Blur @ Hyde Park, London, 3rd July 2009

When this gig was announced in December, I'm not sorry to say that I had £50 saved up spare for just such an eventuality. I would happily pay this much for a chance to see Blur's first gig back together, but as it turned out, it ended up being the last of a short comeback tour that took in railway museums, record stores and the Glastonbury Festival.

Still, I was, understandably, pretty glad to be able to watch my favourite band from my childhood, Parklife being one of the first albums I ever bought, and still one my personal favourites. So to say I was looking forward to this gig was an understatement.

Further delight was found when San Francisan (ish) 4 piece DEERHOOF were announced to be the opening act. Playing to a modest crowd of early entrants, they plucked tracks from all over their extensive discography, possibly finding new fans with the energetic "Panda Panda Panda", the slightly creepy "The Perfect Me" before finishing on a track from their most recent album Offend Maggie "Basketball Get Your Groove Back".

Although I am admittedly a little off the pace in terms of this years influx of (over)hype bands, I am overtly aware of the number of indiosyncratic female-fronted acts. Unfortunately the combination of their joint arrival and my lack of attention means that I don't really make much of a distinction between, say La Roux or Little Boots despite their obvious musical differences. Luckily, FLORENCE & THE MACHINE was someone whom I had heard at least one song that I vaguely enjoyed. I enjoyed so much that I didn't realise they had played it until it was at least halfway through. The best Kate Bush rip off I've heard since Bat For Lashes' latest. And I really mean it.

AMADOU & MARIAM were a completely unknown quantity to me, and to be quite honest, were absolutely amazing, with Amadou's guitar playing particularly impressive, and their anthemic mixture of African and traditional rock music being all the more appreciated being that the pair are blind. My favourite part of their set was when Amadou introduced, not only the entire band, but also the entire road crew to less and less enthusiatic applause from a frankly amused crowd. Also the fact that he sounded suspiciously like my old Somalian GP when he kept asking "Do you feel alriiiiiigght?"

It was interesting how well VAMPIRE WEEKEND came across on the big stage. With tracks that unbelievably managed to fill the park and the stage presence and confidence to talk to the crowd more than all of the previous acts combined. Frontman Ezra Koenig, who was dressed more for a sailing weekend than an outdoor gig, introducing each song (including a couple of new tracks) with a slightly underhand request that they danced a bit. Last year's hype band finished their anthemic set with my personal favourite "Walcott".

BLUR reached the stage after some 15 years of anticipation on my part, having been too young to enjoy them live before, and them having splitting up during my "wilderness years" in terms of music. They find a crowd in good humour, somehow making their somewhat weak debut single "She's So High" sound up to date and exciting.

The set is chock full of classics, featuring early singles "There's No Other Way", Parklife opener "Girls & Boys" as well as fan-favourite album tracks "Tracy Jacks" and "Badhead".

"Beetlebum" receives a big cheers as the band explored their post-britpop albums, including the Coxon-less "Out Of Time" (although he plays on it tonight) and 13 fan favourite "Trimm Trabb", which sees Coxon in fine energetic form.

This section is finished with their last big hit "Tender", seeing the band joined their entire backing contingent of 4 singers and a brass section, as well as all of the 55,000 people in the crowd. While "Tender" is controversially my least favourite of all of Blur's singles, its power with this crowd is intense, seeing sections still singing the chorus as the band continue with the set into the next song.

"Country House" is the almost ironic return to the Britpop part of Blur's discography, seeing a hattrick of Modern Life Is Rubbish tracks in "Oily Water" (where Damon knocked over his mic stand and so shouts through a loudspeaker for the majority of the song), "Chemical World" and "Sunday Sunday", the last with Damon asking the crowd to run on the spot for the fast section.

At this point, a mischevious Phil Daniels appears onstage, not unlike the Tango genie from those banned adverts, albeit wearing glasses, being fully clothed and not orange. Predictably, and to the largest cheer of the night (from this reviewer at least) the band launch into an energetic version of "Parklife", and another life ambition is crossed off the list.

Next up, a trio of tracks from the album of the same name aptly close what is an amazing first set. "End of A Century", "To The End" segway into a brilliant version of my favourite track "This Is A Low", before a clearly overcome band briefly leave the stage.

The natural frontman Damon, clearly enthused for their two week jaunt (this being the first gig announced, but somewhat ironically, the last they play for the moment) is full of energy all night, and this is reflected in the band. The famously shy Graham lets his guitar do the talking, which according to Alex's autobiography, is all he ever wanted to do, and the effect is mesmering. While I was lucky enough to wander towards a stage where he was playing some of his solo work, seeing work as part of Blur is absolutely awe-inspiring in his devastating skill. While Dave is the happy timekeeper who is willing to bash the drums at the back, the largely static Alex is effortlessly cool, affirming his skinny presence in a plain white t-shirt and jeans which would frankly look ridiculous on any other man his age.

The band return to play electrifying versions of "Popscene" and "Advert" to a largely bemused crowd, before a long drum solo melts into the iconic beat of that really famous Blur song. You know, the one where they say "woo-hoo" a lot. I remember the first time I heard that song. I was 10, playing FIFA 98 Road To World Cup on my brother's PlayStation, desperately trying to find out who did the music for the intro, as I was so sure that my friend's observation that it was Blur was completely and utterly wrong. These guys do songs like "Parklife" and "Girls and Boys", not heavy shit like this.

Meanwhile, back in the present, the band again briefly dissapear backstage before coming back to play Blur track "Death Of A Party". At this point I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in my section singing along but by this point I don't really care. "For Tomorrow" is banged out to the park before an amazing rendition of current British Gas theme "The Universal", leaving the entire crowd singing "well it really really really could happen/and the days they seem to run from you/well, just, let them gooooo" for a good twenty minutes afterwards. Well, at least in my head.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure the whole thing happened. It was such an achievement of a long held ambition that I can't actually believe I've finally seen them. And they were absolutely as fantastic as both my childhood and previous spectators would have me believe.

I finally got to see Blur play "Parklife" live, and now I can die happy.

What other people thought of 2008

Yeah, 2009's only five days old, and while there is still an Animal Collective album to look forward to (more of that later), I'm still going to dwell in the past a little bit and take a look at what other people and websites said were the defining albums of the year 2008 AD...

Drowned In Sound
top 50
DIS' top 50, while devoid of Kings Of The Hill, sorry, Kings Of Leon's polished pop work of Only By The Night, that "one who is better than Winehouse, oh no wait chasing what?" Adele and just-simply-really-bloody-annoying Ting Tings, the list is still fairly predictable. A mixture of the highly popular (MGMT in at 38), the unknown (Shearwater at 16) and the critics choice that no one listened to (Gang Gang Dance). So here is the top 5:

1. M83 - Saturdays = Youth
2. Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight
3. Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours
4. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Dig, Lazarus!!! Dig!!!
5. Deerhunter - Microcastle
   

Oh and then they topped of the list with a distinctly average album that was made by a Frenchman. Crazy.

Fake DIY
top 10
Rather than the full-staff faffing of a top 50, instead, editor-in-chief Stephen Ackroyd simply lists his 10 favourites, reminding us that this is based on enjoyment rather than technical ability. Here's the top 5:

1. Johnny Foreigner - Waited Up 'Til It Was Light
2. Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours
3. TV On The Radio – Dear Science
4. Los Campesinos! - We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed
5. Ladyhawke - Ladyhawke

If you are a regular reader of Fake DIY (and if you aren't, you should be) then you will know how refreshingly un-pretentious their approach to music is - they aren't there to "out-indie" anyone and know what they like when it comes to Indie-pop.

Pitchfork Media
top 50 staff picks
Benchmark for critical perfection and absolute pretention, Pitchfork combined both of the approaches of DiS and Fake DIY by having staffers do individual lists as well as an overall top 50. So I'm going to be lazy and look at their top 50. Here's the top 5:

1. Fleet Foxes - Sun Giant EP/Fleet Foxes
2. Portishead - Third
3. No Age - Nouns
4. Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours
5. Deerhunter - Microcastle/Weird Era Cont.

Somewhat predicatable perhaps? Although the entire top 50, if you are a regular reader, pretty much is. Except Hercules & Love Affair at 9. No one could have predicted that.

NME
top 10
Where Pitchfork could be the last word in serious music journalism, NME is surely the last word in embarassing indie "gossip" and tabloid style "build them up and knock them down" journalism. See: Doherty & Winehouse's indefinite inclusion in every NME article ever, until they release a new album when they'll be everywhere else, too. Once again, the list is somewhat predictable:

1. MGMT - Oracular Spectacular
2. TV On The Radio - Dear Science
3. Glasvegas - Glasvegas
4. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
5. Foals - Antidotes

The way they went on about Glasvegas, the only shock is that NME didn't put them at every position in the top 10 and be done with it. I have yet to meet anyone who is a fan of any of their songs, let alone the album, but hey, I could be in the wrong, right? I mean, its not like the record companies give NME money to talk about their bands is it, that would be crazy.

Metacritic
best of 2008 list
A brilliant website for simply collating what all those dirty journos think and condensing their answers into a single number. I sound bitter, but I'm really not. Honest. Their "end of year" feature is therefore as mathematical and neutral and a swiss alarm clock, and simply lists all the albums of the year in order of their metacritic score. Of course, this leads to some, odd (?) results.

1. Amadou & Mariam - Welcome To Mali
2. The Bug - London Zoo
3. Plush - Fed
4. TV On The Radio - Dear Science
5. Shugo Tokumaru - Exit

50 indie points if you've even heard of all those albums (TVOTR aside). 5000 if you own them all.

Last.fm
best of 2008
Last.fm (or audioscrobbler to us veterans) is the opposite of metacritic's narrow journo-based critical maths and instead simply has the top 10 listened to albums, artists and tracks of 2008 by users of their website. If you are or have ever been a member, you'll probably know that everyone listens to Radiohead and Coldplay on this website. Even if you don't have them in your library, your scores will be tallied with everyone elses. So:

1. Coldplay - Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends
2. MGMT - Oracular Spectacular
3. Portishead - Third
4. Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I-IV
5. The Ting Tings - We Started Nothing

Coldplay and MGMT shared the honours with most listened to track (Viva la Vida) and most listened to new artist respectively.


So, Cut Copy and TV On The Radio appeared 3 times each in these lists, and I suppose could be declared to be the "winners". Interesting. No, really, it is.

So thats what everyone else thought. I would ask for your opinion, but I probably wouldn't take it on board. Instead, read what I thought and disagree silently.

Or if you like to feel like part of one huge great slushy cloud of loveliness and oooh glasvegas b-sides wow they are like, almost as good as the kaiser chefs!!!111 i luv dem, stay clean pete!111

then NME.