£60,000 in debt after an ill-conceived American tour and having released two albums that didn’t quite make the splash that they wanted, Colchester bad boys Blur were about as penniless as the privately educated can be. Fully turning away from the baggy sound of their debut and sticking two fingers up at the skuzzed-out U.S. grunge that dominated music journalism (as well as the po-faced shy fuzz of U.K. shoegaze) with a sound and attitude that embraced the history of excellent English rock music from The Kinks to Cardiacs. Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Alex James and the drummer guy who’s a Labour MP now won five separate Brit Awards for “Parklife” - an exploration of what it meant to be young, dumb and full of Britishness in the early-to-mid-nineties.
“Parklife” is also #438 on the Rolling Stone magazine list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Christopher Macarthur-Boyd and Liam Withnail listened to it, and now they’re going to do a deep dive on everything from what it means to be Coxonpilled, to Alex James’ collaboration with Asda on their ‘exotic cheddar’ collection. All that plus an extremely Hinged YouTube Comment of the Week, and an interesting Secret Posho. Enjoy An Album! Enjoy.