37. ‘Intermission’

On ‘Modern Life is Rubbish’. Produced by Blur and John Smith.

Originally ‘The Intro’ (aka ‘The Opening’). In 1989 Seymour used to begin their gigs with it, if the venue had a piano. ‘The Intro’ and ‘Commercial Break’ (aka ‘The Outro’) opened and closed the gigs. “Damon would look like a panda afterwards,” Graham recalls, “and he used to be sick onstage. We used to drink so much. I’d have a bottle of wine under the chair my amp was sat on, and I’d swig my way through that.”

Demoed with John Smith at Matrix in January 1992, ‘The Intro’ was chosen specifically to annoy Balfe, who hated it and was baffled by Blur’s bloody-mindedness. The Matrix demo would later be judged by Stephen Street to be good enough to go on ‘Modern Life is Rubbish’ as it was. Balfe still hates it.

Damon’s jaunty, faintly sickly piano begins this instrumental, which follows on (at 4.04) from ‘Chemical World’ on ‘Modern Life is Rubbish’. Only a curlicue of guitar feedback portends the violence to come. Graham then enters with a lurching, quasi-ska rhythm guitar pattern, accompanied by grinding bass and thrashing drums. The song speeds up as though its driver was stamping emotionally on brakes that had been cynically pre-cut. Moving away from Kurt Weill territory into outright punk insanity, the tune then erupts (at 5.22) in what sounds like a demented bass solo but is, in fact, Graham de-tuning the bottom string of his guitar with his left hand as his right hand keeps playing. The performance’s effect is that of Postman Pat incidental music gone horribly out of control.