Artist: Blur
Title: For Tomorrow
Format: 12" Single
Label: Food
Catalogue Number: 12FOOD40
Year of Release: 1993
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Tracklisting
A For Tomorrow (Visit To Primrose Hill Extended)
B1 Into Another
B2 Hanging Over
Released as "lead track" or taster for the album Modern Life Is Rubbish, For Tomorrow showcased seven new tracks over its various formats - the cassingle and 12" having the same tracklisting - and two CD singles featuring four other tracks and two different mixes ("Single" and "Acoustic", the former raising an obvious question) of the title track. I was obviously still nuts for Blur, having bought all of them except the cassette. Bone Bag from the first CD is well worth checking out, from almost an album's worth of new material.
They almost pulled off the same trick when they released Chemical World, although in that case, three of the extras were live tracks, albeit one of them unreleased (Never Clever), and they put out a 7" instead of a cassette - the B-side of which was a cover version of the Rod Stewart hit Maggie May. Five new tracks and one remix on Chemical World then - Young And Lovely being the greatest by a significant distance. You'll find that on CD2.
Despite all this multi-formatting and stuff, both singles charted at a meagre number 28. I'm not sure how many that means they sold, but I am sure that whatever the number is it's significantly higher than what it takes to get to 28 in 2008.
Regardless, Modern Life Is Rubbish is a great album, and this is a great single. It takes musical and thematic elements from both Popscene and Bang, mangles them together and spits the result at you.
Both B-sides are solid tunes, following up well from what went on Popscene - experimenting with drums patterns, keyboards, other instrument -but still in the main relying on Coxon's guitar-noise-riffs, which I think have a bigger debt to the grunge sound than has previously been acknowledged (a sound [or at least, a 'scene'] they professed to hate). I shouldn't overstate any US-influence, there is a peculiar Britishness still to the band, and it's one which comes horribly to the fore over the next few releases in favour of sonic experimentation.
See, I got a bit bored with Blur after Chemical World. The chirpy-cockney-knees-up-Oi! and London-centric-ness of it all began to grate, as did the sheer balls-out stupidity of tunes like Country House.
The occasional good tune exists on Parklife and The Great Escape, but I stopped buying their singles until they did something more interesting - which turned out to be a return to simpler lyrical themes and guitars, or Beetlebum as it's known. I only have that on CD single, unfortunately. So that's why Music Is My Radar is next up.
