A sea of fred perry clad 30-somethings gathered in Hyde Park in the basking sunshine yesterday to witness one of the gig’s of the year, if not this decade. Among the 50,000 fans you could see there were also people there who would have been barely out of nappies when Blur released their first album.
These gigs were never about the money, such is the case for many greedy, desperate and pathetic groups at the moment getting back together and touring for ‘the fans’. Blur are back not because they feel they should be, not because of the money, but because they want to be, and it shows. They looked like they were having as good a time, if not better, than the audience, which for a ridiculously ecstatic crowd is truly saying something.
Not much has changed in the many years since Blur arrived on the scene, and that is by no means a bad thing. Damon Albarn, despite being 41 years of age still bounces around the stage like a monkey on acid. Alex is still effortlessly cool; with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth as he does his trademark side to side head bopping. Graham still looks endearingly shy, and puts his heart and soul into his guitar playing, which is less an instrument and more an extension of himself; the man is still the best guitarist of his generation. And Dave? Well Dave is still Dave – Mr consistent.
The first chunk of the set is pure 90’s nostalgia at it’s best. They couldn’t have chose a better song to open their set with, She’s So High is vintage Blur, an absolute classic that although may be appreciated more by the Blur connoisseur than the part timer, still goes down a treat. The pogoing officially begins when Girls And Boys is played, and Damon is almost completely drowned out by the crowd’s word for word singing. Not long after this point I’d had my face soaked by some flying ‘liquid’, which I can only hope was water. It wasn’t warm, so it was water. Definitely.
Beetlebum, as ever, is magical and steadily builds into a climax of Graham’s guitar feedback and Damon belting out ‘he’s on, he’s on, he’s on it’ like his life depended on it. It’s also the first song of the night to dip into their self-titled album. Later on they throw a curve ball into the mix by playing Death Of A Party off that very same album which is a welcome surprise. This setlist is a reminder, incase you’ve criminally forgot, that this band has one of the most impressive and consistent back catalogues of any group, ever. What is to be admired is the fact that not only do they play all the hits, but they delve into areas of their career you wouldn’t quite expect them to and are far removed from the predictability of many other bands live shows.
This Is A Low does it’s job of being the quintessential set closer and most emotive song of the night. This track was born for the very purpose of being blasted in a field for thousands of people. The encore was the equivalent of three rockets going off, as they played a hat-trick of frantic songs – Popscene, Advert and Song 2.
My only qualm? they didn’t play Bang. But I can’t have it all my own way, perhaps they’ll save that for the next tour which might occur if they release a brand new studio album, it really really really could happen.
Matt Humphrey
