Woo-hoo! Blur Turns Ten
This weekend, readers of British newspaper The Observer
will find a rare treat among the tabloid’s folds: a free
seven-track CD of Blur songs spanning their ten-year career, with
one song taken from each of the group’s records. The enhanced CD
will also include filmed interviews with the band.
The anniversary festivities continue with another multimedia Blur
experience the following weekend, during an exhibition at London’s
Lux Gallery on Sept. 11-12. The showing, called Blur: X,
will feature live footage, a free jukebox containing all of the
band’s twenty-two singles, listening posts where unreleased tracks
can be heard, a collection of guitarist Graham Coxon’s artwork (a
piece of which, by the way, adorns the cover of the aforementioned
free CD), photos, memorabilia and more. An auction of select items
will follow the close of the exhibit. A camera placed near the
entrance-way to the gallery will be hooked up to a specially
designated Web site, where comings-and-goings will be broadcast
along with other exhibit footage beginning the Monday after the
whole thing ends.
That same URL — which Blur’s management speculates will be
www.blurx.co.uk — will also be the site to witness a live Webcast
of the band’s historic Monday, Sept. 13 club gig, where the band
will perform only B-sides before a very small audience.
And if that’s not enough Blur for you, the band will release a
limited-edition box set at the end of September. The set gathers
all of the band’s singles (and their respective B-sides) into an
elaborately packaged collection that will include plenty of extra
artwork and extensive liner notes. The vast majority of the boxes
will be sold in the U.K., although a small portion will be
distributed internationally.