Flat Out Knackered
Over the weekend Blur played the Coachella Festival. A show where an irritated man in a white suit asked an unresponsive and unimpressed crowd to sing along before telling them they’ll never see him again. I hope that comes to pass. I was there at the beginning for Blur. Even photographed at one of their early gigs before they really broke through. I was there in London when they hit the big time during Britpop, even though I always preferred Oasis and thought Elastica were better than all of them put together. I’d loved the image reinvention of their Modern Life Is Rubbish, all Doctor Martens and mod jackets. A mirror of me in 1995, but others around them were always cooler. They always just seemed to keep doing the stupidest shit alongside writing some truly magical bangers. I was still just about hanging on by the time The Great Escape came around, which arched from the sublime The Universal to the downright crap Country House. That was the end of the Blur journey for me. I never bought another album of theirs afterwards, and moved on to different shores in 1996 once the cigarette ash of Britpop had burned down to the filter.
I’d see them again over the years as they reinvented themselves with the stadium anthem which broke them in America, Song 2. Their worst nightmare made real. I always thought Popscene was so much better at the same thing. They kept going, and over the next twenty years would hack out a few more albums, and indulge in side projects like Albarn’s Gorillaz. All of it was just so mediocre. Gone was the original spark of their earlier cultural criticism of America which had helped birth Britpop. Gone was the attitude and in had come the money. I’d see performances of theirs in London with massive crowds going mental over what looked like pantomime. But whenever I saw interviews with them, they always just seemed so fucking tired all the time. The same unshaven, tousled haired sloppy mess over some expanding waistbands and teasers of double chin. Every time it was the same. Old. Tired. Just flat out knackered.
But then I saw the videos of them playing Coachella and, to paraphrase even them, this was a low. They just looked so old. Which made me feel old. Most of the crowd weren’t even born when Blur were riding high in the nineties. All the air had just gone out of it all, but they were still trying to hang on to something long gone. Albarn berated the crowd for not singing along. But the truth is that no-one cares any more. It might have been a ball during the nineties, but for god’s sake that was over thirty years ago. Blur have always detested America, but the performance felt like America might have finally finished them off. Perhaps it’s all a metaphor for England itself. I hope for Blur’s sake they take it as a signal from the universe to finally pack it in.
I cannot escape the man in the white suit.
