WATCH: Blur Play A Great Acoustic Version Of For Tomorrow

10 May 2017, 17:32 | Updated: 10 May 2017, 17:38

Blur live 1993

See Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon claim Modern Life Is Rubbish live in 1993… and it’s pretty amazing.

Blur’s second album, Modern Life Is Rubbish, was released on 10 May 1993 and marked a turning point for the band. To mark the occasion, here’s a clip of Albarn and Coxon playing a version of the single For Tomorrow with just an acoustic guitar, onstage at London’s Finsbury Park in June 1992, just a month after the album’s release. 

Blur’s debut LP Leisure had been issued in 1991 to mild acclaim and had spawned the Top 10 hit There’s No Other Way. The “Funky Drummer” shuffle and the pudding bowl haircuts led many people to file Blur under the label “Baggy Wannabees”, and the next single, Bang, made an underwhelming No 24 in the UK charts,

The next year, Blur embarked on an ill-tempered US tour and their raucous one-off single Popscene stiffed at the bottom end of the Top 40. When they returned to the UK, they found their old mates Suede had stolen their thunder and work on their second album ground to a halt.

So it was time for a new manifesto: reject the loud, droning guitars of American grunge and embrace all that was great in British pop. The Kinks and early Pink Floyd were the inspirations, rather than Nirvana and Pearl Jam.

The result was Modern Life Is Rubbish - initially greeted with some suspicious due to the overtly “British” images that accompanied the record, it essentially paved the way for Britpop. And we know how that turned out!