Dennis Hopper is dead? Tribute for Gorillaz

After watching the Oscars this morning on live TV, and seeing the montage of dead persons in Hollywood, I got to say, I'm surprised.

I now know that Dennis Hopper and Pete Postlethwaite passed away. That's really something - when did they die? It wasn't like all over the front page of the news, or even the "entertainment" section.

Pete Postlethwaite is possibly the man with the most angular face shape I've ever seen. He was amazing in "Brassed Off" starring Ewan McGregor, and I read somewhere Steven Spielberg thinks highly of him, dubbing him the most versatile actor around.

Brassed Off premier

Dennis Hopper - at first I was like "Wait - wasn't he in one of the Gorillaz albums?" and then I did a quick search and found out that not only was he the guy who did "Fire coming out of the monkey's head" for Gorillaz album Demon Days.

He also performed and toured with the band during the promotion of Demon Days. I remember during my days where college work didn't bombard me with deadlines, words and essays, I used to watch the whole Gorillaz concerts online. Here's a particularly good performance featuring the one and only Dennis Hopper...



He is amazing. Simply amazing how an actor can work with Damon Albarn, the genius of creating music and combining people together, to create such a song. It plays great live too.

Dennis Hopper also features on Bananaz, Gorillaz's documentary film. He is hilarious... Damon's hilarious... Jamie's goofy. The clip below shows you the part he's in.



I think Damon just wants to use his American accent to show his gradual shift into the american music scene! Or to promote his album in the US ?

Dennis Hopper with Jamie and Damon at the Grammys

He will be missed... I'm now wondering how Damon took the news of his death. Damon and Dennis seemed pretty close and in good terms, at least on the business side of things.

It was a shock for me to learn he died, and only in the Oscars did I actually hear this news. It's sad.

Gorillaz lost another collaborator. Any thoughts?

Unseen Gorillaz interview

Check this previously unreleased Gorillaz interview. The interview was conducted while they were in France during the tour late last year. Check out the interview on Youtube below.




I love Damon's hat and that Jamie Hewlett is just a laid back, silly cool ape.

Blur Caption Contest 2

It's Friday night, and the Blur world has been quite quiet. Nothing much really happened this week in terms of music. A couple of disappointing award shows where we didn't win anything, and a nice little NME article with Graham and Damon in it.

So...now it's time for another BLURBLOG CAPTION CONTEST! 

Thanks to my friend Tracy Jack Albarn for the picture. This is your challenge for this week. It's pretty easy to think of something creative, interesting or downright dumb for this picture... just looking at this shot makes me laugh out loud!

Finally, thanks to all that left a comment on the first ever BlurBlog Caption Contest (click to see). The picture was actually taken in Israel during a tour there a while ago. 

The winner is TheJollyDummkopf  who posted the caption "I'm Alex, the smug one from Blur!" with inspiration from No Distance Left to Run! Thank you so much for participating and I hope you keep reading and enjoying this blog. It's readers like you that keeps me going!

You get a Blur badge as a token of thanks.

I'm also going to add a page to this blog that features all the caption contests with the winning caption displayed, just so that there's more to this little blog and for everyone to have a little laugh. 


Please leave a caption idea for this new picture and keep reading, commenting and Blurrin'

Blur on NME this week (Feb 21)

Really short post. Just a heads up on Blur on magazines again.
This week's NME features an exclusive interview with Graham Coxon on Blur’s plans for the year, and some odd new ventures of his own...

And if anyone cares, the entire list is: 

25) Brett Anderson
24) Matt Bellamy
23) Nick Cave
22) Joey Ramone
21) Ian Curtis
20) Karen O
19) Damon Albarn
18 Jack White
17) Lux Interior
16) Bobby Gillespie
15) Marc Bolan
14) Joe Strummer
13) Jarvis Cocker
12) Mark E Smith
11) Jim Morrison
10) Kurt Cobain
9) Shaun Ryder
8 Patti Smith
7) Liam Gallagher
6) Freddie Mercury
5) Morrissey
4) Debbie Harry
3) John Lydon
2) Jimi Hendrix
1) Iggy Pop


Buy NME!  

Phish frontman Trey Anastasio covers Clint Eastwood

After stumbling on the Gorillaz Unofficial forum and reading some posts, I came across a thread that is about Phish frontman Trey Anastasio covers Clint Eastwood from Gorillaz in his concert.

Phish'ing

Not knowing anything about Phish, I did a little search and found out that:

a) They're an American Rock band that broke up and reunited in 2009, and
b) According to Urban Dictionary...

Phish can destroy your phavorite band on stage. 

Phish comprised of phour incredibly talented muscicians

Phish sucks, you say? Phuck you!  

Oh the joys of Urban Dictionary and it's little writers. Here's the Gorillaz cover that frontman/ lead vocalist Trey Anastasio did: 

I like this cover - it's funny. The singer has a really high pitched voice, which is totally different from Damon's deep croon. The song sort of gets higher and higher... which is interesting. It feels like a James Blunt song, but I did enjoy it when the girl sang Del's part.

What do you think of this cover? Any comments?

Blur demo tape on eBay - who's got cash?

BLUR FIRST DEMO TAPE SEYMOUR SONGS SENT TO JB"S DUDLEY

THE NEXT TAPE IS ONE FROM A COLLECTION OF A LOCAL CLUB DJ......HE WORKED AT JB"S IN DUDLEY FOR MANY YEARS AND HE HAS THOUSANDS OF TAPES... THESE ARE ALL COMING MY WAY AND I WILL BE LISTING THEM OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS/MONTHS....., HE ACQUIRED MANY RARE DEMO"S, WHICH WERE SENT TO THE CLUB FOR MANY YEARS.... THE TAPES ARE ALL IN VERY GOOD CONDITION HAVING BEEN STORED AWAY FOR MANY YEARS... ,

THIS AUCTION CONSISTS OF ONE OF MY RARE DEMO TAPES ...... BLUR ....... 3 TRACKS , SHES SO HIGH, US, AND FOOL........ TWO OF THE TRACKS APPEAR IN EXACTLY THE SAME VERSIONS AS THE SEYMOUR [PRE BLUR] TAPE..... THE LAST TRACK "US" DOESNT SEEM TO APPEAR ON ANY OTHER RECORDING..... BUT I EMPHASISE, THAT THIS POSSIBLY UNIQUE DEMO TAPE SENT TO THE LEGENDARY JB"s CLUB IN DUDLEY, BY BLUR IN THEIR EARLIEST DAYS, CONTAINS THREE TRACKS IN VERSIONS NEVER RELEASED, THIS IS THE ORIGINAL TAPE AS SENT BY THE BAND, AND NO COPIES HAVE OR WILL BE MADE...... BEST OF LUCK......


I want this tape! It should be genuine as JBs used to go to the Blur studio regularly. Plus look at that NEW SONG "Us"! Apparently it's a never released song that is recorded during the making of Leisure. Oh god! Really pleased if the winner of the bid shares the song "Us"! Then we'll have a new Blur song released to the public!


Previously the new Blur song "Superman" was leaked online from a man who recorded an early gig where it was performed. Listen to Superman on my youtube channel here.

Bid here! 

(Thanks caitlin from the forums)

  

Graham Coxon tweets about British trees and more...

If you're new to Blur, you might not know that guitarist Graham Coxon has a TWITTER page. He often tweets interesting little things and his music ... and of course, his life and bits and pieces of random happenings.

Anyways, yesterday Graham Coxon has applauded U.K. officials on his twitter page,  for deciding against selling off Britain's public-owned forests after a campaign spearheaded by Annie Lennox and Judi Dench.

The two women, along with model Lily Cole, Gillian Anderson, Richard E. Grant and designer Dame Vivienne Westwood signed a petition organized by conservationists at Save England's Forests, urging the government not to sell off valuable woodlands all over Britain.

The passing of a bill would have allowed officials to sell public forest estates for commercial interests.

But the proposal as officially rejected on Thursday (17 Feb 11) after Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman confessed the government had "got this one wrong" - and Coxon is happy that the consultation has been halted.

And so, in a post on his twitter page, he writes, "So the government aren't selling our forests... what a relief!!"

Glad to know, glad to know. 

I enjoy reading Graham's twitter. In fact, this blog post features Graham's twitter. Graham's twitter IS THE SUBJECT OF THIS POST and I want to share it so more people can read his little tweets. He does reply to you if you write something that catches his eye. Really!

Here's a little bit of excerpts of funny tweets that my fellow Blur fans on cyberspace shared.

Sometimes his tweets gets quite poetic!

Spiders in the sink... thanks Graham

Hmmm, I covered the Graham Twit saga in my other post 

Let me know - have you ever had an experience with twitter and celebrities "tweeting" ? I have gotten replies from Graham before, and it got all over the internet news ... (try to find it by doing a little Google search) and it was quite an experience. I still saved that article because I want to remember my little clash with a Blur boy. I am still glad to know Graham actually responds to some of the fans tweets and reads them in his busy musical life!

Have you ever gotten a reply from a celebrity on twitter / social networking site ?

Site Competition: Blur Caption Contest !

Friday afternoon. Library. Work. Procrastinating. BLURBLOG CAPTION CONTEST!

Anyways here's a new thing for the Blog - every Friday afternoon I will post up a picture relating to Blur/Gorillaz and you guys got to make up a caption to go along with it.  Think of the best, wittiest, funniest caption for the picture and submit it in the Comments section at the bottom of the post.

The winner will be selected based on originality and of course creativity. Feel free to leave votes and comments about the captions!

Thought I'd post my current favourite Blur picture.

Blur for thought... Anyone know who that 5th guy is? Any guesses where this picture was taken ? What are all the boys looking at ? Why is Alex shirtless?

Leave a comment and caption below!

Winners announced every week. Stay tuned.

Blur are back in the studio and recording new material - Feb 2011

Exciting news for you all.

Graham Coxon has explained that Blur are currently jamming in the studio regularly and is very likely to record new material in the year 2011. Earlier this month the guitarist revealed that Blur were reconvening and could "switch a tape recorder on, and even tweeted about Blur meet-ups with the boys. 

Now he has told NME Magazine about the recording process. Graham explained that the meet-up was one of many the band regularly undertake (a bonding thing!) and was not really for any specific new release. 

"Every now and then we like to meet up and record a few things," he said. "We just do stuff when we feel like it."

Graham - bringer of good news

He added that the band will "definitely" continue to meet up and play music together in this way, but fans shouldn't hold out for new music being released anytime soon. 

Also, as usual, Graham cracked a line to tease us fans. 

"I suppose it might turn into an LP in six years or something," he said. "Meeting up every now and then… maybe turning the tape recorder on and jamming around a few ideas."

Coxon said that even though Blur hasn't planned any releases yet, he had two solo albums to be released in mind. He also mentioned that these are probably going to be the last 2 solo albums released and that they're more "youth" sounding. 


One of the album is also called "A&E"... I wonder what that stands for ? 

Graham met up with the Boys for sugary tea, coffee and TV )

He's also releasing 'Desire', a collaboration song with Paloma Faith and The Coral's ex-guitarist Bill Ryder-Jones, for the promotional music campaign for shoe company Converse in April 2011. 

Exciting times! I am positive we will hear something from Blur in 2011. Perhaps a surprise single or even a complete album will spring up, but one thing's for sure: Blur are back, older, wiser, better and with much more surprises in line.

Who knows what will happen? 

Read the full article on NME and check out my early coverage of this speculation-turned-truth. 

What's your reaction to this piece of news? Mine's: