Blur at the BBC

king_hellfire

king_hellfire

Well-known member
Watching Blur at the BBC on BBC 2 now and I don’t know if it’s an age thing but I much prefer their back catalogue to Oasis’.

Don’t get me wrong, Oasis’ first two albums were a massive part of the soundtrack to my teens/early 20s years. I liked Blur, and I even preferred Country House to Roll With It, and I loved This is a Low, To the End, End of a Century, and Song 2 but Oasis were mine and my mates’ preferred band.

Looking back over their back catalogues now I much prefer the eclecticism of Blur.

Anyone else feel the same?
 
king_hellfire said:
Watching Blur at the BBC on BBC 2 now and I don’t know if it’s an age thing but I much prefer their back catalogue to Oasis’.

Don’t get me wrong, Oasis’ first two albums were a massive part of the soundtrack to my teens/early 20s years. I liked Blur, and I even preferred Country House to Roll With It, and I loved This is a Low, To the End, End of a Century, and Song 2 but Oasis were mine and my mates’ preferred band.

Looking back over their back catalogues now I much prefer the eclecticism of Blur.

Anyone else feel the same?
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I got all their albums and compilations (to get singles that are not on albums) about 10 years ago for about a quid each from Amazon, and enjoyed listening to them
I've got all Oasis stuff too , and like both groups
Just watching Blur at the BBC - recorded it and about halfway through now
 
king_hellfire said:
Watching Blur at the BBC on BBC 2 now and I don’t know if it’s an age thing but I much prefer their back catalogue to Oasis’.

Don’t get me wrong, Oasis’ first two albums were a massive part of the soundtrack to my teens/early 20s years. I liked Blur, and I even preferred Country House to Roll With It, and I loved This is a Low, To the End, End of a Century, and Song 2 but Oasis were mine and my mates’ preferred band.

Looking back over their back catalogues now I much prefer the eclecticism of Blur.

Anyone else feel the same?
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Yes, eclectic is a great word to define them. Pretty much the opposite of oasis’s back catalogue which seemed formulaic in hindsight. That’s not to say there were bad songs, but a wall of fuzz guitar, some pentatonic leads and some vague druggy lyrics can only be arranged in so many ways
 
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I'm in the same boat k_h.

I was well into the first couple of Oasis albums and the Master Plan during the Britpop era, only had a passing interest in Blur at the time but in recent years I've really got into them, loads of brilliant albums and all a lot more varied and sophisticated.
 
Centralscrutinizer said:
I'm in the same boat k_h.

I was well into the first couple of Oasis albums and the Master Plan during the Britpop era, only had a passing interest in Blur at the time but in recent years I've really got into them, loads of brilliant albums and all a lot more varied and sophisticated.
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It wasn’t until a few years into the Britpop era that I realised it was Blur who sang There’s No Other Way and Chemical World, both great songs. Plus it wasn’t until a year-or-so back I found out that in the early days they were sharing the same stages with Sonic Youth and The Screaming Trees.
 
Am the other way round, as a twenty something in the 90s, when battle lines were drawn, I thought Blur were the clever fellas (even bought Country House on CD single), but think now Oasis have aged much better.
 
king_hellfire said:
Watching Blur at the BBC on BBC 2 now and I don’t know if it’s an age thing but I much prefer their back catalogue to Oasis’.

Don’t get me wrong, Oasis’ first two albums were a massive part of the soundtrack to my teens/early 20s years. I liked Blur, and I even preferred Country House to Roll With It, and I loved This is a Low, To the End, End of a Century, and Song 2 but Oasis were mine and my mates’ preferred band.

Looking back over their back catalogues now I much prefer the eclecticism of Blur.

Anyone else feel the same?
Click to expand...
Not sure I’ve done the full 180 you have, but definitely appreciate blur more now than back in the day.
 
Ingleby_Flash said:
Not sure I’ve done the full 180 you have, but definitely appreciate blur more now than back in the day.
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I still do love the first two Oasis albums, although I’ve not listened to either for a good few years now, but if I had to put on a Spotify playlist on shuffle for either band, I’d choose Blur.
 
king_hellfire said:
I still do love the first two Oasis albums, although I’ve not listened to either for a good few years now, but if I had to put on a Spotify playlist on shuffle for either band, I’d choose Blur.
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I listened to those first two oasis albums back to back the other day for the first time in probably 7 or 8 years. What I was surprised at is just how low the lead guitar is in the mix. It’s like Noel wasn’t actually as confident in his licks and hid behind boneheads wall of fuzz.

I loved these two albums at the time and DM still sounds visceral and WTSMG has some great tracks, but when you strip away the bands personality and attitude, the lyrics are really cheesy, the albums feel one paced, and don’t feel grown up, to me. There’s a nostalgia value to them, and they’re a great drunk pub singalong, but my interest in them has really waned.

I’m gonna go back to the early blur ones next, see how I feel about those 30 years later.
 
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Always liked Blur, and own all their albums. “Eclectic” is one way of putting it, pretentious is another, but I do think they are good. They’ll always be regarded as more innovative than Oasis and more varied, because they’re more experimental and more discerning about how they want their audience to perceive them.

They do have a lot of tracks with rubbish lyrics too though, in my view. But it’s usually accepted as being tongue in cheek/clever because of Blur’s background. There is always an assumption that Oasis’ daft lyrics are purely down to just being crap at writing lyrics, rather than for the same reasons as Blur. That’s where “class” comes into the debate for me. People seem reluctant to accept that a group (well really, it’s one guy) of Mancunian scallywags can also be “clever”.

Blur probably have 3-4 very good songs on most albums, often padded out with a load of dross in my opinion. But they are consistent, for sure, right through to their later albums including the new one.

Oasis were two separate bands really. “Oasis 2.0” had lost a lot of the spirit and Noel had run out of things he could relate to in his songwriting, so he let the other guys write stuff that was usually abysmal. Some of his own-penned stuff was abysmal too, with the occasional half-decent tune. If they reunited and did an album now, it would be horrific.

Original Oasis (‘94-‘97), however, had something that Blur and most other bands before and since never had, and never will, in my opinion. But you either Iove it or you hate it, and it’s not just about chords sequences.
 
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king_hellfire said:
It wasn’t until a few years into the Britpop era that I realised it was Blur who sang There’s No Other Way and Chemical World, both great songs. Plus it wasn’t until a year-or-so back I found out that in the early days they were sharing the same stages with Sonic Youth and The Screaming Trees.
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If you haven’t listened to Leisure I suggest you do. It is arguably their best album, in my opinion.
 
Ratedr69 said:
i always preferred the ever changing sound of blur. Every album is different and unique in its own way. Such a good live act too, This is a low is a masterpiece for me.

I also think the gorillaz is as good as most bands too.
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Love Blur but think Gorillaz are totally boring. IMHO
 
atypical_boro said:
“Eclectic” is one way of putting it, pretentious is another,
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Pretentious is such a lazy trope to be levelled at an artist. Blur absolutely are not pretentious in any way. They're moderately experimental, but they're hardly some high falluting avante garde band who refuse to play anything but the most impossible to play jazz chords

atypical_boro said:
There is always an assumption that Oasis’ daft lyrics are purely down to just being crap at writing lyrics, rather than for the same reasons as Blur.
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But lets be honest here, the Gallagher brothers are as thick as a boxing day turd, whereas all the members of Blur are moderately intelligent. That's nothing to do with class, it's to do with intellect. So it's a pretty fair comment about their lyric writing. That's not to say Blur haven't had the odd terrible lyric, they have.

atypical_boro said:
People seem reluctant to accept that a group (well really, it’s one guy) of Mancunian scallywags can also be “clever”.
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If they were clever I'd happily big that up, but the music they wrote was pretty simplistic. Chord progressions were really bog standard, bass lines were largely playing the root note, the lead parts were good but almost exclusively pentatonic based, there was no use of interesting modes, many of the songs were in the major key (which to me helps with keeping upbeat and popular, but lowers interest), extended chords were scarce, they didn't really play with tension in songs. It's not pretentious to play with those things in your songwriting it's just learning your craft properly. Oasis did the basics well, and did it with attitude, but couldn't be bothered to improve themselves. They and were effectively the 90s equivalent of a boy band.....a lad band, living off tales of bad behaviour and sound bites.

They were an important band still, and you can't help but sing along, in the way that you can't help popping into a kebab shop after 8 beers, it tastes great in the moment, but it's not a good pub meal, or a nice restaurant.
 
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