Graham Coxon tone and playing on Charmless Man

RandallFlagg

Musicman20 said:

Wasn't he a Marshall stack user?

Yes, Marshall Super Lead 100 Plexi with a Marshall Power Brake and a 52 reissue Tele was his mainstay with Blur.

stickyfiddle

mikem8634 said:

Just a general observation - different things light up different parts of different brains, none more valid than the next, all equally worthy.

The first two Suede albums move me.

Yes of course, otherwise we’d all be listening to the Lighthouse Family, or Gene Oitney, or Sonic Youth, depending on however our identical brains were wired. 

I just get tetchy with people  mwhoncry of selling out and decline in quality the instant a band starts selling decent numbers of records. 

Its like religion - I have no problem with anyone believing/liking whatever they want, as long as they don’t tell me what to think

AlexC

I’m a huge Blur fan. Have been since their first album. Seen them live several times, including the historic Alexandra Palace gig (support was Pulp).Followed Coxon’s solo career since day one, as well. I’m not going to ‘defend’ Blur or mull over the merits/failings of what was called Britpop (which was a term coined by John Rob and became a quick and easy media label), but I wil say that Coxon is one of the most interesting, talented and influential British guitarists of his generation.And he used a Les Paul and an ES335 a lot more than people think. And he’s a player who serves the song and finds and creates the appropriate sound for that song. So much more valid than wank solos with no melody in my book.

darthed1981

Just to clarify, is everyone cool with me loving Bowie, Suede both pre and post Bernard, and Blur?

AlexC

darthed1981 said:

Just to clarify, is everyone cool with me loving Bowie, Suede both pre and post Bernard, and Blur?

I’d say you’ve got that spot on, mate!

UnclePsychosis

darthed1981 said:

Just to clarify, is everyone cool with me loving Bowie, Suede both pre and post Bernard, and Blur?

-yes, no, and no :-P

mikem8634

darthed1981 said:

Just to clarify, is everyone cool with me loving Bowie, Suede both pre and post Bernard, and Blur?

Bingo.

tampaxboo

just caught up with this thread after a few days being distracted by spacey things (mad space week).

i wasn't beating Graham up too badly, i don't think. even if my tone was irreverent (or provocative) about blur in general. Graham's perfectly ok by me, as a musician and what i know of him as a person from what i have read.
i also said that he was my favourite member of blur and that i warmed to him most in interviews (for the record, the one that got really on my tits was that smirking cheese dude).
i also like bits of his stuff before and after the britpop-fuss-over-nothing that i felt held him back creatively. if that's an outrageous heresy to his fans, i can live with that. i feel the same way about musicians i like and will defend them. different strokes etc.
if the 'guardian style bullshit regurgitation' was too much for some, that's ok too. i'v never read a blur guardian review to regurgitate, but hey ho. you're entitled to your opinion.

re any lingering suspicion of my 'arty' pretentions, it is worth bearing in mind that Graham is a fine arts graduate. me too. so that raises my expectations of him as a performer-artist-whatever, above 'craft for craft's sake', to a different register (art school concerns, if you like);
breaking new ground, challenging expectations, 'what if?'. and that goes hand-in-hand with resisting formula (or subverting it) and not prioritising 'wanting to be popular' as a motivation to do things above 'trying to do something interesting'.

you don't have to be an arts graduate to do that, some people just have it in their natures (Jimi one among many), but engagement with graduate level fine art study is speciafically designed to draw that insight/attitude/sensitivity out of a person and fine train it, like a muscle, so the student can can later bring it to bear on any task. that's why so many interesting bands have fine art guitarists (the beatles? the who? and many more since. mcgeoch is my favourite, choose yours).

in view of those specific expectations, my personal impression is that Graham under-achieved according to his potential (a compliment in there) during blur's britpop phase (heresy?).
i am not saying he didn't make some great records during that period, i even bought a couple of singles (never an album). but he was possibly easily distracted by shiny objects at that time, for whatever reason, and things like 'parklife' and 'country house' grate, frankly. silly songs.

i liked suede more, and c1992-1994 bought both albums and most of their singles to get the extra tracks, which were usually better than the main track. they later released all those extra bits on a compo double CD later (sci-fi) and that's the great forgotten suede album.
when you hear the first CD of the that (bernard era) and think that is stuff they considered 'extra tracks' (not even album or single appropriate), you really begin to get a sense of how much bernard had to give, and what a shame it was that things fell apart during album 2.

there are some shit suede songs and some mighty blur songs, but generally i felt bernard was trying harder around that time. accordingly bernard got poster space on my bedroom wall and blur didn't. sorry Graham!