Concert review of Blur @ Hyde Park, July 3rd 2009
Posted by Dennis Wiesch on 14 Jul 2009 | Tagged as: Concerts, Music
Last Friday the long waiting came to an end. After six years of silence they finally stood together on one stage again. It’s the band that in the 1990ies like no other band influenced especially the british pop and rock music for ever. I’m talking about Blur. And there could not have been a better setting for this reunion than the beautiful Hyde Park in London.
None of the members have really been away in all these years, they just preferred to take care of their own projects. It’s Damon Albarn, the lead singer, who was always on the go. With his side projects Gorillaz, The Good, The Bad & The Queen, a soloalbum, co-founder of a label and the composition of music for movie soundtracks he was definitely busy all the time. Graham Coxon, guitar, has been responisble for two solo albums and Alex James, bass, supported and produced up-and-coming new bands and talents. Only Dave Rowntree, drums, has been working in a regular job.
The concert was announced quite unexpectedly in December 2008. The 50.000 tickets were sold out in nearly ten minutes. An extra concert has been organized very quickly and it took not long until appearances at Glastonbury, T In The Park and some smaller club venues have been announced as well. The most surprising gig took place a few weeks ago at Londons most famous record store “Rough Trade“. It was a secret concert and the store burst at the seams.
The weather on this beautiful afternoon at Hyde Park for this small festival could not have been any better. Blue sky and sun just everywhere! There were four support bands that performed before Blur: Deerhoof, Florence & The Machine, Amadou & Mariam and Vampire Weekend. The music reached from strange to easy nice pop music and very danceable worldmusic to some melancholic and independent pop and folk. It was a perfect introduction to the long awaited headliner.
At 8.20 pm the waiting finally came to an end: the audience went totally crazy and was screaming while the first guitar chords of “She’s So High” from their debut album “Leisure” shook the ground of the whole Park. I got totally overwhelmed by my feelings and got goose pimples until the end of the concert. Blur sounded better than ever, it was as if there has never been a break and they all four looked so enormously happy on stage. And for the next two and a half hours, the whole audience went with them. The stage appearance of Damon Albarn is still impressive and really everybody eats out of the palm of his hands. The whole concert felt like it lasted five minutes, i felt like being in some sort of trance.
Of course Blur played all their great hits from their seven albums: “Girls & Boys“, “Tender”, “Park Life”, “Country House”, “End Of A Century”, “Beetlebum”, “To The End” and “Coffee & TV”. But even some rather unexpected songs like “Death Of A Party” and “Trimm Trabb” have been performed and delighted me even more than all the other songs. Through several big screens and a lot of P.A. all over the field, the sound and the view was just great for everybody.
During their encore there was one song that just had to be played. It’s their best seeling single, “Song 2“. I have never been a big fan of this song, but at this moment with this certain atmosphere at this location it just blew me away like everybody else. To cap the event off they played the amazing “The Universal” that made us all feel like one and finally sent us away into the warm night of London. This was a concert I won’t forget in my whole life.
Finally there is one thing that really impressed me on Blur: even after six years of a break they were able to show just everybody, who came out there to Hyde Park, that they are still the Kings of Britpop. Blur stand for a very creative, manifold and unique sound, that always has a recognition value without repeating itself or being boring. This is a fact, that I miss with nearly all new hyped British bands like for example Arctic Monkeys, Bloc Party, Maximo Park and so on and on and on.
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