Blur Vinyl

"The Great Escape" from 1995 has been called third stage of Blur's Life/Brit-pop trilogy that began with "Modern Life is Rubbish" (1993) and "Park Life" (1994). The band went after these three albums for a simpler and less produced expression.

Without being quite as consistent as its predecessor "Park Life", "The Great Escape" remains as one of milestones among Brit-pop albums. With Damon Albarn in the lead Blur continued the English pop-songwriting tradition, which was started by people like Ray Davies and Pete Townshend in the 1960's.

The album includes some of the group's biggest hits such as "Country House", "Stereotypes" and not least the band's possibly greatest song, the grand ballad "The Universal" - a track which alone is worth the whole album.

Other tracks that lift the album up to belong among the greatest albums of its time are the delicate ballad, "Best Days", while "Top Man" and "Charmless Man" both have charm and bite.

Some of the album's less catchy tracks, can be seen as advance warning of what was to come from the band on their subsequent albums; this applies for, to pick out two, "He Thought of Cars" and "Globe Alone"

This cd includes "Crazy Beat" album version, which is a great uptempo track with a great guitar riff, sample and fat beat which was produced by Fatboy Slim. If you dont own "think tank" blur's latest release, well, the rest of the cd is nothing like this song. ( for a more adequate previez of what the cd sounds like listen to the second single "out of time")

I found the alternative video of "crazy beat" included really boring. It starts out interesting, but it never picks up. Photography is nowhere near amazing, the action is tedious, and not entertaining. The only curious thing that keeps your attention is the band either pretending to playing another song or just pretending to play offtempo, or just fooling around.

"Don't be" would be only reason to get this cd, if you already own "think tank." The track has a slight different feel than the rest of the songs in the LP, yet it still has that gloomy atmosphere and "gorillaz-remniscent" production the cd has. It features great lyrics and a great brass arrangement. I really believe this could have been a great track on the cd. Could have "lightened up" the tank.

Because only 1 out of 3 items in here is worth it, if you are not a collector, youre better off buying this when the price is a little lower or its released nationally... or you could always buy it used on amazon.

Even the best bands, the biggest bands, the most important ones, are cosmic accidents, and a worldbeating career can hinge on a brief encounter. Blur's story begins at Colchester's Stanway Comprehensive School in the early '80s, and a feisty collision between recent East London transplant Damon Albarn and local lad Graham Coxon.
"First impressions of Damon?" Graham would recall. "Black mac. Very white shirt. Small Cary Grant tie knot. White socks. Very nice, rude boy shoes. I was wearing Tuf brogues and he said they were fakes."

An alliance was born, intense and challenging. At lunchtimes the two would obsess over The Jam, 2-Tone and Quadrophenia - prophetic in more ways than one. Later when art student Coxon joined Albarn's pre-Blur band Circus, he brought instant guitar ideas and a bass-playing pal from Goldmith's Alex James, who adjudged the music "shit" but could smell fun a mile off. The drummer, Mohawk-coiffed computer programmer Dave Rowntree, stood slightly left of Tony Benn and beat the tubs like a savage.

Together they became Seymour and then Blur: architects of a resurgence in British music as their first quartet of albums - Leisure (1991), Modern Life Is Rubbish (1993), Parklife (1994) and The Great Escape (1995) - reconnected home grown pop with its classic paradigms - Ray Davies, Bowie, The Jam, John Barry, Syd Barrett, The Specials - and Damon Albarn matured into a poignant, telling painter of cultural landscapes.

Their first Number 1 album, Parklife, stayed in the charts for a mammoth 90 weeks and the following year, the band won four Brit Awards, a groundbreaking crossover moment for alternative music. On June 17, Blur played to 30,000 fans at East London's Mile End Stadium and were joined onstage by Quadrophenia star Phil Daniels, who reprised his monologue from the album's swaggering, ubiquitous title track; in August of that year they sold 274,000 copies of the Number 1 single Country House in the first week of its release.

Britpop had reached its peak, but Blur was moving on, into the sonically scuffed territory of the Blur (1997) album and another monolithic single, Song 2. Albarn and Coxon were back on the same page, as the destabilizing lunacy of Britpop's 24-7 maelstrom subsided, and Blur's continued exploration of the recording studio culminated in 13 (1999), their most experimental incarnation since the deconstructions of Seymour. Tender and No Distance Left to Run saw a rueful Albarn sifting the rubble of his eight-year relationship with Elastica singer Justine Frischmann while the record's pop hit Coffee & TV, was sung by Coxon.

Combustible, like all creative combinations, Blur could sometimes take their differences out on each other but on stage their cocktail of personalities made for spectacular pop events, whether they ended with the band maced by security or the enraptured singalong that accompanied 1994's Glastonbury set-closer, This Is A Low. And although that volatile chemistry has ensured a hiatus since 2002 - when the band completed the alternately touching and funky Think Tank album (2003) minus Graham Coxon - it also produced that record's most ravishing song. "You can be with me if you want to be," goes album closer Battery In Your Leg, as Graham's guitars shimmer exquisitely. "This is a ballad for the good times%u2026"

Almost exactly 20 years since the formation of Seymour, Blur have reconvened. Let the good times roll.

"It's fantastic to get my old friend back." Damon Albarn, 2008.
What they're doing when they're not being Blur%u2026
Alex James' musical projects outside of Blur have included Me Me Me (with Stephen Duffy) and Fat Les, makers of 1998's Number 2 hit Vindaloo. He has written music with Marianne Faithfull, Sophie Ellis Bextor and the legend that is Betty Boo. A prolific writer for newspapers and magazines, he lives on a farm in Oxfordshire, and is the author of Britpop memoir A Bit of A Blur.

Dave Rowntree runs his own computer animation company, Nanomation, and has directed episodes of Channel 4 TV comedy series Empire Square. A Labour party member and activist, he is the party's prospective candidate for the Cities Of London & Westminster constituency at the next General Election.

Graham Coxon is the founder of Transcopic Records and the author of six solo studio albums - The Sky Is Too High (1998), The Golden D (2000), Crow Sit On Blood Tree (2001), The Kiss Of Morning (2002), Happiness In Magazines (2004) and Love Travels At Illegal Speeds (2006) - finding time to co-write a 2007 single with Paul Weller, This Old Town, and collaborate on 22 Dreams album track Black River. His artworks, adorning the covers of records by Blur and Kate Rusby, have been exhibited at the ICA and elsewhere.

Damon Albarn partners artist Jamie Hewlett in virtual band Gorillaz, creators of the multi platinum selling Gorillaz (2001) and Grammy-winning Demon Days (2005) albums. Other musical adventures have included Mali Music, Democrazy, The Good, The Bad & The Queen, soundtracks to the films Ravenous and 101 Reykyavik and a multimedia opera in Mandarin, Monkey: Journey To The West. He is heavily involved with the cross-pollinating musical revue Africa Express, and has contributed songs production and performances to records by Tony Allen, Ray Davies, Massive Attack, Fatboy Slim and Amadou & Mariam.