Monday's Long Song

 

I never understood the hype surrounding the britpop rivalry between Blur and Oasis. For me, both bands wrote great songs in the beginning, until Oasis took off and became more about themselves than their music. During this time, Blur continued to evolve and add new facets to their music. Shortly before the end of the last century, Blur released their sixth album, 13, which marked a step away from the Britpop bubble. First, they release the single ‘Tender’, a magnificent, slow and undanceable anthem accompanied by a gospel choir, which is unlike anything Blur has done before. In fact, the whole album is a cornucopia of unusual influences: Kraut-inspired space effects, dubby passages, bluesy patterns and psychedelic swathes have found their way into the Blur cosmos without the whole thing slipping into overly obscure territory. Maybe one of the best opening songs from an album from the end of the century.

Blur - Tender

Floating

Another new band came to my ears the recent days. I use to follow the charts of Austrian radio station fm4 because this station is far away from the mainstream in my country. This station has indebted them to be a platform for independent, electronic music and local artists as well. Not everything touches my musical taste but a lot of songs were played there for the first time. In their last chart the highest new entry were Slide, a Swedish indie-rock duo. For me this songs sounds like a mixture of their musical tastes jointed together in a pop song. They borrowed a chorus by Oasis to create a pop song like Beck would probably do and stealing the melody by Pixie's Where is my mind and you get a very nice pop song.

In the late afternoon I will go like all two weeks to the home match of my team to be able to be present after long time once again at a victory. Well knowing that it will be a hard work to beat Freiburg it might be one of the last chances to stay in contact to the teams that might think their save.

Swerve

Their is a record compilation out now I thinking about to buy. Manchester North Of England shows on seven CD's the musical evolution of this city from the early Buzzcocks to Oasis. Filled with bands from the independent era of the mid 70's to the end of the 80's. Many of them are new to me, others I didn't heard before. One of them I remember well because they were played often in various locations in my hometown. Dub Sex was another brilliant and sadly forgotten Manchester band playing alongside with Happy Mondays and Stone Roses when the came through. I still can enjoy their rough industrial sound. Probably one of the essences that made punk great.



The band reunited a few years ago and I found a footage from gig they played in December 2014. Great stuff.