The Independent reports that the Blur/Gorillaz frontman is a leading contender to become the artistic director of the 2012 Olympic Games. Albarn collaborated with artist Jamie Hewlett on the music and animation for the BBC’s coverage of the Bejing games. The decision process could take months. Regardless, the idea that the opening ceremonies could look a bit more like the “Clint Eastwood” music video is a sufficiently worthwhile one. Albarn, dudes: he just doesn’t cease to explore and excite. (via The Daily Swarm via The Independent)

—Nikki Turner

We’ve been scrambling to keep you up-to-date as Glastonbury’s slowly leaked megaconfirmation after megaconfirmation in the past few months. But today’s full lineup announcement is something to behold, the headlining package of Neil Young, the Boss and a reunited Blur now propped up by a roster so behemoth and iron-clad, it’s equal parts intimidating and enticing. Also playing: Bloc Party, Lady Gaga, Jarvis Cocker, Regina Spektor, Maximo Park, Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, Lily Allen, Tom Jones, Pete Doherty, Q-Tip, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Streets, Ray Davies and and and and…

There will be mud.

The hype surrounding Blur’s reunion shows has been rising since it was first announced, and now they are looking to add U.S. and European tours to their plans, which was originally only slated for U.K. dates. 

They already surprised us with the announcement of warm-up shows in London, but according to Billboard, the VP of Live Nation U.K., Steve Homer, said that Blur is looking into the possibility of booking  shows in other areas outside of the U.K. “They have been rehearsing for some time now, for several months,” Homer told Billboard. “…They are talking about some American shows still in the same time frame. There are possibilities of some European ones as well.” 

Blur has already scheduled a string of U.K. dates, and have seen an enormous response to their reunion, having two sold-out 50,000-capacity shows at Hyde Park in London in July, and headlining slots at the Glastonbury and T in the Park festivals. There is no word as to whether or not the band would be playing smaller, more intimate shows in the states, or sticking to the arena-rock settings they have signed onto with their U.K. tour. 

Alongside the announcement of possible U.S. and European dates, Blur is also set to release a double CD compilation, Midlife: A Beginners Guide to Blur, on June 15, according to NME. The new CD will have 25 tracks and is apparently aimed for those who missed the Blur’s first go-around (aka – people with no taste).

We’ve been anticipating Blur’s reunion since we first heard about it, and were even more excited when they confirmed the addition of Crystal Castles, Deerhoof and (to a lesser extent, it’s nothing personal) Vampire Weekend to the line up for their reunion shows at Hyde Park. But the hype keeps growing with the announcement of two intimate shows for fans before their awaited reunion. See how nice they are? They hype up the Hyde Park shows so it’s not as annoying when you’re told they won’t be Blur’s first shows back as originally advertised.

The warm up shows will be played at East Anglian Railway Museum, in Colchester, England on June 13 and London Goldsmith’s College, on June 22. Proceeds for the June 13 sow will be donated to the museum’s charity and the Aldham Village Hall Restoration Project. The band announced the warm-up shows to their fan club, and tickets for the shows are on sale now for Blur fan club members, and further preview show announcements are due out shortly.

Hot off the presses this morning from across the pond — Blur have announced the roster of bands who’ll join them in Hyde Park for their highly anticipated reunion gigs this July. Among the chosen ones are Crystal Castles, Vampire Weekend, Foals and more.

The band gave the official word to NME this morning, and the hand-picked line-ups for the two nights are as follows: July 2 features Foals, Crystal Castles, Friendly Fires and Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, and July 3 features Vampire Weekend, Amadou & Mariam, Florence And The Machine and Deerhoof.

Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koening told NME.com, “I think the Hyde Park show will be pretty phenomenal. People have been waiting a long time to see Blur reunite and it’s flattering to be invited to play at all. This will be my first time seeing Blur live and I’m psyched.”

We spoke with guitarist Graham Coxon about the reunion last month, and while we forgot to ask him who would be opening, he did speak about the process of reuniting and rehearsing the old songs.

Blur will also play Manchester’s MEN Arena June 26, with Klaxons and Florence And The Machine supporting. Ticket info for all three shows is available here.

Blur aside, The Specials reunion has us more excited than any of the umpteen other band reincarnations this year. And by the looks of this — their first — performance on Later with Jools Holland, they’ve barely missed a beat. They also played “Gangsters”, but here is the reunited Specials performing their hit “A Message To You Rudy”.

We just caught Graham Coxon playing at the Levi’s®/FADER Fort — where we got to speak with the former-now-current-again Blur guitarist. Now we’re excited to announce he has released the new artwork for his upcoming album, The Spinning Top, which is due out in mid-May. 

Coxon just revealed the cover art, which is a drawing of a distorted, spinning woman (above), exclusively to NME. The cover was drawn by Coxon himself, but this isn’t the first time the singer/songwriter has designed an album cover. Coxon has made all of the artwork for his solo albums, as well designing the sleeve for Blur’s 1999 record, 13. 

The Spinning Top will be released on May 11, and was produced by Stephen Street, who is known for his prior work with Blur. Coxon and the rest of the guys from Blur will be reuniting later this spring for a stint of summer shows as well, including a headlining gig at the Glastonbury festival in late June.

When I heard Graham Coxon was playing the Levi’s®/FADER Fort, I knew he was someone I had to interview. Besides having a new solo album set to drop in May, he’s touring with Pete Doherty and getting back together with this little band called Blur too. All were up for discussion on this warm, first day of Spring in Austin, Texas.

If you grew up in the 90s like some of us (no names will be mentioned), then you must be creaming your collective pants. Let’s see, we’ve had Jane’s Addiction, Blur, Faith No More, Sublime, Jesus Lizard, Pavement, Orbital and The Libertines all in the news in the past couple months about confirmed or rumored reunions. And that’s not even taking into account The Specials or Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Well, add one more to your list. The already once-reformed and broken up Pixies are at it again three years after their 2004 reunion stint.

Earlier today, NME reported that the Pixies will be playing Isle of Wight Festival on June 14 before headliner Neil Young. Festival promoter John Giddings was quoted as saying, “It was hard to think of someone capable of complementing the musical talent of Neil Young, but once I had the idea it was blindly obvious and it will surely be a legendary day on the Isle Of Wight.”

The Isle Of Wight Festival line-up so far is:
The Prodigy
Basement Jaxx
The Ting Tings
Pendulum
Stereophonics
Razorlight
Neil Young
Pixies
The Charlatans

And in case you want some juice with your news, Pitchfork has reminded us that in 2007 Kim Deal said, “I think [a new Pixies album] is something to bring up whenever [Frank Black] needs press. That’s the only time I hear about it. I have no idea, dude.”

And in fact, Frank Black does have have somethings to promote, including a new album with his wife, Violet Clark, under the name Grand Duchy, out April 14 in the U.S. on Cooking Vinyl. He also produced Art Brut’s latest LP, Art Brut vs. Satan, and there may or may not be a new Breeders EP in the works.

The rumors about Neil Young playing Glastonbury were finally confirmed earlier this week. Now it’s been announced that Young’s former band mates Dave Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash will be playing as well, leading us to speculate if a CSNY reunion might take place on stage at this year’s Glasto.

The band’s web site lists a show date of Saturday, June 27, but Glastonbury has not officially announced Young’s performance date as of yet. As NME pointed out, Young is listed as one of the headliners of the event and since Bruce Springsteen is already headlining on Saturday, it makes a reunion unlikely (at least for promotional purposes). The festival’s third headliner will be Blur, making for a very strange combination of old and older.

It’ll be interesting to see if songs like “Ohio” will resonate with the largely British crowd. We also wonder if they’ll pull out some old CSNY hits like “Teach Your Children.” We find it’s sure to get the party started. All four members last got together back in 2006 to play the Freedom of Speech tour in the U.S.

When Glastonbury organizer Michael Eavis announced that Neil Young would be playing the fest this year, he said, “Neil Young to play this year is a dream come true for me personally. He is one of my all-time favourites and we have always wanted him to play.”

This year’s festival takes place in Pilton, Somerset, June 24-28.

Sigh. This is what it’s come to? It’s one thing for Rolling Stone to drop a quote in an interview with Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips dissing Win Butler and The Arcade Fire for being pompous (doesn’t seem that hard to believe, does it?). But for them to run a headline in their “Smoking Section” that blasts, “Exclusive: Wayne Coyne Tears Apart Arcade Fire!” is quite another. Now the music-world is abuzz with the two iconic front men exchanging verbal blows through the media.

We have our own opinions of both (see the headline), but that’s a whole other story, because yesterday Rolling Stone posted a quote from Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips accusing the Arcade Fire of being dicks in real life. In fact, the entire quote looks like this:

I’m a fan of them on one level, but on another level I get really tired of their pompousness. We’ve played some shows with them and they really treat people like shit. Whenever I’ve been around them, I’ve found that they not only treated their crew like shit, they treated the audience like shit. They treated everybody in their vicinity like shit. I thought, ‘Who do they think they are?’ I don’t know why people put up with it. I wouldn’t put up with it. I don’t care if it’s Arcade Fire or Brian Eno. If either of them walked into a room and treated people like shit I’d be like, ‘Fuck you, get outta here.’

People treat Arcade Fire like they’re the greatest thing ever and they get away with it. Those sort of opinions change my view of their music. They have good tunes, but they’re pricks, so fuck ‘em. Who does Arcade Fire think they are? I’ve been around groups. I’ve been around the Edge from U2 and he’s the fucking sweetest guy ever. I was around Justin Timberlake when he was young and he was just a normal, nice, kind person. Anyone can be polite and kind and people who have the privilege and money and attention should understand that. If they don’t, then fuck ‘em.

Again, we can only speculate, but considering we’ve rarely seen the Arcade Fire smile, it doesn’t seem impossible to believe that they are not the most friendly of people. Still, it is rather unbecoming of Coyne to openly bash another band in one of the larger music publications of the world.

But don’t fret effeminate Arcade Fire fans, your leading man is not taking Mr. Coyne’s statements laying down. Today, Win Butler struck back by blogging (gasp!) about the incident on the Arcade Fire website (click on “Win”). If words could hurt, just imagine the pain Wayne would be feeling after getting verbally smacked up like this:

Wow, I can’t believe I am actually writing to defend my bands “real” personality. I wish I could not respond to something like this, but the reality is is that people will be asking me questions about it for the next 5 years. I also fear that people will base their opinion of our band on the media quotes of a guy who doesn’t even know us.

Win

So there you have it. Two grown men who each made about one great record apiece fighting through the media. If Oasis, Blur and hip-hop have taught us anything, this will keep both in the spotlight despite the ratio of good music coming out of either. So we figured, why take the high road? Might as well stoop to each of their levels and just make fun of them both. Congrats Mr. Coyne and Mr. Butler, we’ll be looking forward to the inevitable big festival you guys play together and waiting with bated breath to see if you guys slap it out like real “indie” rockers. Now THAT would be news!

As we told you earlier in the week, Bruce Springsteen is confirmed as a headliner for the Glastonbury Festival this year, but now the newly reunited Blur have confirmed they too will be playing the festival this year.

After rumors ran rampant about the band possibly performing at the festival, Blur frontman, Damon Albarn, confirmed to the Daily Mirror that they would surely be performing this year. “Yeah we’re doing Glasto this year. We were asked last year, but we turned them down.”

The band is also playing at Hyde Park in the U.K. on July 3, which was supposed to be the bands big reunited debut before they announced their Glastonbury confirmation.

Albarn and Graham Coxon gave us a taste of what’s to come at Glastonbury, at the Shockwaves NME awards, which was their first performance together in nine years, but we are hoping we will be hearing even more from the band before then. Albarn tossed around the possible idea of the band playing a few gigs before the festival saying, “We need a few more warm-up gigs to get back into it, ready for the big one. Glastonbury’s great.”

The Glastonbury festival will take place on June 24-28, and is known for hosting a wide range of performers. Last year’s festival included the likes of Jay-Z, Kings of Leon, and The Verve among many other performers.

The infamous Pete Doherty kicked off his solo UK tour last night at a sold-out Shockwaves NME Awards show in London last night. Doherty was joined by a plethera of guests, including Graham Coxon, once-again of Blur, who also plays guitar on Doherty’s new solo album Grace/Wastelands. Doherty was also joined on stage by his Babysambles‘ mates, Drew McConnell and Adam Ficek, as well as esteemed music producer Stephen Street, singer Dot Allison, and guitarist John Robinson.

Doherty, formerly of The Libertines, played a wide variety of classics for the star-packed audience, (Attendees included Roger Daltrey of The Who), ranging from Libertines’ hits like “What a Waster”, “Time for Heroes”, and “Music When The Lights Go Out”, where his Babyshambles band mates played along as a string trio. Coxon also aided Doherty as he played acoustic renditions of songs off his up and coming album, which is due out March 9, and was recorded with Stephen Street last fall.

It looks like Bruce Springsteen is making his way through the festival circuit this spring and summer. It was rumored just last week that Mr. America himself might possibly be headlining Bonnaroo Festival, but now Bruce will be making his way over to the U.K. for the Glastonbury Festival, where he will be the Saturday night headliner as well.

While we’re a little curious as to how “Born In the U.S.A.” will pan out over on the other side of the pond, the sold out music festival — which will take place on June 26-28 — and the its organizers are very excited to have Springsteen grace their stage. “I’m so pleased that Bruce Springsteen has agreed to come to Worthy Farm for the first time,” said festival chief Michael Eavis. “He’s one of the all-time rock legends and I’m confident that this will be one of our best shows ever.”

Just last week, Emily Eavis, who helps run the festival, dismissed rumors that The Rolling Stones and U2 would be headlining the festival, but said “I’m knocked out that we’ve managed to get Bruce to play. It’s the icing on the cake of this year’s bill, which I’m sure will take everyone’s breath away when we announce the full details.”

So far, only a hand full of acts along with Bruce have been confirmed for the festival, including Bon Iver, Lilly Allen, and Franz Ferdinand. Among other artists rumored to play are Neil Young,Blur, Coldplay, and Oasis.

British music producer Stephen Street has released exclusive footage of his work with Blur during the recording of 1994’s Parklife, which secured the alternative British rocker’s multi-platinum success.

“I think the thing that comes over is not only how talented these guys are but also how much fun they were to work with,” said Street in regards to the hazy footage, which shows the band energetically tinkering around in the studio, having fun, and recording their best known singles like “Girls and Boys” and “Parklife”.

Be prepared to squint your eyes to get a good look at the video montage though. The footage is cleverly placed on an image of a MacBook Pro, in a pseudo Stephen Street recording rig, which makes it unnecessarily hard to get a good look at the then-boys of Blur on the grainy screen. Regardless, the footage takes you for a great, short stroll back down memory lane.

You can check out the footage in it’s entirety here.

If you can take a break from fantasizing about Blur in Hyde Park for just a few minutes this afternoon, Damon Albarn will be playing new Gorillaz demos on BBC Radio1 when he fills in as a guest DJ for Zane Lowe.

The show will air from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. GMT (2 p.m. to 4 p.m. EST), and you can listen live through the Radio1 web site. Joining Albarn on the show will be Radio1 DJ Steve Lamacq and, apparently, Gorillaz bassist Murdoc Niccals. Albarn will be playing the demos from the as-yet untitled album, plus some of his favorite tunes and a few Blur radio sessions.

As for what type of conversation we can expect between “Murdoc” and Albarn, based on the message from Murdoc to his fans on several Gorillaz fansites, it should be good.

“Let’s try and clear this up,” said the cartoon creation. “As far as I can work out, I, Murdoc Niccals, the Gorillaz musical auteur, have been requested by the BBC to take over Zane Lowe’s radio show this Wednesday. Sounds simple. They want ‘the guy who wrote all those Gorillaz tunes’.”

He added: “But now apparently ‘Damon Albarn’, is hosting this farce and he’s going to be playing some of the new Gorillaz demos, and ‘would I like to maybe put in an appearance, say hello, kind of thing’. Shurely [sic], some kind of admin mistake. So yeah, folks, I’ll put in an appearance this Wednesday, for sure. Let’s find out who’s hosting who, exactly.”

Since we’re now in the business of reporting rumors, let’s get the ball rolling on a Libertines reunion at Coachella this year too. I mean, if Pete Doherty’s going to start acting like a working musician again, can cracking US Immigration laws be far off?

Revealed exclusively this morning on NME, the album — the title of which the Babyshambles man is yet to decide — will be released on March 9, with a single, “Last Of The English Roses”, to be released on March 2.

According to NME, The album was recorded with producer Stephen Street in London’s Olympic Studios in autumn last year. Blur guitarist Graham Coxon plays guitar on all songs apart from “Broken Love Song”. Singer Dot Allison performs co-vocals on “Sheepskin Tearaway”, while Doherty’s Babyshambles band mates Mik Whitnall, Adam Ficek and Drew McConnell also play on the album.

Pete Doherty’s solo album track listing
01. Arcadie
02. Last Of The English Roses
03. 1939 Returning
04. A Little Death Around The Eyes
05. Salome
06. Through The Looking Glass
07. Sweet By And By
08. Palace Of Bone
09. Sheepskin Tearaway
10. Broken Love Song
11. New Love Grows On Trees
12. Lady, Don’t Fall Backwards

Undoubtedly the biggest news of the week was the announcement that Blur (with Graham) will be reuniting in ‘09. So we’re taking a flashback to the year 1994 with the title track to the album that launched Damon and Co. to international prominence.

Parklife is the third studio album by Blur, released on April 25, 1994 on Food Records. After disappointing sales for their previous album, 1993’s Modern Life is Rubbish, Parklife launched Blur to worldwide fame, thanks in part to it’s four singles: “Girls & Boys”, “End of a Century”, “Parklife” and “To the End”.

Ironically, the recording for Parklife was done extremely fast, due in part to Damon Albarn writing a lot during the Modern Life sessions, but also because the band and label were struggling financially. So much in fact, that upon completion Food Records owner David Balfe was not pleased with the record, telling the band’s management “This is a mistake,” and soon afterwards, Balfe sold Food to EMI.

So without further ado, we present the best mistake Blur ever made.

Like a bad fiancee, it took them four years to set the date. But Blur have finally confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that their much-anticipated, highly speculated about reunion will happen next year. The band announced on its site this morning that July 3, 2009 will see them play at London’s Hyde Park.

The gig will be the first time guitarist Graham Coxon, bassist Alex James, drummer Dave Rowntree and lead singer Damon Albarn have shared the stage since their 2000 performance at the Royal Festival Hall in London. Tickets go on sale this Friday at 9 a.m. in the UK, 4 a.m. Eastern/3 a.m. Central. They will cost you £45 each, which according to today’s exchange rate is $66.27. Each buyer will be limited to six tickets and will be subject to a booking fee.

For more updates on the progress of the show, you can give Blur a few details like cell phone and e-mail address, and they’ll send you more info on Blur in 2009. You’ll also get to see a video interview with the band about the show, where they talk about the time they spent apart — “a lot of little experiences, nothing personal” — and what it’s been like practicing together again — “a bit like putting the A-Team back together for a job, we’ve gotta bust Rowntree out of law school.”

Blur