blur

If the rowdy Gallagher brothers never brought Oasis to worldwide acclaim, blur could have become the biggest band this side of Radiohead. Often compared to The Stone Roses and their brand of psychedelic guitar pop, blur continually reinvented their sound over the course of the 90’s, remaining relevant in the course of a rickety Brit-pop movement. Although founding member and guitarist Graham Coxon and his whirlwind guitars weren’t around on the band’s last album - 2003’s Think Tank – blur still remains on top of British lore throughout the shuffle.

Thanks to the camcorder, blur has released starshaped, a video retrospective of their carefree glory days from 1991-1994. These are moments when cases of Newcastle were flowing freely, backstage buffoonery was welcomed, and overall drunkenness and reckless travel dominated the landscape of a band that had only the pressure of finding their sound.

It’s fair to say blur’s true sound never came to fruition throughout their history, due to various sound experiments, but starshaped gives clues to the beginning of this trial and error period. As Coxon jokes in one of the scenes while getting a back massage, “touring isn’t the best thing we can be doing, it’s the worst thing we can be doing actually.” starshaped proves that touring made blur one firecracker of a stage act, on the course of transgressing from noise rock to pop rock stars.

A majority of starshaped is assembled by award-winning director Matthew Longfellow and producer Ceri Levy. The footage is a collage of scenes never really developing into a solid plot or biography over rough accents, sporting energy over plot. Live performances from Glastonbury 1992, Heineken Music Festival 1994 in Nottingham and festivals in Germany, Denmark and Sweden dominate the live portions of the documentary. starshaped candidly shows us the early 90’s festival scene – at a time when the alternative movement and the Lollapalooza circuit and 90’s hairdos were blossoming in the states. Songs like “For Tomorrow” and “Chemical World,” both taken from the Heineken Festival, nicely display blur’s maturing sound. Lead singer Damon Albarn proves to be the unpredictably reckless front-man, whether passing out backstage or climbing recklessly atop stage rafters or even jumping into linebacker sized amplifiers.

The bonus footage of a 1991 show at the Kilburn National in London and an early 1990 gig at the sweaty Princeton Charlotte are a goldmine for fans, the latter was filmed by a scratchy videocam just after being signed, forcing Albarn to announce, “the trouble with small stages, is we keep bumping into each other.” After watching the band’s rapid growth in years to follow, blur wishes their only concern was elbow room on stage.

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