A Look Back On 1997 and Blur
Visualize 1997. What were you? Where were you? How old were you? You could be anything, but I was just 5 years old kid, still playing see-saw in the kindergarten, spending every afternoon as my nanny always told me to take an afternoon nap (which I extremely hate), and so on. My only companions as a kid were only my neighbor-childhood-friend, my nanny, and my only sister. In 1997, my sister was 14 years old (she was in the middle school at that time), funny young girl who always tease me with whatever I did, but in fact she was a quite caring person. There were times we did not get along; there were times we get along. I thought it was a love-hate relationship (we are still at it nowadays, haha).
She was the person in my nuclear family who watches telly the most. I mean, whenever she went back from school, she always put the telly on, and I loved playing while watching the telly with her. She always watched MTV Indonesia, which back then was a Mecca for every music enthusiast around the country. With witty personalities namely Jamie Aditya and Sarah Sechan, they were also playing best music of the era. Any favourite music of the era. Names like Green Day, Nirvana, Prodigy, Backstreet Boys, Boyzone, Spice Girls, TLC, Janet Jackson, Oasis, Suede, are not unusual for me since it was shown everyday in the MTV. If my sister loved it, I would also love it, sing it whenever they were played (despite the fact that I did not understand English that time, so it were all just blah blah blah). One of my favorite piece from the MTV 1997’s overplayed tracks is Blur’s Song 2. As I ever explained, it was the first time I listened to Blur. I remembered the music video was so kooky, wind blown the Blur boys all over the strange, rug-covered wall. It was a loud track and it became a massive hit back then. You heard it anywhere, anytime until you get sick of it! Then my sister bought the self-titled album, Blur, so we played, and played, and played the record for as many times as you can imagine.
Now, let us recollect Blur. Graham once said it was their best album ever made. To me, it was a huge musical shift from something the media always called Britpop into something that was more thoughtful, more personal musical direction. If I look back at their three previous album, the songs was all about biographical stories with London fictional character that Damon made. Colin Zeal, Tracy Jacks, Mr. Robinson’s Quango, Ernold Same, and Dan Abnormal, it were all just about the characters that went into Damon’s mind. You cannot find them in Blur anyway, for as far as I know the band started to let Graham contributing in musical direction, so it was not just about Damon’s creative power. So, what are my highlights of this album?
No one really knows what the word ‘beetlebum’ means, but I believe it was related to something about the song. It is a common knowledge that the song represents how Damon and his then girlfriend, singer Justine Frischmann from Elastica, experiencing heroin. It has a bittersweet feeling with lyrics like “She sucked your thumb / She’ll make you come”. Without a doubt, a very personal song about a relationship of a man and a woman, laced with drugs.
Superstar of the album, it is. The America knows Blur as a band right after they release this grunge-influenced track (back then, “BLUR WHO?”, asked America). Graham told us that at that time, there were not any influential British guitarist exist that can nourish him to play guitar more creatively so he take muses from American guitarist such as Stephen Malkmus so, this is the result. Complemented with twice-recorded bass line (so it became loud and abrasive) from Alex, this is your perfect party tune.
3. Theme From Retro
I simply cannot understand the purpose of this track, but hell, who wants to? It is a beautiful almost-instrumental track (Damon was just talking through megaphone, producing hard-to-comprehend spoken words) which gives me chill when it was played through the PA right before the boys appeared on the stage, at their show in Jakarta. Seriously, I had goosebumps for this song at that night. This is not the song that we expect from them in the Britpop days, but it is a good quality track.
4. You’re So Great
If I could pick only one Blur song as the soundtrack of biopic of my life, surely I will consider this greatest piece ever from Graham. It means a lot to me, the lyrics and everything. When most people see this all-composed-and-performed-by-Graham track as a romantic, melancholy song from Blur, well, you better know the fact: it was about Graham’s alcoholic state of mind (or also caffeine-ic state of mind, he once said). He said that, this song could be about anything in this world. He told us in No Distance Left To Run that he was very pissed and very annoyed at everyone at the time he made this song as he encountered a mid-pop life crisis. A life crisis that made him talked to painting and decorators, and even talked to more and more painting and decorators at the pubs as he hated and tired of pop music so much. Maybe this song is all about painting and decorators he talked to? Might be. Everything is possible in the mind of a drunk man.
5. Death of a Party
This is one of most underrated tracks from Blur ever (alongside with Inertia, Young and Lovely, Battle, and so forth). I think it deserved to be the top of the list of Blur: Most Forgotten Song. In my opinion, it is all about their tiredness of glamorous days of Britpop that they have been through. As Damon said, right after The Great Escape, they do not really hang out anymore as the boys were having their hard times. Dave at the end of his relationship with his wife, Graham was an alcoholic, Alex was living his glamorous life with celebrity friends in West End, and Damon is in the kind of strange permutation of performance. I think this song sums up what they were feeling, when they felt really tired of what they are presented in the media. People kind of sick seeing them everyday and maybe have thoughts like “that’s enough, Britpop”. That is why the lyrics became so gloom as “The death of the party came as no surprise / Why did we bother? / Should have stayed away.”
6. Chinese Bombs
I said earlier that this record contains no biographical materials. Well, almost. If you pay attention to this track, it is all about Bruce Lee, the cult and legendary actor-martial artist originating from Hong Kong. Quite short for a Blur track (1:25), but filled with harsh guitar playing from Graham, influenced by American bands that he listened to. If you listen to Graham’s solo project after departing from Blur, this song has got so much feeling of them. I know nothing about guitar playing, but this fast and loud tracks surely livens my day.
7. Essex Dogs
Such a perfect 8 minutes closure for a top album. It is a very experimental song, containing the sound of a motorcycle being started, repeating guitar sounds that potentially makes you dizzy, synthesizer tunes, even the sound from a vacuum cleaner! At the almost end, it came the silence for seconds and continue again with repetition of odd bit from Graham. Never thought that Blur could ever produce this kind of musical piece until I heard this.
Accompanying those highlighted pieces are the songs that also have so much power. The rest like I Am Just A Killer Of Your Love, M.O.R., and On Your Own are having the same worth to be discussed as the first alternative pieces from Blur. As Alex said, this album is a new cycle of Blur after that Britpop age. Blur itself was having its 18th birthday yesterday (10/2) so this writing is a homage to the album that makes me know that this band, this particular band, is exist, even back when I was 5 years old. Blur, embrace your legal age!
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