Let's talk Blur b-sides!

Some of the latter ones had entertaining dafties like "Got Yer" and "Beard" to say nothing of "Rednecks" and "Alex Song"

so thanks, blur, for those dafties.

I love Blur b-sides. They are always very daft. I liked "One Born Every Minute" off of Country House - pure silliness.

It's neither French or a song. But it's awesome!

Put all the singles onto one CDr and go nuts on random!

You mean the Live It! remix. I remember hating hating hating that remix when it came out (b-side of the Universal I think). It sounded like Take That. I think it was the last nail in the coffin for Blur during their teenybopper phase and I soon after sold all my stuff, basically disgusted with Damon's schtick and how every chav girl in my Science class was now bickering over Oasis vs Blur. Don't worry, I eventually saw sense and reacquired everything I'd sold.

I've stuck all their b's into a folder (remixes and versions optional) on my HD just for this reason.

I know I could go on with the "Think Tank" singles, but hey I gotta stop somewhere and I choose to stop with the last of the Graham.

This set does show off G.Coxon's guitar to impressive extent!

happy now? :-D

Yes.

Good lord, I missed this thread entirely until now.

My Blur CD singles are due for a dust off, I must thank you guys. I really don't remember a lot of their b-sides except that "I'm Fine" (on the vinyl of Popscene only) is I think THE best ever Beatles pastiche, XTC's Skylarking notwithstanding. Also I remember the b-sides to There's No Other Way like Mr. Briggs and Luminous and whatever the hell else was on that CD single. Also I remember "Day Upon Day" live which was such a punk blast. They always had this habit of including at least one song on their albums that was just a total throwback to fast paced punk. I loved it. If they'd done it too much, it would have been the death of them, but it was just a laugh while it lasted.

Oh dear, I'm getting the Bang and There's No Other Way b-sides mixed up now. Terribly sorry. And the vinyl was always different than the CD so everything gets very complicated for that reason as well.

Funny you mention "Dizzy" that is on the CD single I was going to try next - Sunday Bloody Sunday. I don't remember a damn thing about it of course, same as Beetlebum.

It was £100 retail, I got mine for £30 off an auction site, e-bay has them for £40 to £50.

"MOR" has now a writing credit of "Albarn/Coxon/James/Rowntree/Bowie/Eno"

What's that all about then? (specifically)

Blur’s 1997 track “M.O.R.” heavily borrowed the rhythm of the song, too, (Boys keep swinging), and after legal intervention, was credited to “Blur/Bowie/Eno”.

You what?

In the U.S. it's only on Trainspotting.

other personal favorites: "Tame", "All Your Life", and the aforementioned "Dizzy"... "Young and Lovely", "Theme From an Imaginary Film"...

also worth hearing: "Get Out of Cities", "Polished Stone", "Rednecks", "People in Europe", "Fried", "One Born Every Minute"

forgetting plenty of good ones, i'm sure.

"polished stones" is nice and languishing. what about the eerie b-sides on "charmless man" like st. louis and horrors and a song. those three always freaked me out.

St Louis
Inertia
Luminous
Explain
Swallows in the Heatwave
Tell Me Tell Me
Dizzy
Long Legged
Mixed Up
Never Clever
Into Another
Uncle Love
No Monsters In Me
Ultranol
Young and Lovely
Fried (I believe this is a Seymour song)
People In Europe (pure disco brillance)
Theme From An Imaginary Film
Got Yer! (delightfully creepy)
Alex's Song (I lost my virginity to this song, of all options!)
Rednecks
All Your Life
Magpie

Apparently I like all their b-sides :P

it's only 2:42! with chipmunk vocals!

therefore, classic

I clicked and read and had nothing to say, though.

I like the extended Primrose Hill vers. of "For Tomorrow"...

we could also start talking Blur fan-club singles, but i can't remember which ones I have at the moment.

Observer ones, I think. "Ambulance" being one...

http://www.blur-unofficial.com/rare.php

I must really thank Mark Grout for an idea that simply would never have occured to me on my own: Blur b-sides. I mean wow, thanks man.

blur did do an awful lot of decent instrumentals though, didn't they?

Some favourite non-album tracks of mine:

All Your Life
French Song
Magpie
Popscene
All We Want
Mace
Badgeman Brown
No Monsters In Me
Peter Panic
Get Out of Cities
Threadneedle Street
Tame
Day Upon Day (live)
So You
Bone Bag
Theme from an Imaginary Film
When the Cows Come Home
Berserk
Music Is My Radar
Black Book
Uncle Love
Young and Lovely
My Ark
Garden Central

love music is my radar

It's been about 21-22 years, but I still can't believe my luck at finding the Chemical World CD single (the one with Young & Lovely) for 99p in an Our Price bargain bucket, at the height of all their old singles being sold for around £25.

I bought the On Your Own Australian CD single for a couple of quid off some second hand website around '99ish (might even have been one of my first Ebay purchases) because at the time it was the only way to get Popscene without spending ££££ (they put a live version on the UK single)

The whole thing regarding the availability of the studio version of 'Popscene' from roughly 1993 up to 2009 (when it finally appeared on a UK compilation album) is something I still find amusing. They were really fucked off about that single not doing well, weren't they? As a result it became one of those tracks that the hardcore fans used to get one over on the fairweather fans, this thing that you weren't a "proper" fan unless you owned a copy of (or knew) 'Popscene' ... Blur themselves of course fuelling this kind of idea by regularly playing it live while being stubborn about re-releasing it.

Alex's full-length version of Far Out is great, I'd take that over most of the rest of Parklife.

Yeah, I like the full version of 'Far Out' too. These days, my highlights of Parklife are 'Badhead', 'Bank Holiday', 'London Loves', 'Trouble in the Message Centre', 'Clover Over Dover' and 'This is a Low' ...

"Mr CD" on Berwick street used to get low-price Japanese editions in, so I got "Modern Life is Rubbish" with extra "Young and Lovely" and "Popscene" to boot!

"Popscene" was on the US version of MLIR too, which was pretty easy to get in the mid nineties (in The NL). But I'd've preferred the Japanese version, where it's just tacked on in the end, I think, rather than shoehorned in somewhere, disrupting the flow.

I remember seeing an import of Modern Life is Rubbish with Popscene on it in Virgin Megastore mid-90s but it was ££££ again

'Young and Lovely' really should have been on the album proper, and probably would have been if Balfe hadn't insisted on 'Turn It Up' going on the record.

Young & Lovely being a b-side just makes no sense whatsoever

I feel the same about 'All Your Life', but I don't have the faintest idea whereabouts on Blur it could have gone.

Blur were a better B-sides band than people think. While they weren't the same kind of B-sides band as, say, Suede or Oasis, it's great to listen to this stuff and hear them just making music with the pressure off and doing whatever the fuck they feel like. Not all of it works, but when it hits the mark it's great. Something like 'Berserk' now sounds like the Blur of 13, even though it was released about eight years before.

I assumed All Your Life was left off as it would look reckless to have two songs which rip off Bowie on one album

And yup, Blur wrongly got a reputation for being a lesser b-sides band as they released lots of silly ones at the hight of their fame, but over the course of their career they left more than enough to compile a lengthy, high-quality collection to rival some of the better b-sides albums of the era.

I dunno, how many references to Julian Cope were on MLIR? At least two..

two songs which rip off Bowie on one album

Pressure On Julian
Coping
Colin Zeal = Sleeping Gas

...i'm sure there are more

xpost - ha ha, yes it does. Three would be completely excessive

There's a bit in Essex Dogs which sounds like Quicksand as well...

Yeah, I agree... some of the Parklife b-sides could be considered some of the worst tracks they ever did... 'Got Yer!', 'Red Necks', 'Alex's Song' etc.

(x-posts)

I think it's a case of both MOR and All Your Life are just too in debt overall to specific Bowie songs, whereas the other two do in passing

'Strange News From Another Star' is fucking incredible - I heard it the other day for the first time in ages and it still retains its power for me. Great outro.

Never heard MOR as a Bowie ripoff but Strange News is pure Bowie. Have to say, MOR is probably my least favourite Blur single while On Your Own is one of their best

Uh, 'M.O.R.' is a far bigger rip off of Bowie than 'Strange News From Another Star' is. The latter is a convincing impression of Bowie's songwriting, whereas 'M.O.R.' quite literally lifts the chord progression from 'Boys Keep Swinging'/'Fantastic Voyage' but also the "work it out" part. That Bowie and Eno ended up with a songwriting credit on it makes perfect sense.

'M.O.R.' is still great though, was one of my highlights of the Blur album 20 years ago. I don't like the single version, only the album take.