Blur: Parklife

Blur: Parklife

1994

Food/SBK Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Girls & Boys  2.Tracy Jacks  3. End of a Century  4. Parklife  5. Bank Holiday  6. Badhead  7. The Debt Collector  8. Far Out  9. To the End  10. London Loves  11. Trouble in the Message Centre  12. Clover Over Dover  13. Magic America  14. Jubilee  15. This is a Low  16.Lot 105


Man, I haven't heard this album in a looong time...I think I over-listened to it back in the day and probably sold my old copy or whatever...But recently I was listening to their 1997 self-titled record and had a hankering for some "Parklife," so I ventured out to the Zia Records in Tempe and found a used $2.00 CD copy...

The album plays like a 90's version of "The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society"...



..with Ian Hunter on vocals...



God, it took me forever to realize it, but Damon Albarn sounds like Ian Hunter...The music doesn't bear any similarity to Mott the Hoople, but the vocals sure do...Sort of an arch yelp...But anyway, similar to "Village Green Preservation Society," each song is a little vignette of ordinary (and a few extraordinary) citizens, that taken in its entirety, tells the bigger story of British society at the end of the Century (which ends up being "nothing special")...

Musically, its most distinctive feature is its eclecticism...From club disco  ("Girls & Boys") New Wave ("Tracy Jacks," "Trouble in the Message Centre), punk ("Bank Holiday), soft rock ("Badhead," "To the End"),  to polka ("The Debt Collector").  They utilize whatever musical genre best tells the story, which gives the album its grand sweep...You really do feel like you're going from house to house, soaking up the feel and life stories of the record's various inhabitants...

There's the story of  the civil servant who one day loses his mind and decides to bulldoze his house, and the charming tale of Bill Barret who dreams about one day visiting America, where there are "Buildings in the sky and the air is sugar free"...Hell, we even get to drop off to Syd Barrett's psychedelic pad  on "Far Out"...

"Parklife" was a game-changing smash in England, I'm told, but it  wasn't much more than a cult curio here in the States...I'm not sure why this didn't go over bigger here...Maybe it was a bit too ironic...Sophisticated...

Actually, I think the main obstacle was that it was probably a bit too pop and not rock enough for our taste at the time...People that listened to "pop" music generally don't like guitars and American rock (especially during 1994) was all about LOUD GUITARS and catharsis...and there's not a lot of that here...Well, not in any of the obvious ways that it's usually presented to us...I mean, tell me "This is a Low" isn't cathartic in its own way...

Our loss...It really was a great little record that had a lot to offer...So let's check out "This is a Low" by Blur...