Wednesday, August 17, 2005

We spent some time last night watching BBC4's 10th anniversary of Britpop coverage. It's quite amusing now to look back on the events of 1994. Whilst watching an interview with Louise Wener of Sleeper, we started chatting about the time that we saw Sleeper supporting Blur at the Anson Rooms in Bristol. At the time neither of us particular fans of Blur, going along out of a sense of curiosity more than expectation.

It was an amazing gig. Sleeper were OK - Blur were just fantastic, one of those times when you catch a band absolutely on the top of their form. The audience caught the mood and responded in kind, giving us a night of exuberance and exhilaration when band and crowd became one.

Towards the end of the show Damon Albarn disappeared into the throng for a bit of crowd surfing, emerging a while later minus his shoes. Interesting then to hear Ms Wiener talking about the madness that surrounded that tour, and we both chuckled when she mentioned that people were chanting "Jesus" to Damon and pinching his shoes when he went into the crowd.

Obviously the scene fizzled out in the end, as too many drugs and an inability to change scuppered the long term plans for most of the bands. Yet it was fun for a while, what a treat it was to see bands like Teenage Fanclub, Pulp and Boo Radleys make it into the charts, if only briefly.

My replacement iPod arrived at the end of last week – and it works!

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