Record Store Day 2026 • Spins: Blur • Live at Budokan 30th Anniversary
Blur
Live at the Budokan 30th anniversary 2xLP
(Warner Bros.)
Live at the Budokan is a Record Store Day release to entice Blur diehards and vinyl junkies alike. This is the first vinyl pressing of a set that originally appeared in 1996 as a Japanese exclusive CD package. Budokan follows 2024’s Live at Wembley Stadium, which documented a stadium sellout in support of 2023’s The Ballad of Darren. The current offering features a markedly different tone and set list, captured on November 8, 1995, prior to the band’s North American breakout with its self-titled fifth album. “Country House,” “The Universal,” and seven others were fresh material from the fourth album, The Great Escape. The stadium anthem “Song 2” was yet to be dreamed up by Damon Albarn and brought to life by guitarist Graham Coxon, bassist Alex James, and drummer Dave Rowntree. All were still in their 20s except for Rowntree.
Budokan features 24 of the 27 songs performed on the band’s first of two nights in Tokyo. Debut Leisure single “She’s So High” was captured the following night. “Charmless Man” is the more unfortunate of the two omissions. Modern Life is Rubbish track “Chemical World” is also AWOL.
The remainder of the show is a vibrant example of prime-time ’90s Britpop with a heavy dose of the third album, Parklife. The band opens to the giddy brass band flourish of “The Great Escape,” which soon erupts into mayhem when joined by the band. Coxon’s feral guitar twists and bends around Albarn’s bratty Cockney affectations during a manic “Jubilee.” “End of a Century” sways blissfully while lamenting the slide of a relationship and life in general from passion into the mundane. “It’s nothing special,” sings Albarn.
Bassist James plays cartwheeling bass alongside Coxon’s gritty riff and Rowntree’s stark rhythm during the effervescent “Tracy Jacks.” Albarn and Coxon trade call-and-response vocals, and Rowntree shifts between infectious rhythmic patterns.
“Arigato,” says Albarn before the band launches the crashing and brass-fueled “Mr. Robison’s Quango.” The song concludes with a carnivalesque diversion into “Mack the Knife” led by a woozy trumpet. The Japanese crowd erupts at the intro to the sweeping and starlit “To the End.”
The band’s playing is uniformly sharp, with songs like the bristling, bouncing “It Could Be You” and the thrasher “Bank Holiday” frequently showcasing Coxon’s playing as inventive even before the major stylistic overhaul he introduced two years later.
The psychedelic grunge-pop haze of “She’s So High” is introduced by Albarn as “a very old song of ours.” The band follows with the ebullient disco of the sarcastic and gender-fluid “Girls & Boys,” complete with a breakdown for a dubious attempt at audience participation. The wry “Advert” is a wild blast of adrenaline.
The rat-race casualty skewered in the jaunty “Country House” and the metaphor of the British Shipping Forecast in the moody “This is a Low” arrive near the end of the main set. “Origami, oregano,” adds Albarn to his thanks during the encore before the dizzy “Globe Alone.” The encore reaches fever pitch with the swinging “Parklife” and climbs toward euphoria with the showstopping epic “The Universal.” “Well, here’s your lucky day,” sing Albarn and Coxon in harmony. “It really could happen,” continues Albarn in the deceptively upbeat chorus about a tranquilized future, answered by sparkling brass.
The 2xLP set, pressed on red vinyl, is limited to 9,500 copies worldwide. The number is likely to satisfy RSD impulse buys and then some, but it will eventually sell out and become scarce. Blur fans and younger Gorillaz devotees unfamiliar with Albarn’s “old band” shouldn’t sleep on the chance to find their own copies. (warnerrecords.com)
– Jeff Elbel
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