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Review and Pictures: Blur at The 100 Club [Live]

2nd August // The 100 Club, London

by cfaruolo, August 3rd, 2012 and has been Read 1630 times.
Last Edited by: Ffion Davies August 3rd, 2012.

The legendary Blur are getting ready for their Olympic performance on the Britpop discipline at Hyde Park next week so after a hiatus from the comeback-from-hiatus (and one balcony presentation) a handful of warm up gigs were announced including an exciting Competition-winners-only gig at the mighty 100 Club in Oxford Street.

Competition-winners-only gigs in Britain can be either full of random guests that applied to a gig just cause it was free, or full of dedicated fans that follow every single movement of the band and probably entered the competition 20 times to increase the chances of winning a spot in a dream gig. Well lucky for us Blur's gig was filled with die-hard fans all climbing over each other trying to get a glimpse of what was rumored to be a rarities filled setlist.

How often would you get the chance to sing the lyrics to one of your favorites-but-least-played-live songs of an emblematic album right into the face of Damon Albarn who's standing only a few inches away, also screaming the lyrics back at you? I would say that it will probably happen to you between one and zero times in your life.

Blur got on stage one by one, Coxon leading the team with a huge smile followed closely by Albarn and his usual suspicios grin. Alex was barefoot and wearing country-friendy beige shorts and for the first couple seconds it was hard to tell if he actually knew where he was. Dave sat slowly behind the drums and gave the expectant Alex (who was now standing on top of one of the speakers) a modest nod, that triggered the force of one million rhinos running at the rate of 'Girls & Boys'. Time froze, the sweat started to come down from the red walls an even the bouncers showed clear excitement about what was going down.

"This column seems to be intimidating..." mentioned Damon mid-set while switching his microphone base to the "other" side of the stage to reach the audience on the right side of the venue. The pace of the show was thrilling and Damon didn't miss a chance to interact with the crowd throwing water at the steamed up fans and even wearing someone's sunglasses for a bit.

An acoustic guitar was introduced for 'For Tomorrow', which was undoubtedly the most massive singalong of the night and the atmosphere resembled a campfire on an independent festival in the midlands during spring. Intimate, engaging and intriguing. 'Under The Westway' (the other new track performed apart from 'The Puritan') was left for the very end and it got Albarn on piano also staying there to venture to do a little outro with the un-planned 'Intermission'.

Everyone remained in their spots waiting for an encore but after realizing it was not going to happen it was then front-row-Vietnam in order to catch a setlist, empty bottle of water, wet towel or ANYTHING to tweet the next day as proof that they were at this unique gig. Are we on the verge of the a new Blur album? I would definitely say so.