Blur/Courtney Barnett, October 20, 2015 at the Hollywood Bowl

A friend of mine said some years back that if you were a Britpop fan (presumably from the ‘90s), out of Oasis, Suede, and Blur, you loved two of those but not all three. It’s stuck with me since then and I’ve found reasons to argue then not argue it. My love for Oasis is well-documented, but there’s some Suede stuff I don’t connect to, so I always figured it was them and that would automatically make me a Blur fan. But in considering most of their stuff I’ve had since early on, I can’t always be excited about listening to it. Some of it I’ve just gone with putting it on and took my fandom for them for granted. Looking at it closer, there were probably singles that I really liked, but some I hated (in particular “Boys & Girls,” which has taken me years and a Pet Shop Boys cover just to tolerate), and a lot of other material that doesn’t always move me. I’ve even seen them before, at a pretty lackluster show that wasn’t necessarily representative of what they built their name on, but Graham also wasn’t with them at that time, so they could get some slack, but provisionally. So all this could explain why I didn’t jump on getting Blur tickets for their Bowl show and would have been cool with missing it, but then Rachel came through with an extra on a free night and I went, almost like it was just any other show. It wasn’t a guarantee that I would have considered any show a bunch of my friends were going to, but being Blur helped. I rode over with Jen and the bunch of us got together before and picnicked, like usual for a Bowl show. Courtney Barnett opening was more of a draw than Blur themselves, and a coup of an opener, near her initial height, and should have been a big deal on her own. But part of her appeal is her slacker aesthetic and that’s hard to translate to such a massive space as the Bowl and she couldn’t fill it, especially with folks just wandering in and too cool and/or British to be taken over by her catchy songs about very pedestrian topics. It didn’t work but anyone could chalk it up to being the wrong venue for her and wishing to go back in time to see her at a more appropriate club (or, even better, a bar, if that could even happen) (and, for us, seeing more than just the second half of her set). Blur finally did their thing, even making a showing of putting in songs from their newest album, The Magic Whip like this was just another tour stop for an album so successful that everyone would want to hear the new stuff. They only did two shows in America, here (pulling a Tuesday night) and New York, so it could be assumed that this could have been a big deal for all the fans in the western half of the country, and a presumed showcase of new stuff might not sell well for those who are obsessed enough to only want classic stuff. And the new singles (if they even had any) didn’t catch on enough here to get more to fill the Bowl with, by my estimation from the cheap seats, about half full, and even most of those present lethargic at best, if because of L.A. cool or these fans not being the teeny-boppers they once were and were more content to stand back with arms crossed and hoping it would pick up and they would get more out of it than the just-enough that the band wanted to passively offer (even with Graham). We were dancing, helped when they wisely jump-started it with “There’s No Other Way” early on, even if that didn’t do anything for the field of empty seats where we were. No mention of Gorillaz, unless Damon’s lack of spirit could be attributed to having to drag along his old band when he could have played to more with the new, more energetic stuff by the ones who weren't Blur. If there’s an explanation for how Gorillaz got bigger in the States than Blur, it could be that he had contributors that actually still wanted to do the stuff, and material and a brand that could move with the time and stay fun and cool, instead of some stodgy English blokes with no big hit songs except for the “Woo Hoo” one that was completely unlike anything else they did and which had already been played to death and lost to the generation that would make them stars here. Not the show to polish their legendary status (if only somewhere else in the world) but the other show wrapped their series in less than a week and they could move on from whatever obligation they had, just like the States would go on with them only being a footnote in popular music from somewhere else. As for me, I got the Oasis side-projects and started getting more out of Suede.

Blur’s set-list:
“Music Box Instrumentals“ (PA intro)
“Go Out“
“There's No Other Way“
“Lonesome Street“
“Badhead“
“Ghost Ship“
“Coffee & TV“
“Out of Time“
“Caravan“
“Beetlebum“
“Thought I Was a Spaceman“
“Trimm Trabb“
“Tender“ (outro: "Don't fall for Trump/He's such a chump")
“Parklife“ (with Fred Armisen)
“Song 2“
“To the End“
“This Is a Low“

“Stereotypes“
“Girls & Boys“
“For Tomorrow“
“The Universal“

Courtney Barnett’s set-list:
"Avant Gardener"
"Nobody Really Cares If You Don't Go to the Party"
"Small Poppies"
"Depreston"
"Elevator Operator"
"An Illustration of Loneliness (Sleepless in New York)"
"Dead Fox"
"Pedestrian at Best"