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2009-2010
Back together
in Midlife
January 2009
- Blur begin to rehearse for their upcoming live shows,
reviewing one album per week. Damon premieres three new Gorillaz
demos on BBC Radio 1; Eclectic "Electric Shock", dreamy "Broken"
and electro-esque "Stylo" hint at the fresh musical direction
Damon is going with the new album.
February 2009 - Damon and
Graham make a surprise appearance at Shockwaves NME Awards and
perform the acoustic version of "This Is A Low".
May 2009 - Graham releases
his seventh solo album The Spinning Top and does a tour
in the UK.
June 2009 - Blur embark on
their reunion tour, starting from the
same goods shed at the East Anglian
Railway Museum where they made
their debut gig as Seymour. The band believe they've returned
better than ever and the break has done good for them.
There are no plans for recording
any new material, though. "We'll make sure everyone else has fun
[at the reunion concerts] and then we'll think about it
afterwards," says Graham. In the middle of the month, a
new Blur compilation called Midlife: A Beginner's Guide To
Blur, is released.
July 2009 -
After headlining Glastonbury Festival, the tour culminates with two massive
sold-out Hyde Park shows that are released as live albums. "We
feel really privileged to be able to do nothing for years and then
come back to this. It's incredible," Damon says to the crowd of
55,000.
October 2009 - The future
of Blur remains uncertain for the future. As for now, the band
have no plans to record or perform together as they've got all
individual projects to do.
November 2009 - The
Sunday Times teams up with Blur and releases a freebie
live CD recorded on the reunion tour, plus the trailer for the
upcoming Blur documentary No Distance Left To Run.
January 2010 - Blur
documentary No Distance Left To Run premieres in cinemas
worldwide.
New Gorillaz single "Stylo" is released to somewhat mixed
reactions. With a delayed promo video and the lack of airplay
on the mainstream channels, it fails to become a massive hit
like "Clint Eastwood" and "Feel Good Inc".
March 2010
- The third Gorillaz studio album, Plastic Beach is
released and surprisingly enters at Number 2 in the US. However,
due to lack of hit singles, the album eventually fails to sell
as many copies as its predecessors.
April 2010 - For
everybody's surprise, Blur announce they will release a newly
recorded song called "Fool's Day" as part of Record Store Day.
Only 1000 vinyl copies of the single are pressed and circulated
to independent record shops across the UK. Damon says that the
band will very likely record more one-off singles, but rule out
that the album will follow soon.
June 2010 - Graham records
his eight studio album with producer Ben Hillier. Gorillaz
perform probably their biggest gig to date at Glastonbury Festival, but gather
some criticism from the
press and general audience of not being exciting enough.
October 2010
- Gorillaz' first ever world tour begins in North America.
Despite playing mostly to half-empty arenas, Damon is very happy
with the tour saying "it was never like that with Blur".
While on the road, Gorillaz kill time recording a low-profile
album called The Fall (later available for free on their
website).
November 2010
- Damon announces that Blur will probably head back to the
studio in January, but stresses that next year he will be busy
working on the project for Manchester International Festival
2011.
The history years 1989-1997 were written by Cristopher Lyons
at BlurPoint. Some
additions and corrections were made by Veikko.
The years 1998-2010 were written by Veikko.
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