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.
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