LEISURE PROCESS
The best thing about the waning retro phase, other than it's waning, is that the bands involved stole from the right decade — the 60s. Grabbing a little piece of past action, a wah-wah here, a Farsifa there, this essentially mercenary and shallow English resurgence at least gave the illusion of progression long enough to save a spent independent scene and allow some bands of real quality to emerge.
Blur have wrongly been included as part of this Manchester movement From Colchester, Alex, Damion and Graham left for art and drama college in London where the band took shape. Dave was brought in from the hometown and eight or nine gigs later they signed to Food, a subsidiary of EMI. Hit singles like 'She's So High' and There's No Other Way* and the acclaimed
Leisure album were another couple of rungs up the ladder to stardom, a progress reflected by the screaming 15-year-old girls that are turning up to their gigs. T think it's just a new group of fans attracted by the singles," says guitarist Graham rather matter-of-factly from a studio somewhere in London. "Some of them get turned off from the gigs if
they're just expecting commercial dance stuff which is a good way of filtering out the chaff form the people who're really interested." How are you coping with this new found and rapid fame? "H's hardly a mania, there's an obsessive fan writing me letters at the moment, but it's nothing scary, it's just a laugh."
What separates Blur from the rest of the indie herd is that their songs are diverse and searching, making Leisure inconsistent but intriguing. "The diversity isn't intentional. We have diverse interests in sounds and rhythms. There's dance rhythms in there and stuff that's hot quite punk, but is noisier, heavier, which is the kind of thing we're into at the b
moment, more experimental." The best thing on Leisure is probably the lovely piano and
mutant guitar backwash of 'Sing', an indication as to where the band
could develop. "Yeah, that along with 'Slow b Dawn' and Wear Me Down' hint at what we might be more interested in doing. We're demoing the new songs for a new album at the moment and it will be less accessible than Leisure. We want to make albums that aren't five minutes of enjoyment. So it might take six months to like the songs, but after that you'll love them for the rest of your life. So the new album could be a bit warped." Blur's first single, and the opening salvo on Leisure is the epic guitar pop of 'She's So High'. Was that song in response to the so-called Manchester Sound?
"No, when that was all happening we were in a little studio rehearsing wacky songs. 'She's So High' was the first thing we wrote together as a band so it's got a part of everyone in it."
Do you object to being lumped in with the Manchester thing? "Yeah, but people do that, I suppose, to give some idea as to what we sound like, but people are changing their minds about us, especially after seeing our live shows where we're loud, thrashy and crackers on stage and hearing demos of the new stuff we're doing. People are taking us more seriously.'
. A new single from the demos is . due in a couple of months as the band rightly don't want to chum out another one from Leisure.
"We've been keeping away from the English press at the moment to have a good think and get our house in order."
But the press have been pretty supportive.
"Yeah, they've hardly had any time to start slaggin' us off as we got right out of it. One of the papers has started slightly, but that's because we didn't pay for them to come and see our gigs in New York and we payed for the other paper."
The price of fame.
GEORGE KAY
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LEISURE PROCESS
Rip It Up, Issue 174, 1 January 1992, Page 6
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