last week. Thanks for the tip!

despite CSM's rather sniffy summing up in the mag as he didn't really care for the Blurs. Thats alright Charlie, the Feelgoods don't mean shit to me either.

Yes its an offically sanctioned film which hardly presses the band into any revolatory statements but neitehr is it a hagiography. Plenty of great live footage including bits from last years Glastonbury triumph. The footage of the crowd singing the refrain from Tender back at them and Damon overcome with emotion - marvellous.

The DVD adds their first Hyde Park show from last year and it bristles with fun and energy. The grins on all their faces during Parklife as Phil Daniels hams it up are infectious.

Much less easy to pick serious holes in the best of their material. I always think the title track is a bit of a shame on "Parklife", claimed as it was by the "lad" scene, because the album as a whole contains some of their loveliest moments: Badhead, End Of A Century, To The End and the incomparably beautiful This Is A Low. I remember a few years back, they played This Is A Low at Glastonbury just as the sun was dipping below the horizon. For that moment alone, I forgive them all their foolishness.

I still think The Great Escape is bloody awful, though.

...Doug, thanks for the tip. I'm recording it. :-)

Nigel Tufnel lead guitar!

To begin with thought - oh can't take this seriously, reminded of Spinal Tap, The Day Today, The Office parodies and spoofs. Maybe I can't really take any film like this seriously again. And then I was thinking, God what are they complaining about? - typical rock star lack of sense of reality, self obsessive, exaggerated sense of self importance. But then they won me over with their insight and intelligence and it all got a bit emotional, and you have to think bands are so young when they go through all this extreme experience which you can't understand unless you've also been through it, no doubt. Beetlebum was the first song of theirs I thought was really something great. Tender is marvellous too. I'd say it was a case of later autobiographical writing triumphing over earlier fictional approach, songwriting-wise.

I thought it was fabulous stuff. Always liked them and the sight of lads, too young to have been through it in the 90s, going mad for Parklife in Rough Trade was genuinely affecting.
Say what you want about Damon, but he's a very intelligent, bright man.

It's just lovely. It's bringing back how exhilarating it was in 1994, realising that there was a genuine scene that belonged to us (and by us, I mean British kids). I was just finishing my GCSEs and going into sixth form as Britpop was kicking off, which was pretty much ideal. It gets slated a lot, but damn, it was fun. And Blur really are one of the greats. No question.

It's possible the wine is talking a teeny bit. But not much.