trivia.

See also my album page for album and track-related trivia!

Blur remixed the song "Angel" for Massive Attack.

"England v America" was seriously considered as the title for the "Modern Life Is Rubbish" album.

The Rentals have been known to do a cover of "Tracy Jacks" as part of their live set.

The milk carton in the "Coffee & TV" video was the same actor who played R2D2 in Star Wars.

Blur's only live appearance of 2000 was at the Meltdown festival, the Royal Festival Hall, London, on the 2nd of July. View the gig on-line for a limited time.

A send-up of Blur was included in the 2000 season of Rock profiles.

A British unmanned spacecraft named Beagle Two - after Darwin's ship - will land on Mars in November 2003 and broadcast a specially written fanfare composed by Blur. The track is called "Beagle 2" and was one of the b-sides of No distance left to run. Dave and Alex have been doing odd bits of promotion for the project along with Professor Colin Pillinger of the Beagle 2 lander team.

Blur have released three videos: Blur: the best of (also available on DVD), Starshaped and Showtime, and one DVD which includes the making of No distance left to run, the accompanying video, live footage and interviews. Blur: the best of features the 22 first singles and their promo videos. Starshaped is from 1993 and features live and backstage footage, plus an awful lot of drinking... ;) Showtime is from the 1994 gig at the Ally Pally.

Their only official biography, "3862 days" by Stuart Maconie, was published in 2000 to coincide with their 10th anniversary.

Mogwai have had T-shirts printed which read "Blur; are shite".

One of the predecessors to Blur was Circus - which included Damon, Graham and later Alex. When they met Dave they formed Seymour (named after a character in a story by J.D. Salinger). They were renamed Blur when they got their record deal.

Their record deal was notorious, partly because they were forced to change their name to one off a list presented to them by Food, and because one of the conditions was that Dave wasn't allowed to wear pyjama trousers on stage.

Apparently they are all vegetarians and all smoke, usually Marlborough. Damon also smokes Camels.

Damon and Dave have both read "Miss Smilla's feeling for snow" by Peter Hoeg. I liked it a lot, unfortunately I have yet to hear whether or not they did.

They "do" fruit-flavoured air (i.e. orange). Apparently it's very big in Canada...

One of the inspirations for "Parklife" was the book "London fields" by Martin Amis.

Blur have signed a Greenpeace petition calling for solar power to replace oil heating.

The bands estimated earnings for 1996 were around £5 million altogether. Their personal fortunes were estimated at £1.2 million each.

Damon co-owns a pub in Iceland.

Blur have had 8 number one hits in Sweden: Girls and boys, Parklife, Country House, The Universal, Song 2, M.O.R., Beetlebum and On your own.

The guy in "Starshaped" with the black rectangle over his eyes is their ex-manager Mike Collins who didn't handle their finances very carefully, to put it mildly...

Blur's royalties used to get divided up as follows: Damon gets just under half, Graham a bit over a quarter, and Alex and Dave get about an eighth each.