When Did You Discover Blur?

[baxter]

I wish Alex had done more solo work. My fave of all of the Blur solo output is the Me Me Me single - those B sides are outstanding. Alex is a tremendous songwriter when he isn't taking the piss.

[ricj]

I was a casual fan from about 94/95, then became a mega fan after watching/taping their Glastonbury 98 performance off the telly.

Then I went to Reading 99 just to see Blur basically.

[aldamasta]

As an American blur fan, I’m pretty much the same as everyone. Gorillaz led to blur. Stumbled upon the Gorillaz website playing flash games as a 9 or 10 year old, realized the song in the background of “Gorillaz Final Drive” was based off a music video for a song called “19-2000”, and I was hooked.

Didn’t get into blur until a few years later. I was aware of them early on and loved Song 2, but didn’t listen all the way through an album until a family trip to London in 2012. My dad got us tickets to see Dr. Dee at the English national opera and I was starstruck by Damon and that drummer I didn’t know the name of… who later became my fav drummer of all time Mr. Tony Allen.

I heard blur were releasing new music and playing shows that year, so I went to HMV and bought all the blur CDs they had in stock. Leisure, MLIR, Parklife, and s/t. Listened to the s/t on a shitty hotel room tv dvd player and my mind was BLOWN. Got Parklive for Xmas, got Blur 21 box set a few months later and the rest is history After the Wembley shows, I will have seen Damon live 14 times (and graham solo live once, hopefully get to see the Waeve…!)

[Mr Tembo]

Hi, folks. Thanks for your replies. I've enjoyed reading all your stories.

They really are such a great band with such an expansive discography between the 4 of them. They've also led me to so many other artists. Tony Allen being one who springs to mind having read the above comment.

[dparrott]

19 in 1991, saw TNOW video on US MTV, been in love ever since.

[Petter]

Ordinary weekday, May 1995, I was 16 and sat down on the couch after football training. Turned on MTV: Blur live from Leeds Town And Country Club. That was it..

Persuaded my dad to buy me Parklife at Mallorca Airport a couple of weeks later.

The MTV gig was uploaded to youtube a couple of years ago:
https://youtu.be/yGEYiQjxgmc

[TristramShandy]

I must have seen the video clip for Country House on telly in 1995~6 (so I was 12~13), and I knew the band existed, but had completely missed Parklife or stuff before. Then a few months later there was this preview advert for the S/T album with a very short snippet of the beginning of Beetlebum, showing only Graham chunking his intro on the Telecaster for like 5 seconds short, and I thought it was the epitome of high class. It led me to buy the fifth album straight away (without even having heard Song 2). I think it must have been the third CD I'd bought my entire life (... I own roughly 1000 now... )
A bit afterwards, I found Graham's first solo album at my local record store, sold the import price, and I was super intrigued by the artwork, so I bought it too. I remember being blown away from the very first notes of That's All I Wanna Do (a good 20 years later I would find out what his strange tuning was!).
Then borrowed Modern Life from the library, which became one of my favourite records ever.

[vitekm]

I must have seen the video clip for Country House on telly in 1995~6 (so I was 12~13), and I knew the band existed, but had completely missed Parklife or stuff before. Then a few months later there was this preview advert for the S/T album with a very short snippet of the beginning of Beetlebum, showing only Graham chunking his intro on the Telecaster for like 5 seconds short, and I thought it was the epitome of high class. It led me to buy the fifth album straight away (without even having heard Song 2). I think it must have been the third CD I'd bought my entire life (... I own roughly 1000 now... )
A bit afterwards, I found Graham's first solo album at my local record store, sold the import price, and I was super intrigued by the artwork, so I bought it too. I remember being blown away from the very first notes of That's All I Wanna Do (a good 20 years later I would find out what his strange tuning was!).
Then borrowed Modern Life from the library, which became one of my favourite records ever.

Interestingly enough, Graham´s partner from The Waeve Rose E. Dougall mentioned That´s All I Wanna Do as her favorite Graham´s song in newly published video interview for NME.

[Sledge Hammer]

Knew of There's No Other Way just as I started the pubscene! but it was For Tomorrow in 1993 that got me into Blur, Radio 1 then played the other singles from Modern Life and I bought everything from then and before! Ended up seeing Blur 9 times in the 90s alone, supporting REM at Milton Keynes my fave gig, felt more like a Blur gig and Blur were on fire on a scorching summer day.

[thespider]

Fascinating reading about the American fans who discovered them through Gorillaz, I think that's great.

For me, it was watching them on telly playing Parklife with Phil on Top of the Pops, August 1994.
They had a stage set with graffiti and stuff. It really stood out from the usual Top of the Pops performances and I've loved them ever since:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2aqLZ7qPN4

[MsMagicAmerica]

I got into Blur when I was 19 years old in 1999. A friend of mine gave me a mixed tape of some of her favorite songs and “Magic America” was on it. It intrigued me because it was so different from anything on American radio. She sent me a copy of Parklife and I was hooked.

[Mr Tembo]

I got into Blur when I was 19 years old in 1999. A friend of mine gave me a mixed tape of some of her favorite songs and “Magic America” was on it. It intrigued me because it was so different from anything on American radio. She sent me a copy of Parklife and I was hooked.

Same here. Except I was 19 in 1995 and my mate had given me a cassette with a mixture of songs from Leisure, MLIR and Parklife

[aldamasta]

Those who send blur mixtapes are true friends!

[TripleJay97]

I would have been around two years old. I don't have a vivid memory of this, but my mother explained to me when I was a little bit older that I had seen the Coffee and TV music video on MTV around the time it came out and cried because of how sad it was... That experience and my affinity for the deranged energy of Song 2 were little seeds that were planted in my early brain, and boy would they grow...

I got into CDs when I was around 10 years old, and after rooting through my dad's collection, Demon Days caught my eye. It was then explained to me that an animated band played these songs, and I remembered seeing the video for Clint Eastwood at some point, so I was very intrigued. The music was magical. It was vibrant and bouncy, animated, sure, but full of life and love and longing for the world we live in.

When it finally clicked that 2-D was Damon, everything began to fall into place. I rooted around the collective family music collections again and found The Great Escape, Blur: The Best Of and 13. I couldn't believe how different everything on these albums all sounded, especially the latter which remains my favourite even to this day. From there it was begging my parents to order the other CDs from Amazon for me, or running straight to HMV every trip to the Metro Centre. For my 16th birthday I got the 10 Year Singles Boxset and was able to dig even deeper, discovering future favourites like Bone Bag, Young and Lovely and Dancehall.

This year I'm finally going to have the opportunity to see Blur live for the first time at Wembley. It feels like something I've been building towards my whole life and I'm certain I'm going to cry like a baby during Tender or the Universal. One thing I've been thankful for all these years are this forum and the previous one. I've been an active user since 2013 and both have been instrumental in my education about Blur, other bands and the music industry as a whole.

Blur are a pretty special band, huh?

[Mr Tembo]

I would have been around two years old. I don't have a vivid memory of this, but my mother explained to me when I was a little bit older that I had seen the Coffee and TV music video on MTV around the time it came out and cried because of how sad it was... That experience and my affinity for the deranged energy of Song 2 were little seeds that were planted in my early brain, and boy would they grow...

I got into CDs when I was around 10 years old, and after rooting through my dad's collection, Demon Days caught my eye. It was then explained to me that an animated band played these songs, and I remembered seeing the video for Clint Eastwood at some point, so I was very intrigued. The music was magical. It was vibrant and bouncy, animated, sure, but full of life and love and longing for the world we live in.

When it finally clicked that 2-D was Damon, everything began to fall into place. I rooted around the collective family music collections again and found The Great Escape, Blur: The Best Of and 13. I couldn't believe how different everything on these albums all sounded, especially the latter which remains my favourite even to this day. From there it was begging my parents to order the other CDs from Amazon for me, or running straight to HMV every trip to the Metro Centre. For my 16th birthday I got the 10 Year Singles Boxset and was able to dig even deeper, discovering future favourites like Bone Bag, Young and Lovely and Dancehall.

This year I'm finally going to have the opportunity to see Blur live for the first time at Wembley. It feels like something I've been building towards my whole life and I'm certain I'm going to cry like a baby during Tender or the Universal. One thing I've been thankful for all these years are this forum and the previous one. I've been an active user since 2013 and both have been instrumental in my education about Blur, other bands and the music industry as a whole.

Blur are a pretty special band, huh?

Fantastic response, thank you for that.

They certainly are special.

Some brilliant replies, so thank you to everyone.

I think Blur kept some fans, lost some fans and gained some fans with each album. So, a lot of people first heard about them when they released Girls And Boys but lost interest around S/T and 13, but other fans - who hadn't liked the Britpop stuff - got into them during S/T and 13 era