Friday 17 April 2009

Concerning Blur, Goldsmiths and the start of a new mission

Blur have announced two tiny warm-up shows for their contrastingly massive festival appearances and Hyde Park extravaganzas. June 13th sees them going back to their hometown of Colchester and the East Anglian Railway Museum, then on the 22nd to Graham Coxon and Alex James' former university, Goldsmiths. Tickets were made available to the fan club this morning and have SOLD. OUT. 

Picture this: I'm lazily surfing the net from the comfort of my bed and head to NME.com for a catch up on some music news. The first headline I see is 'Blur announce dates for intimate warm-up gigs'. CLICK. Colchester's there as has been suggested by the band for a while now but there's another one.. GOLDSMITHS? I sit up so fast I make myself dizzy and scream so loud the cleaner literally turns off the hoover and says something that vaguely resembles "are you okay?" Um, no. Blur aka one of my favourite bands (easily top 3) are playing at Goldsmiths? Like, not even 10 minutes walk from where I'm sitting now? I am most certainly not okay. Especially not when I find out its already sold out a few minutes later. I could cry. 

I already had plans to go to the Colchester show, once announced. Before my parents decided it was a good idea to move to some quaint little market town in the middle of nowhere, North Essex, we lived in Colchester. I lived there, Blur lived there. So I saw it as an opportunity for not only them to go back to their roots but for me to do the same. Ace. Goldsmiths is an entirely different situation. Alex and Graham studied here in 1988, where they met and formed Blur. Essentially, I am a bit ridiculous and base all major life decisions on music-related things and so when it came to deciding where to go to uni, chose Goldsmiths purely because of the Blur factor (and because of No Pain in Pop and the scene based around Angular Recording Company and their 'The New Cross' sampler. But mostly because of Blur). Before I came here, I was really excited. I thought there'd be loads of amazing bands playing in our SU and everyone would be really cool, take music far too seriously and dress like they were on the catwalk even when they were going to Sainsbury's. Alas, I was wrong. Most people I've met are nothing like that and I've only been to two gigs at our SU (South Central/The Ghost Frequency & Those Dancing Days/Sky Larkin/La Shark). Blur playing there is like the stuff of dreams, even with its dodgy lighting that makes everyones faces go a shocking pink colour that is guaranteed to sketch you out when you're fucked and the bastardo security who ask you if you have a ticket and when you say you're on the list assume you think you're better than everyone and insist on acting like cunts just so you know you're not. In short, if I don't get into this show I will cry. Sure, a week later I'll be seeing them at Glastonbury but its not the same, is it? I'm hella excited about watching Blur in a field with 120,000 other people but watching them in the dingy GCSU with 300 other people would be far more magical. I could pretend it was 1989 and they were still called Seymour, that it was the beginning and not 20 years in. 

The mission to find Blur's PR and charm my way onto the guestlist starts here. In the meantime, I'm going to stare at the building they'll be playing in from my window, feel very sorry for myself and listen to the whole back catalogue until I can take the torture no longer. 

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