 04

  Oh, okay.

• 1:08:18Yasi Salek?

  Because the label was just like not hap- kept bringing in new people to be like, "Well, this isn't working. Do this. Do the- work with this person." I guess Mike Thorne had also done Soft Cell's Tainted Love.

• 1:08:29Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:08:30Yasi Salek?

  He did Fool, Birthday, and Wear Me Down, tracks that nobody cares about. Blur themselves produced Sing.

• 1:08:37Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:08:38Yasi Salek?

  Which I thought was interesting. Here's what Damon said about it. Again, this is-

• 1:08:42Speaker 04

  About Leisure?

• 1:08:42Yasi Salek?

  About Leisure. And this is in that book, The 3,862 Days, which I think it was 99 that it came out. Leisure has no identity at all. It wasn't allowed to have any identity at all. If we'd been allowed to put our B-sides out as album tracks, "Luminous," it's a good song, and the like, it would have been a really interesting record. It seems ridiculous now, but we were being told what to do continually. That's why their relationship with Balfour soured early. We felt we knew better than him, which we did, really.

• 1:09:08Speaker 04

  I trust his judgment.

• 1:09:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:11Speaker 04

  I don't think they have the same trajectory if they're like a weird, experimental shoegaze band.

• 1:09:16Yasi Salek?

  No, they had to, like, they had to have that hit.

• 1:09:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:20Yasi Salek?

  Or nobody- they would have gotten dropped.

• 1:09:22Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:09:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. They almost get dropped like three times before they break, before Parklife. So, they- if they hadn't have had at least one top 10 hit, I'm sure they would have gotten dropped.

• 1:09:32Speaker 04

  Now, while you're listening to Yasi break down all the things that went into making Leisure, you're probably like, "Man, four or five producers, go back and re-record stuff? Like, that sounds like it costs a lot of money."

• 1:09:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:43Speaker 04

  And you would be right.

• 1:09:44Yasi Salek?

  And you would be right.

• 1:09:45Speaker 04

  Because Blur is increasingly in debt at this time.

• 1:09:49Yasi Salek?

  But they don't know that.

• 1:09:50Speaker 04

  They don't.

• 1:09:51Yasi Salek?

  No. They don't know that. It's completely unclear what happens with their money, which we'll get into. The reviews were pretty good, though, of Leisure. David Kavanaugh, who does kind of become a Blur scholar later, which you can see it forming, like, the stars in his eyes from the beginning, he writes for Select. And guess what? They were right. It is special. That's the lead. "Blurs are stars with guitars. It's that simple." He does say that Graham Coxon can simply be declared the new Johnny Marr now. That feels insane. Off-leisure?

• 1:10:24Speaker 04

  That's the weird thing, is that it's like-

• 1:10:25Yasi Salek?

  That's excessive. I'm not saying it's not true, because Graham Coxon's an incredible guitar player, but off the back of leisure, you're gonna say this?

• 1:10:32Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:10:33Yasi Salek?

  Did you get paid to say this? Melody Maker said guitars like forests of burning pylons. Once again, unclear if that's positive or negative. I think it might be negative.

• 1:10:44Speaker 04

  That's how people used to write back then, though.

• 1:10:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but it's negative, right?

• 1:10:47Speaker 04

  Right, but like you would just be like-

• 1:10:48Yasi Salek?

  But you just couldn't tell.

• 1:10:48Speaker 04

  A dump truck full of rose stems, and people would be like, "Yeah, that's what a great way to describe Superchunk."

• 1:10:55Yasi Salek?

  They were very mad at Superchunk. There's actually a line, it's funny, I thought of you. There's a line where Damon Albarn was specifically angry that Superchunk was on the cover of NME.

• 1:11:04Speaker 04

  Are you serious?

• 1:11:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:05Speaker 04

  In the early 90s?

• 1:11:06Yasi Salek?

  Because it was like, what, it was his, it's his whole thing, which we're getting into, which is like, why is American culture constantly being shoved down our throats?

• 1:11:12Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:11:12Yasi Salek?

  Why do I care about fucking Superchunk?

• 1:11:14Speaker 04

  Right, until I make a record that sounds exactly like it.

• 1:11:17Yasi Salek?

  Your breakthrough, your breakthrough record. Q Magazine gave it four out of five stars. This latest bunch of floppy-fringed pop cadets in baggy clothing should consummate their burgeoning pop romance in fine style. They play Redding after this. You have one-hit single, babe, you're gonna play Redding. In a tent, but still. Then they tour America for the first time. This is a bad experience.

• 1:11:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:11:40Yasi Salek?

  They have a US label called SBK. They did a couple of other big, I think, I want to say Radiohead, because Radiohead was also on Parlophone.

• 1:11:47Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:11:48Yasi Salek?

  They're miserable, they're drunk, they're showing up every morning at 8 a.m. being forced to do radio promos, but they're still drunk and SBK is mad at them. Here's what Alex said. If we thought Balf had business over taste, then SBK were the biggest bunch of inept, soulless, artless fuckwits you could ever meet. A company founded by lawyers selling Jesus Joan records on the back of the Gulf War. Did you know, I'm sorry, I can't help myself. I was like, what does that mean? Did you know that the Gulf War veterans took Right Here Right Now and made it their, like, "We showed you Saddam Hussein anthem."

• 1:12:24Speaker 04

  I didn't know that.

• 1:12:24Yasi Salek?

  And that made it go to number one on like, all these charts? Because all these like, pro-war people made this like, a fucking rallying Gulf War, fuck you-

• 1:12:35Speaker 04

  Scud missile anthem?

• 1:12:36Yasi Salek?

  Middle East, yeah. And then the Clintons used it as walk-on music at their rallies. It also came out on September 11th, 1990.

• 1:12:46Speaker 04

  It's all connected.

• 1:12:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Galaxy.

• 1:12:50Speaker 04

  You should get an R. Dash. That's right.

• 1:12:54Yasi Salek?

  That's a bad tour. One meaningful thing happens in November of this year, too. Smells Like Teen Spirit comes out in the UK. It came out a little bit later in the UK. It hit number seven in the UK singles chart. So it was, it was pretty popular right away. And also that famous Melody Maker Sub Pop Grunge article. Do you remember that?

• 1:13:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:13:12Yasi Salek?

  That had come out in 89. So the like, the scene was already being set in Britain for Grunge to sort of start to slowly take over.

• 1:13:21Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:13:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:22Speaker 04

  Yeah. And this is the thing is like you, you notice from some of the reviews that, that you just read. The British press are just always looking for the next big thing.

• 1:13:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:33Speaker 04

  And they are fine throwing their full force behind something. But they're also like, cool to drop it. And like, if something else better comes along, they're like, forgot your names. You guys were in Seymour, right? And so for a minute, it's like Stone Roses and it's Madchester and it's Baggy and Jesus Jones and everything. And then the second everybody puts on flannel shirts and it seems like this is the new guitar music that people are going to be into. It's adios.

• 1:13:58Yasi Salek?

  I'm not sure Jesus Jones was respected in Britain, but yes, I hear you.

• 1:14:01Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:14:02Yasi Salek?

  I think they had equal levels of disrespect on both sides of the pond. But yes, your point is well taken. Here's where the money problems start. So they had recouped the money they spent on Leisure. Leisure was expensive, but they made, they sold a lot of records because they had hit singles. And then they're like, okay, well, I'm sorry, we don't have any money. 40,000 pounds is missing from our account. And they're also 60,000 pounds in debt. And their accountant, who's the one who realized, because they didn't realize, was like, oh, no one's been paid. Like no vendor we hired to do amps and PAs on tour, no tour man. They're like, have people coming to them, like you owe us money. The band would just go see Mike Collins, their manager, be like, we need money. And he'd be like, here's money.

• 1:14:46Yasi Salek?

  And that was like, the extent of their understanding of their financial situation.

• 1:14:50Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:14:51Yasi Salek?

  Also, the manager would ask Dave, the drummer, on the weekend, it would be like Friday, but can you sign some blank checks for me? I just need to handle some stuff. He'd be like, yeah, sure. Not a smart, not a smart move in the end. They never figured out what, like, was it mismanagement? Was it theft? Like, they all kind of, to this day, are like, we don't think he stole from us.

• 1:15:13Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:15:14Yasi Salek?

  But obviously, he sucked at his job, or whatever.

• 1:15:17Speaker 04

  And never like, came to us and was like, by the way.

• 1:15:19Yasi Salek?

  No, I think he was, you know, probably trying to fix it.

• 1:15:21Speaker 04

  Quite a deficit at this point, yeah.

• 1:15:23Yasi Salek?

  This, this made me laugh so hard, though. Okay, so Dave, Dave was like, there's a guy called Mick Conroy, who I'd known since Colchester days. I used to walk home from school with him. He went on to be in quite big stadium bands in America. Anyway, I knew that Mike Collins had managed a band he'd been in. So when his name came up as our potential manager, I took Mick to one side and asked him, okay, what about Mike? And he said, oh, yeah, he's all right. So when it all blew up, I went back to him. And I was like, we had a funny business with Mike Collins. And we ended up losing all our money. And Mick said, really? Blimey, that happened to us as well.

• 1:15:57Yasi Salek?

  You went to this man? I go like, this guy all right? And he was like, yeah, he's all right. Didn't, didn't mention that, by the way, he lost all our money.

• 1:16:03Speaker 04

  So this is all, A, funny, B, probably sad for them at the time.

• 1:16:06Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:16:07Speaker 04

  But C, I love how much stuff that happens in Blur is like a chain reaction. So like, if not for this.

• 1:16:15Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:16:15Speaker 04

  And not for this be-shitted tour in America. Where they are completely miserable, hammered.

• 1:16:21Yasi Salek?

  That's the next one.

• 1:16:21Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:16:22Yasi Salek?

  They have to do two of them.

• 1:16:22Speaker 04

  Oh, they have to go back to America. So that's like, when they go back to America to make up for the 60 grand.

• 1:16:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:27Speaker 04

  But this puts them down this path of being like antagonistic, not only to the band that they previously were.

• 1:16:34Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:16:35Speaker 04

  But what they think people want them to be. And like, kind of like, I love the fact that like, Blur only happens because of like, what happens to Blur.

• 1:16:43Yasi Salek?

  Literally, this manager invented Britpop by accident.

• 1:16:46Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yes.

• 1:16:47Yasi Salek?

  By, by somehow losing all of Blur's money, he invented Britpop. It's a butterfly effect.

• 1:16:52Speaker 04

  It really is though. Like it's like there were plenty of bands where you're like, oh, like I guess you could do that with Radiohead. And it's like, if fake plastic trees hadn't gotten big, they wouldn't have been like, oh, I want to do OK Computer because I hate being famous.

• 1:17:04Yasi Salek?

  They didn't like invent a genre.

• 1:17:06Speaker 04

  No, it's literally because this happens.

• 1:17:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:09Speaker 04

  They go on another American tour, not to step on that. And then they're like, the only thing that matters is England and English culture.

• 1:17:15Yasi Salek?

  So what happens before they do that, which we're going to get into in a second, is Chris Morrison, who was the guy that they had first met with, Thin Lizzy guy. He's managing Jesus and Mary Chain now, and he's creating this touring UK festival, I think it only happened once, called Roller Coaster, which was sort of like inspired by Lollapalooza. And he wanted to use it as like a vehicle for Jesus and Mary Chain to like make them big and famous or whatever. And he, he asked them who they want. And so it's Dinosaur Jr., My Bloody Valentine, and they wanted Blur. What a nice guy, right? Blur had been like, we don't want you to manage us. And he'd be like, OK, comes back, still wants to put them on the tour.

• 1:17:53Yasi Salek?

  And then he goes to try to book them and he finds out they don't have a manager anymore. And instead of being mad, he was, he was like, that would be their manager. And he becomes their manager. It was interesting. He said something about how like, he really was trying to make this festival to reinvigorate indie rock music. Cause he, he was like, the best that indie bands sold was around 150,000 records. The Stone Roses, who were regarded as global superstars, which they weren't really global superstars, had only sold 800,000 worldwide. Michael Jackson thought Bad had flopped for selling 30 million.

• 1:18:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:18:28Yasi Salek?

  So it's a huge divide, right?

• 1:18:30Speaker 04

  But selling 150,000 records in that time, you could still make a pretty decent living off of.

• 1:18:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:37Speaker 04

  Like that's, there, there's like money in being smaller, you know, like it's, I guess that's.

• 1:18:42Yasi Salek?

  It's just so unrelated, whereas like, I think, and I'm not sure if that's what he was getting at, but what I take from it, which I find so interesting, which is back to us being Anglophiles and being so fascinated by the UK is that like, the Stone Roses were fucking Michael Jackson in the UK, but they didn't make that kind of money, but they were that famous.

• 1:18:59Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:19:00Yasi Salek?

  Which is so interesting, you know? But then you leave the UK and people are like, who?

• 1:19:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:19:05Yasi Salek?

  And what?

• 1:19:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:19:06Yasi Salek?

  You know, like, I just want you to put your mind in this roller coaster tour. The vibes are bad, you have no money, but you're 20 years old and you get to play with Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Dynasty Jr. every night. Everyone is a party animal. These people all drink crazy. They're going bowling together. I want you to picture going bowling with all these people. This is the things I dream about.

• 1:19:29Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:19:30Yasi Salek?

  On the tour's opening night, Damon decided to do a Jim Morrison and pull down his pants and run around displaying his undercarriage. And the next day after sound check, Jay Mascis went into the dining room and just went up to Damon and was like, "You gonna whip it out again today?"

• 1:19:50Yasi Salek?

  So good.

• 1:19:50Speaker 04

  That's good.

• 1:19:50Yasi Salek?

  It's so good. They released a single while they're on that roller coaster tour, which is Pop Scene.

• 1:19:55Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:19:56Yasi Salek?

  Pop Scene is arguably their first move towards Britpop.

• 1:20:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:20:03Yasi Salek?

  You know?

• 1:20:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:20:04Yasi Salek?

  And they really think them, the label, the manager, everyone's like, "This is gonna be a fucking hit, babe. This is major. This song is so good."

• 1:20:19Yasi Salek?

  It has a horn section. Perhaps in the Nirvana wake is not the most popular application of instrument. It's basically a hater anthem about the indie music scene.

• 1:20:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:20:31Yasi Salek?

  And Damon was like, "We felt it was of departure. It was very, very English, but that annoyed a lot of people." All I have to say is it was not a hit.

• 1:20:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, which they, but they were like, "We've got it."

• 1:20:40Yasi Salek?

  I think they were a little bit bummed. I think they were like, maybe happy with their direction, but things are not going well. Like, you have no money, you put out a single, it flops. Your next single, they canceled the next single because it flopped. They're like, "We're not putting out another single."

• 1:20:57Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:20:58Yasi Salek?

  From modern, they're working on Modern Life is Rubbish. At the same time, Suede, who is your girlfriend's ex-boyfriend, is on the cover of Melody Maker with the headline, "Suede: The Best New Band in Britain."

• 1:21:13Speaker 04

  It stings.

• 1:21:14Yasi Salek?

  It's not a good vibe. And then they're like, guess what? Chris Morrison, God bless him. Chris Morrison like horse traded to like, they could, they could have not been a band at this point because if any one of those debtors had called in a debt, they would have had to declare bankruptcy and they couldn't be a band anymore. So Chris Morrison like went and their accountant, whose name was I think Julian, went around and negotiated deals with all these people. And then Chris Morrison negotiated a deal with this merchandise company to get upfront the money to pay off all the debtors.

• 1:21:42Speaker 04

  Blur t-shirts and stuff.

• 1:21:43Yasi Salek?

  Then the merchandise company was like, you have to go tour all America and sell those t-shirts.

• 1:21:47Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:21:48Yasi Salek?

  That's why they had to do the American tour. They basically had to pay back their debt.

• 1:21:50Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:21:50Yasi Salek?

  Forty-four dates, two days off.

• 1:21:54Speaker 04

  And essentially like one album and another song of material that anyone could conceivably know.

• 1:21:59Yasi Salek?

  Oh, honey, it is May 1992.

• 1:22:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:22:01Yasi Salek?

  Do you think anyone gives a flying fuck about Blur?

• 1:22:05Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:22:05Yasi Salek?

  We are Pearl Jam. We are Alice in Chains. We are still Nirvana. Like, nobody cares. Alex James said, "America had found its voice and no one wanted to know about these bouncy, floppy, fringed indie kids on the tail end of this Jesus Jones EMF." Oh yeah, don't forget EMF, which is unbelievable. So-called British Invasion. Nobody had heard of the biggest English bands. Nobody had heard of the Stone Roses. So why the fuck should anyone have heard of us? They're drinking crazy amounts. They're depressed. Graham at one point breaks like all the glass on the tour bus. Like, he's so drunk and mad and sad. They're so homesick. They had an insane like road and tour crew, including a guy called Gimbo, who had been an associate of the KLF.

• 1:22:50Speaker 04

  Nice.

• 1:22:51Yasi Salek?

  And deaf in one ear from fighting in the Falcons War. And he, I just love this. Graham said he was a total lunatic. His party trick, which he used to perform onboard on our very long buses, was to crouch at the rear end of the aisle and instruct the driver to slam the brakes on the next red light. When the coach bus screeched to a stop, he would be propelled from where he was sitting like a frog and fly the entire length of vehicle, slamming into the dashboard and crumbling onto the floor. And when it came to our per diems, he would ask if we wanted to be paid in cash or acid. If it's acid, You want, it's in the fridge. And Graham was like, we just wanted fag money. Cigarettes. Lovely bloke, but mad as a hatter. So this is just a crazy miserable work to the bone. And Damon is really suffering and really has homesickness. And here's what he said.

• 1:23:36Yasi Salek?

  I started to really miss simple things. I miss people queuing up in shops. I miss people saying good night on the BBC. I miss having 15 minutes between commercial breaks. I miss people having some respect for my geographical roots because Americans don't care if you're from Land's End or Inverness. Because we don't know what that is. I missed everything about England.

• 1:23:57Yasi Salek?

  It's not my like.

• 1:23:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's a great. Imagining you engaging with 1992 Damon Albarn is he's like, no one cares if I'm from Inverness.

• 1:24:06Yasi Salek?

  I'm like, do you care if I'm from Torrance or Redondo Beach? Like, do you know what those things are? Like, do you know what like Pittsburgh is like?

• 1:24:14Speaker 06

  When we went to America, you know, England started to become this fantasy place that we could return to one day. And all the work we've been doing since then has sort of dealt with England as a fantasy place.

• 1:24:27Yasi Salek?

  Anyways, he also had a King's Tape. That whole, that he was listening to the whole time. A little, just a little insult to injury. You're literally, you're down solo, babe. And then their American label was like, guess what? We took Bang and we made these remixes, these like electro remixes, and we're calling it Blur to Go.

• 1:24:48Yasi Salek?

  And putting it out and they were like, okay. They were so mad and they hated it, but they couldn't do anything about it.

• 1:25:01Yasi Salek?

  The other fallout of this extremely long American tour was by the time they got back, like they were forgotten, like you said, like.

• 1:25:08Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:25:09Yasi Salek?

  The press, everyone was like, who? Seymour? That month, when they got back, the top 10 singles included Guns N' Roses, Faith No More, Ugly Kid Joe. Hate everything about you.

• 1:25:21Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:25:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And Criss Cross's Jump, Jump. I had that single. You know, Suede is fucking crushing.

• 1:25:30Yasi Salek?

  They've put out singles, everyone's loving them. The vibes are bad. Alex said the Suede thing was really hard to deal with because of the Damon Justine thing and Bernard Butler was a bit of a cunt and they were always rude to us in the papers.

• 1:25:46Yasi Salek?

  But also Dave said, I didn't know about this. There were rumors that the tape of Modern Life is Rubbish that hadn't come out yet, like the demos, had gotten to Bernard Butler and they had ripped them off.

• 1:25:58Speaker 04

  Interesting.

• 1:25:59Yasi Salek?

  Which I don't hear in that Suede album. Do you hear that?

• 1:26:01Speaker 04

  I don't.

• 1:26:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but...

• 1:26:03Speaker 04

  They're like so obviously like to me like Suede is just like, they sound like Sweet and T-Rex. And then it's like mixed with this sort of drug-addled and androgyny.

• 1:26:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's it's kind of like glam and Bowie. Yeah, totally.

• 1:26:18Speaker 04

  A little goth, but like, you know, it's like, they had such a defined aesthetic. It doesn't really, I wouldn't be like modern, I wouldn't be sitting on my Modern Life is Rubbish tapes being like, I'm deciding this is robbery.

• 1:26:28Yasi Salek?

  I guess the only thing you can say is that the first Suede album is is pretty English.

• 1:26:32Speaker 04

  Sure, yeah.

• 1:26:33Yasi Salek?

  Whereas Dave was like, we thought we'd invented that in the first place. We had invented England. And you're like, babe, your album's not even out yet. It's also important to point out that that first Suede album and the and Modern Life is Rubbish are both about Justine Freshman, queen, iconic. You're welcome, is what she would say to you guys.

• 1:26:50Speaker 04

  When you look at the cover for the Suede record, you're like, which one's Justine? Because it's just two androgynous people kissing.

• 1:26:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Can we do a really quick Britpop term sidebar?

• 1:27:01Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:27:02Yasi Salek?

  The thing about Britpop is like, they've been using that term since the 70s, maybe even the 60s. As far as, I just searched the furthest article back I found on Rock's back pages, which has a lot of the British Weeklys on it, was from 77 and it was an article about the Sex Pistols. The sentence was, "At home, the Sex Pistols are public enemies. In Sweden, they're an important visiting Britpop group." So they've kind of been using the term Britpop for like, exactly what you would think it would be, just popular British bands. They used it for XTC. And then John Robb says that actually he's the one that really started using it in relation to Baggy.

• 1:27:42Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:27:42Yasi Salek?

  Stone Roses and Saint Etienne and stuff. And then it was, whatever. And then it was used to describe EMF. So it doesn't gel, though, as like what we know it to be now until post-modern life is rubbish.

• 1:27:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:27:58Yasi Salek?

  But it had been bandied around.

• 1:28:00Speaker 04

  I feel like I first kind of like became aware of it on this side of the pond because of, obviously, like the Blur, Oasis thing was like thrown together as the Battle of Britpop. And then also like the Hail Britannia and the correlation between the rise of these bands and the rise of New Labour over there at the government and Blair taking office in 97 or whatever, but like rising through like 94.

• 1:28:23Yasi Salek?

  It's very interesting and we'll get into it, but do you not see so many parallels between our grunge becoming mainstream and then like having this sort of like Bill Clinton playing the saxophone, like 90s dream world politics, Gen X, Starbucks situation and New Labour and like indie music becoming for them the same as what like Nirvana

• 1:28:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:28:53Yasi Salek?

  besting bad is like, it's basically the same thing, right? That's their underground.

• 1:28:58Speaker 04

  I mean, Bill Clinton wasn't playing the rooster on Arsenio Hall.

• 1:29:01Yasi Salek?

  Sure, he wasn't, honestly.

• 1:29:03Speaker 04

  Man in a box.

• 1:29:04Yasi Salek?

  Imagine.

• 1:29:09Speaker 04

  Truly, he was a man in the box, you know?

• 1:29:11Yasi Salek?

  He really was, Ben, he really was. Damon Albarn said, "If punk was all about getting rid of hippies, we're all about getting rid of grunge."

• 1:29:18Speaker 04

  Kind of a cool stance to take, though.

• 1:29:19Yasi Salek?

  Kind of a cool, totally a cool stance. He said, "People are walking around like hippies again with stooped shoulders, greasy hair and horrible clothes. There's lots of great music being made in Britain. It's time kids stopped listening to American rubbish."

• 1:29:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:29:30Yasi Salek?

  So I want to talk about my idea of the two great muses for this album and then we'll talk about what you think of it. Number one, spite. Well, spite with two different targets. Suede and America. We are gonna best Suede.

• 1:29:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:29:45Yasi Salek?

  And fuck you, America.

• 1:29:47Speaker 04

  Suede's music seems to be shrouded in darkness. It's like taking place in the corner of the gothiest goth club. It's like. Happening in this kind of like pan Berlin cabaret.

• 1:30:01Yasi Salek?

  Not pan Berlin cabaret.

• 1:30:03Speaker 04

  And Blur is like, here is a middle aged man watching television, eating a biscuit.

• 1:30:09Yasi Salek?

  I think you mean.

• 1:30:10Speaker 04

  And so it's like, I think it's like.

• 1:30:12Yasi Salek?

  Milky tea, sugar tea.

• 1:30:13Speaker 04

  A very different aperture that they're looking through.

• 1:30:15Yasi Salek?

  Well, it's an interesting distinction because I think Suede is not making music, is not reactionary making music and Blur is reactionary. Oasis is not reactionary. Oasis and Happy Mondays to me are two of the same where they're like, I keep saying Forrest Gump, but I want like, just naturals. They're naturalistic to the point that they couldn't even be different if they wanted to.

• 1:30:37Speaker 04

  Iterate, I mean, like they got more cocaine and bigger budgets and maybe messed around a little bit more with some studio stuff, but for the most part, just made the same record a bunch of times. Whereas Blur is like, we need to completely reskin this thing every single time.

• 1:30:50Yasi Salek?

  When it's bad, it's because it's overthought, in my opinion. It's overwrought and overthought, but when it's good, it's because it's thoughtful.

• 1:30:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:30:57Yasi Salek?

  You know, and that's what you get with a band that is not naturalistic. Like they do think about things and they do approach things.

• 1:31:03Speaker 04

  We'll probably imagine that it's like this Bowie-esque.

• 1:31:06Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:31:06Speaker 04

  Like, oh, I'm just gonna try it, try something new because I've gotten into this. But they're, they're sort of driven, like you're saying, by spite. They're driven by.

• 1:31:14Yasi Salek?

  Damon.

• 1:31:14Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:31:15Yasi Salek?

  In particular.

• 1:31:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:31:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I can't, I don't can't speak for the rest of them, but it's very, Damon even said it, he was like, Suede and America fueled my desire to prove to everyone that Blur were worth it. There was nothing more important in my life. And at times, I mean, that's the whole thing. Graham has been like, I was like, who is this careerist monster? You know, like, he was like, kind of scared of like, but you know, every band has to have one careerist.

• 1:31:37Speaker 04

  It's true.

• 1:31:38Yasi Salek?

  You can't make it without it. Okay, so on top of all this, Suede's ruling the world, they're tired, they had to sell T-shirts to go make money, nobody cared about them in America, they didn't get to say, hear people say goodnight on the BBC nightly news. Then EMI is like, you're not doing well, we might drop you. So get it together. At this exact juncture, where they should really be trying their best, the enemy asked them to play a benefit for this homelessness charity called Shelter, under the moniker, Gimme Shelter. That's clever. It was headlined by Blur with support from Three and a Half Minutes, Mega City Four, never heard of these bands, and Suede.

• 1:32:14Speaker 04

  Tough beat.

• 1:32:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Blur decides that it's a good idea to get just blackout despair drunk before, like, the most decrepit, like, bleak drunkenness you've ever laid eyes on. Suede goes on, fucking kills, crushes, everyone goes nuts. Blur shambles upon the stage. Damon-

• 1:32:36Speaker 04

  Shows their undercarriage.

• 1:32:37Yasi Salek?

  Damon literally introduced them. Apparently, it's gone, it's like an iconic thing, because he was like, "We're so fucking shit, you may as well go home right now. This might be the worst gig you'll ever see." And he was maybe right. He might have been right. They trashed all the equipment. Damon kept trying to, like, shoulder check the, like, speaker cab off- He probably weighed 110 pounds. I guess some people found it fun and punk, from what I read, but you know who did not? The label or their manager?

• 1:33:02Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:33:03Yasi Salek?

  Who were like, "The fuck is wrong with you? You're literally about to be dropped, and then you, like, have one little- You're doing it for the enemy, and you fucking shit the bed." Balf basically was like, "You're gonna, you're gonna get, you're probably gonna get dropped." And their manager was like, "I was, like, gonna fucking give them a talking to, but then they came in really sheepish, and they're like, 'We have, we've had a band meeting, and we have a rule now.'"

• 1:33:25Speaker 04

  We're gonna be super British now.

• 1:33:28Yasi Salek?

  Now we're gonna be super- They were like, "No, we're gonna have, only have one beer each before we go onstage."

• 1:33:32Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:33:32Yasi Salek?

  That was their rule, and he was like, "Okay." And then they went back to the studio, tried to finish Modern Life is Rubbish. And this time, they brought Andy Partridge from XTC. It did not work out. Here's what Andy Partridge said. "It was for our second album, is rubbish. The songs weren't very good, and I did it for the wrong reasons, the flattery and the money. I like them immensely, though. I saw go-to, period, us in them." Apparently, basically, he was just like too, he was telling them what to do too much, and they didn't like him, and-

• 1:34:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:34:01Yasi Salek?

  So, he was gone. Then Graham goes to see The Cranberries, who are kind of on the early part of their career, and he runs into Steven Street. And so, they start talking, and Steven Street, Steven Street gets, keeps getting drawn back-

• 1:34:14Speaker 04

  Yes, even though they try different things.

• 1:34:16Yasi Salek?

  The label hates him, does not want him. Yeah.

• 1:34:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:34:19Yasi Salek?

  Even though he obviously did such a good job with them, I don't really understand the- Also, The Smiths were very popular.

• 1:34:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:34:25Yasi Salek?

  They finish the album with Steven Street, and they're like, "Yes, we're done. Here it is. David Balf, hear it." Balf's like, "I fuck-" He called it, "This is worse than suicide," is what he said.

• 1:34:38Yasi Salek?

  This is worse than suicide.

• 1:34:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, not the band Suicide.

• 1:34:40Yasi Salek?

  No, not, not Alan, Alan, what's his name? He said it's Artwink. Dave was like, when someone says, someone who had been in the teardrop explodes, calls you Artwink? It's a bit, the pot, calling the kettle black. He's basically like, listen, no, I'm sorry, but no, go write a hit and bring it back to me. And so Damon's like, oh, fine. Goes home for Christmas, gets wasted on Christmas Eve, which is apparently an English tradition.

• 1:35:07Speaker 04

  They, cause they have like a long holiday. Well, it's, it's a very like indulgent holidays, period.

• 1:35:11Yasi Salek?

  That sounds, I'm gonna do that this year to indulge in my Anglophilia. But you have to drink something weird, right? Like a hot, like whiskey side.

• 1:35:19Speaker 04

  Wine?

• 1:35:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. The Guinness in it. Wakes up hungover, writes For Tomorrow.

• 1:35:30Yasi Salek?

  This was heavily influenced by a thing no one has ever heard of. It's a record by a guy called Alan Klein that's called, well, at least it's British. Couldn't even make that up. That's the real title. And he had founded a thrift store.

• 1:35:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:35:43Yasi Salek?

  It had a song called He's a 20th Century Englishman on it. And that's where he got the.

• 1:35:48Speaker 04

  He's a 20th century.

• 1:35:49Yasi Salek?

  Boy, yeah.

• 1:35:50Speaker 04

  Which at the time, sounded, sounded very grounding and cool.

• 1:35:54Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:35:54Speaker 04

  And now it's funny to go back and listen to in 2024.

• 1:35:57Yasi Salek?

  Right, because the 20th century, like wow, but isn't, isn't, weren't we in the 20th century?

• 1:36:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's what I mean. Like at the moment, like they were like very much like, here's all this stuff that I'm seeing that like I'm also laying over. It's like these visions of the past with these visions of the present.

• 1:36:12Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:36:12Speaker 04

  There's things I'm very cynical about, but the things that I'm very romantic about. And now you just listen to it and it's like, oh, this doesn't exist.

• 1:36:23Yasi Salek?

  It's a good song.

• 1:36:24Speaker 04

  For Tomorrow?

• 1:36:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's not my favorite.

• 1:36:26Yasi Salek?

  It's not my favorite.

• 1:36:26Speaker 04

  Song on Modern Life is Rubbish, but yeah.

• 1:36:28Yasi Salek?

  And it's not even to my taste, but I can recognize that it's a good song. We don't get to put out Modern Life is Rubbish because Balf was still like, that's good, go write one more.

• 1:36:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, right.

• 1:36:37Yasi Salek?

  And then he wrote Chemical World, which to my ears is not a hit, but I guess Balf was just tired and was like, fine, we'll put it out.

• 1:36:48Yasi Salek?

  For Tomorrow comes out first. It's a little too la la la for me. They love a la la la, this band.

• 1:36:54Speaker 04

  I'm not a big For Tomorrow guy.

• 1:36:55Yasi Salek?

  They love la la la.

• 1:37:03Yasi Salek?

  This background singer, you know, it's all very theater.

• 1:37:06Speaker 04

  But Yeah.

• 1:37:07Yasi Salek?

  It's about London, right? It's very much about London. The video, the video could not be more, like, it's almost racist.

• 1:37:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:37:17Yasi Salek?

  They're like, he's floating in the Thames. They're at Trafalgar Square. They're leaning out of the bus. Like, it's like so over the top.

• 1:37:23Speaker 04

  Dude, this entire record is indecipherable. To be American and listen to this, like, even calling a song advert. I was like, I don't understand. What is that? And then, like, the best songs on this record are all ones that immediately put you in a place. But it was a place I'd never been. So it'd be like, I bought these jeans on the Portobello Road. And I would just be like, you might as well have bought them on the moon. Like, I don't know what that is. And they're so specific and specifically rooted.

• 1:37:50Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:37:51Speaker 04

  Whereas at the same time, Oasis is so purely universal, even though they are themselves so quintessentially British.

• 1:37:59Yasi Salek?

  Way more than that.

• 1:38:00Speaker 04

  But they're like, fucking cigarettes. And you're like, yeah.

• 1:38:05Yasi Salek?

  And I do want to live forever. Gin and tonic, I'll have one.

• 1:38:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:38:09Yasi Salek?

  No, it's, it's truly, and it's ironic because later Damon Albarn's like, I'd like to be more universal. And you're like, yeah, that. Were you a lyric guy, though? I need to ask because like,

• 1:38:19Speaker 04

  I was.

• 1:38:19Yasi Salek?

  So you were like opening the pamphlet, the CD booklet.

• 1:38:23Speaker 04

  I was always fascinated by lyrics by people who were telling me not to pay attention to the lyrics, like Malcolmus or whatever. So like,

• 1:38:30Yasi Salek?

  That's my favorite. So I'm like, this is haikus. This is, this is ZenCon poetry.

• 1:38:34Speaker 04

  For as much as that was like inscrutable in a different way, because it was like this collage-y cut up version of it.

• 1:38:41Yasi Salek?

  It's not culturally inscrutable. That's just simply like, I can't know your mind.

• 1:38:45Speaker 04

  But that was also was attractive to listen to Blur and be like, oh, okay. So like, what's, what is the drug they're talking about? Or like, why is he scared of this teenager for like sniffing glue or something? Like, I tried to teach myself the cultural reference points that he was making.

• 1:39:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. This is such an aggressively English album, though. Like, to the, to the point of like, you know, there's the whole thing of like, in singing, usually you can't hear an accent. You can hear the English accent and all.

• 1:39:16Speaker 04

  I think it's purposeful, for sure.

• 1:39:17Yasi Salek?

  Yes, for sure. But it's, and the brass bands, which honestly, personally, I could do without.

• 1:39:29Yasi Salek?

  What are they on about?

• 1:39:31Speaker 04

  On this record?

• 1:39:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:32Speaker 04

  So I think that there's a couple of songs on here, I mean, I adore. Modern Life is Rubbish was a kind of like, cool pick for like, that's secretly the best Blur record for a while, and now I think it's-

• 1:39:44Yasi Salek?

  Amongst who?

• 1:39:45Speaker 04

  Amongst like Blur fans, I think.

• 1:39:46Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:39:47Speaker 04

  I really like Oily Water, I really like Blue Jeans.

• 1:39:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I like Oily Water because why?

• 1:39:51Speaker 04

  It's a shoegaze.

• 1:39:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:00Speaker 04

  And Blue Jeans, I just think is like incredibly catchy.

• 1:40:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:03Speaker 04

  And it's like a pretty song about shopping.

• 1:40:12Speaker 04

  A good example of what you're talking about, which is like, this is a song about going secondhand jeans shopping.

• 1:40:17Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:40:17Speaker 04

  In North London.

• 1:40:18Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 1:40:18Speaker 04

  Like, that's crazy.

• 1:40:23Speaker 04

  This, this was vying for airtime with Man in the Box.

• 1:40:28Yasi Salek?

  It's funny that you say that, but the one thing about grunge was that grunge was also very concerned with class, right? But I can only say this about Oasis and Blur, Pulp gets a little different. I'm working this out in real time, so give me a wide berth, but at least for like the Nirvana's and Pearl Jam's of the world, their preoccupation with class was political, right? Like, they were sort of overtly criticizing a system, or like, coming from this working class background, and it was a statement in and of itself.

• 1:41:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:41:04Yasi Salek?

  Whereas like-

• 1:41:05Speaker 04

  The act of making the music the way they made it was a statement.

• 1:41:08Yasi Salek?

  And also like, you knew where they landed. I mean, Pearl Jam, of course, was like overt about-

• 1:41:12Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:41:13Yasi Salek?

  And Kurt was like, you know, a clear feminist, talked about abortion, like, these, they talked about issues, right? It was very unclear where Blur stood. I mean, they were like, we're labor, but like-

• 1:41:25Speaker 04

  But they're cosplaying a lot.

• 1:41:26Yasi Salek?

  And they're cosplaying a lot.

• 1:41:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:41:27Yasi Salek?

  And Oasis don't stand for anything.

• 1:41:29Speaker 04

  They can't read.

• 1:41:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. They can't read, but, I mean, but, in a way are more overtly political than Blur by their existence.

• 1:41:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:41:38Yasi Salek?

  Right?

• 1:41:38Yasi Salek?

  Well, Oasis to me was like- They were just like, we just want to be rich and rock stars.

• 1:41:41Speaker 04

  Life is kind of shit.

• 1:41:42Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:41:42Speaker 04

  So let's have drinks and cocaine and rock.

• 1:41:45Yasi Salek?

  Perhaps they're, they're more like a- Libertarians.

• 1:41:49Speaker 04

  I, I, who couldn't even, I don't even know what, how that would translate to the British political spectrum.

• 1:41:53Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:41:54Speaker 04

  But Blur was like, I have been aware

• 1:41:58Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:41:58Speaker 04

  of political theories since I was apparently 10 years old and reading Karl Marx.

• 1:42:02Yasi Salek?

  Reading Karl Marx and getting bullied by the skinheads.

• 1:42:03Speaker 04

  And also, it's, can't be understated how much he was probably listening to 1965 to 1971 kinks.

• 1:42:11Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:42:12Speaker 04

  And those guys being like David Watts and like these little character studies of like

• 1:42:17Yasi Salek?

  That was their whole thing, modern, you know, preservation society.

• 1:42:20Speaker 04

  Middle class, middle aged, British men whose life didn't work out the way they thought it would. And that's like to Damon, that's like a fascinating topic.

• 1:42:25Yasi Salek?

  And they were obsessed with Mike Lee movies, which is also

• 1:42:28Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:42:28Yasi Salek?

  kind of takes on the same concerns.

• 1:42:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:42:31Yasi Salek?

  I like Resigned, that's also another shoegaze number on here.

• 1:42:34Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 1:42:42Speaker 04

  You like the parts of Modern Life is Rubbish that improve the shoegaze bits of Leisure?

• 1:42:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I like the idea of this album because I do, when I take a step back, think it's very cool to like have such a clear, I mean, again, we're like 21 years old here, you know, like to have such a clear vision of like the statement you want to make and, and the pivot you want to do, not just musically, but like thematically, that's pretty high level stuff for like a 22 year old or 21 year old.

• 1:43:12Speaker 04

  And it serves as like a crucial bridge record. Like, I don't think Park Life could ever be made as the follow up to Leisure.

• 1:43:18Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 1:43:19Speaker 04

  But Modern Life is Rubbish kind of opens up a bunch of different doors for them.

• 1:43:23Yasi Salek?

  Right. It hit number 15 is what I want to tell you. It was a moderate chart success. So it was good enough that the EMI and Food weren't like, we're gonna drop you.

• 1:43:32Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:43:33Yasi Salek?

  But it was, it was not a hit. And in America, again, I don't even know how you found it because

• 1:43:40Speaker 04

  I didn't until after Park Life stuff.

• 1:43:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, because I don't think it, it made any mark. This also largely had to do with the fact that SBK, the American label, completely ignored their manager's advice to market it to college radio and was like, no, we're gonna market it to MOR stations, Middle Road.

• 1:43:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, but that being said, like, college radio in the early 90s, I don't know how much Blur would have, I don't know how much this record, this Blur record would have hit.

• 1:44:04Yasi Salek?

  They would have been like shopping for jeans on the Portobello Road right next to R E M, no? The NME gave it seven out of 10. Here's just one line. But best of all, they had three cool members. So mean.

• 1:44:18Speaker 04

  Jesus.

• 1:44:20Yasi Salek?

  Whereas most groups have one.

• 1:44:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:44:22Yasi Salek?

  So mean. They called it "A London Odyssey Crammed Full of Strange Commuters, Peeping Thomases and Lost Dreams of Opening the Windows and Breathing in Petrol." And you can put those idiot Suede comparisons away now. Blur have reinvented themselves in the image of their youth, sullen and suburban, as ghosts from a time where you could have still be beaten up before assembly for wearing the wrong badge. It's the Village Green Preservation Society come home to find a car park in this place.

• 1:44:49Speaker 04

  Thanks.

• 1:44:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Yeah, they got it.

• 1:44:51Speaker 04

  Damon was probably like, yes.

• 1:44:52Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:44:53Speaker 04

  Nailed it.

• 1:44:54Yasi Salek?

  And Melody Maker said, "It was not so long ago that similar hyperbolic claims were being made for their own take on Britpop resurrection." A little more Britpop here. Once again, it's being like Blur demonstrate that they're every bit as good as Suede. Again, Damon is like, "Everything I wanted is happening." It's super English, fuck you grunge, and they said we're as good as Suede. Then they go play a little tour, Ben. 14th date, the Sugary Tea Tour. This is the one that was in the coastal charming seaside towns at, you know, abandoned train museums and stuff.

• 1:45:25Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:45:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And then they play a major set at Reading. This was like a big deal. It was like a pivotal set where like they blew it out of the water. Everyone that was there was like, this was huge. It's worth also noting, they're always making the next album.

• 1:45:39Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:45:39Yasi Salek?

  They're never not making the next album.

• 1:45:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:45:41Yasi Salek?

  So they're already making.

• 1:45:42Speaker 04

  Is that partially like business decisions? Cause they're like, they're like, we're trying to get out of this.

• 1:45:47Yasi Salek?

  Damon said it was because he was on a songwriting kick, but then Graham was like, and we were broke.

• 1:45:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:45:53Yasi Salek?

  So I think it's me both. I mean, also you're 22. What else do you have going on?

• 1:45:58Speaker 04

  It's cool that the Reading note is worth hearing just because. Their status as like a live band doesn't really come together until this point.

• 1:46:08Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:46:08Speaker 04

  I think. And now like you go watch, if you watch their reunion from like 09.

• 1:46:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:13Speaker 04

  When they play Hyde Park.

• 1:46:14Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:46:14Speaker 04

  It's like, holy shit. This dude has like the entire city in the palm of his hand.

• 1:46:19Yasi Salek?

  It's crazy.

• 1:46:20Speaker 04

  But like, watching early videos of them from the first record at least, you're like, this is a group of fools. This is a ship of fools.

• 1:46:27Yasi Salek?

  He puked every show.

• 1:46:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:46:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. It also meant though that they would kind of temp check new songs live.

• 1:46:35Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:46:35Yasi Salek?

  Because they were making them in this year at the time. November of 93 is when Elastica released their first single, "Stutter."

• 1:46:42Speaker 04

  Thank god.

• 1:46:43Yasi Salek?

  One of the best songs.

• 1:46:51Yasi Salek?

  There's a long time before that single. Their album is like until 95.

• 1:46:54Speaker 04

  Although ironically, that single, that's, that they like fucking hit in America like instantaneously.

• 1:47:00Yasi Salek?

  I want to talk about this. From what I can make, there was a period where Elastica was more famous than both Oasis and Blur in America, right?

• 1:47:08Speaker 04

  Certainly. And also like just imagine being Damon Albarn and be like, my number one point is that I need to be British and destroy grunge.

• 1:47:15Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:47:15Speaker 04

  And my number two point is that I beat Suede. And then like your girlfriend who used to date Brett Anderson from Suede, becomes big in America.

• 1:47:24Yasi Salek?

  Right. Your girlfriend's like, well, that's fine, chimney sweep, but I'm gonna go take over the USA.

• 1:47:27Speaker 04

  Good music without like having to fucking overthink it and change your personality seven times.

• 1:47:32Yasi Salek?

  The telly. Yeah. The glory of the telly.

• 1:47:34Speaker 04

  Not that I, you know, I love Blur, but I just, it was always just like this, this is instantly awesome. Elastica needed no explanation.

• 1:47:42Yasi Salek?

  "Stutter" is still one of my favorite songs.

• 1:47:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

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• 1:48:47Yasi Salek?

  Okay, don't worry babe, because it's March of 1994 and we have the girls and boys single. This did make a dent in America because I definitely remember, 12 years old, honey, I was glued to that K-Rock, okay? I knew what they were playing and they were absolutely playing girls and boys. I did not understand it.

• 1:49:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:49:07Yasi Salek?

  To me, it sounded, I know this is wrong and I'm sorry, but I was 12. To me, it sounded like Dramaroma.

• 1:49:12Speaker 04

  Like new romantic, like new wave stuff?

• 1:49:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, new wave. It sounded new wave.

• 1:49:17Speaker 04

  I read something that was like, it was actually specifically, the tempo is-

• 1:49:21Yasi Salek?

  Yes, 120 beats per minute. The disco tempo.

• 1:49:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:49:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Whereas like house music was 130 and Happy Mondays was like 100.

• 1:49:28Speaker 04

  So this is also one of those Damon songs that you can just listen to superficially and be like, blah, blah, blah, get to the chorus and then everybody sings the chorus. But then you can also listen to it as like, oh, the thing he's writing about is actually, he's actually making fun of the act of liking a song like this in some ways.

• 1:49:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, he's making fun of like, that's what's challenging about the code switching and the- And the viewpoint shifting, whatever, because it's like, are you a little bit punching down? Because you're making fun of these people.

• 1:50:04Speaker 04

  Who go to Ibiza.

• 1:50:04Yasi Salek?

  Who go to Ibiza and like want to party and like fuck each other, you know? He said, I went on a holiday with Justine last summer to, I think it was Mallorca.

• 1:50:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:50:13Yasi Salek?

  And the place was just equally divided between cafes, serving up full English breakfast and really tacky Essex nightclubs. There's a very strong sexuality about it. I just love the whole idea of it, to be honest. I love herds. All these blokes and all these girls. Is a bloke and a lad the same?

• 1:50:28Speaker 04

  As a bloke is just a guy, yeah.

• 1:50:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Meeting at the watering hole and then just copulating. There's no morality involved. I'm not saying it should or shouldn't happen. My mind's just getting more dirty. I can't help it. Copulating, you say.

• 1:50:40Speaker 04

  Yeah. But, okay, you can, and you can critique that because you can be like, oh, are you, does this all interest you, like on a safari?

• 1:50:47Yasi Salek?

  Like zoo animals? Yeah.

• 1:50:48Speaker 04

  But you could also be like, this is kind of like a JG Ballard way of like looking at like British society and like their rituals.

• 1:50:58Yasi Salek?

  I find girls and boys really interesting on a different level because there is a really thrown off observation in, this is in John Harris's really great Britpop book, where it's like, just like, he interviews a lot of people and also compiles, you know, interviews and stuff, but basically talk about all these bands. Just like a thrown off quote from Justine Freshman, where she mentions that when she first started dating Damon, he started sleeping with men also.

• 1:51:25Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:51:26Yasi Salek?

  And then there is confirmation of this later in a short-lived, actually, I think it still exists, so it's not short-lived. The short-lived part was that it was supposed to be a joke and then it just became what it was making fun of, which was that magazine Loaded. Do you know these magazines?

• 1:51:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:51:40Yasi Salek?

  It was made by James Brown, who was like an NME and Melody Maker writer, to be like a sort of like making fun of lad culture.

• 1:51:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:51:48Yasi Salek?

  But it ended up just becoming a maxim.

• 1:51:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:51:50Yasi Salek?

  But there's an interview with Damon Albarn and they just asked this, you know, most disgusting, like, how often do you jerk off questions?

• 1:51:56Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:51:56Yasi Salek?

  Because he was a lad. And like, asked him if he's ever like had, you know, bisexual experience. And he was like, yeah. And I was like, okay, now girls and boys is put into a little bit of a different light. He's not a personal songwriter though, at this point, so.

• 1:52:11Speaker 04

  No, not as much.

• 1:52:12Yasi Salek?

  I'm simply being titillating.

• 1:52:14Speaker 04

  Also, like, you can, if you know the biography and you know, like, the details of different things, you can find out, like, oh, well. To the end is about Justine or whatever.

• 1:52:23Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:52:23Speaker 04

  But like, you know, you have to actually like.

• 1:52:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, you have to do detective work.

• 1:52:27Speaker 04

  To know that.

• 1:52:28Yasi Salek?

  I did, but don't you worry. This is a major hit.

• 1:52:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:52:32Yasi Salek?

  Girls and Boys, number five. It's the, I think, the highest they've hit. Top five. Big deal.

• 1:52:40Speaker 04

  I think if you were doing Britpop top five, like songs that have lasted, is Girls and Boys up there with like Common People and.

• 1:52:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:50Speaker 04

  Live Forever.

• 1:52:51Yasi Salek?

  This is where it gets a little confusing and hairy to me. Girls and Boys is a disco song.

• 1:52:59Speaker 04

  So is Common People.

• 1:53:00Yasi Salek?

  So is Common People, kind of, right? Wonderwall.

• 1:53:04Speaker 04

  It's like a soft rock folk ballad, yeah.

• 1:53:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and Live Forever, you know, like, what does Britpop mean?

• 1:53:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:53:11Yasi Salek?

  It's a group of people, right?

• 1:53:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:53:13Yasi Salek?

  It's a scene. It's not a genre.

• 1:53:15Speaker 04

  It's like two dozen bands in the early to mid 90s to the end of the 90s, I think.

• 1:53:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:20Speaker 04

  Essentially.

• 1:53:21Yasi Salek?

  But it's not, but it's not really stylistic.

• 1:53:26Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:53:27Yasi Salek?

  If you wanted to be like pedantic, I feel like you could make the argument that the only Britpop bands are like Pulp and Blur.

• 1:53:34Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:53:35Yasi Salek?

  And maybe even mostly Blur, whose thematic concerns are England.

• 1:53:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:53:41Yasi Salek?

  And Pulp to an extent too, right? And I'm probably, I don't know, I'm not really sure what Lush's songs are about and nobody knows what My Bloody Valentine is talking about.

• 1:53:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, those songs are like way more opaque.

• 1:53:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. So I find that that's kind of interesting.

• 1:53:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think that this song is just, it just goes.

• 1:53:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's undeniable.

• 1:53:59Speaker 04

  Chorus.

• 1:54:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:00Speaker 04

  Um, that you can, you can see like thousands of people singing along to.

• 1:54:14Speaker 04

  It's funny now that they've reunited a couple of times and that their catalog has gone through different reconsiderations.

• 1:54:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:21Speaker 04

  That there are other songs from their discography or from their musical output that have clearly eclipsed Girls and Boys.

• 1:54:29Yasi Salek?

  Like Woohoo?

• 1:54:31Speaker 04

  Well, that, but also like the Universal and like other songs that have like, kind of like, just eclipsed this.

• 1:54:37Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:54:37Speaker 04

  But they still have to like play it. But they don't like, I don't think contractually, like, I don't think you would go to a Blur concert if they didn't play Girls and Boys. You'd be like, I want my money back.

• 1:54:47Yasi Salek?

  I might because I, you know, I'm not really like a deep Blur fan.

• 1:54:51Speaker 04

  But you could, you could make the argument that like, this is sort of like their fake plastic trees.

• 1:54:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, in my experience, personal experience with Blur, I would expect this and song two, because those were the songs that hit when I was young.

• 1:55:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:55:06Yasi Salek?

  And then I kind of didn't keep up with the Blur'ses, the Joneses. I'm sorry.

• 1:55:11Speaker 04

  The Damons.

• 1:55:11Yasi Salek?

  The Damons. This is for my Guitar Center hats.

• 1:55:15Speaker 04

  My Sam Ash guys.

• 1:55:16Yasi Salek?

  My Sam Ash guys. So Graham said, I wanted to put some irksomeness, to your point earlier about how Graham's constantly just trying to like fuck up their pop music. I wanted to put some irksomeness into the chord progression. That was my job, to cut across the flow of Alex's chic style bassline. He was sort of sister sledgeing out, and I was trying to add a wire like guitar mark, taking the mickie out of the fact that we were practically playing a disco tune. The first chord is disrupted, so it transforms from major to minor. It's a very jarring contrary part to start with, which shifts to a C major seventh, which is like a jazz chord, and then into an ordinary seventh. Everything I just said right there, I have, it could, might as well be Croatian, because I have no idea what it is, but I know some of you at home will be like, wow, is that what it is?

• 1:56:02Speaker 04

  Well, he's at war with this song. Like, you can, if the more you listen to this, you're like, even if you were gonna do cool slashing Gang of Four wire guitars.

• 1:56:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:13Speaker 04

  Someone else would have played it a little straighter, and he's like, I'm trying to yank this song off the charts.

• 1:56:26Yasi Salek?

  I think this is really where you see Graham's genius. Like, I hadn't thought about it before because I, you know, I'm not really versed in instrument and notes, but without what he's just described, it would be such a boring song.

• 1:56:42Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's also, his guitar is a character in the song.

• 1:56:45Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:56:45Speaker 04

  Because if you just like are listening to Damon, he sounds snotty, but he sounds like he's basically like, I like to get drunk and fuck.

• 1:56:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:53Speaker 04

  And then Graham is like, there's something depraved and solace about what we're singing about.

• 1:56:59Yasi Salek?

  Totally. That is a little bit of a foreshadowing because Graham is also the one of the band who ends up dating, Joe Johnson from Huggy Bear, Riot Girl Band, and has like actually a completely anti-lad stance. And increasingly grows more despondent.

• 1:57:14Speaker 04

  And this is, this is what happened to a lot of these bands, British and American, where it's like a single breaks containment.

• 1:57:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:21Speaker 04

  And you're like, oh, this song that like is not for these guys who were singing this back in my face are now singing this back in my face.

• 1:57:28Yasi Salek?

  Which is different than American, right?

• 1:57:29Speaker 04

  Damon definitely wanted it.

• 1:57:30Yasi Salek?

  I mean, and they all wanted it, right? I mean, you want to be in a band.

• 1:57:33Speaker 04

  But you know who likes this song is the blokes.

• 1:57:35Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:57:36Speaker 04

  Who are copulating.

• 1:57:37Yasi Salek?

  The Essex, the same exact Essex club kids that like, I learned a thing, apparently at that time, the girls that would, this kind of woman wore white stiletto high heels.

• 1:57:46Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:57:46Yasi Salek?

  It's like a dig. Like even Justine Freshman says at one point, like, well, I thought Damon should have just gone with one of those white stiletto heel wearing girls. And I was like, I didn't know this was such a thing. The fashion things are so interesting. Okay, Park Life, babe. Let's fucking go.

• 1:58:01Speaker 04

  Your resistance is futile. You invited me on to Band Splain to talk about my beloved Blur and I feel like this is, there's one album that I say is their best.

• 1:58:10Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:58:10Speaker 04

  And there's another album that goes into the museum and it's like, this is what Blur did.

• 1:58:14Yasi Salek?

  Are you gonna tell me which one is which?

• 1:58:16Speaker 04

  Park Life is the album that goes in the museum.

• 1:58:17Yasi Salek?

  The museum, the National British Museum.

• 1:58:20Speaker 04

  Yes. They go to Greece and they say, we'll take that marble.

• 1:58:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. The thing is, we're not accepting this in the Met here. It's only can go into the British Museum. How much like? Quadrophenia, do you feel like impacted this album?

• 1:58:38Speaker 04

  I think it is a compilation of British music since rock.

• 1:58:43Yasi Salek?

  Since rock, yeah.

• 1:58:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, so it's like The Jam, The Kinks, The Who.

• 1:58:46Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 1:58:47Speaker 04

  The Beatles, Stones, I guess, not so much, but definitely Sgt. Pepper.

• 1:58:52Yasi Salek?

  It's missing a little Stones.

• 1:58:53Speaker 04

  Yes, they're not a stonzy band.

• 1:58:55Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 1:58:55Speaker 04

  For sure.

• 1:58:56Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 1:58:56Speaker 04

  There's not a lot of blues in their music at this point.

• 1:58:58Yasi Salek?

  Or like libido.

• 1:59:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, but it's also like a time when Britain was part of Europe and like there's a little bit of like French.

• 1:59:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, pre-Brexit.

• 1:59:10Speaker 04

  You're, you've really got a soft touch, you know?

• 1:59:14Yasi Salek?

  It's me tipping my, doffing my cap.

• 1:59:17Speaker 04

  Do you find it complicated to address albums that are regarded as masterpieces when you don't see them as such?

• 1:59:23Yasi Salek?

  Complicated is not the right word. I just feel like, I feel at a loss because I'm like, shit, maybe I'm not the one to, to like take it on in that sense. I feel really American. I feel like really like hamstrung by my Americanness here.

• 1:59:37Speaker 04

  Here, we talked about, we talked about Girls and Boys.

• 1:59:39Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:59:39Speaker 04

  And we were like, that's a banger no matter what language you speak.

• 1:59:42Yasi Salek?

  Right, which that was on purpose, I think. That was by design.

• 1:59:44Speaker 04

  End of Century is a really good example.

• 1:59:46Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:47Speaker 04

  Of incredibly tuneful song that opens with an image that I don't think you'd find in a lot of American music, for instance, which is like these ants in the carpet.

• 2:00:00Yasi Salek?

  Unless you're at my house.

• 2:00:01Speaker 04

  Sure, but like even like that observation.

• 2:00:04Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:00:04Speaker 04

  And that, I think that observation was like Justine and Damon's apartment had ants, or their flat.

• 2:00:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:09Speaker 04

  Had ants.

• 2:00:09Yasi Salek?

  They're flat, yeah.

• 2:00:17Speaker 04

  It is incredibly British, is like the imagery, the sensibility, the sense of humor, the characters that he.

• 2:00:25Speaker 04

  Inhabits and portrays, or has other people's voice.

• 2:00:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:29Speaker 04

  It's just something about it is like transporting to me, but maybe it's a block to others.

• 2:00:34Yasi Salek?

  Look, I recognize that it's such a good album, right? Like, there's two kinds of experiences for me with music where like, I'm like, mm, objectively good. And then there's also, there's like objectively good, I love, and then the third secret thing, which is obviously not objectively good, but I love it.

• 2:00:52Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:00:54Yasi Salek?

  And this, it just doesn't, it doesn't totally hit for me. I think it's not just the like, oi wanker, you know, like, put on the telly or whatever. It's, I've, for the most part, with very few exceptions, have trouble connecting with music that is not vulnerable and lyrics that are a third person and storytelling. It's never really been my thing.

• 2:01:15Speaker 04

  That actually is usually, I, I find that difficult sometimes with like, some really vaunted American folk country songwriters, like his portraits of characters on the outskirts of society. I'm like, I would just prefer like, you just sing from like that perspective.

• 2:01:30Yasi Salek?

  Like, who does that? Like Bob Dylan.

• 2:01:32Speaker 05

  Hollis Brown, he lived on the outside of town.

• 2:01:37Speaker 04

  You don't find this vulnerable?

• 2:01:39Yasi Salek?

  Not till we get further on in the discography.

• 2:01:42Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:01:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Cause Pavement is a good comparison, right?

• 2:01:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, but you recognize Pavement's DNA, though.

• 2:01:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:50Speaker 04

  Suburban Californian.

• 2:01:51Yasi Salek?

  It's legible to me in a different way, but I also feel like there's an emotion in the actual music that I pick up on, that I don't pick up on in this music, except for when they do balladry.

• 2:02:02Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:02:03Yasi Salek?

  Which is the parts that do resonate with me, like the end of the century.

• 2:02:07Speaker 04

  This is a low.

• 2:02:08Yasi Salek?

  To the end, I like, yeah. Damon himself said that the thing you've got to understand about Blur is that there's not an ounce of rock and roll in us, not any. And I wanted to ask you what you thought about that. Cause for this album, I was like, well, yes.

• 2:02:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I would say not to jump too far ahead of ourselves, but the time when I felt like they tried that, they were very successful.

• 2:02:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:31Speaker 04

  On self-titled, but you can tell.

• 2:02:35Speaker 04

  They're trying it on like a costume.

• 2:02:36Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:02:37Speaker 04

  You know what I mean? Now, they've kind of let the handbrake off of Graham too, to like do his thing on that record. But it's almost crucial to understand them as pop, not as rock.

• 2:02:47Yasi Salek?

  No, totally.

• 2:02:47Speaker 04

  And as something that's being shot through the lens of no matter what contributions other songwriters in the band are making. This is like kind of Damon's musical theater vision in a lot of ways that is getting translated through like Bowie and Ray Davies maybe, but not through swagger and rock, which is what makes the Oasis comparison so, I think, contentious and like

• 2:03:09Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:03:09Speaker 04

  and intense.

• 2:03:10Yasi Salek?

  I'll do you one better. I feel like it's crucial to view them through the lens of art.

• 2:03:16Speaker 04

  Like the art world.

• 2:03:17Yasi Salek?

  They're literally making-

• 2:03:18Speaker 04

  Like fine arts.

• 2:03:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, they're making art. Like, this is like a statement, right? This, like, you can see this as Damon really thinking like, I'm making this like an artistic thesis statement about, we've already talked about it with Modern Life is Rubbish, but like, it really crystallizes here, like, fuck grunge, fuck-

• 2:03:40Speaker 04

  America.

• 2:03:40Yasi Salek?

  Fuck America and fuck the foisting of American culture onto us. It's like, we're drowning in it and I don't want it anymore. What happened to the greatness of Britain? And really like going hard in there. And in that sense, I respect it so much because also, again, they're like 24. Like, to have this kind of like vision at 24. And, you know, there's a couple times in the future where like, people say like, oh, he was so prescient to like predict Britpop. And it's like, that's a disservice. Like, he architected Britpop.

• 2:04:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:04:15Yasi Salek?

  And he didn't, he didn't foresee it. He had a huge hand in making it a thing. And that I respect immensely.

• 2:04:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, and crucially, I think Blur and Pulp looked at British culture with a highly critical eye. So like the, at the same time, while they may be celebrating certain British popular musical forms.

• 2:04:35Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:04:35Speaker 04

  And highlighting certain like cultural like rituals in England. I think that there's a lot of like disappointment and disillusionment with those same things.

• 2:04:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:49Speaker 04

  So like, these songs all have like a kind of bittersweet- And we were talking about this with girls and boys, where it's like, are you, do you wanna go follow the herd down to graze? Or are you mocking people who do it?

• 2:05:00Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:05:00Speaker 04

  And then like you get something like Parklife, which becomes like an anthem, but is also like kind of-

• 2:05:05Yasi Salek?

  Boy winker.

• 2:05:07Speaker 04

  But it's kinda taking the piss out of those people.

• 2:05:09Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:05:09Speaker 04

  And it's like, that's where there's like that, that arms-length distance.

• 2:05:21Speaker 04

  Whereas I don't think that there's really that distance on those ballads, like you're talking about.

• 2:05:25Yasi Salek?

  No, yeah, that's-

• 2:05:26Speaker 04

  I think those are always about Justine, and they're beautiful.

• 2:05:28Yasi Salek?

  And they're beautiful, exactly. It is complicated. I mean, we started to talk about this in Modern Life is Rubbish, but like, the difference, in my estimation, between Pulp and Blur is that, like we said before, like, Pulp is writing this music from within the class-esque, even though they're art school kids or whatever.

• 2:05:47Speaker 04

  They'd also been around for longer too, right?

• 2:05:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, they're older. Yeah. And Blur, I mean, Damon's writing these like pithy observations from outside. And I guess it didn't really hit me, I was watching, there's like a great documentary called Live Forever, have you seen it?

• 2:06:04Speaker 04

  The Oasis one?

• 2:06:05Yasi Salek?

  No, it's just a Britpop documentary. And it seems like it came out pretty soon, like, it's like 2000, maybe, I don't remember the- You know, so it's like, it makes, you can't, it's not available for streaming anywhere. I think it's on YouTube, that's where I watched it, but it's so great to see them, like Liam and Nolan at Damon's in it, Jarvis Cocker's in it, to see them talk about a thing that just ended, instead of like 20 years on, where they have all this like wisdom and distance or whatever. And they asked Damon about the like, writing this like mockney or whatever, and he was like, he said, "I didn't realize my flippancy was going to have such a profound of impact on my life, and I changed quite dramatically after that." Then it really made me realize a couple of things.

• 2:06:50Yasi Salek?

  One, that he was very young.

• 2:06:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:06:51Yasi Salek?

  So it's like, I don't want anyone to like, hold me to, you know, the shit I said when I had big ideas I had when I was 24. But then also understanding that like, we live in such a different world now, right? But in 94, it was like, five minutes past the 80s where like, people really looked down on the working class.

• 2:07:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:07:08Yasi Salek?

  Especially in Britain, you know, like, it was truly like, uncool and unpopular and like, uncouth, everything you could think of. They were deeply marginalized. The added layer of the voyeurism or touristing, I can see the criticism of it at the time.

• 2:07:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I think that there's an element of it where you could look at Damon's background and say, like, are you punching down? Like, when you make something like the song Parklife, which isn't like, I think it's really nuanced and it's got like, a lot of really cool lines in there and he has Phil Daniels' voice, the Cockney, like, like, verses. But even on, or in Girls and Boys, you're just like, so, are these people not allowed to fuck? Like, what are, what are, what are we doing here? Like, what are you trying to say about people who might like, enjoy a holiday or whatever?

• 2:07:53Yasi Salek?

  That's kind of why I feel like, art is the best lens to look at it through because when I was watching, I really like Mike Lee movies, but I hadn't, I hadn't really watched those really old ones, right? And I was like, it's not that different from what Mike Lee was doing, which like, you wouldn't say Mike Lee was punching down.

• 2:08:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, but Mike Lee has, like, Mike Lee can just make a movie that feels lifted and Damon Albarn has to write hits.

• 2:08:14Yasi Salek?

  But Parklife is very similar, I feel like, to what Mike Lee, it's, it's just pure observation in a way, that actually isn't, it's almost like a litmus test of your, like, prejudice.

• 2:08:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:08:26Yasi Salek?

  Of if you see it as punching down or, or, you know, like.

• 2:08:29Speaker 04

  I don't, I mean, I just, I mean, I also.

• 2:08:31Yasi Salek?

  I don't really either, like, I mean, again, I can't, I couldn't, I couldn't understand it and I'm literally an American who was born with, you know, 10 years before this came out and I.

• 2:08:39Speaker 04

  But, I mean, like, this is where we start to get into. Blur being defined by their relationship to Oasis, which

• 2:08:45Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 2:08:46Speaker 04

  Regardless of whether you think that's like a false binary, or you can have both, or whatever. At the time, I think in any other moment, Blur would have had like this open runway to kind of project what they wanted to project, but they couldn't necessarily do that because Oasis is honestly like one of the most authentic bands ever.

• 2:09:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, for better or for worse.

• 2:09:07Speaker 04

  Just literally who they are.

• 2:09:09Yasi Salek?

  Hundred percent. Couldn't even be something different if they wanted to or tried.

• 2:09:12Speaker 04

  They're just being here now.

• 2:09:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, they are rock and roll stars. They are rolling with it. All of the things that they say.

• 2:09:19Speaker 04

  I want to live forever. There's no double entendre in there. It's like, and Blur is trying to do, you know, it's a breakup song, but it's also about the weather systems over England and stuff like that.

• 2:09:31Yasi Salek?

  Blur is playing four dimensional chess.

• 2:09:32Speaker 04

  Right. Against no one, though.

• 2:09:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Well, maybe like against the world, almost.

• 2:09:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:09:38Yasi Salek?

  Anyways, it is, as a work of art, I think it's so interesting and it's so important. And I don't put it on.

• 2:09:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:09:46Yasi Salek?

  You know, I do love Anglophile and I do really love Parklife because I love that accent.

• 2:09:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:09:52Yasi Salek?

  I could listen to that man.

• 2:09:53Speaker 04

  Phil Daniels.

• 2:09:55Yasi Salek?

  Love Phil Daniels talk forever. I could listen to him talk forever. I'm obsessed.

• 2:10:06Yasi Salek?

  This was a major hit, though. Everyone loved it. 27,000 copies in its first week, which is a lot for those who

• 2:10:14Speaker 04

  For England.

• 2:10:14Yasi Salek?

  For England at the time. It outsold Pink Floyd's new album, three to one.

• 2:10:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:10:19Yasi Salek?

  To give like an understanding of how big it was. And it even hit number six of the Billboard Heat Seekers in America, which was kind of surprising.

• 2:10:27Speaker 04

  We doff our cap to them.

• 2:10:30Yasi Salek?

  Here's something really interesting, though. We're talking about The Pulp. Again, it's so, it is so funny that it ended up being Blur versus Oasis because they were the biggest and it was the easiest comparison. But again, I think it's more useful to compare Pulp and Blur. This album actually like played a great role in common people being written.

• 2:10:52Speaker 04

  Did it?

• 2:10:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. So this is what Jarvis said. "It seemed to be in the air, that kind of patronizing social voyeurism slumming it. The idea that there's a glamour about low rent, low life. I felt that off Parklife, for example. There's that noble savage notion. But if you walk around a council estate, there's plenty of savagery and not much nobility going on." Which is truly like you couldn't, you can hold it up next to Parklife. And it, I think it really proves my point, this Parklife is just not making a statement. It's just an observation, whereas Common People is like a impassioned.

• 2:11:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, Common People's narrator, the song Common People's narrator, is crucially taking part in the story.

• 2:11:32Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 2:11:33Speaker 04

  So the narrator of Common People is talking to a girl who's slumming it.

• 2:11:44Speaker 04

  You could make the argument that the Blur version of that song is written from the POV of the girl. And doesn't necessar- or like is about the girl, but has no distance of like, this is what it means, what you're doing. Do you know what I mean? Whereas like Common People is like, your dad can make this all go away.

• 2:12:01Yasi Salek?

  Well, it's emotional, it's impassioned, like the chorus of Common People, when you hear it, like you're like, ugh, like.

• 2:12:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:12:07Yasi Salek?

  You feel the like, sort of like, pain and the like pleading of the character.

• 2:12:14Speaker 04

  But it's also just like, it's so funny, because like, once things break containment, it's like, they have the same experience where like, 80,000 people in a music festival are singing Common People. And it's like, do they all understand exactly why they're singing along to this?

• 2:12:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:27Speaker 04

  You know?

• 2:12:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:36Speaker 04

  And I think that Blur runs into that too.

• 2:12:38Yasi Salek?

  Totally, totally. Well, Damon is wearing his Philatrax suits, honey, and he is wearing a gold chain and putting a gold tooth in. So, you know, he's a method actor.

• 2:12:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:12:48Yasi Salek?

  He might not have lived for two months as a hobo on the streets, but he did live for several years as a dog track-loving, uh, working-class person.

• 2:12:57Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:12:58Yasi Salek?

  Lad.

• 2:12:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:12:59Yasi Salek?

  He did cosplay as a lad for a little while.

• 2:13:00Speaker 04

  The album cover is one of those like, you, I, you can see it, like, you know, I just.

• 2:13:08Yasi Salek?

  They did really good album covers.

• 2:13:09Speaker 04

  It's such a distinctive image, because you're like, it's about competition, but it's also about savagery. So it's like, this, it just is very evocative to me.

• 2:13:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's a great, I think it might be their best album cover. No disrespect to Bingsey.

• 2:13:22Speaker 04

  I like the blurry gurney going through the ER in Unselfied.

• 2:13:26Yasi Salek?

  Unselfied, that's a good one, too. This is one thing also that Damon told Rolling Stone that I thought was really, or ID. You can talk to a yob, you know what a yob is? Yeah, should we tell the people what a yob is?

• 2:13:38Speaker 04

  It's like a working-class person.

• 2:13:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but like a lad, like a lout. Yeah, exactly. Who'll give you a bigoted, slightly racist macho view. Or you can talk to a middle-class voyeur like myself, who will try to articulate it all. The strongest thing in British culture, for better or for worse, is that the nation identifies with gangs. Understand, it's not about gangs with guns, it's gangs with cans of Lager. This kind of thing's always been around. The whole Manchester thing was exactly the same, but it's gone countrywide now. I thought that was really interesting. And you can even extrapolate it further to why they love bands so much. Because bands are gangs. It's a group, it's a gang, right? He's very self-aware.

• 2:14:13Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:14:13Yasi Salek?

  At no point is he, until later, is he like, oh, my bad, you know?

• 2:14:19Speaker 04

  Well, it's funny, because like, if you look at this period, specifically Park Life and Great Escape.

• 2:14:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:27Speaker 04

  Because on Great Escape, they kind of doubled down on the British societal observational style.

• 2:14:33Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 2:14:33Speaker 04

  In a lot of ways. It's like, what's the real Damon Albarn? Is it that? Is it, I'm wearing a thrift store t-shirt and making kind of Bowie-ish Pavement songs? Is it world music Moroccan gorillas guy?

• 2:14:48Yasi Salek?

  He went to Africa.

• 2:14:49Speaker 04

  Yeah. Is it like, what is the real Damon? Of course, it's just, they're all him, and this is just the journey that he's gone on.

• 2:14:55Yasi Salek?

  We have many selves throughout life.

• 2:14:57Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's hard to have all those selves be like on the cover of ID magazine, though.

• 2:15:01Yasi Salek?

  Right, and to be famous since you're 19.

• 2:15:03Speaker 04

  And everybody's just like, hey, remember that interview in 1994, when you said you were a voyeur? And he's just like, fuck.

• 2:15:07Yasi Salek?

  Meanwhile, Oasis is like, oi wanker, their whole entire career.

• 2:15:11Speaker 04

  They're literally doing the same interview now.

• 2:15:13Yasi Salek?

  I got nicer parkas, bitch. Fuck you, I'm rich. My takeaway for everyone from this is that you should go watch the film Meantime, which is the Mike Lee movie that starred Phil Daniels and also a very young Gary Oldman and Tim Roth, that Graham and Damon were obsessed with, which is how they end up getting Phil Daniels to do Park Life. It's a good movie.

• 2:15:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:15:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:39Yasi Salek?

  You got 20 quid. Why, if you're in your dreams, you ain't got 20 pence. It really reminds you that they don't leave any space in movies anymore for you to have any emotions or thoughts. I was like, wow, that's why I don't go to the movies that often. One other, like, just tiny tid for my, like, fun fact lovers at home.

• 2:15:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:15:58Yasi Salek?

  Clover Over Dover, which I actually do like that song, I will say.

• 2:16:01Speaker 04

  It's about suicide, right?

• 2:16:02Yasi Salek?

  I did not know that. Is that what it's about?

• 2:16:04Speaker 04

  Isn't it like rolling off the cliffs?

• 2:16:05Yasi Salek?

  Yes, yes, correct. That's not the fun fact, though. That's a fact. The fun fact is that the song starts with seagull sounds that come from Steven Street's BBC Sound Effects CD, which he got from Morrissey, because Morrissey used it a bunch on Meat is Murder and also on the song Last Night I Drum Somebody Loved Me.

• 2:16:32Yasi Salek?

  Okay, for, like, it's a little "Why are you so obsessed with me?" Do you know what I mean? Like, there's a song about America on every Blur album. The tone changes.

• 2:16:40Speaker 04

  Oh, the "Look Inside America and See She's Alright," like in a later record.

• 2:16:45Yasi Salek?

  Right, exactly. I'm like, oh, the tides have turned. But the "Magic America" is just a straight-up "Fuck You, America" song.

• 2:16:59Speaker 04

  To the End features Letitia Sadié.

• 2:17:01Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 2:17:01Speaker 04

  Her vocal performance is beautiful on, uh...

• 2:17:04Yasi Salek?

  You know, on the demo, it was just...

• 2:17:06Speaker 04

  Disgusting.

• 2:17:06Yasi Salek?

  And then they had, um, Francois Hardy do it.

• 2:17:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:17:10Yasi Salek?

  And there is a version of it out there. They put it on, like, the French B-side or whatever.

• 2:17:15Speaker 04

  Just, like...

• 2:17:16Yasi Salek?

  I'm like, was Francois Hardy not good enough?

• 2:17:18Speaker 04

  I know. I was like, is Justin Frishman not good enough?

• 2:17:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:20Speaker 04

  Although I guess that's a little bit rumors-y to have Justin Frishman sing a song about the end of a relationship.

• 2:17:26Yasi Salek?

  Maybe they just wanted, like, a real French person?

• 2:17:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:17:31Speaker 04

  Well, they got one.

• 2:17:31Yasi Salek?

  They got one.

• 2:17:32Speaker 04

  Singer Stereo Lab. It's about as good as you can get.

• 2:17:34Yasi Salek?

  It's pretty good.

• 2:17:41Yasi Salek?

  I just wanted to read you the opening to the Melody Maker review of this album.

• 2:17:45Speaker 04

  They liked it, right?

• 2:17:46Yasi Salek?

  They did like it.

• 2:17:48Speaker 04

  It's always funny when you go back and you're like, oh, I bet Spin or NME like just lost their minds over this and they're like, seven out of 10.

• 2:17:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, NME liked it.

• 2:17:59Speaker 04

  Be good.

• 2:17:59Yasi Salek?

  Melody Maker kind of like called them out.

• 2:18:02Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:18:03Yasi Salek?

  On the like

• 2:18:04Speaker 04

  The class stuff.

• 2:18:04Yasi Salek?

  wanker. Strike a like Govna for their third album, Blur, the Bin Laden's favorites have gone all London. It's like written in Cockney, like.

• 2:18:16Speaker 04

  But you're reading it like you're from Orange County.

• 2:18:18Yasi Salek?

  I'm reading it like Foghorn Leghorn. Like no matter when I try to do an accent, I sound like some bizarre cartoon character that like no one has ever spoken like this in the world, which is why I'm not an actor.

• 2:18:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:18:28Yasi Salek?

  He basically says that like, he points out all of their influences, right? The Kinks, Alfie, Madness. And then he's basically like, I don't like this. It doesn't do anything for me.

• 2:18:39Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:18:40Yasi Salek?

  Which is interesting. Simon Price is who wrote it. And he was like, maybe it's because I'm not from London. Like, I can't get it.

• 2:18:44Speaker 04

  Did he say that?

• 2:18:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:45Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 2:18:46Yasi Salek?

  NME just called it a great pop record. They liked it. The LA Times gave it three and a half stars.

• 2:18:50Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 2:18:51Yasi Salek?

  It was nice.

• 2:18:52Speaker 04

  Los Angeles Times.

• 2:18:53Yasi Salek?

  Gregory Cott of the Chicago Tribune, also three and a half stars.

• 2:18:56Speaker 04

  It's a very dense record. So like, it's a good critics record because you can just like get really lost in those lyrics.

• 2:19:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:19:01Speaker 04

  There's a lot of like hook under a hook.

• 2:19:04Yasi Salek?

  And they love to be like, I hear the kinks, you know?

• 2:19:07Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 2:19:07Yasi Salek?

  You know what a music writer loves to say?

• 2:19:08Speaker 04

  I'm still doing it today.

• 2:19:10Yasi Salek?

  I hear the kinks here, bitch.

• 2:19:14Yasi Salek?

  August of 94, post Parklife, the glow of Parklife is still settling in. Oasis released their first album, definitely, maybe. Fucking great album, I must say.

• 2:19:24Speaker 04

  It's a great album.

• 2:19:24Yasi Salek?

  It's a great album. Here's where we can talk a bit about Lading. Ladder, Lattery. And for producer Justin, who demanded that we define bloke versus lad and I've tried to explain, a bloke is a guy. All lads are blokes, but not all blokes are lads.

• 2:19:40Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 2:19:41Yasi Salek?

  It's that simple. Vox magazine asked Liam, they were like

• 2:19:46Speaker 04

  I remember Vox.

• 2:19:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Basically about ladding. And he was like, being a lad is what I'm all about. Define lad? I don't define anything. I'm just me and I know I'm a lad. I can tell you who isn't a lad. Anyone from fucking Blur. Nobody, just shots fired.

• 2:20:00Speaker 04

  No sub tweets there.

• 2:20:01Yasi Salek?

  No, yeah. While Blur might not be lads, their fans definitely are becoming in the ranks. Yeah, lots, lots of lads. Until it becomes teenage girls, which we're not there yet, but it does become like a sea of teenage girls. Late 94 is also when Elastica is like really cooking. Like they have like a few top 10 hits, Lineup, Connection, like it's off.

• 2:20:22Speaker 04

  And they're really big in America.

• 2:20:23Yasi Salek?

  And they're really big in America.

• 2:20:24Speaker 04

  Or big-ish. They've had some hits.

• 2:20:26Yasi Salek?

  They're definitely more known to me than Oasis at that time.

• 2:20:30Speaker 04

  Sure. Stutter and Connection were on MTV, yeah.

• 2:20:32Yasi Salek?

  And, and definitely maybe it was on MTV.

• 2:20:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:20:35Yasi Salek?

  But I don't remember it as much.

• 2:20:37Speaker 04

  Blur had walled off America. Like I think Girls and Boys was like a hit here to.

• 2:20:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that was on, that was on alternative rock radio.

• 2:20:44Speaker 04

  But I don't remember any of these other songs from Parklife making it. And certainly not from Great Escape.

• 2:20:50Yasi Salek?

  No, because they kind of tripled down on the Lori and the Telly and the White Winker. Britpop is popping. Can we agree?

• 2:20:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:20:57Yasi Salek?

  This is at the time where you can like pretty much clearly say like, we have an Oasis album, we have several Blur albums. Parklife is like the Britpop album. Suede is doing well. Pulp is doing well. Supergas has put out their first single, which is not the big one, but Caught by the Fuzz, it's Caught by the Fuzz. Oh yeah, Ash. There's a lot of, I can't even get into like the 70,000 also rans.

• 2:21:21Speaker 04

  I was a big fan of Kneiki.

• 2:21:23Yasi Salek?

  Sure, Kneiki. It's kind of what happened with us after post Nirvana.

• 2:21:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:21:27Yasi Salek?

  Where like you have a million.

• 2:21:29Speaker 04

  The gold rush.

• 2:21:30Yasi Salek?

  Also rans, yeah.

• 2:21:31Speaker 04

  They're going around, they're trying to find, oh, menswear, here's a four album deal, yeah.

• 2:21:34Yasi Salek?

  Right. Menswear is a really funny story. They got a lot of money.

• 2:21:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:21:38Yasi Salek?

  They asked like five million dollars, something insane like that. No, half a million. And they got it. Then did they even make a mark out here? No.

• 2:21:45Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 2:21:45Yasi Salek?

  No. Okay. Blur's vibes start to turn extremely bad because of all the fame. Except for with Alex. Damon's fully starts having panic attacks.

• 2:21:58Speaker 05

  I started getting panic attacks and I was just, it was bad during the day and great at night because I'd just drink and then I'd have a great night. But then I'd wake up and it would be even worse the next day. So, you know.

• 2:22:07Yasi Salek?

  Graham is dating Joe Johnson from Huggy Bear, a Riot Girl band, who is absolutely like, "Oh, you're having champagne at the Groucho Bar? Cool." And she, we need to actually doff our cap to her because she's the one that put Graham on to Nation of Ulysses, to Pavement, to Fugazi, to Rights of Spring, to Slant Six.

• 2:22:30Speaker 04

  And he was out of Blur in four years.

• 2:22:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, well, not before he took that shit and shoved it into self-titled and we got a great album.

• 2:22:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:22:38Yasi Salek?

  Without that, we'd have four more Lori albums.

• 2:22:41Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:22:42Yasi Salek?

  Four more.

• 2:22:43Speaker 04

  Well, I don't know. That's a really good, that's a good counterfactual is like, were it not for Graham's increasing disillusionment and then Damon's like, "I'm reading The Market and we can't keep doing this."

• 2:22:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:54Speaker 04

  Like how, where would they have gone after Great Escape, after they had sort of finished the trilogy?

• 2:22:59Yasi Salek?

  To be generous to Damon, it wasn't even like, "I'm reading The Market," although it was because people literally hated him. We'll get into that. It's actually respectfully for his feelings. It's very funny, the way that people were so mean to him.

• 2:23:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:23:11Yasi Salek?

  He just was like, "I don't want to make another Britpop album." To like be a Graham head, what album would you have made without Graham there being like, "I want to not tune my guitar."

• 2:23:23Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:23:24Yasi Salek?

  Steven Street would go in at night and tune his guitar. Anyways, we're getting ahead.

• 2:23:28Speaker 04

  This is just a great time to be a music fan, by the way.

• 2:23:30Yasi Salek?

  It's so great.

• 2:23:31Speaker 04

  The cool thing was, is like now, everything is really, really mediated and obviously access is like much more restrictive or sort of organized by the artists themselves and produced by the artists themselves. These guys were like usually three sheets to the wind, constantly talking about one another. Like I know that they probably go back now and they're like, "It was a false binary and we never wanted to be pitted against one another." But like, they did a very good job doing that for the music press. Now, I'm sure the music press would show up and they'd be like half in the bag and they'd be like Oasis and they'd be like, "Fuck those guys."

• 2:24:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:08Speaker 04

  But it was like. It was a soap opera.

• 2:24:11Yasi Salek?

  It was amazing.

• 2:24:12Speaker 04

  And it was, it was honestly like a really smart way of, as a, as a fan at that time, like I would religiously buy these newspapers every week. But then would find out about the 11 other bands because I bought it to hear Liam be like, anything that is about Blur is bullshit.

• 2:24:32Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:24:32Speaker 04

  And then it would be like, oh, the third review in the review section is about, I don't know, like, I'm sure the timing wise, this isn't right, but like, Ursay Yetzorah. And I'd be like, that band's sick.

• 2:24:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:42Speaker 04

  So that's, that's how I found a lot of bands back then.

• 2:24:44Yasi Salek?

  We used to be a proper country. And by country, I mean world.

• 2:24:48Speaker 04

  Western world.

• 2:24:49Yasi Salek?

  Yes, western world.

• 2:24:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:24:50Yasi Salek?

  Also, it's worth pointing out that we're at 95, top of 95 right now. Oasis and Blur have not really made it in America. Blur absolutely not really at all, except for Girls and Boys a little bit. Oasis is like creeping.

• 2:25:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:25:04Yasi Salek?

  But they're not made it. Like, they don't consider-

• 2:25:06Speaker 04

  Cigarettes and alcohol and Live Forever are kind of like rock hits, but these, they're like playing the whiskey and a mess.

• 2:25:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:12Speaker 04

  And like not doing well when they come over here, right?

• 2:25:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, exactly. Meanwhile, you know who's doing extremely big in America? Bush. 16 Stone came out in 94. Bush is like, according to my British sources, who were there, boots on the ground at the time, they're like, we don't know her. Like Bush, no impact in England, no impact in the UK. Like, nobody cared about them. So huge in America. Like, I think 16 Stone went like six times platinum or something.

• 2:25:42Speaker 04

  I'm sure.

• 2:25:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And Radiohead, who are on the same label. Radiohead are doing numbers at this point. Creep is already out, Creep's 93.

• 2:25:48Speaker 04

  And then Fake Plastic Trees is like 95, I think.

• 2:25:50Yasi Salek?

  Yes, so that, now they're like kind of cooking with gas. And Radiohead had sort of a presence in both places. Like, Radiohead was known-

• 2:25:58Speaker 04

  The Benz was big in England.

• 2:25:59Yasi Salek?

  The Benz is big in England. We also have like a PJ Harvey going on this whole time. Like, there's other, you know, British artists that are outside of Red Pump. Damon does an interview where he like-

• 2:26:13Yasi Salek?

  To your point, just like publicly-

• 2:26:16Speaker 04

  Slags them off.

• 2:26:17Yasi Salek?

  Slags off Brett Anderson for doing too much heroin.

• 2:26:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:26:22Yasi Salek?

  And Justine was mad about that. It didn't- they're all kind of literally feuding. Oasis do talk-

• 2:26:29Speaker 04

  And sleeping with each other.

• 2:26:30Yasi Salek?

  And sleeping with each other.

• 2:26:30Speaker 04

  And hanging out.

• 2:26:31Yasi Salek?

  And hanging out at the same bar. Yeah, exactly. "You want a little more Oasis? Here it is. January, Select Magazine. Have you seen the bona fide lad experience, Oasis?" Damon. "I've actually never seen them play. Something to listen to when you're out of your face on a Saturday night, and you can't get better than that, can you?" Alex. "We did a radio show with them in San Francisco. They did an acoustic set and it was really good. Quite touching and beautiful. Damon thought it was wank." Damon. "I never! I thought it was good." So Blur is very nice about Oasis until the gloves kind of come off.

• 2:27:02Speaker 04

  Until they're not.

• 2:27:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Well, they're kind of forced into. "The Brit Awards are in February of 95. This is a huge turning point because they win four awards. What is your understanding of the Brit Awards? Because I had to do some asking questions about this."

• 2:27:15Speaker 04

  That it's like very important to the musicians, but they- it's got the sobriety of like an even more fucked up Golden Globes.

• 2:27:22Yasi Salek?

  It's like the Grammys, though. It's a huge-

• 2:27:24Speaker 04

  It's a huge deal, but they will get up on stage after having drank $3 of wine.

• 2:27:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, they're crazy there, for sure. Yes, I see the sobriety. Yes. But I think my point is like it's a nationally televised, like if you're getting four awards, if you're getting Best Band of the Year at the Brit Awards, you're proper famous.

• 2:27:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:27:40Yasi Salek?

  Like, everyone is gonna know who you are. You're a pop star.

• 2:27:42Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:27:43Yasi Salek?

  And they won four awards, which is a lot. And when they got British Group of the Year, Damon got on stage and said, "I think this should be shared with Oasis." What a lovely man.

• 2:27:53Speaker 04

  And there was no sarcasm?

• 2:27:54Yasi Salek?

  No, he was being dead serious.

• 2:27:56Speaker 04

  I think this should have been shared with Oasis.

• 2:28:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, much love and respect to them.

• 2:28:02Yasi Salek?

  This is before Blur turns on Oasis. Like, Oasis won Newcomer of the Year. Meanwhile, Oasis had mixed responses. Noel, to his credit, made everyone at the Brit Awards get up and dance at his table- they have tables- get up and dance to Girls and Boys when Blur performed it. And he told a journalist that same night, "If we'd have won that- None of our lot would have said what he did. Our lot would have said, fuck the lot of you. What Blur did was a great gesture and I want to go on record saying that it's us and them now against the world. Liam was not exactly as gracious.

• 2:28:33Speaker 04

  He wasn't on that email.

• 2:28:34Yasi Salek?

  He wasn't on, he didn't get CC'd on that memo. Graham was like, I was sitting right next to Liam, who was just being provocative and trying to intimidate us all night. Every time we came back from the stage with another one, he'd glare at me and say, you fucking look me in the eye and tell me you deserve that award. And then he'd make to hit you. It was a weird enough night without him fucking going on. I just love Graham, who's just like, clearly such like a sweet, soft spoken, shy. Dating a riot girl, like, kind of like with Liam going, I'll fucking hit you in your fucking face. You don't deserve that fucking award. Graham's like, oh god, I don't want to be famous. I don't want Liam Gallagher yelling at me. I gotta get out of here. April of 95 is when the big feud begins. Oasis, really, some might say.

• 2:29:15Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:29:16Yasi Salek?

  Major single, hits number one.

• 2:29:25Yasi Salek?

  They throw a party at Mars Bar in Soho. Damon's like, I'll go. Show a little support for the, for the lads.

• 2:29:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:29:32Yasi Salek?

  Zipped up his feel jacket, shined up the gold tooth. Oy wanka, I'm on my way. And here's what happened. Damon said, as I went in, Liam was at the door and he came right over to me, right in my face, going, number fucking one, mate. Good luck to them, you know, they'd gotten their first number one. There was something weird about the naked ambition in his eyes. They had a kerfuffle, basically.

• 2:29:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:29:56Yasi Salek?

  Also, the same night, Damon, I just read this, I have no way to corroborate it.

• 2:30:02Speaker 04

  You did not fact check this.

• 2:30:02Yasi Salek?

  There's no way to fact check this. I mean, unless we can get Liam on the, on the horn. Apparently Damon had a dalliance with Liam's girlfriend at the time, at this party. And that also just-

• 2:30:11Speaker 04

  So he's still with Justine?

• 2:30:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but they had an open relationship. That's kind of the whole thing of their relationship, was it was open.

• 2:30:17Speaker 04

  Very modern.

• 2:30:18Yasi Salek?

  Very modern. I think Justine said something to the effect of, there was no other option.

• 2:30:22Speaker 04

  Like it was either be with Damon in an open relationship or don't be with Damon?

• 2:30:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah. Also, it's not happened yet, but at some point, Elastig is on tour for a year. Like, the whole year they're gone, so it doesn't really make sense.

• 2:30:33Speaker 04

  Emailing each other to Hotmail accounts?

• 2:30:34Yasi Salek?

  Literally, they're at the internet cafe. So some bad blood has brewed because Liam Gallagher loves to be angry and contentious at anybody and at everybody. The tone is soured between the two of them. It's also bad blood between Blur and Pulp later because Steve Mackey did sleep with Alex James's on again, off again girlfriend, Justine Andrews.

• 2:30:59Speaker 04

  There's like 13 people in this country.

• 2:31:00Yasi Salek?

  There's 13 people in this country and they just can't find anyone else to have sex with, to shag in the parlance of the country. The Mile End Show, you know about this?

• 2:31:09Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:31:10Yasi Salek?

  This is kind of like, I hate to say it because it once again shows the binary and the rivalry, but this is Blur's Nebworth before Oasis does Nebworth and kind of blows them out of the water because Nebworth is bigger. But they do this big show, June 95 in Mile End Stadium. They handpicked their openers, the Boo Radleys, that band, The Cardiacs, Sparks, Wire, and a band called Dodgy and the Shinnakes.

• 2:31:32Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:31:32Yasi Salek?

  That's Eddie Dietz again, the acting school friend from the first iteration of Circus.

• 2:31:38Speaker 04

  Huge look for him.

• 2:31:38Yasi Salek?

  Huge look. Wire get fully booed offstage by the lads. They did not want Wire.

• 2:31:44Speaker 04

  I want Wire.

• 2:31:44Yasi Salek?

  That's how laddy is. I know. But the lads are like, football, Blur, Parklife. They play country house for the first time at this show. It gets such a huge response. They kind of decide to put, they weren't going to put it out.

• 2:31:57Speaker 04

  They were going to do stereotypes as the first thing, right?

• 2:31:59Yasi Salek?

  Yes. But they were like, oh, we're going to do this. And thus, another butterfly effect begins, babe.

• 2:32:14Yasi Salek?

  Here's where everyone is a little bit a liar.

• 2:32:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:32:18Yasi Salek?

  Not everyone. Oasis, actually, once again, they don't really lie. They're just like, this is what we did. Ultimately, what happened is their singles come out on the same day, but they weren't supposed to. Basically, Andy Ross from the label was like, the common practice was that singles came out like three weeks before an album, right? So we presumed Creation worked on common practice and sensibility, but Creation did not work on common practice and sensibility. And they were just kind of like, like according to Tim Abbott from Creation, like he's like, we just, whenever something was ready, we put it out. There was no real planning of that. So they were gonna release "Roll With It" the week before Country House? And basically, they didn't want it to come out after the Oasis single.

• 2:33:01Yasi Salek?

  He basically knew that if they were gonna move it in any way, like forward or backward, like to get further away from, Oasis would be like, fucking wankers are scared, which they would have. That's what Andy Ross said. From other sources that are quoted in these things, it sounds like Damon wanted to go up against them.

• 2:33:21Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:33:22Yasi Salek?

  And so they moved it to the same day. And it was a brilliant marketing move.

• 2:33:27Speaker 04

  I mean, the amount of interest this was driving is unfathomable.

• 2:33:31Yasi Salek?

  It was on like-

• 2:33:32Speaker 04

  The only way you could actually, I mean, it's not numerically, it's not the same, but you would have to be like, Kendrick and Drake dropped singles at the same time, you know? About, not about one another, but like, and it is a chart war. Now, we don't really even have that anymore, like, but the idea was basically like, who's gonna get to the number one single? And it's so interesting, too, because of the choice of songs. "Roll With It" is good. It's like the eighth best song on that album. Country House is so weird in retrospect, and also the video would turn off 82% of a global audience. Like, if you saw it and it's Damon dressed up as like a middle-class, middle-aged British

• 2:34:15Speaker 04

  man in the country, like an upper-class British man in the country, you'd just be like, absolutely not. You know what I mean? I have no idea what's going on here.

• 2:34:22Yasi Salek?

  That was actually Keith Allen, Lily Allen's dad.

• 2:34:23Speaker 04

  Damon's in the video, though.

• 2:34:24Yasi Salek?

  He's in the video, yeah. But the guy who's the middle-class dude running around-

• 2:34:27Speaker 04

  But isn't Damon like, walking around with a hat, kind of, in the video?

• 2:34:31Yasi Salek?

  It's like a board game.

• 2:34:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:34:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's like a board, and I think the thing about that video- Is that it was such, Damien Hirst directed it. It's full of page three girls, which for those of you that don't know.

• 2:34:44Speaker 04

  This is an incredible cultural.

• 2:34:46Yasi Salek?

  Incredible cultural thing.

• 2:34:47Speaker 04

  Thing. It still happens.

• 2:34:48Yasi Salek?

  Three of The Sun, correct? They put nudie pictures of girls who then become national.

• 2:34:54Speaker 04

  But it'll be like, the front page is some absolute fucking propaganda about.

• 2:34:59Yasi Salek?

  The Sun is a tabloid.

• 2:35:00Speaker 04

  It's, but it's like, very controversial.

• 2:35:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:35:04Speaker 04

  Some would say evil. I would, I would say evil.

• 2:35:06Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 2:35:06Speaker 04

  And then you see the front page and it's like something about Britain shame.

• 2:35:10Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:35:11Speaker 04

  And then you open the fucking paper up and it's just topless girls.

• 2:35:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:15Speaker 04

  And then you turn the page again and it's like more Britain shame.

• 2:35:18Yasi Salek?

  More Britain, yeah.

• 2:35:19Speaker 04

  It's, it is like, this is like how your brain rots is by looking at this.

• 2:35:23Yasi Salek?

  Only, only Britain has this, though. We don't even have, we don't even have a version of this.

• 2:35:27Speaker 04

  No, I'm trying to think of like, it would be like if the New York Post had nudie pictures.

• 2:35:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, kind of. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah.

• 2:35:33Speaker 04

  But even the New York Post will be like, rats in the subway. It's like, oh, I gotta see about this.

• 2:35:37Yasi Salek?

  It's almost like Borderline has like a touch of the National Enquirer. Where they like, kind of low key make stuff up, like, it's fear mongering. Yeah, yeah. It's, it's a very, it's an interesting, but.

• 2:35:47Speaker 04

  So it's a super, but everything about.

• 2:35:49Yasi Salek?

  It's not alt.

• 2:35:50Speaker 04

  The song and the video is like, makes sense to people literally in England and that's it.

• 2:35:56Yasi Salek?

  And that's it.

• 2:35:56Speaker 04

  Whereas Roll With It is like, people still whistle that to themselves doing their dishes in Peoria.

• 2:36:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:10Speaker 04

  Famously, I can't remember who said this, but Blur won the battle and lost the war.

• 2:36:14Yasi Salek?

  And lost the war. It's, it's actually crazy because there were literal, like, spreads, like betting spreads and, and projected to win was Oasis. Everyone thought Oasis was gonna win. NME thought it, whatever. And in the end, Country House won. Here's why, though. You wanna know why?

• 2:36:30Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 2:36:31Yasi Salek?

  It's actually a little bit sinister. It's something extremely 90s. Basically, Oasis put out one CD single, a seven inch and a 12 inch, which was just like classic.

• 2:36:42Speaker 04

  How the singles got released, yeah.

• 2:36:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Blur put out two CD singles and a cussingle.

• 2:36:49Speaker 04

  I see.

• 2:36:50Yasi Salek?

  They also made their CD single one pound cheaper than Oasis's. And the cussingle, because it's cheaper than a seven inch, outsold the seven inch 20 to one.

• 2:36:59Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:37:00Yasi Salek?

  They kind of gamed the system a little bit because they only-

• 2:37:03Speaker 04

  Very tortured poets department of them, yeah.

• 2:37:05Yasi Salek?

  It literally tells, I've been like, here's a voice memo that you don't have yet. You better fucking slap this on.

• 2:37:09Speaker 04

  25 bucks, yeah.

• 2:37:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Because they only, Blur only won, it was 274,000 copies versus 216,000. So it was quite close. So I'm just, I'm not accusing anyone or anything. I just feel it wasn't exactly a fair battle.

• 2:37:24Speaker 04

  Oasis probably, like, they couldn't give a shit whether, like, Blur did or didn't like them, but they drove that conflict with their insanity air quotes, just like Blur tried.

• 2:37:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:35Speaker 04

  To like, keep this going so that people would, they would be talked about on the nightly news and their singles would sell. And then Oasis, even though they're fucking brothers and probably have spent every Christmas together for the last 15 years.

• 2:37:47Yasi Salek?

  I don't think they have.

• 2:37:48Speaker 04

  Well, okay. But they have done a very good job of publicly pretending like they would never speak to each other again until they got paid like five million dollars a show.

• 2:37:56Yasi Salek?

  That's like two more hours of a conversation. We don't have time.

• 2:37:58Speaker 04

  I don't want to have that conversation, but I'm just saying like Oasis have-

• 2:38:01Yasi Salek?

  Pretending, I don't know, but-

• 2:38:02Speaker 04

  Managed the extra musical narrative of their band in a better way than Blur did. Blur just kind of like became old men and started plugging away at their cool noodley songs.

• 2:38:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, totally. Dave basically outed Damon in the end of this and was like, yeah, I wasn't surprised we won because Damon threatened pretty much everyone with the sack if we lost. The management, everyone at EMI. He was like, I didn't care. I was whatever. And it's like, you care. I think you cared a little bit. He, Alborn did say in the Blur documentary that it really hurt him how much Noel Gallagher used to take the piss out of him. He said Oasis were like the bullies I had to put up with at school. There was a victory party when they won this, the battle of the Britpop singles. And Graham Coxon tried to jump out the window because he was so miserable. So anyways, Graham is hating it. Graham hates the fame. Graham didn't want to fight with Oasis. Famously, and we'll get into it, Oasis actually likes Graham. He's the only one they like. They like talk to him.

• 2:38:58Yasi Salek?

  They're like friends, but they hate everyone else in Blur.

• 2:39:00Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:39:01Yasi Salek?

  He didn't want to be famous. He hated Country House as a song. He hated the video. He was like, it's exploiting women. It's very Benny Hill. It's stupid. I don't want... He like wouldn't do his parts in it. Like, he was just like, chase women. He's like, I'm not... whatever. He's being a feminist.

• 2:39:17Speaker 04

  He's an ally.

• 2:39:18Yasi Salek?

  He's an ally, exactly. Famously an ally. And he was like, I personally hate football and Page Three Girls. I don't want Blur to be a football and cocaine band. But like, everyone just listens to what Damon says and they think that we like what he likes. It didn't help that Damon said that same wink to NME. I know it's a very flippant thing to say, but if Kurt Cobain had played football, he'd probably be alive today.

• 2:39:37Speaker 04

  Did he say that?

• 2:39:38Yasi Salek?

  He did. He said, I know it sounds the most ridiculous thing.

• 2:39:41Speaker 04

  That should be in my Twitter bio.

• 2:39:42Yasi Salek?

  But if you play football, you'll know what that means. I find it increasingly hard to find things it can't solve. Famously not a dog, Kurt Cobain, so I'm not sure.

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• 2:40:54Yasi Salek?

  All right, let's have "The Grey Escape," once again, produced by Steven Street. It's in the trilogy.

• 2:41:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'll do my capsule review.

• 2:41:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:03Speaker 04

  This is like a Motown record where, or album where they put the bangers up top.

• 2:41:07Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 2:41:09Speaker 04

  You could make an argument that this entire first phase of Blur's career peaks with "The Universal," which is the seventh song on the record, and that then I was like, did you guys know that you had to finish this record? Because there's like eight more songs that are like, okay. And then they have to go into hibernation and recreate themselves afterwards. So that's my read on it. Like, there are songs here, "Stereotypes" and "Charmless Man" and "Best Days" and "Country House" are all tuneful. They feel dated.

• 2:41:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:40Speaker 04

  But probably go hard at a Blur reunion show in England. And "Universal" is like a top 20 song of all time. Like, it's just like completely unfuckwithable.

• 2:41:52Yasi Salek?

  You know it almost didn't make the album because Justine hated it so much?

• 2:41:54Speaker 04

  Really?

• 2:41:55Yasi Salek?

  She thought it was awful. She thought the whole album was awful.

• 2:41:57Speaker 04

  That's the song when they reunited at Hyde Park, when they play "Universal" and like the crowd just sings it. It's like one of the coolest moments I've ever seen.

• 2:42:15Yasi Salek?

  For me, it was, I don't know if it's that same show, but I think it is because it's in the documentary where they sing "Tender" and everyone's singing Graham's part back.

• 2:42:23Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:42:30Yasi Salek?

  "Oh, my baby," I was like, because he's back, he's back in the band. I just feel like you were beating a dead horse here at this point, you know, like, and I do think-

• 2:42:40Speaker 04

  Damon doesn't like this record. Like, we don't have to spend a ton of time on it. I think it's got its moments, but where I think Parklife, like even the experiments or the really like, only for the true chimney sweep music.

• 2:42:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:53Speaker 04

  Like, there's interesting parts of those songs where there's like, oh, Real Heads know that Bad Head or Jubilee is good on Parklife. Like, I can't make a Mr. Robinson's Quango case to you.

• 2:43:05Yasi Salek?

  I am a naughty, naughty boy.

• 2:43:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, I can't make a Arnold Seim or Dan Abnormal.

• 2:43:11Yasi Salek?

  Arnold Seim that features the voice of popular left-wing politician Ken Livingstone.

• 2:43:15Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 2:43:17Speaker 05

  I woke from the same dream, same bed, same time.

• 2:43:23Yasi Salek?

  Yoko and Hiro is kind of a cool weird little brand, you know?

• 2:43:26Speaker 04

  Sure, but like the highs of it-

• 2:43:28Yasi Salek?

  It's not saving the album for me, but yeah.

• 2:43:30Speaker 04

  The highs of it are like, you can stop listening after The Universal if you would like, but even Damon has gone back and said, "Not my tempo."

• 2:43:38Yasi Salek?

  I thought, just because it brought up this quote, "Charlless Man" was interesting. I don't, to me, I don't like that song very much, but Damon said to Loaded Magazine, the Lads magazine, "I liked the Smiths growing up, but I despised all Smiths fans. All my mates became vegetarians and started acting all moody and suicidal because of Morrissey." I thought that was pathetic, load of bollocks. "At that age, between 15 and 19, kids are very vulnerable. They're leaving their family environment, finding their sexuality, trying to figure out what to do with their lives. They're full of late adolescent paranoia. So many bands like Joy Division, The Smiths, The Cure, Depeche Mode and Suede," had to get Suede in there, "consciously play on that. I had those feelings of insecurity in myself, but I wasn't gonna sit in a room listening to fucking Morrissey or fucking Robert Smith or fucking Brett fucking Anderson. It's all a big con to me.

• 2:44:23Yasi Salek?

  It's selling the audience short in the worst way imaginable." I thought this is interesting, this is at the time, actually like prior to the time. I'm like, "This is the place you're making music from in this trilogy. You are allergic to vulnerability. You do not want to like, the bands that you're name checking are like, well, maybe not Depeche Mode, but like, they're really trafficking in like raw emotion-

• 2:44:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:44:45Yasi Salek?

  -and putting themselves out there." And he is like, "Not for me, sir."

• 2:44:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is, this is the sort of more vitriolic, dark side of this pose that he has going for this period, where he's like, "I'm trying to somehow invent jock intellectuals in English culture, where it's like lads, but lads who also read, but guys who read who also go out."

• 2:45:08Yasi Salek?

  But who aren't in touch with their emotions and femininity.

• 2:45:10Speaker 04

  So I personally find his need to like, create a storytelling device to put all of this stuff into, because he can't just be it.

• 2:45:19Yasi Salek?

  Men won't go to therapy, but they'll write Parklife.

• 2:45:21Speaker 04

  Right, and The Universal is like-

• 2:45:25Speaker 04

  Is it kind of self consciously like it's like here's what I would do if I wrote a song for Sados?

• 2:45:30Yasi Salek?

  Totally, totally.

• 2:45:32Speaker 04

  There are some common themes in like a lot of Blur songs, which is this like alienation due to like the rise of technology and like, you know, our dependency on media or whatever. And ironically, they wound up selling this song to Vodafone, I think, or to somebody as like a jingle essentially. But, you know, like when, when you watch them play Universal now, and since they've reunited a couple of times, it obviously takes on the power of like, just a truly like emo power ballad. But at the time, like they were, the video is set in like a spaceship and like Damon's wearing like an eye patch. And it's like, what, what the fuck is going on?

• 2:46:14Speaker 04

  Whereas like Wonderwall, it's just like, ah, I'm dead. That cut, that cut straight to the marrow.

• 2:46:19Yasi Salek?

  There's no, there's, I can't believe Producer Liz, who, for you guys to know, our new producer, who's, I don't know her exact age, I think she's in her like mid to late twenties, was like, yeah, growing up a lot of Oasis was whack. They were like home goods music. And I was like, what?

• 2:46:35Yasi Salek?

  I felt decrepit when I heard that. I felt like, literally like I should be on a walker, let's get you to bed grandma. It hurt. I'll just say it, I think those panic attacks came from his refusal to be vulnerable in music.

• 2:46:50Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:46:51Yasi Salek?

  That's all. Just, and I think Justine agreed with me because she hated this album. And she shit on it the whole time. And I think she had a little insight into what was going on. And she was like, please stop making these little storytelling. Watched the tea in the telewinker. This is less class based, though, I will say that. This is more just observational of like, people, characters, less about the working class, I think.

• 2:47:18Yasi Salek?

  It didn't get good reviews. It got okay reviews. Except for Melody Maker, who said, "It's better than Parklife, seven stars, 12 out of 10. Absolutely bloody fucking essential." And I was like, "It feels the same." This guy who I really like, Johnny Cigarettes.

• 2:47:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:47:31Yasi Salek?

  Also, it's so cool that, like, you would just write under a pseudonym.

• 2:47:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:47:36Yasi Salek?

  Why? I want everyone to know. He said, "If Noel Oasis's strength derives," I also love that, they would just call you by the last name of your band.

• 2:47:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's like, um, Bill calls the kid in The Omen, Damien Omen.

• 2:47:51Yasi Salek?

  That's, he's doing-

• 2:47:52Speaker 04

  But his name's Damien.

• 2:47:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:47:53Speaker 04

  But his last name's not Omen.

• 2:47:54Yasi Salek?

  It's not Omen, but he's doing, he's doing British journalism, because that's what they did. "If Noel Oasis's strength derives from an ambition to be the John Lennon of his generation, then Blur wannabe Lennon and McCartney." Oh, that was interesting.

• 2:48:05Speaker 04

  Nice one.

• 2:48:06Yasi Salek?

  "And the main fuel of Blur's genius is an incredible, almost obsessional attention to detail." That was also-

• 2:48:12Speaker 04

  That's true.

• 2:48:12Yasi Salek?

  That's a, that was a good observation. Okay, here's a really major point in the Oasis versus Blur feud. September, post-Great Escape. Noel Gallagher does an interview with The Observer with a woman named Miranda Sawyer. He says, he's asked about Blur. He says, "The guitarist, I've got a lot of time for." So he likes Graham. "The drummer I've never met, I hear is a nice guy." "The bass player and the singer, I hope the pair of them catch fucking AIDS and die." Because I fucking hate them too.

• 2:48:38Speaker 04

  Yeah. I think there was some blowback about this even at the time.

• 2:48:41Yasi Salek?

  Oh, my god, there was a lot of blowback. Damon was like, "It was such a weird, unpleasant comment." What was going through his mind to say that? "It changed the whole toad of the supposed rivalry." "I haven't spoken to him since." Again, this is in 1999. Now they're like, good friends. Noel publicly apologized. I don't think he wanted to. I think he kind of was forced to. He said, because at first what he tried to do is kind of backpedal and be like, "I told the journalist to not print that." And then the journalist was like-

• 2:49:10Speaker 04

  That's not how journalism works, yeah.

• 2:49:11Yasi Salek?

  No, she was, she was like, "Here's the tape. He never said that. I would have taken it out."

• 2:49:14Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:49:14Yasi Salek?

  He literally didn't say that. "Here's the entire tape." Not one time did he say that. What's the story in Morning Glory? It comes out October 2nd. I bring up Morning Glory because at this point, if you look at it, they won. It blew everything out of the water. Morning Glory is a record-breaking album. It spent 10 weeks at number one. It was the fastest-selling album in the UK since Michael Jackson's Bad. It broke through in America. Like, there was no more few, there was no more contest. The contest is over at this point.

• 2:49:39Speaker 04

  There was like, actually, like, honestly, a moment where, and Oasis tries to implode multiple times over this period when like, you know, Liam leaves the band.

• 2:49:49Yasi Salek?

  Noel quits so many times because of Liam. He's like, fuck you.

• 2:49:52Speaker 04

  Doesn't play Unplugged, like, all these things. But when Wonderwall's video came out, like, anybody with ears was like, oh, it's a rap. Not only is it a rap for, like, this fucking thing that doesn't matter to Americans, like this Britpop, but like, Oasis is so clearly gonna be like this huge band because of this song.

• 2:50:10Yasi Salek?

  It's just like how I always talk about When Smells Like Teen Spirit came out in every nine, because it's pertinent to like, what happens, you know? This was extremely pertinent because not just did Oasis win at this point, the tide quickly turned against Blur. People hated Damon Albarn. He would, okay, I know it's not funny, but it's kind of funny. There was an actual visceral backlash. He said, "I'd go down in the street and people would sing 'Roll With It' at me." "There was an atmosphere akin to football violence. People would open their windows and put Oasis on really loud as I walked past."

• 2:50:46Speaker 04

  But like, six, six months before that, he's like, "Football would have saved Kurt Cobain's life."

• 2:50:50Yasi Salek?

  I know. And now he doesn't believe in it because people, it, how funny is it though?

• 2:50:53Speaker 04

  It's him reaping what he sown.

• 2:50:54Yasi Salek?

  Damon walking down the street and people rolled their windows down and blast Oasis. He's like, "I would walk into a shop, they would turn Oasis on and look at me." Like, he's like, "I was on a, in a tiny, isolated railway station in France and a guy shouted, 'Where's Liam?'" But it really broke him. Like, it was like, and all the band members, like, he was like the most hated man in England.

• 2:51:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:51:13Yasi Salek?

  Because it's crazy. They cared that much. They were like Oasis 1, fuck you. We loved you five minutes ago. This was a number one album, Blur. We don't like you anymore. So all this to say the vibes in Blur are not amazing at this point.

• 2:51:25Speaker 04

  There's not really like a peak Blur moment, like-

• 2:51:28Yasi Salek?

  Parklife.

• 2:51:29Speaker 04

  I think even then, though, they're like starting to be tense with one another, like-

• 2:51:33Yasi Salek?

  Their imperial phase, right? You know, this like Neil Tennant from the Pet Shop Boys, so that all popular bands have an imperial phase. I would say it starts at Parklife.

• 2:51:41Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:51:42Yasi Salek?

  And ends, like, is on the Twilight with 13.

• 2:51:46Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:51:46Yasi Salek?

  Don't you think?

• 2:51:47Speaker 04

  Sure. They're just such a different band by that point.

• 2:51:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but it's just, it's less about like what they're outputting and like the power of their, of their celebrity and, and, you know. Okay, Damon's limb is, right? People are shouting, where's Liam? And fucking blasting What's the Story Morning Glory every time he walks by. Graham's limb is about the band, about making pop music, the fame. Alex is being a Playboy fuck ass. He doesn't like that. Dave is sober. Dave got sober like two albums ago and he has a wife. So Uncle Dave is like off the charts. Graham is really not sober, very, very much not. No one else is sober, but Graham is extremely not sober, loves to drink. Alex, though, like I said, he's having fun. Here's a thing he said in Q Magazine. What's 40 yards long, has no pubes and goes, "Ah!"

• 2:52:34Yasi Salek?

  The front row of a Blur concert.

• 2:52:38Yasi Salek?

  Imagine again, you're Graham, your girlfriend's in a Riot Girl band.

• 2:52:42Speaker 04

  And this guy is talking about prepubescent-

• 2:52:44Yasi Salek?

  Right next to you is talking about pubescent girl, then he was just like, "Oh, I hate you."

• 2:52:50Yasi Salek?

  Vibes are bad. This is what we're making the next record from. We're uncool. We're sidelined. We're bored and annoyed with fame. Graham had basically gotten drunk and screamed at Damon about the direction of the band. They got in a huge fight about it. Graham said, "I wanted to know why I couldn't play the music that I liked. I was very pissed off." "It seemed to me at that moment that if you didn't have the same opinion as Damon, everyone thought you were a zero and Damon thought you were mad. So I had this big, great shout on the bus and it all went funny after that and we didn't talk. That was a low spot. I was ready to pack it in." He was gonna leave the band. Dave says that he actually thought they were gonna break up because Graham wanted to quit and Damon said that he wouldn't keep doing Blur if Graham left. But then Graham wrote Damon a beautiful letter.

• 2:53:33Yasi Salek?

  He wrote him a beautiful letter saying he wanted to make harder music and he wanted to scare people again. And Damon was like, "Okay, bet."

• 2:53:42Yasi Salek?

  That's not what he said. He wrote another letter back. They're like, they're literally writing letters to each other. Do we not have cell phones in at this point?

• 2:53:47Speaker 04

  I'm reading a Dostoevsky novel now because I was worried about my brain.

• 2:53:50Yasi Salek?

  All right, Damon Albarn. Which one? What are we reading?

• 2:53:53Speaker 04

  Devils.

• 2:53:53Yasi Salek?

  Karamazov? Oh.

• 2:53:54Speaker 04

  And they just write letters within the same house to one another. It's fucking stupid.

• 2:53:58Yasi Salek?

  No, it's amazing. People used to be literate. It's incredible. What do I get now? Like a two-word text with an emoji. It's so dark and sad. We're gonna be non-verbal at some point because of this. Not you and I, though, because this is our job to talk. It worked. The letter worked. The letter-writing campaign worked. Damon was like, okay. Like, Damon already wanted to, like, escape Britpop, and he was like, let's do it. The Trainspotting soundtrack also comes out here, which we touched on already with. It has a solo Damon song as well.

• 2:54:28Speaker 04

  Oh, does it?

• 2:54:29Yasi Salek?

  Closet romantic.

• 2:54:29Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:54:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:54:35Speaker 04

  Now Blur turns into a Yasi band.

• 2:54:37Yasi Salek?

  Yes, right. And, and again, I'm so aware of my prejudice.

• 2:54:41Speaker 04

  Your bias.

• 2:54:42Yasi Salek?

  My bias, my American alt-rock bias.

• 2:54:44Speaker 04

  Checking your privilege.

• 2:54:45Yasi Salek?

  Of course. I'm checking my, my, my college rock privilege. They record this album partially in Iceland because Damon Albarn went to go find himself in Iceland after he couldn't take being yelled. Where's Liam? Roll with it.

• 2:54:59Speaker 04

  Reykjavik was big. Starting to be big then.

• 2:55:01Yasi Salek?

  That was like the hit.

• 2:55:02Speaker 04

  It was like Prague, Reykjavik.

• 2:55:04Yasi Salek?

  Bjork.

• 2:55:05Speaker 04

  But it was just like, go, go get in the springs.

• 2:55:08Yasi Salek?

  This is when.

• 2:55:08Speaker 04

  Fuck off and eat horse and.

• 2:55:10Yasi Salek?

  This is when Reykjavik went viral.

• 2:55:13Speaker 04

  It's not viral. I just remember, like, reading about people going, I went to Prague. But that, like, that was like, remember like in the Noah Baumeck movie? It's like, I've been to Prague, been to Prague.

• 2:55:23Yasi Salek?

  Totally, totally.

• 2:55:24Speaker 04

  So there were these destinations.

• 2:55:25Yasi Salek?

  Yes. It was a hipster destination, is what you're saying, before we had hipster.

• 2:55:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:55:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And he fell in love. He found himself there. He wanted to record there.

• 2:55:32Speaker 04

  He fell in love, like, found a gal?

• 2:55:33Yasi Salek?

  No, no. Fell in love with Iceland, yeah. He was like, we're gonna go record there. And Graham was like, can we, um, I just bought a house. Can we just stay home? Do we have to? So they kind of compromised and did both places. And they made self-titled, "Let's Fucking Go."

• 2:55:50Yasi Salek?

  February 10th, 1997. I'm gonna tell you my quick take on this. Why this album works, besides my bias. I think it's universally agreed that this is a good album, right? Not just by American people.

• 2:56:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:56:02Yasi Salek?

  It works because they let my, my boy Graham out of the cage.

• 2:56:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:56:07Yasi Salek?

  And because-

• 2:56:08Speaker 04

  They finally took the cuffs off.

• 2:56:10Yasi Salek?

  They took the cuffs off. And because Damon stopped being like, "Oi, wanker, Lori, trolley, telly." And was like, "I'm gonna get personal, babe. I'm gonna get vulnerable." They didn't even print the lyrics in this CD because he felt too vulnerable.

• 2:56:22Speaker 04

  Really?

• 2:56:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. So, that's what worked.

• 2:56:26Speaker 04

  What was your sort of first experience with this? Was it Song 2?

• 2:56:30Yasi Salek?

  It was "Woohoo" for sure, I think, yeah.

• 2:56:31Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:56:32Yasi Salek?

  It was definitely "Woohoo."

• 2:56:33Speaker 04

  I remember when the Beatle bum single came out.

• 2:56:35Yasi Salek?

  That's such a good song.

• 2:56:37Speaker 04

  And I had a bunch of friends who were like pavement fans, you know, like, like indie rock fans or whatever, but not Blur fans, because their experience with Blur was like country house.

• 2:56:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:56:49Speaker 04

  And I was like, "You guys, holy shit." And I would put it on and they were like, "What the fuck? This is so good." You know, like that opening guitar line for Beatle bum.

• 2:57:00Yasi Salek?

  It's so good.

• 2:57:07Speaker 04

  It was like this weird thing that unlocked them for, I think, a lot of American rock fans.

• 2:57:11Yasi Salek?

  Hundred percent. Largely on the back of Song 2, because Song 2-

• 2:57:17Speaker 04

  Song 2 had a very long life of being a fun, cool song before it became a jock jam.

• 2:57:22Yasi Salek?

  Well, yes, but it also like kind of immediately was like the Intel Pentium 2 ad, a Nike ad, the theme music to the USA Ice Hockey Team, the trailer for Starship Troopers.

• 2:57:33Speaker 04

  Reiki Evic doesn't pay for itself, you know?

• 2:57:35Yasi Salek?

  No, theme for the PlayStation game FIFA 98, for my FIFA 98 heads out there.

• 2:57:39Speaker 04

  Dude, little Thierry Henry, little flick on.

• 2:57:42Yasi Salek?

  I didn't play this, I'm just nodding. I don't know anything about football soccer. I don't know if Graham was joking or not, but he said that the American Army tried to pay them a huge sum of money to use it in video packages when they were unveiling the stealth bomber. And Blur said no. It seems like it could be true.

• 2:57:58Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 2:57:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:57:59Yasi Salek?

  And they were like, no, thanks. Here's just like a funny aside about the US. It's funny because I feel that even though obviously this is the album that translated in the US because they're using American references, The Pavement of it all, like Graham famously was like, I showed Damon Pavement and I like finally got him to listen to hip hop because he had been really anti hip hop before that. And he got him into the Beastie Boys, which so we can really thank Graham for the Gorillaz in the end. It also, I think in a way, they stopped courting America in any way. Like, I don't think they were trying to break it in America. They were just making a different sound. Do you agree?

• 2:58:36Speaker 04

  I think that they tasted the most fame almost most bands can even conceive of and hated it.

• 2:58:45Yasi Salek?

  You're right.

• 2:58:45Speaker 04

  And it blew up in their face.

• 2:58:46Yasi Salek?

  So why would they want more?

• 2:58:48Speaker 04

  So they made a record that was just cool. Like, I don't know if they meant for it to be cool, but it's just like this record has so much swagger. And it'll be these kind of like hand stitched, homemade lo-fi songs. And it is really the most Lennon McCartney of the albums, I think, because it'll be like a kind of like fuzzy Graham thing going on and then Damon puts like pop genius on top of it.

• 2:59:15Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:59:16Speaker 04

  And there are all these little like effects or flourishes that they have, which like other bands can't even conceive of.

• 2:59:23Yasi Salek?

  Beatlebum is like-

• 2:59:24Speaker 04

  All the backing vocals in Beatlebum.

• 2:59:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and at the end, because Beatlebum is a heroin song. Everyone knows that, I think, at this point. Like Justine, to her own admission, was like, I think got into heroin in like 96 or 97. So she's kind of like in the throes of heroin.

• 2:59:37Speaker 04

  That like tore Elastico apart, basically, right?

• 2:59:39Yasi Salek?

  Yes, correct. And Damon also got into heroin, which I didn't realize. And he himself confirmed it later. And there's a song about it on the next album. But this is like, A, such a vulnerable and personal song, right? Because it's about the love of your life, being addicted to heroin. And also, it's so menacing because they do such an amazing job of like creating that feeling that Damon must have been experiencing this like creeping anxiety. That's what all that sound collage does for me anyways.

• 3:00:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:00:18Speaker 04

  Not too many bad, bad tracks on this.

• 3:00:20Yasi Salek?

  No. Do you know Song Two was written, everyone has it wrong, I think, because they think that it was written to like, mimic an American song, but actually, he wrote this as a really slow acoustic song, and the woo-hoo was kind of like a wolf whistle, like a, you know?

• 3:00:40Yasi Salek?

  And he brought it in, kind of like, isn't this like a little funny diddy I wrote? There's actually, we'll clip it here. I couldn't find the actual demo, but they did play it once acoustic bossa nova, and you can kind of get the feeling.

• 3:00:57Yasi Salek?

  They've played it, and Graham was like, oh, we should tell the label we want to record this as a single, because they'll hate it.

• 3:01:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:01:02Yasi Salek?

  It'll be funny. And the label was like, this is fantastic. You should definitely do that. And they were like, okay. They recorded it in 30 minutes. That drum track is two drum kits. Both Graham and Dave are playing drums facing each other. Damon did scratch vocal, which they used pretty much all of it. That's just his scratch vocal. I just love it. I feel like this is like Graham's guitar wishes came true, because at the point, he was like, he thought Thurston Moore was the best guitarist on the planet, and he was obsessed with Stephen Malkmus. And he got to like, do weird, feedbacky, fuzzy guitar.

• 3:01:45Speaker 04

  There's still like so much melody and so much Damon stuff on even.

• 3:01:48Yasi Salek?

  Totally. No, they're, they're never, Graham will never be able to make a fully like, lo-fi, like.

• 3:01:56Speaker 04

  Sebado.

• 3:01:56Yasi Salek?

  Noise. Yeah. Like, not with Damon on board. I just have to say, this song still goes crazy. You can put it on Military Gun, shout out Military Gun, who we both love. They.

• 3:02:08Speaker 04

  Cover it.

• 3:02:08Yasi Salek?

  They cover it all the time, and they're set.

• 3:02:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:02:10Yasi Salek?

  And it goes crazy. It's a fucking incredible song.

• 3:02:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:02:13Yasi Salek?

  Timeless.

• 3:02:13Speaker 04

  You could think it's like, it can get overplayed, but like, if you get like enough of a break, it's like one of those things like, it's like Bright Side, where you're just like, ah shit. It's about to go off in here.

• 3:02:22Yasi Salek?

  It's about to fucking go. Also, I'm sorry, countryside ballad, man. This is a pavement song. This pavement song is pavementing, and it's, it's fab.

• 3:02:36Speaker 04

  And this is like, maybe a more palatable version of Oi Wanker Telly?

• 3:02:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:02:44Speaker 04

  MOR and On Your Own are fucking crazy good.

• 3:02:48Yasi Salek?

  It is also interesting, because usually I don't like songs that are about being in a band.

• 3:02:54Speaker 04

  Me neither.

• 3:02:54Yasi Salek?

  And this is, these songs are about being in a band.

• 3:03:04Speaker 04

  On Your Own has like a little bit of like a Sean Ryder vibe.

• 3:03:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, totally.

• 3:03:09Speaker 04

  Little shaman.

• 3:03:10Yasi Salek?

  I like it.

• 3:03:20Speaker 04

  Gosh, you know, this record.

• 3:03:22Yasi Salek?

  Dude, You're So Great, the Graham song, is so good.

• 3:03:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:03:26Yasi Salek?

  Because why? It's jangle pop acoustic guitar, stripped down cutie pants, British, guided by voices.

• 3:03:39Speaker 04

  And then he just is like, oh, here's a couple of David Bowie songs at the end. Like the Look Inside America and Strange News From Another Star and stuff.

• 3:03:53Yasi Salek?

  I even like Chinese Bombs, because it's a fun punk song.

• 3:03:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:04:02Speaker 04

  This was what I was referring to, and I was like, this is the best one.

• 3:04:05Yasi Salek?

  Yes, but it's not the one that goes in the British National Museum, which is Parklife.

• 3:04:09Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:04:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:04:10Speaker 04

  But Parklife is just like apex. It's just like, the whole world is running through this band.

• 3:04:14Yasi Salek?

  That's when their imperial, imperial phase begins. We do have to mention the America song, Look Inside America, because it names-

• 3:04:22Speaker 04

  See, she's alright.

• 3:04:23Yasi Salek?

  Name checks K-Rock. Chuck from the company says it'll be alright. Got an ad on K-Rock, and there's an in-store tonight.

• 3:04:34Yasi Salek?

  We love it. Essex Dogs was a poem

• 3:04:37Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 3:04:37Yasi Salek?

  that Damon performed at Albert Hall. Damon went from like, oi wanker, I'm at the fucking racetrack in my Phyllis suit,

• 3:04:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:04:45Yasi Salek?

  to like, I'm performing poetry at Albert Hall within a year and a half. That's the binary of Damon Albarn.

• 3:04:53Speaker 04

  But it's also like, what a great accelerated, sort of like, five phases of Bowie within three years.

• 3:05:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, totally.

• 3:05:01Speaker 04

  To go from like, shoegazer to lad.

• 3:05:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:05:06Speaker 04

  To Evelyn Waugh, to Jay Mascis, to spoken word poet.

• 3:05:14Yasi Salek?

  I love this album.

• 3:05:16Speaker 04

  And it was received well?

• 3:05:18Yasi Salek?

  Very well. Beatlebum hit number one as a single. That was their second, I think, number one. They topped the UK album chart, number one. It didn't sell as much as Parklife and Great Escape, actually. But it was internationally more successful, like we said, America, but also like Norway and Sweden and stuff. There's a very funny aside about Bush that comes up during this that I have to tell you. So Graham Coxon is trying to explain, I think to Everett True, that like, if you go in America to have success, they won't get it. But if you tease them with it, like, he's trying to explain how you win America. And it's like, you can't just overtly court them.

• 3:05:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:05:58Yasi Salek?

  Like, and then Damon Albarn's like, well, what about Bush? He's like, they went for American success super clearly and they got it. And then Graham goes, I'm gonna get really annoyed by fucking kids wearing Bush t-shirts in England now. It's really gonna piss me off. I'm gonna have to stop everywhere I see and slap them a bit. It's really a hideous thing. Kids with their Pearl Jam t-shirts, their Nirvana t-shirts, and every one of them with a Bush t-shirt.

• 3:06:20Speaker 04

  Graham.

• 3:06:21Yasi Salek?

  Graham. Graham is like, fuck Gavin Rossdale and the Bush he came in. There's a couple of things in the reviews that I wanted to ask you about. Because, again, we're American. We're gonna love this record, you know?

• 3:06:33Speaker 04

  I saw them play a warm-up show for whatever American tour it was after this came out.

• 3:06:38Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 3:06:38Speaker 04

  And it was at the Downstairs Middle East, which is like 800 people.

• 3:06:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:06:42Speaker 04

  Shit went hard. It went off. The lads came out. But the lads were all wearing cardigans. Like, you know what I mean? Like...

• 3:06:49Yasi Salek?

  Oh, and in Boston, you could both be like...

• 3:06:51Speaker 04

  No, I just mean like...

• 3:06:52Yasi Salek?

  A terrible hooligan and wear a cardigan.

• 3:06:55Speaker 04

  We had fully converted from lad culture to like, we're now back in our...

• 3:06:57Yasi Salek?

  Oh, I see. Yeah, we're back to cardigan culture. Yeah, yeah. Even though Woohoo probably did translate over to the football terraces.

• 3:07:04Speaker 04

  We shoved each other around a little bit.

• 3:07:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:07:05Speaker 04

  A friendly, consensual shove.

• 3:07:08Yasi Salek?

  Well, it wasn't a circle pit, per se, but it was, we did a little...

• 3:07:10Speaker 04

  No one crowd killed.

• 3:07:11Yasi Salek?

  Shoulder checking. The Independent said, which I thought this was perfect, "Loudly heralded as the pyre upon which their former Britpop selves have been ritually dispatched." The album, blurb. Certainly takes some getting used to. He eventually says, "It's questionable whether even familiarity saves it from being an underwhelming experience. There's no consistency to the songs, which seem more readily definable by what they're not, chirpy, mockney Britpop, than what they'd like to be, 57 varieties of alternative rock." To which I say, "What is the problem?"

• 3:07:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:07:46Yasi Salek?

  Heins 57 alternative rock? I'll have two.

• 3:07:49Speaker 04

  That's the kind of thing that you write in the present tense about an album, and then like five years or 10 years later, you're like, who cares?

• 3:07:54Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 3:07:55Speaker 04

  This just sounds so much better.

• 3:07:56Yasi Salek?

  Like, yeah, within the context of 1997.

• 3:08:01Speaker 04

  And you could say like, "Oh, you guys riled us all up and made us think about British culture, and I thought this was all about..."

• 3:08:08Yasi Salek?

  I thought I knew you.

• 3:08:09Speaker 04

  I thought this was all about like Stephen Street's Bird Sounds CD that he got from Morrissey. And in fact, it's about listening to "You're Living All Over Me" by Dinosaur Jr. and stuff.

• 3:08:20Yasi Salek?

  You know, like, why can't we do both?

• 3:08:23Speaker 04

  They did.

• 3:08:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:08:24Speaker 04

  They did it all. Then it's just like, "I will be a cartoon and have the biggest song on the planet."

• 3:08:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:08:29Speaker 04

  So.

• 3:08:30Yasi Salek?

  I regret to inform you, though, that... This album was one of the nails in the coffin of Britpop because 1997 is officially the year that Britpop died.

• 3:08:39Speaker 04

  Is that Be Here Now?

• 3:08:40Yasi Salek?

  Be Here Now came out. One nail in the coffin does happen in 96, which is the Spice Girls come out. But then it's this Blur album where they're like, Britpop? Fuck her. Be Here Now, Crash and Disappointment, which again, I think upon revisiting, it's not as bad as

• 3:08:54Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 3:08:55Yasi Salek?

  people make it out to be. More importantly, Noel Gallagher goes to 10 Downing in a fuck ass blazer and a stupid haircut to see fucking Tony Blair and like, that's the day the music dies, you know?

• 3:09:04Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 3:09:05Yasi Salek?

  Because people are like, the fuck is he doing?

• 3:09:08Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:09:09Yasi Salek?

  I mean, again, this is third hand through my British friends, but like, it's both said by, shout out Chloe Walsh, but also my friend, not my friend, the, uh, the woman from Sleeper.

• 3:09:20Speaker 04

  Louise.

• 3:09:21Yasi Salek?

  Louise, in the Britpop documentary, was like, we saw that and we were like, this was like an ungovernable, you know, like, this volatile, like, amazing, like, beholden to no one band, that's what we loved about them. And then all of a sudden, he's in his little stupid blazer, fucking shaking Tony Blair's hand, like, and it was, it was a miscalculation.

• 3:09:41Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 3:09:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Also Austin Powers comes out that year, which is like a pair, like, you know, it's like almost like, the cool Britannia has like gone too, you know?

• 3:09:50Speaker 04

  It was a, it was a thing, it was cool, and then it was, then it was like co-opted by-

• 3:09:55Yasi Salek?

  Princess Diana dies, Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kensit are on the cover of Vanity, it gets over here, it's on the cover of Vanity Fair, and the Union Jack, and Noel Gallagher was like, what did I think of that? I thought he looked fucking stupid. No notes. And then we do 13. Do you feel, I mean, I guess it's, it's pretty obvious, but do you feel that like, the making of 13 sowed the seeds for the Gorillaz?

• 3:10:21Speaker 04

  I had never thought about it that way. I think it obviously is like, you're talking about nails in coffins. It's interesting that self-titled-

• 3:10:31Speaker 04

  And this is a really hard thing for bands to do. It's like, pretty rare for a band to reach their peak on album three or four anyway. Usually, it's like a Strokes kind of thing. Or not even, I mean, I don't know. My experience, like, bands go hot when they first come out. It's like, there's something about the newness of it. It's rare that you see a band achieve, like, commercial and artistic superiority, like, mid-stride like that.

• 3:10:53Yasi Salek?

  I think Blur did that because it wasn't mid-stride. It's mid-stride in the discography, but it's... Yeah, it's like boom, boom, boom. So it's almost like one long album.

• 3:11:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I guess, in truth, the kinds of music that they were referencing on self-titled actually was not very commercially viable. It's fucking artistically viable to us. It's like the music that we would like prefer to listen to on any given moment.

• 3:11:15Yasi Salek?

  In 1997, Pavement wasn't exactly like, they're more famous now.

• 3:11:20Speaker 04

  No, of course. Yeah, but...

• 3:11:22Yasi Salek?

  Or Dinosaur Jr.

• 3:11:23Speaker 04

  So yeah, the idea that they would turn into, like, a stable, like, sonic youth band or something. I don't, I guess that wasn't possible. The thing I always think about with 13 is it feels more like a Damon solo record, and that, like, tender... And the cult of, like, him being like, "I'm opening up the doors a little bit here and letting you in, and I'm like this kind of, like, cherubic but complicated genius", becomes much more of like, like, how I think of the band, rather than as like, these four guys who are making this. Do you know what I mean? It almost feels like 13 feels like a, I know that Graham has a lot of fingerprints on it, but it feels very, like, Damon-driven.

• 3:12:07Yasi Salek?

  I think so.

• 3:12:08Speaker 04

  So what did you mean by the Gorillaz thing?

• 3:12:10Yasi Salek?

  Well, because William Orbit is an electronic-ish-based producer. Like, he's def, he's not Steven Street, right? He's not coming at it from this sort of, like... Traditionally, rock music production lens. He does weird shit, you know, and he does sort of electronicy shit, you know? There's a lot of electronica over this album.

• 3:12:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, but the songs that like are still, they still play and that people still listen to are all like fucking pop songs.

• 3:12:39Yasi Salek?

  I mean, I don't mean sow the seeds in the world for the girls. I mean within Damon. Like, I'm wondering if he was like, oh, this is cool. And also he's like into hip hop now. And that's just what I was thinking.

• 3:12:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:12:50Yasi Salek?

  I'm a William Morbid, like I said, stan because Ray of Light is one of the best albums of all time. And he famously produced that Madonna album.

• 3:13:04Yasi Salek?

  To your point of Graham being a little bit absent from this album. I think he was very close to Steven Street and he was maybe the one band member who did not want to abandon Steven Street.

• 3:13:17Speaker 04

  Isn't he also like coming apart at the seams here?

• 3:13:19Yasi Salek?

  He's also coming apart at the seams, kind of the whole time, though, increasingly. So, yeah. I mean, I think he had had a renewed, like, vigor.

• 3:13:30Speaker 04

  Creative.

• 3:13:31Yasi Salek?

  Creative thing. And also, and he said of Damon in the last album, because of those vulnerable lyrics, that he like, was able to like finally see, oh, my friend isn't this careerist monster. He's like a real person and it made him fall in love with him again, is what he said. So, on one hand, he was back in, but yeah, he is, he's drinking too much, is what we can say.

• 3:13:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:13:53Yasi Salek?

  Graham did say about William Morbid, eventually I met him and I really liked him. He's really different to Streetie, who's more like a schoolteacher, more rigid. With William, it was like, do what the hell you want. I thought it was interesting, basically Madonna had said about William Morbid that working with him was like making a film. Like, you create all the individual scenes, but you have no sense of what it's gonna be like till you see it at the end.

• 3:14:13Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:14:13Yasi Salek?

  Because he's just like.

• 3:14:14Speaker 04

  A little Brian Eno-ish.

• 3:14:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. This album is the breakup album. The justine. Yeah, because they've broken up at this point.

• 3:14:23Speaker 04

  It's a tender and no distance left or wrong.

• 3:14:25Yasi Salek?

  Two of the best Blur songs.

• 3:14:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:14:34Yasi Salek?

  The breakup also did actually kind of meaningfully help Swan Gorillas because when they broke up, he moved out and moved in with Jamie Hewlett, who was Graham's friend.

• 3:14:43Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:14:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. The vibes, babe, they're horrendous.

• 3:14:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:14:46Yasi Salek?

  They're-

• 3:14:47Speaker 04

  It's actually an uncomfortable record to listen to.

• 3:14:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:14:50Speaker 04

  I put on self-titled, I put on Parklife.

• 3:14:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:14:54Speaker 04

  I'd never put this on. I listened to Tender and I listened to-

• 3:14:58Yasi Salek?

  Right, No Distance Left To Run.

• 3:14:59Speaker 04

  And a couple of like other like Coffee and TV in 1992 and Swamp Song and stuff.

• 3:15:03Yasi Salek?

  Coffee and TV, babe, how far have we come? It's not tea and telly, honey.

• 3:15:09Speaker 04

  It's Coffee and TV.

• 3:15:10Yasi Salek?

  It's Coffee and TV.

• 3:15:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:15:11Yasi Salek?

  We've done an about-face.

• 3:15:21Speaker 04

  But I don't reach for this one a lot. Like even that cover art, looking at it, bums me out.

• 3:15:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, so in real time, you're a blur stan stamped and true because of self-titled.

• 3:15:34Speaker 04

  My UK passport in my hand, yeah.

• 3:15:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, which you have one.

• 3:15:38Speaker 04

  I don't have one, but theoretically I could, yeah.

• 3:15:41Yasi Salek?

  It's kind of useless now because of Brexit, but.

• 3:15:45Yasi Salek?

  And you got this, you got your little hands on it.

• 3:15:48Speaker 04

  But I'm also an indie rock fan, so this is all making sense to me.

• 3:15:50Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 3:15:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:15:51Yasi Salek?

  But then you were disappointed.

• 3:15:53Speaker 04

  I sound like I was disappointed, I think I hadn't, well, in 1989, I don't think I'd gone through anything like approaching the kind of romantic catastrophe that this record captures.

• 3:16:02Yasi Salek?

  It doesn't matter, I had not gone through anything when I was listening to Fountain and Fairfax by the Afghan Wings when I was 12, but I was like feeling it.

• 3:16:10Speaker 04

  Sure. I don't know, there's something sad about this record that's not like sad in the way like listening to Songs of Ohio is sad.

• 3:16:19Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 3:16:20Speaker 04

  You know what I mean? It's sad like, this is like a very, in some places ugly, in some places like really like kind of like, ooh, should I be looking at this kind of record, you know?

• 3:16:30Yasi Salek?

  Confirming Damon Albarn's worst fears of being vulnerable.

• 3:16:34Speaker 04

  No, but and I don't mean to, but like, do you like this? You don't like this more than self-titled?

• 3:16:40Yasi Salek?

  No, no, and I actually didn't really experience it in real time. Again, self-titled didn't do it. I had, self-titled was the only album I had in real time. And I did really like it, but like when-

• 3:16:48Speaker 04

  But it was Woo Hoo's song.

• 3:16:49Yasi Salek?

  Well, it was, I liked, and I listened to the whole thing, so, but by 99, I was like a little checked out of independent rock music.

• 3:16:57Speaker 04

  What were you checked into?

• 3:16:58Yasi Salek?

  I think I had started to get into nu metal. I was still listening to Pavement a lot, and I had gotten into, started getting into underground hip-hop.

• 3:17:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:17:07Yasi Salek?

  That's being said, Gorillaz, like, I was the front row for, but this, no.

• 3:17:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, okay. They put this out, Tender's big.

• 3:17:13Yasi Salek?

  Tender's huge. Coffee and TV, I actually vaguely remember being on the radio. Does that sound right to you?

• 3:17:19Speaker 04

  It's still in their, like, top five Spotify songs, I think.

• 3:17:22Yasi Salek?

  That's a good song. I want to point one more thing out, this album, that maybe might put it into context for the feeling. I think this is when Damon's on heroin.

• 3:17:30Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 3:17:31Yasi Salek?

  Because Caramel is about him doing heroin, and he had said much later that it made him very productive in a Guardian, yeah. And I, my last thing I'll say is that No Distance Left to Run is the best Blore song, in my opinion, number one.

• 3:17:43Speaker 04

  Oh, I guess, let me think. I think Universal is the best Blore song.

• 3:17:46Yasi Salek?

  And it's like two sides of the same coin. William Orbit said he remembers Damon coming out of the vocal booth after singing No Distance Left to Run, and he was crying. "When you're coming down, think of me."

• 3:18:02Yasi Salek?

  This mixed reviews, you know, their imperial phase is over.

• 3:18:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:18:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I liked that, what the enemy said, this is the last thing I'll say about 13. "The magic is here, but so clogged by extraneous growth, you could be forgiven for not noticing." And it's kind of true, like, self-titled struck the perfect balance between we don't want to be that anymore, and we're going to grow and change. And then this was like, we're going to be even great, we're growing even more, and you're like, you didn't have to grow that much.

• 3:18:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:18:30Yasi Salek?

  Ran it in, honey.

• 3:18:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, self-titled is like if Ziggy Stardust was playing, like, indie, lo-fi indie rock, and this is like, real, spacey, fucked up, hungover.

• 3:18:41Yasi Salek?

  Put this album on than Parklife.

• 3:18:43Speaker 04

  13, okay.

• 3:18:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:18:45Speaker 04

  All right.

• 3:18:45Yasi Salek?

  To my taste. It's much more my taste. And it's like, you know, we got fucking Massive Attack and Portishead fucking popping off in England also in the background. There's like a, someone set the table for this kind of stuff. After this album, like I said, the vibes were horrendous. Damon, while doing this album, actually I found out, so I was correct in my initial thought, but he had started working on The Gorillaz album. Worked on it for like two years. They put it out an EP in 2000. They put out the first album, 2001, March 26th. Produced by The God, David the Automator. It's one of the coolest albums.

• 3:19:20Speaker 04

  And Clidius, what is on that one?

• 3:19:27Yasi Salek?

  Here's the thing, The Gorillaz was, that album, not as massive as the second one, but still massive. It sold seven million copies worldwide.

• 3:19:37Speaker 04

  Is that a two or one? What is that?

• 3:19:38Yasi Salek?

  It's a one.

• 3:19:39Speaker 04

  Here's the thing that happens, this kind of has happened with other bands, planes I've done with you, where we kind of get to this like-

• 3:19:45Yasi Salek?

  I know, the lull.

• 3:19:47Speaker 04

  The, the brand maintenance era. Now, they have some interesting, I think, creative outlets here. Like, I think that they, there's some moments where I'm like, shit, Blur's still cooking.

• 3:19:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:19:57Speaker 04

  But for the most part, the next 21 years are reunions and kind of good effort reunion records, right?

• 3:20:06Yasi Salek?

  A thing I will do is take my cap once again off to them chimney sweep, chim chiminy chim chimaroo, and say thank you for not making eight albums.

• 3:20:14Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 3:20:15Yasi Salek?

  Because there were bands that do that during the time, and they don't.

• 3:20:18Speaker 04

  So they make Think Tank in 03.

• 3:20:20Yasi Salek?

  In 03, and then they take a smooth 12 years off. They're basically in, they make an album every 12 years.

• 3:20:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:20:27Yasi Salek?

  Which is the right amount of time, I think. Gorillaz happens, Graham Coxon, actually, we're not going to get into it because we have enough time. He made several really good, actually, solo albums. Alex James had a band called Fat Less. With Keith Allen, Lily Allen's dad.

• 3:20:41Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:20:41Yasi Salek?

  Who was a, was a famous comedian in England, and Damien Hirst. And they had a huge hit called Vindaloo. Do you remember this song?

• 3:20:47Speaker 04

  I don't.

• 3:20:52Yasi Salek?

  It was the FIFA World Cup song in 1998. Now it's time to make the next album after Post Gorillaz. Graham is not doing well. Graham's had a child. He checks himself into rehab in March. It doesn't stick. He checks himself into rehab again in November of 2001. This does line up with when Blur goes in the studio and thusly he does not show up to the studio. They kind of reconvene in May of 2002. He comes back, he plays guitar in like four songs. The vibes are atrocious. He does not want to be there. They don't want him to be there. I'm paraphrasing, obviously. If you try to make sense of this, there's no clear cut answer because even in the documentary,

• 3:21:35Yasi Salek?

  they're like, "We told him to go talk himself out and then come back." And Graham was like, "It was like, your girlfriend's like, I'm not breaking up with you, but I don't want to see you for a while."

• 3:21:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I think there's also an agree to which like, it's been four years since 13.

• 3:21:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:21:51Speaker 04

  And it sounds like when you read about it that they're kind of like, "We're making this record with or without you." Like, you can go.

• 3:21:59Yasi Salek?

  And Damon did not want to make it, which I thought was interesting. Damon was like, "I had no interest in making this album, but like, also I didn't want to be a dick who like, was like, I just sold seven million albums with Gorillaz, I'm not coming back." They also, again, were contractually obligated, like,

• 3:22:11Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 3:22:12Yasi Salek?

  "We're still in that same, I believe, we're still in that same EMI deal."

• 3:22:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:22:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Graham said he went in the bathroom and he looked in the mirror and said, "This is just like behind the music." And then Alex was like, in Some Kind of Monster, the Metallica documentary, they waited for the singer to come around and maybe we should have waited for Graham. Two excellent pop cultural references.

• 3:22:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm not really sure. It's funny.

• 3:22:36Yasi Salek?

  It's so unclear what happened here.

• 3:22:38Speaker 04

  But they make think tank. And Graham's on a little bit of it, but it feels essentially like

• 3:22:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's Graham-less.

• 3:22:45Speaker 04

  Damon taking the lessons of Gorillaz.

• 3:22:48Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 3:22:48Speaker 04

  Taking his burgeoning world music interests.

• 3:22:51Yasi Salek?

  I'll tell you why that happened just in one sentence. Graham, Damon is a relationship guy because post Justin Friskman, I think he's single for like five minutes, whatever, a year or something. And he meets his next partner, who he literally just broke up with like two, a year ago. Like, that last album was about her and the breakup. And they go to Africa together. And he, Paul Simons, and is like, "Can you believe?"

• 3:23:13Yasi Salek?

  I'm just kidding, that's not what he's... Grisland. Yeah, he brings all that in. And Fatboy Slim as well.

• 3:23:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, and this is honestly kinda underrated.

• 3:23:23Yasi Salek?

  Low-key good album. I felt the same way.

• 3:23:26Speaker 04

  My, uh, my partner on the watch, Andy Greenwald, reviewed it for Spin.

• 3:23:29Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 3:23:30Speaker 04

  And is featured in the Wikipedia entry about this album.

• 3:23:32Yasi Salek?

  Incredible.

• 3:23:33Speaker 04

  And he loves this record.

• 3:23:35Yasi Salek?

  He's right. He's right, he should say it.

• 3:23:37Speaker 04

  It's a groove monster, honestly. You just like drive around LA and...

• 3:23:40Yasi Salek?

  I agree.

• 3:23:42Speaker 04

  You vibe out.

• 3:23:42Yasi Salek?

  I was blindsided because had I ever heard this album once in my God-given life, the answer is no. Had I even heard of this album? No, because I was famously checked out in the 2000s, did not hear any new rock music. And also probably would have been turned off by the Banksy graffiti cover.

• 3:23:57Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 3:23:58Yasi Salek?

  But it's 2003, well, 2003, but okay, it's 2003, what are we gonna do?

• 3:24:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:24:02Yasi Salek?

  It is surprisingly great. It's a kind of a concepty album. It's about polit- it's love and politics, right? Damon, again, and I, now I take back or recontextualize what I said earlier about Blur being sort of like apolitical, right? They've really proved in the end to not be apolitical. And Damon was like a very vocal anti-war advocate. And this is post-September 11th, obviously. This is Afghan war, war on terror or whatever. The Quaker jumped out, is what I'm saying, the Quaker upbringing. This album also hit number one in the UK.

• 3:24:37Speaker 04

  Well, Blur is back. I'm sure there was just like, holy shit.

• 3:24:39Yasi Salek?

  Blur had just a string of number, they never, I assume they're just like so famous there.

• 3:24:45Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I think also like their fans have now graduated to a point of like, I'll just, this is one of the five things I'm gonna buy this year is a Blur record.

• 3:24:53Yasi Salek?

  It even charted, it was the highest charting album in America.

• 3:24:56Speaker 04

  Think Tech was?

• 3:24:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:24:57Speaker 04

  Just off of Gorillaz vibes or what?

• 3:25:00Yasi Salek?

  I have to assume it's because it's post-Napster and it takes, you know how that started to happen? Where like you, you could sell 200 records and you're number one that week or whatever. You know, like, no one's really buying, as, not no one, because it's still 2003 and people are still buying CDs and stuff, but it's not as much. Because they only sold 20,000 in the first week and that got them to number 50 or 51. Got mostly positive reviews.

• 3:25:25Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 3:25:26Yasi Salek?

  Andy Greenwald included. Miranda Sawyer said that Think Tank is the band's first warm album. They have hopped genres in the past from baggy to mod to pop to grunge to art rock, but the sound has always stayed urban, western, cool. Think Tank is none of these things. What do you think about that?

• 3:25:42Speaker 04

  Urban, I guess, although I associate them with a lot of pastoral scenery lyrically.

• 3:25:49Yasi Salek?

  That's because to you, London is pastoral when actually-

• 3:25:52Speaker 04

  No, but all the Clover over Dover and yeah, a lot of that stuff. This is just a great groove record to me. I think that there's also an invisibility because when you listen to those other records, it's like, oh, this is the Graham part where he's going to try and pull it into the basement and then Damon's going to make it pop and shiny. And this is kind of a little bit more coherent.

• 3:26:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:26:20Speaker 04

  It's also the last good Blur record.

• 3:26:22Yasi Salek?

  Well.

• 3:26:23Speaker 04

  I'm just saying, to me, I think this is where Blur ends.

• 3:26:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it just completely changes. I love the hidden track.

• 3:26:31Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:26:32Yasi Salek?

  They bring Phil Daniels back.

• 3:26:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:26:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, me, white noise. And it's the rare pre-track one hidden track.

• 3:26:40Speaker 04

  You have to get the special edition or-

• 3:26:41Yasi Salek?

  You had to rewind. You had to start on track one and then rewind.

• 3:26:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:26:46Yasi Salek?

  Think of what they've taken from you. I need you guys to understand what they've taken from you. There used to be a beautiful sense of mystery and discovery in this world.

• 3:27:00Yasi Salek?

  You're right. It's a groovy album, has grooves, it slaps. Sweet song is inspired by Graham because Damon wrote it after looking at a picture of Graham.

• 3:27:16Speaker 04

  He could have just had him in the band.

• 3:27:17Yasi Salek?

  Well, I don't think Graham at that point was like, you're all dead to me. Although he did go to Alex's wedding.

• 3:27:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:27:24Yasi Salek?

  Okay, here's what happens after that. And by after that, I mean 2003 to 2015, 12 years.

• 3:27:30Speaker 04

  What would you say the most notable thing is the 09 reunion?

• 3:27:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, well, they tour this album and they have to have Simon Tong fill in from the Verve.

• 3:27:37Speaker 04

  I love when like the guys in the slightly second level of the Brit pop bands.

• 3:27:43Yasi Salek?

  Wait to get called up from the minors.

• 3:27:44Speaker 04

  Just like, yes, I'll just be the best guitar player in Oasis for 10 years. Yeah.

• 3:27:48Yasi Salek?

  Called up from the minors, but it was only like four, five years later, like around 2006 or seven that Graham kind of is like, I would come back. In the meantime, Demon Days is really the second girl is album, six times platinum, massive, major, Danger Mouse. But when Graham is like, I could come back, they're like, oh, okay, great. And then they do those reunion shows that you're talking about Hyde Park. They also headline Glastonbury. Then they play Coachella 2013 where your friend, podcaster Yasi Salek, saw them for the first time. And it was fucking fab. And maybe not coincidentally, that's also the year the Stone Roses played.

• 3:28:30Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 3:28:31Yasi Salek?

  Coachella, which was also fab to me.

• 3:28:33Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 3:28:34Yasi Salek?

  Not many people, unfortunately, made a big showing for that, but it was, it was great. Modest Mouse played, New Order played, it was a great fucking Coachella.

• 3:28:43Speaker 04

  That's a great one.

• 3:28:44Yasi Salek?

  Nick Cave, fab. Coachella used to be so good. Anywho, then they made, I'm not gonna say the mistake that bands make, I'm just gonna say they made the decision that bands make after they reunite. They're like, well, I might as well put out an album. And they put out The Magic Whip.

• 3:28:59Speaker 04

  Well, they were gonna like tour Japan, right? And they couldn't. So then they were like stuck in Hong Kong.

• 3:29:05Yasi Salek?

  Now you're in Portland. Now you're man slaying to me. I don't know.

• 3:29:07Speaker 04

  They were gonna do a tour in Asia and something happened with one show. And then they were like, oh, well, let's just start recording new stuff. And initially they were like, who knows if we'll ever put this out. And then it was like, I think each of them were doing various interviews where they would be like, who knows, we could put a Blur record out tomorrow.

• 3:29:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:29:25Speaker 04

  Or Damon would be like, we didn't finish it, so we're not gonna finish it. So we're never gonna put a Blur record. Like, there was a lot of like, we'll get to it when we get to it. Which guy has his own industry at this point?

• 3:29:34Yasi Salek?

  Yes. Well, it's generous, but yeah.

• 3:29:36Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, Dave is beginning his political career.

• 3:29:39Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 3:29:40Speaker 04

  Alex is a cheesemonger.

• 3:29:42Yasi Salek?

  I did not know that about Alex.

• 3:29:43Speaker 04

  I think so.

• 3:29:44Yasi Salek?

  He loves, he's still, he's still a Francophile.

• 3:29:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, and Graham and Damon both making music, I assume.

• 3:29:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and Graham, Graham started a label as well, like an indie label. And they all have kids, I think, at this point.

• 3:29:54Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 3:29:55Yasi Salek?

  I don't know about all of them, but definitely Graham and Damon have kids. And Dave, I think Dave had kids early. It's just so crazy. I put in my doc what came out and was bestselling the year that these albums came out. By the time we're in 2015, it's like you're in a whole new world, honey.

• 3:30:12Yasi Salek?

  Like, Father John Misty, I Love You Honey Bear, Courtney Barnett, Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit. Like, the rock landscape. Also, we should point out Arctic Monkeys have happened right now. So, speaking of imperial phase, right? By the time Britpop dies, which was 97, you might squeeze a little more out for like a year. Don't you feel it's kind of the end of British rock excellence?

• 3:30:37Speaker 04

  Well, the British media press, like, obviously, they go through their, like, six-year Spice Girls Take That period or whatever.

• 3:30:45Yasi Salek?

  Oh, my God, S Club 7, honey? Like, I mean, we're over here, we're like, S Club who? But like-

• 3:30:49Speaker 04

  But they fully, fully, fully bought into the Strokes/West stripes thing.

• 3:30:53Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 3:30:54Speaker 04

  And basically imported New York cool, American rock into British culture. And then had a bunch of bands that jumped, jumped on that, essentially.

• 3:31:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, like Friends/Ferdinand.

• 3:31:05Speaker 04

  Not jumped on it.

• 3:31:06Yasi Salek?

  Not jumped on it, but were kind of part of, but they were never as big. The Klaxons, like, nothing got, except for the Arctic Monkeys, I would say, who are the last massive rock band to-

• 3:31:17Speaker 04

  Would you call 1975 a rock band? No, I guess. I mean, initially, they were.

• 3:31:21Yasi Salek?

  Yes, but I wouldn't even call them as big as Arctic Monkeys. You know, I guess you could say Coldplay, but-

• 3:31:26Speaker 04

  Uh, you could.

• 3:31:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. It's just that, you know, the British exceptionalism in rock music, it died down. Rock music exceptionalism died down, though, so it's not even-

• 3:31:36Speaker 04

  What are you talking about?

• 3:31:37Yasi Salek?

  We had the last gasp with a- The Killers and the Strokes and stuff, but, and the White Stripes.

• 3:31:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think now it's much more of a subcultural thing.

• 3:31:46Yasi Salek?

  May it rest in peace. That's why we have devoted our lives to talking about it every week till we die, or I have anyways.

• 3:31:52Speaker 04

  What are we talking about?

• 3:31:53Yasi Salek?

  We're talking about the Magic Whip was an album.

• 3:31:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, warmly received by critics.

• 3:31:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think Blur has a lot of goodwill amongst critics.

• 3:32:01Speaker 04

  But even like a warmly received Blur record in this year winds up being like 15th in the like year end polls or whatever.

• 3:32:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, they're not gonna, they're, you know, they're not gonna beat out Tame Impala's Currents. That's what's, that's what's going on in 2015. The, you know, Grimes as Art Angels. Okay, then they take a second hiatus after Magic Whip. They're like, thank you, bye bye. Gorillaz put out three other albums that I'm not familiar with. Are you familiar with them?

• 3:32:29Speaker 04

  I'm not.

• 3:32:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, they're still massive and major. Damon Albarn's, I don't know if they were married or not, but his, his long-term relationship,

• 3:32:38Speaker 04

  His partner.

• 3:32:38Yasi Salek?

  Partner, 20 plus years. It was just Justine and then this woman, they broke up. And I told you I had like two things to say about this. One, low-key kind of a good album.

• 3:32:51Speaker 04

  Like The Ballad of Darren.

• 3:32:52Yasi Salek?

  It's not a Blur album in the classic sense, but it does kind of show you that Damon Albarn is really a crooner at his heart and soul. It brings back a bit of the theater and the croonery. I'm just like, I'm kind of interested in how like, you're having major success with Gorillaz, right? And that's kind of your new thing, but you decide, you were like, I can't, what I need to express about my middle-aged breakup can only be done through a Blur album. Oh, that was kind of sweet.

• 3:33:23Speaker 04

  That's nice. It's like, maybe it's like where he puts his biography, the chapters of his biography.

• 3:33:27Yasi Salek?

  Right. The Narcissus is a good song.

• 3:33:36Speaker 04

  There's some good songs on all of their post-peak.

• 3:33:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, their post-imperial phase.

• 3:33:41Speaker 04

  I think you could make like a pretty decent greatest hits out of these three records. Like you could put like a 12-song thing where you'd be like, this is really good. This is one album, this would be awesome.

• 3:33:49Yasi Salek?

  They use the Arctic Bookies producer, James Ford.

• 3:33:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:33:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's good. I think it's, here's, here's what I'll say, which is, I think, a high compliment for a late-career rock band album, it's not embarrassing.

• 3:34:01Speaker 04

  Damn.

• 3:34:02Yasi Salek?

  Which is not something you can say about 90%.

• 3:34:05Speaker 04

  It's just one of those things where it's like, we spent so many minutes just now talking about their presence at the center of culture.

• 3:34:14Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 3:34:14Speaker 04

  That I think when they move out of that center, it just dims a little bit, like the musical accomplishment.

• 3:34:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:34:22Speaker 04

  And maybe it speaks to, for both Oasis and Blur, it speaks to the fact that part of what made their music so magical was the moment that it was happening in and what they created extra musically around it.

• 3:34:35Yasi Salek?

  I think, yes, and also youth. Rock music is

• 3:34:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:34:40Yasi Salek?

  the lingua franca of youth.

• 3:34:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:34:42Yasi Salek?

  As Alex James would say. He didn't say that, but he would probably use the word lingua franca.

• 3:34:47Speaker 04

  I wonder, and they've never become, what we talked about with Pearl Jam, where it's like, our job is to put out 12 above-average songs every three years and then tour for a year so that people can have the experience of coming to see Blur.

• 3:35:01Yasi Salek?

  Doesn't it seem like that's a really American thing?

• 3:35:03Speaker 04

  I mean, Oasis is doing it, like, right?

• 3:35:05Yasi Salek?

  But they're not.

• 3:35:06Speaker 04

  Well, they're not doing it for their records.

• 3:35:08Yasi Salek?

  I don't think, I would posit that if Oasis had done what Blur did, which was continue to make albums, they would not be selling out.

• 3:35:17Speaker 04

  They were also on that trajectory. Like, the Oasis records, like, I went and saw them play Mucky Fingers at MSG, you know, or whatever that album was on, like.

• 3:35:26Yasi Salek?

  Have blocked it out fully, out of my mind.

• 3:35:28Speaker 04

  It's like, okay, like Liam can't really sing anymore.

• 3:35:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:35:31Speaker 04

  Like, this is, like, it's just Nolan Liam from the band.

• 3:35:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Bonehead's gone, babe.

• 3:35:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:35:37Yasi Salek?

  Well. The last thing Blur did in the public eye was play Coachella this year.

• 3:35:42Speaker 04

  And they didn't enjoy themselves.

• 3:35:44Yasi Salek?

  It's hard for me to tell if it was like, they're taking the piss, taking the Mickey, British sense of humor, or they were actually like mad that people didn't know who they were.

• 3:35:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:35:52Yasi Salek?

  Because I know the Stone Roses, I think, were a little bit miffed.

• 3:35:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:35:57Yasi Salek?

  And he told the crowd that you're never seeing us again, so you might as well fucking sing along to Girls, Against Girls and Boys.

• 3:36:11Speaker 04

  I imagine that they will probably, it would probably be loath to come to America again, but I could imagine it being hard to resist a huge paycheck to play like "T in the Park."

• 3:36:20Yasi Salek?

  It wouldn't have really played as well, the Coachella performance and the documentary, like the Hyde Park.

• 3:36:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:36:25Yasi Salek?

  Tears in the eyes and the signs. All that said, Christopher Ryan, OBE, I have walked away from this with a really great respect and deeper understanding for Blur. I'm serious.

• 3:36:39Speaker 04

  Good.

• 3:36:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:36:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:36:41Yasi Salek?

  I think before I'd been like, who cares, which was really cavalierly American of me, but also think like, understanding how young they were when they put out those albums in rapid succession, and then how much they grew as artists and changed, and how much good music they also like, put out into the world.

• 3:37:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, and also like, I think we're good ambassadors for good music. Like, they brought a lot of cool shit to the forefront.

• 3:37:08Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 3:37:08Speaker 04

  Worked with a lot of interesting people.

• 3:37:09Yasi Salek?

  Correct. All right.

• 3:37:10Speaker 04

  All right.

• 3:37:11Yasi Salek?

  Well, chuffed to have you here.

• 3:37:14Speaker 04

  Cheerio.

• 3:37:14Yasi Salek?

  Cheerio. Come back next week for a new episode of Bandsplain.

• 3:37:28Yasi Salek?

  If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bandsplain, and tell your friends about the show. Our guest today was Christopher Ryan. This episode was produced by Liz Sanchez and edited by Adrian Bridges with help from Justin Sales. Executive producers for Bandsplain are Gina Delbacke and me, Yasi Salek. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed- ...by Bevyn Cosentino and Jennifer Klavan, and graciously recorded by Carlos Delgarza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer Emeritus, producer Dylan, AKA Dylan Tupper-Ruffer, and also Casey Simonsen, Michael Hardman, Robert Adler, Leah Edwards, David McDonough, Dana Myerson, Jessica Hopper, Matt Helders, Drew Pierce, and The Wayback Machine. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Band Swing,

• 3:38:12Yasi Salek?

  on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 3:38:22Yasi Salek?

  I'm more interested in setting up this album. Not now.

• 3:38:29Speaker 04

  He's a Tony Blair.

• 3:38:29Yasi Salek?

  It's Tony Blair. I mean, like, hey, are you talking about Blair? I'd love to chime in. I have some thoughts.