SEASIDE snapshots. The venue's febrile school-gymnasium atmosphere,

shrieking teens and volleyball courts marked out on the wooden floor. A

votive bra flung on to the stage. Dunoon's laddies and lassies

transformed into a cockney chorus by the power of pop.

Blur in Dunoon? The hippest band in the universe in a resort which

only narrowly heads Rothesay for unalloyed sophistication? Yes and yes.

While the notion might seem strange, out-of-the-way tours are

well-established rock business practice. A band's regular metropolitan

fans travel for what becomes an adventurous occasion. Far-flung natives,

deprived of big names, are guaranteed to go bananas for Moira Anderson,

let alone Damon Albarn and company. Under the gaze of the press,

hysteria ensues, dispelling any sense of a band having peaked.

And so it proved last night: a grateful crowd going potty, a muscular

band discovering fresh life in British musical pastures left untilled

since the arch Home Counties vowel sounds of Ziggy Stardust.

The retro references don't end there of course. Blur make positive use

of ancient fairground organ noises; the chirpy cynicism of the Small

Faces; Ray Davies's world-weary flair for observational storytelling;

Jimmy Pursey's sing-along punk. All of this put together into a knowing

knees-up for the nineties.

Literate, tuneful, sixties-inspired guitar pop, cranked out very loud

by nice middle-class boys with oikish accents and a social conscience:

its allure remains undimmed. We do like getting Blurred beside the

seaside.