Latest Gorillaz News

TIMES ONLINE PODCAST

The Times Online has got an exclusive podcast for download featuring a great interview with Murdoc and 2-D. Head on over to the Times podcast page to hear Pete Paphides gauge the boys' thoughts on Rise of the Ogre, why Wayne Rooney's book is probably quite thin, why Ricky Gervais is "phat," why countersuing is rather like tennis, the band's favourite books as children, Muds' musical history, and more!

 

Source: Fans.gorillaz.com

Latest Gorillaz News:

GUARDIAN INTERVIEW

The band appeared in the Guardian last week as part of the paper's best arts of 2006 feature, and were quizzed on their favourite bits of 2006:

 

Murdoc: I had mixed feelings watching the Gorillaz tribute act recreate our Demon Days album at the Apollo in Harlem. On the upside, you're watching an incredible lineup, plus a choir, orchestra and fireworks. But we were in the audience, and that felt like being Thin Lizzy and watching Twin Lizzy steal your glory. Or AC/DC being blown away by AB/DC. Or watching Earth, Wind for Hire.

 

2-D: I really enjoyed the Yeah Yeah Yeah's Show Your Bones album. If Tim Burton drew a band, it would look like them.

 

Murdoc: Whitesnake's album, In The Shadow of The Blues. Best thing this decade. David Coverdale? Genius

 

Source: Fans.gorillaz.com

Latest The Good, The Bad & The Queen News:

PRE-ORDER KINGDOM OF DOOM

Be the first! Pre-order the second single from The Good, The Bad and The Queen, Kingdom of Doom, and get to hear five tracks from the album a week before anyone else. A hymn to twilit London, Kingdom Of Doom is a study in melodic melancholy: beautiful, insistent and affecting, and it’s out 15th Jan here

 

If you'd like to reserve your copy of the album, that's also available. to preorder it, click here

 

Source: Thegoodthebadandthequeen.com

Latest The Good The Bad And The Queen News:

CONFIRMED ALBUM FORMATS:

Release date: 22nd January 2007

CD / 12" vinyl / UK Limited Edition with bonus DVD

 

Tracklisting:

1 History Song

2 80's Life

3 Northern Whale

4 Kingdom of Doom

5 Herculean

6 Behind The Sun

7 The Bunting Song

8 Nature Springs

9 A Soldier's Tale

10 Three Changes

11 Green Fields

12 The Good, The Bad and The Queen

 

UK Limited Edition DVD contains:

* Live at the Tabernacle

1 Nature Springs

2 The Bunting Song

3 The Good The Bad and The Queen

 

*Rehersal footage

4 A Soldier's Tale

 

*Exclusive bonus interview

 

Japanese edition of the CD features the full 12 tracks and a bonus track called 'Back In The Day'

 

Source: Thegoodthebadandthequeen.com

Latest Blur News:

DAMON ON FRONT ROW

Damon appeared on the current edition of Radio 4's Front Row discussing the TGTB&TQ album and Damon's forthcoming monkey opera. Listen to it again here

 

Source: Blur.co.uk

Latest TheGoodTheBad&TheQueen News:

HEAR THE ALBUM IN FULL!

The album is up for a limited time on the band's myspace!

 

http://www.myspace.com/thegoodthebadandthequeen

 

Source:thegoodthebadandthequeen.com

Albarn Inspired By Racial Mix

DAMON ALBARN's new album was inspired by the rich racial mix in his London neighbourhood and his hatred of racist stereotypes promoted by politicians. Albarn teamed with former THE CLASH bassist PAUL SIMONON to form new band THE GOOD, THE BAD + THE QUEEN - and the pair quickly found a mutual interest in the diverse cultures surrounding them both in west London's Ladbroke Grove. Albarn says, "We love this melting pot idea. The belief that all conceivable cultures and ideologies can live side by side here, in large part peacefully. "It makes me physically sick the way the attempt has been made recently to play Muslims out against non-Muslims, the way politicians are continually fuelling this latent aggression. "We don't have any clash of cultures. We need each other. Over the last four years, every time I saw (British Prime Minister) TONY BLAIR I just wanted to grab him by the throat."

 

Sourced: contactmusic.co.uk

Latest TheGoodTheBad&TheQueen News:

FORTHCOMING EVENTS:

13th Jan - The band will be giving an interview on Jonathon Ross's Radio 2 show

16th Jan - XFM Album Of The Week. The album will be played in full with an interview

19th Jan - The band will be performing live at Abbey Road, which will be broadcast on E4

20th Jan - The band will be on the front cover of Telegraph Magazine, and BBC London will be doing a Gary Crowley special

22nd Jan - The band will be performing live at Abbey Road, and it will be broadcast on Channel 4

 

Source: Blur.co.uk

Useful Links:

Gorillaz Useful Links:

Wikipedia Page

Official Gorillaz Site

Official Gorillaz Fansite

Myspace

Gorillaz Wiki

Last FM Page

Another Unofficial Site

MusicBrainz

 

Blur Useful Links:

Wikipedia Page

Official Blur Website

Blur Fanclub

Blur Forums

Unofficial Site

Last FM

Myspace

 

Useful The Good The Bad & The Queen Links:

Wikipedia Page

Official Website

Myspace

Official Fansite

Unofficial Fansite

 

Other Useful Links:

Damon's Myspace

Graham Coxon's Myspace

Wikipedia Page on Damon Albarn

Gorillaz Face Extinction to Resurrect Blur?

 

Damon Albarn has announced to the BBC that there will no longer be anymore studio albums recorded for the award-winning side project group, Gorillaz. The former lead singer of the group, Blur, would not comment on a question posed as to the reformation of his previous band.

 

The group, Gorillaz, was the brainchild of Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett (the co-creator of the Tank Girl comic book). The band is made up of the fictional animated characters of 2D (aka Stu-Pot), Noodle, Russel Hobbs, and Murdoc Niccals. The former members of the group are Paula Cracker and Del.

 

The two successful albums, Gorrilaz (2001) and Demon Days (2005) produced such hits as, "Clint Eastwood," "Rock the House," "19-2000," "Feel Good Inc.," and "DARE." Both albums were nominated, and won multiple awards. The group has also been immortalized in both comic book, and action figure forms.

 

Albarn stated that Gorillaz will be portrayed in a feature film that is being worked on by filmmaker Terry Gilliam. Gilliam was the mastermind behind the classic comedy group of Monty Python. There are conflicting reports as to whether the characters will be playing themselves, or other characters.

 

Gorillaz will be featured prominently on the soundtrack to the movie, but never recording another studio album. The film project is slated to start sometime around September of this year.

 

Many of the radio stations in the UK are predicting that the break-up of Gorrilaz will cause for Albarn to reform the group, Blur. Blur has been one of the most successful British bands in years.

 

Blur first single was released in 1990, and their last was in 2003. Blur has released a total of twenty-six singles in the UK. Despite this overseas recognition, only six of those songs ever hit the charts in the United States. The highest chart topper was, "Girls and Boys," which hit #59 on the Hot 100, and #4 on the Modern Rock list in the US.

 

In 2003, the members of Blur announced that they would be taking time off from the bank to pursue other projects. Gorrilaz is the only side project from the group members that has garnished any memorable success.

 

With no comment from Damon Albarn about the reformation of Blur, many are left to wonder if the group will reform, or if it's members will continue to work on side projects. Whatever the outcome, Albarn will still, most likely, come out on top.

 

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2..._resurrect.html

Gorillaz Movie On Its Way

 

Even though the Gorillaz have officially made their last record, front man Damon Albarn confirms that a movie is in the works. During an interview I did with Albarn for an upcoming piece in the magazine, the Brit popstar turned most wanted musician confirmed that the Gorillaz will be working with director Terry Gilliam starting this September. "It'll be totally animated with a full score," he says. He also hinted that it may include musical numbers. Gorillaz meets West Side Story? Hmmm... curious. More info as it trinkles in.

 

http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2007/04/gorillaz_movie_.html

The Past, the Present & the Future

 

 

Damon Albarn is not what he once was. He must be tired of hearing this by now, but it is all true. A decade ago, he was a U.K. pop superstar, the shiny, skinny leader of Blur, a quartet of young Britpop craftsmen with a knack for urgent melody and drawing eternal tabloid adulation. Back when “Britpop” was the next new thing. And back when Blur was in competition with the hooligans of Oasis for the great fleeting whatever of pop-music success. You would hardly recognize Albarn now.

 

Oasis? The band had its ’90s moment, and it passed. Perhaps Blur’s moment has passed, too, but Albarn’s hasn’t. (It’s something like that joke Chris Rock used to tell: “Remember when we was young, everybody used to have these arguments about who’s better, Michael Jackson or Prince? Prince won!”) What has happened since Albarn put Blur into hibernation in 2004 is a second act nearly as surprising as the one by rapper Cee-Lo, a moderate success turned modern musical visionary (with the mighty Danger Mouse) in the mysterious Gnarls Barkley. Albarn is not just surviving but flourishing, working up new sounds and ideas with his hit-making Gorillaz and other projects and amusements that suggest a new phase tragically unknown to the fallen Gallaghers.

 

“I had a different impression of myself five years ago,” says Albarn of what has happened since shaking off the Britpop identity. “When you die is when you should be judged. You can’t do anything else after that. If you’re going to judge something, it should be at the end.”

 

His newest band is the Good, the Bad & the Queen, though he claims it has no name at all but merely adopted the title of its debut album as a convenient and clumsy handle. A second album might mean another name. “It is perverse and difficult,” he admits happily.

 

In GB&Q, Albarn has surrounded himself with eclectic players who have voices and accomplishments of their own, beginning with Nigerian drummer Tony Kaye, esteemed sideman to the late Fela Kuti. On guitar is poker-faced Simon Tong, onetime guitarist for the Verve and later of Blur and Gorillaz. On bass is perhaps the most astonishing presence of all: The Clash’s Paul Simonon, original punk pinup and songwriter of “The Guns of Brixton.” What they create together is often dark and adventurous, a mingling of love and war with big ideas and deep, brooding riddims.

 

Even the fussy, fickle U.K. music papers are impressed. And Albarn has had his share of cheers and sneers there through the years of Britpop warfare and Gorillaz rebirth. “If they love or hate you, then you’re in there,” Albarn says with a comfortable grin. “Indifference in England – that really hurts.”

 

He’s a little rougher around the edges now, often unshaven, less the polished pop idol and more musically serious yet somehow casual about the whole thing, making music of deep meaning with a bit of offhanded flair. He wears a peace-sign button on his pinstriped lapel, relaxing at a party during the recent South by Southwest music fest in Austin, Texas. The rest of the band is crowded into the small room, fresh from a two-day drive from Washington, D.C., stopping only for gas and chicken. Traveling with them is the veteran punk photographer Pennie Smith, known for her image of a young Simonon smashing his bass on the cover of the Clash’s London Calling, taking pictures of their every move.

 

GB&Q will be performing tonight, but Simonon will not smash his bass. That was another time, another attitude, and this band is anxious to move forward. The illustrious histories within the group feed its current sound, but the members’ shared future will require more than nostalgia, the past merely a fading prologue.

 

“If you were going to work with Paul McCartney now, and you were looking for it to sound like Revolver …,” says Albarn, stopping before finishing the thought. “You’ve got to judge people on where they are now. That is what’s relevant, however glittery someone’s past is – or however mediocre someone’s past is. The past can suggest your approach as a human being, but it doesn’t reveal whether you’re actually up to the job.”

 

Simonon leans forward. “There’s no resting on laurels.”

 

“No way,” adds Albarn. “Laurel-resting is illegal.”

 

The band will arrive directly from London to perform at this weekend’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. It will be the second time for Albarn and Tong, who appeared there as part of Blur in 2003. “It was definitely hot,” Albarn remembers. “When we were onstage, a plane flew by with an advert for Radiohead’s new album. That was a bit cheeky, as we were on the same label.”

 

Before being recruited for GB&Q, Simonon hadn’t been seen regularly onstage since he left the band Havana 3am after the death of singer Nigel Dixon in ’93. For most of the last decade, he has committed himself seriously to painting, showing regularly in galleries, leaving music behind as he created canvases of landscapes and women and scenes of urban Bohemia. For years, there was talk of a long-awaited reunion of the Clash – possibly at Lollapalooza, or at the band’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. But then singer-guitarist Joe Strummer died, and that talk ended forever. Simonon would only be a painter now, not a working musician.

 

“It’s always been in the back of my mind, but nothing I really entertained, because I was more focused on painting the pictures,” Simonon says. “I didn’t have time on my hands. I was just getting on with it, painting pictures. I never had the luxury to ponder what could be done next.”

 

That would change. Three years ago, Albarn began a collaboration with Kaye that ultimately took him, Kaye, and Tong to Kuti’s old studio in Lagos, Nigeria, to begin recording. It was a place of extremes, of a 22-piece orchestra and engineers who slept on the floor. It was a beginning, but the final recordings never quite gelled. Back in London, Albarn called up Simonon, and, after hearing some tapes, the Clash legend was in.

 

“At first, it was really, really tricky,” Simonon says of playing alongside the complex beats of Kaye. “I think I’ve got the hang of it now. He’s got a good knack for playing rhythm with every limb. Sometimes it can be a bit confusing. He did give me some advice: He said, ‘Look, Paul, basically don’t listen to me, and you’ll be fine.’”

 

Critics have called The Good, the Bad & the Queen (Virgin) a “headphones record,” which is one way of pointing to the layers of sound and subtlety within its grooves. The lyrical content is pointed and mournful, reacting to an era that has had British subjects watch a war without end unfold in Iraq, with their political choices limited between a flawed Labor government and opposing Conservative party. And the symbolism is heavy. One song, “Northern Whale,” recounts last year’s image of the bottlenose whale that swam 20 miles up the Thames River and died. On the album cover is an ancient drawing of London in flames.

 

“It’s not exactly a protest album,” says Tong. “It’s Damon’s document of where he is and where he’s headed and what’s going on around him. Not to sing about the war would mean he’s not addressing things that are going around. But I don’t think it’s a political record. There are love songs as well. Songs about the history and the future.”

 

Onstage, those songs do come alive, smoldering and sparking as the band performs the album in full, end-to-end. In Austin, the core quartet was joined by a string quartet, as Simonon wielded his big bass gracefully across the stage, like a man riding a surfboard or aiming a tommy gun. And he will do much the same while facing the desert landscape of Coachella, playing with a new band and purpose, without a single nod to the past, aiming once more for the vital present.

 

http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=5...mp;IssueNum=203

The Good The Bad, and the late

 

THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE QUEEN kept fans waiting 45 minutes for their 11pm headline set.

 

By the time DAMON ALBARN and Co came out to perform below street party-style bunting, many had gone home.

 

But without apologising they went straight into the set, overcame sound glitches and won over what remained of the crowd.

 

Wakefield’s THE CRIBS, at their first US festival, were the band to watch. Think Monkeys with bit more rock.

 

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,4-2007190745,00.html

Alex James on Blur: 'we'll never split'

 

He's confident about a new album

 

By: News Desk

 

Alex James has been speaking about the future of Blur in a new interview and says the band will never split up - despite not recording together for four years.

 

The bassist, along with Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon and Dave Rowntree are widely reported to be underway with writing their new album, the follow up to 2003's "Think Tank". And despite the commitments of other bandmembers, with Albarn's hugely successful side-projects Gorillaz and The Good, The Bad and The Queen, and Graham Coxon's successful solo career, James is sure they can retain the magic.

 

"I think we are kind of stuck together forever one way or another. There will always be Blur somehow or other, I think."

 

 

http://www.soundgenerator.com/viewArticle....ArticleID=17749

JAMES BLASTS OASIS' 'TRAGIC' HAIRSTYLES

 

Movie & Entertainment News provided by World Entertainment News Network (www.wenn.com)

2007-08-02 13:26:41 -

 

BLUR bassist ALEX JAMES has criticised fellow Brit rockers OASIS for their "tragic" and unfashionable hair styles.

The Country House star favours a more cropped cut, while the Oasis brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher are famed for their longer, unkempt styles.

He says, "I'd never have a haircut like Liam Gallagher.

"He's starting to look a bit like (former English soccer ace) Kevin Keegan and I'd never have any Eighties cut. It was truly a tragic time for hair."

 

http://www.pr-inside.com/james-blasts-oasi...les-r192828.htm

Damon Albarn Criticises Australian Government

 

 

Gorillaz star Damon Albarn has criticised the Australian government's decision to ban Snoop Dogg, insisting it will only serve to raise the rapper's profile even more.

 

The hip-hop star has been denied entry to the country since April (07) when he was due to appear at the MTV Australia Video Music Awards.

 

Lawmakers agreed his criminal record - which includes convictions for drugs and firearms offences in the U.S. - was sufficient grounds to exclude him indefinitely.

 

However, Albarn can't understand the logic behind the decision, insisting it won't harm the rapper at all.

 

He says, "(Australia) is just making his franchise even stronger by banning him. So they're doing the total opposite of what they're trying to do. "He can't lose."

 

Last year (06) Britain's Home Office also banned Snoop Dogg from entering the country after a disturbance at London's Heathrow Airport.

 

Albarn who is best known for fronting 90's band Blur also criticised Live 8 claiming that there were not enough black artists in the line-up. His out burst resulted in Snoop Dogg, Ms. Dynamite and Youssou N'Dour being added to the list of performers.

 

Albarn also made his views on war very public openly criticising the United States and there wars in Iraq and Afganistan.

 

http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/entertainment...barn-37423.html

Yes that last link was from a website called femalefirst :D

Oasis Vs Blur In 2008

 

Well maybe for a Weakest Link TV special, if a report is to be believed…

 

Oasis could take on Blur all over again but this time for a Weakest Link Britpop special!

 

According to a report in The Star the programme makers are in talks with the Gallaghers and Damon Albarn to appear on the quiz show.

 

They also want Jarvis Cocker and members of mid nineties groups like Elastica and Suede to be grilled by Anne Robinson

 

We really can’t see Liam, Noel or Damon on the Weakest Link, but they might get Bonehead and Dave Rowntree.

 

http://www.mtv.co.uk/channel/mtvuk/news/17...vs_blur_in_2008

LOL at that last comment.

 

It'd be fantastic if they did get them all on :o They did bury the hatchet a while ago so it'd be good fun ^_^

James: 'Albarn is delaying Blur reunion'

 

Alex James has claimed that singer Damon Albarn is the current stumbling block preventing a Blur reunion.

 

James said that the band members keep taking it turns to scrap plans for a reformation, and admitted that it could be him who objects next time.

 

He told the BBC: "We all have to sort of take it in turns to not want to do it. I think it's Damon who doesn't want to do it at the moment, I think it's my turn next.

 

"March onwards I can't do it because I am in a bad mood."

 

However, the bassist added that he was still hopeful for a reunion, claiming it would be a "disaster" for the band not to record together again.

 

"We are all talking...you know it's great, we have all gone on to do other things, it would be a disaster to think there would never be another Blur record."

 

Blur's last album was 2003's Think Tank.

 

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/music/a88249/j...ur-reunion.html