David Segal apparantly didn't have as good of a time as we did:
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 21, 2003; Page C01
Have we offended Blur? Did one of you lift the band's wallet, or short its sheets? Is there a joker among us who gave lead singer Damon Albarn a wedgie?
These are fair questions, given the punishment Blur inflicted on fans at the 9:30 club on Friday night. Ordinarily, the search for what motivates rockers starts with money and sex. With Blur, on this tour anyway, one possibility seems to be revenge.
Nearly half the show was unwatchable. Literally unwatchable, as in, you couldn't look at it. For some catastrophic reason, Blur decided that simply illuminating the band wouldn't cut it. Instead, nearly all the wattage for this show came from the stage, much of it from eight rectangular high beams, parked behind the musicians and pointed at the audience, flickering and changing color to eye-withering effect. Occasionally, a set of Technicolor kliegs were thrown in, sweeping the crowd in slow and menacing circles, like search lights at a disco prison. Imagine being interrogated at the Vegas Flamingo, only louder and without the possibility of blackjack.
Most fans did their best to ignore the visuals, while others squinted or closed their eyes or looked at the side walls. The lights flickered faster and brighter whenever the band sprang into an upbeat number, like the stadium classic "Song 2" -- known better as "the woo hoo song" -- or "We've Got a File on You," a Ramones-like track from Blur's latest album, "Think Tank." The effect was perverse: Visually the show hurt most when the band rocked hardest, so you couldn't help hoping the group would keep things dull.
And for long stretches, they did. Beneath the fatally distracting surface were a dozen-plus old favorites and a handful of new cuts, a 100-minute set that pleased the faithful but won't win over newcomers. For years, Blur has been panning for album gold in the United States, though with less success than Oasis, their main rivals in England. Oasis flourished here for a while, but aside from "Song 2" Blur never had a high radio profile.
"Think Tank" hasn't helped. The album dabbles in the world beats that have fascinated Albarn in recent years, and for this show, the group was augmented with an extra percussionist, three backup singers and guitarist Simon Tong, who was brought along to replace Graham Coxon, who has quit the group.
The new stuff, such as "Ambulance," which opened the show, and "Battery in Your Leg" and "Caravan," relies more on soul than momentum, but these songs plod self-indulgently. Albarn has a voice that can do just about anything -- soul, disco, Johnny Rotten punk -- and never lose its adolescent sense of wonder or its velvety finish. But his attempts to reinvent Blur flounder whenever he forgets that he's not as interesting as his music, or as interesting as the band once it wraps both hands around a beat. It did just that on "Moroccan Peoples Revolutionary Bowls Club," one of the most overtly African-sounding tracks on "Think."
It'd be easier to forgive Albarn's occasional streak of narcissism if he expended more effort wooing fans. The guy's idea of a transition on Friday night was to mumble incomprehensibly to his band mates, then announce to the crowd, "I just wanted to pause between that song and this one." To Albarn's everlasting credit, he plunged headfirst into the audience toward the end of the set, a dive that was all the more impressive because it seemed utterly spontaneous, as though even he wasn't told about it in advance.
Blinded as they were, the audience never saw it coming.
