Blur Poster

                                         

Happy holidays! 

An original production made by BlurBalls - click to view full size and download ! 

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Graham Coxon's NME Christmas Card Design - free download

Graham Coxon from Blur has designed a festive Christmas card for NME , after the magazine requested musicians to draw them original artwork to be featured in a free downloadable card for all music fans. 

Graham's design is, as quote NME, "a grotesque dude who's just learned that he's eating turkey from now til Easter".


We think it's very much on par with his other artworks in the past... take a look and do drop a comment on our facebook page and let us know what you think ? Will you send this to your loved ones ?

Click HERE to download the card (pdf)


Source: NME 

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Merry Blurry Christmas !

Merry Christmas readers and fellow Blur fans! May you all have a restful holiday and don't forget to put on a little Blur during your morning coffee, or play some soothing tunes out of Think Tank after your late nights out ! Here are some Blur-related images to add some Christmas cheer to your day... 

BLURBALLS ORIGINAL LOGO: I made this logo 2 years ago during Christmas! 

Photo credits: Tracy Jack Albarn, Bianca and other Blur Buddies online 

The Wassailing Song by Blur was a one-off record for promotional purposes. It's christmas-related, have a listen below!

Blur to play at the BRIT AWARDS 2012

Britpop Prince Damon Albarn and his band Blur will perform next year in the Brit Awards 2012, Alex James has confirmed. 

The cheese-making bassist told XFM that the band will reunite for a special performance at the 2012 BRIT Awards to celebrate winning the 2012 Outstanding Contribution prize:

"We're going to play, which is brilliant, it's like putting the Blues Brothers back together."

James have hinted at the possibility of a new album by mentioning that the boys are meeting up for Christmas drinks and have even recorded a few tracks off the top of their guitars. 

"We're getting together for a Christmas drink next week which is nice. We still see each other all the time, more since we were all living out of a suitcase. We'll probably record again."

A good new years present for all the Blur fans out there! 

We can't help wishing there'd be a new album soon though - that's definitely on our Christmas wish list.

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Alex James - official Twitter

https://twitter.com/#!/TheAlexJames


Click to follow the Alex James on his official twitter page! He's real, he tweets and writes many cheesy things... 

Blur to win Outstanding Contribution Award in Brit Awards 2012

Awesome news for all you Blur Fans out there...

Blur will be receiving an Outstanding Contribution To Music award at next year's Brit Awards, reports The Guardian and BBC.

"It's great to have recognition for all the work and all the heartache and all the joy that's gone into this band," said Damon Albarn.

Past winners of the gong include Bob Geldof, Paul McCartney and Pet Shop Boys. The award ceremony will take place on 21st February at London's O2 arena.

Meanwhile, the official Blur website is due to be partially closed from today (Dec 8) for "an exciting redesign". Read the announcement on forums.blur.co.uk.

In other Blur news, Alex James has revealed to NME.com that the band will meet up shortly and 'probably' record again. James said:

We're getting together for a Christmas drink next week which is nice. We still see each other all the time, more since we were all living out of a suitcase.

He added: "We'll probably record again."

James hinted that the band may not release a full album though, commenting: "Is there such a thing as an album? Does music have to come 12 tracks at a time?" The bassist said that he didn't know what the music would sound like due to "Damon doing operas," adding that it would be like" getting The Blues Brothers back together."

Watch the video interview here! 

Free Graham Coxon show at Leeds Cockpit - December 2011

TOUR ANNOUNCEMENT: Graham Coxon has announced a free show for fans on Friday 2nd December at the Leeds Cockpit. To enter the draw to be on the guest list, simply head over to his official Facebook page (click here) and enter your details and you will be notified if you are a winner.  There are 400 spaces available for this one-time pre-Christmas gig and spaces are limited to 2 per entry – your guest’s name must be supplied on entry. Good luck all and do enter for this amazing free gig! ******* Stay Tuned and remember to subscribe and "LIKE" BlurBalls on Facebook, or email subscribe to receive the latest news on everything Blur, Gorillaz, Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon!  If you missed old news, visit the NEWS ARCHIVE to read about past news!

Blur - Country House - Chipmunk Version

Time for some fun, fellow Blur fan! I decided its time to update my Youtube channel (www.youtube.com/user/uktahhh) and thank you ALL for the awesome 650+ subscribers. So I made a video, and I hope you enjoy it and isn't it just pure fun ?




I drew the logo myself.

NEW GORILLAZ SONG for February 2012 release

The band have signed up for Converse's 'Three Artists. One Song' series! 

Gorillaz have announced that they will be recording a new track in February next year as part of the Converse shoe company's 'Three Artists. One Song' series. 

The series has brought together rapper Soulja Boy, Andrew WK and Matt And Kim to record a collaboration and also saw Graham Coxon, Paloma Faith and ex-The Coralguitarist Bill Ryder-Jones collaborate to record a track together in 2010. 

The track will come out to coincide with the release of a new collection of Converseshoes, which have been created in association with Gorillaz and feature a heel tab by the band's design guru Jamie Hewlett. 

The band will also host a special club night next month. The night, which is under the name Gorillaz Sound System, will be held at London's 100 Club on December 1. 

To find out more information, to view the range of shoes and for more details about the night, visit Converse.co.uk. 

Meanwhile, Gorillaz will be releasing a career-spanning compilation to celebrate their ten-year anniversary later this month. 'The Singles Collection: 2001-2011' is due out on November 28.

Source and article from: NME Magazine 

Blur recording new songs again while Damon Albarn starts a new band

Breaking news: Damon albarn has been recording again with his old Brit-pop band Blur, with members including Graham Coxon, Alex James and Dave Rowntree. The news came just after Albarn, the frontman of bands including renowned electro-pop eclectic group Gorillaz, The Good The Bad and The Queen and most recently, a new band Rocketjuice and The Moon with Tony Allen and Flea, has revealed exclusively to NME magazine that "Blur had been meeting up regularly and recording again"! 


What exciting news - this means officially that Blur has NOT broken up, rekindled their grudges with each other, gotten past the massive hiatus of 8 years since 2003's album Out Of Time (minus Coxon) and officially started recording new songs again!

Will we see an album ? According to NME, Albarn revealed the britpop band has recorded a "spoken word piece with poet Michael Horovitz", a British Oxford-man, poet, songwriter/singer, translator, journalist amongst other things, who is famous for his provoking work for over five decades.

The track was put together in response to the brief threat that this year's Notting Hill Carnival would be cancelled. Albarn is ambiguous about whether the track will ever be released, commenting:

If they'd have cancelled the carnival – and thank God they didn't – maybe we'd have put it out. It had its moment: it was a perfect plea to reinstate the carnival. So it wasn't relevant – it was relevant for about 12 hours.

Albarn also said to NME he gets an "amazing feeling" from playing with Blur and hinted at plans to play live with the band, perhaps outside the United Kingdom sometime next year in 2012, due to his packed schedule. He also explains how he's trying to balance out Blur and his other projects which the work-a-holic is part of, such as his new band Rocketjuice To The Moon with the Red Hot Chili Peppers man Flea and Tony Allen.


Abarn also has two gigs with The Good, The Bad & The Queen later this month (both on November 10). He also released his DRC Music side-project album last month.


A truly great news for every Blur fan out there.


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Damon Albarn's new band name Rocketjuice and The Moon revealed -

(Sourced from NME)

Damon Albarn has named his new band with Flea and Tony Allen Rocketjuice And The Moon.

The Blur and Gorillaz man is due to make his live debut with the Red Hot Chili Peppers man and The Good, The Bad & The Queen cohort on Saturday (October 29) at the Barbican in London.

The performance is taking place as part of the Another Honest Jon's Chop Up! event, which will also see the likes of Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble and Detroit techno man Theo Parrish appear.

Rocketjuice And The Moon have also confirmed their debut album, which is due to be released in the new year, will be self-titled.

Speaking to the Irish Times, Albarn explained that the band didn't come up with the name themselves, commenting:

Someone in Lagos did the sleeve design and that’s the name he gave it, which suits me because trying to find a name for another band is always tricky.

Along with the Rocketjuice And The Moon date, Albarn is also playing two gigs withThe Good, The Bad & The Queen at the capital's Coronet venue on November 10, their first live show since 2008. 

Exclusive: The End of Blur and Oasis feud - Just in time for Christmas - 2011

So, the year 2011 marks the END OF THE BLUR/OASIS feud for decades. Noel Gallagher from Oasis and Damon Albarn from Blur, two frontmans who battled out their way to the Top of the Charts in the 90s BritPop period has ended their media feuds and public dramas, by celebrating with, in typical English fashion... a beer. 

Quoting NME:

Noel Gallagher has revealed that he has finally made up with Damon Albarn after their spat during the height of Britpop in the mid-'90s.

The pair haven't spoken in over 15 years following the war of words between Blur andOasis which kicked off in 1995 when they went head-to-head in the UK's singles chart and the former beat the Manchester band to Number One with their hit 'Country House'.

But Gallagher, who is currently set to top the UK album chart with his debut solo album 'Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds', said they recently bumped into each other and went for a beer.

He told Shortlist magazine:

Funnily enough, when I was out last night, I bumped into him. I literally haven't seen the guy for 15 fucking years and I bump into him in some club. We both went, 'Hey! Fucking hell!' and then he said, 'Come on, let’s go for a beer.'

The ex-Oasis chief added: "So, we're sitting there, having a beer, just going, 'What the fuck was all that about 15 years ago? That was mental.' Then he said, 'It was a great time, though,' and I was like, 'Yeah, it was a fucking good laugh.'" 

Here's just a little something down memory lane - 

EXCLUSIVE FEATURE 

A tribute to the Battle of the Britpop- Blur VS Oasis Mega Chart Battle - 1995

Exciting feud between the two Britpop Superpowers - Blur and Oasis

Cover of the 12 August 1995 issue ofNME advertising the "British Heavyweight Championship" battle between Oasis and Blur

Spurred on by the media, the groups became engaged in what the NME dubbed on the cover of its 12 August issue the "British Heavyweight Championship" with the pending release of Oasis' single "Roll With It", and Blur's "Country House" on the same day.

 The battle pitted the two bands against each other, with the conflict as much about British class and regional divisions as it was about music

The event caught the public's imagination and gained mass media attention in national newspapers, tabloids, and even the BBC News. 

The NME wrote about the phenomeon, "Yes, in a week where news leaked that Saddam Hussein was preparing nuclear weapons, everyday folks were still getting slaughtered in Bosnia and Mike Tyson was making his comeback, tabloids and broadsheets alike went Britpop crazy.

Blur won the battle of the bands, selling 274,000 copies to Oasis' 216,000 - the songs charting at number one and number two respectively.

Both bands have parted ways now, looks like the war is FINALLY OVER. Peace to Britpop! 

Perhaps this has come at a good time - Oasis split recently and Damon's embarked on more new and exciting projects like Dr. Dee's Opera and possible new African music, and Noel's just chilling out with his life away from the band. What a lovely story. 

What do you think ? Does this signal a new era ? A new beginning ? A beginning to an end? Let us know on our FACEBOOK page or tweet us at @danomind to join in the conversation! 

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Gorillaz to release Best Of collection - Oct 2011

GORILLAZ CELEBRATE A DECADE WITH NEW SINGLES COLLECTION

The Singles Collection: 2001-2011 the career-spanning best of from Gorillaz, will be released on November 28th 2011 by Parlophone Records. 

A 15-track collection of the band’s singles, videos and remixes, The Singles Collection: 2001-2011 celebrates 10 years of audio visual innovation and three studio albums from the most successful virtual band in the world ever. The Singles Collection will be released as a standard CD, CD and DVD and 140 gram vinyl. A special edition 7” box set will also be made available.

Formed in 1998, the band released their revolutionary debut album Gorillaz in 2001. The launch had many industry detractors who saw the idea of an animated pop group as merely folly and gimmick – but the album went on to sell 6 million copies around the world. The hugely successful campaign took its toll on Gorillaz. As guitar-playing wunderkind Noodle noted sadly “Every great band is destroyed by their success. Cartoon bands are no exception". Despite this, she wrestled the band back together for the release of second album Demon Days in 2005 and a run of groundbreaking animated live shows at Manchester International Festival and Harlem’s Apollo Theater. In early 2010 Gorillaz resurfaced again – this time from an island in the South Pacific with the album Plastic Beach. The lead single Stylo featured a bad ass Bruce Willis chasing down our intrepid Gorillaz who made a clean escape and headed out on their first World Tour with a crack team of musicians including Clash greats Paul Simonon and Mick Jones.

In ten years, Gorillaz didn’t just top charts around the world, hit number 1 in more than a dozen countries and garner sales in excess of 13 million, they received influential awards and recognition that represented the band’s significance beyond their music. Alongside a Grammy and an Ivor Novello, Gorillaz were nominated for four CAD awards and took home the coveted Webby Award for Artist of The Year 2006, plus the Jim Henson Award for Creativity. In 2006 Jamie Hewlett was awarded Designer of the Year for his work on Gorillaz; four years later the band graced the cover of tech bible Wired Magazine.

Always open to an interesting collaboration, Gorillaz have worked with numerous artists including Dangermouse, Ibrahim Ferrer, Del the Funkee Homosapien, De La Soul, Kano, Bobby Womack, Ike Turner, Lou Reed, Mark E Smith, Bootie Brown, Tina Weymouth, Bashy, Little Dragon, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Snoop Dogg, Dan The Automator, Mos Def, D12, Phi Life Cypher, MF Doom, Rosie Wilson, Shaun Ryder and Neneh Cherry.

Gorillaz are Murdoc Niccals, Noodle, 2D and Russel Hobbs.

1. Tomorrow Comes Today
2. Clint Eastwood
3. 19-2000
4. Rock The House
5. Feel Good Inc
6. DARE
7. Dirty Harry
8. Kids With Guns
9. El Manana
10. Stylo
11. Superfast Jellyfish
12. On Melancholy Hill
13. Doncamatic
14. Clint Eastwood (Ed Case & Sweetie Irie Refix)
15. 19-2000 (Soulchild Remix)


From Gorillaz Unofficial:


It will be available on CD, CD+DVD and double vinyl formats, and a 7" box set will also be released with the same 15 tracks spread over 8 7" vinyls all in a clamshell box. The standard 15-track tracklisting - used for the CD (both versions) and both the vinyl formats - is entirely previously released material. The DVD contents are unknown at this time.

For the cover, see here on Amazon. For the full tracklisting and the full official press release, click 'Read More' below.

More features including a slightly interactive version of the album cover, over on www.gorillaz.com.

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Damon Albarn to revive The Good, The Bad and The Queen for Greenpeace charity gig

Lifted from the Greenpeace blog:

We’ve got some really exciting news for you, Damon Albarn, Tony Allen, Paul Simonon and Simon Tong will come together for a special one-off The Good, The Bad and The Queen gig celebrating 40 years of Greenpeace and the arrival of the new Rainbow Warrior III in London.

The Good, The Bad and The Queen are big supporters of Greenpeace. Bassist Paul Simonon said, “We've always supported Greenpeace and their amazing work. It should be a great night, we're really looking forward to it."

Our Executive Director John Sauven added "I can’t think of a better way to celebrate our 40th Anniversary than with The Good, the Bad and the Queen. What makes it really special is that this show will coincide with the arrival of Greenpeace's brand new Rainbow Warrior to its new mooring on the Thames.”

The gig will be on Thursday 10 November at London’s Coronet, New Kent Road. Tickets are on sale this Friday at 9am. So we’ll see you there right?

Tickets are available from this Friday 7th October at 9am from the usual outlets and on 0844 249 1000 / 0844 811 0051 / 020 7734 8932 / 0844 844 0444 / coronettheatre.co.uk /gigsandtours.com / ticketline.co.uk

Blur plays an alternate version of Song 2

This is the most amazing Blur video I've watched in a long time - Blur performs their song "Song 2" in a completely different style, essentially a "cover of" their own original song. It's brilliant, totally chilled out and Damon's voice just vibrates and forms awesome rhythms. Watch below and comment on what you think - Yay or Nay ?

Alex James to judge Ambition AXA Awards

AXA, in association with Arts Council England, have recently launched the Ambition AXA Awards, making available £200,000 to 5 talented 11-18 year olds in the UK.


Each winner will receive up to £40,000 worth of personalised mentoring, to help develop their ambitions in their chosen field of arts, enterprise, science, community or sport. The prize will be judged by an expert panel, which includes Laura Gander Howe, ACE Director of Learning and Skills Strategy as well as celebrity musician Alex James from Blur.


He also had a little interview that talked about his life, bio and achievements so far. 

Alex James - How to aim for a career in the arts and get the most out of it 

I’ve always loved music, but I never thought it was a career option.

My dad bought a piano when I was 13 and showed me how to play boogie woogie. Not much later I got a bass and joined a band. I went to London to study French, but spent all my time playing music. I dropped my studies because I wanted to be in Blur.

It’s very hard to know what you want to do with your life – in fact it’s the hardest thing there is. I’ve never had a master plan, but I’ve always followed what has interested me most.

Do what you love

I don’t think you can help following interests. And it’s vital, even if it makes you look ridiculous – there was a time when leaving university to be in a band that had songs that all went very, very fast and were very, very loud seemed ridiculous, but that was what I cared about.

I’ve always loved music, but journalism and even inventing cheese are equally creative. I really love cheese so I always find it interesting.

Get into a band

Whenever you find something that interests you, you’ve got to go after it with everything you’ve got even if it makes you look stupid. If it’s music, get involved in a band. If it’s writing, write. If it’s cheese, er, give me a call. Whatever it is, the important thing is doing it, not dreaming about it.

Don’t fret about music lessons/training/not having enough money

I didn’t have any training when I was younger. I just played every day and eventually I could do it. Pop music is great, as you don’t have to know loads -  it’s just a way to express yourself. But I don’t think I’ve ever stopped learning. I’ve had loads of music lessons recently, and I wish I'd done it years ago.

Enjoy yourself

I like playing the guitar on my own. I love making records, I love playing music, I like talking about it – always have, always will. So I was drawn to music.

If you dedicate yourself to something you like, it is surprising what will come out of it. I still find it amazing that what I enjoyed messing about at as a teenager has led me. Who’d have thought when I formed my first band in my bedroom all those years ago that I’d be playing to thousands at Glastonbury? (Apart from me, I mean – I knew it was going to happen).

Read about Alex James from AXA's official website HERE.