Latest releases reviewed

BLUR
Starshaped EMI
**

Filmed before they became the platinum selling indie Chas ’n’ Dave, this captures the band during the early 1990s when they were still dabbling with baggy and desperately searching for a new direction. There’s plenty of (i.e. too much) footage of the band travelling to and from different European festivals which is of little or no interest and, to make matters worse, the director goes in for some perplexingly bad "arty" camera angles. With so little going on, you’re left speculating as to how much a young Damon Albarn looked like Neil Hannon and how the bass player really could do with a good slap. Tacked on at the end are two gigs – Live in Kilburn and the impossibly ramshackle Live at the Princess Charlotte. The latter show in particular betrays their huge early debt to The Stone Roses right down to Albarn’s tambourine-shaking. And it all comes to an abrupt halt before the band did anything interesting on record. Strictly for fans – and hardcore fans at that.

Brian Boyd

THE WHO
Live In Boston Warner Music Vision 
***

The Who's best 1960s moments were far tougher than rivals The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and, along with The Kinks, they represented an era and a movement that defined pop and rock music for the best part of ten years. Seeing the two sole survivors Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend on stage in Boston (days after Who bassist John Entwhistle popped his clogs in the company of cocaine and ladies; ah, but they don't make 'em like that any more), still raging hard in their 60s and late 50s respectively – the former a salmon farmer and AMEX promoter, the latter under a cloud for accessing a child porn website a couple of years ago – is edifying if only for their resilience. The performance is scarily good, though – old pros not so much going through the motions as kicking it to splinters – and the songs are still mostly fab: I Can't Explain, Baba O'Reilly, Behind Blue Eyes, Won't Get Fooled Again and My Generation. Extras include interviews with Townshend and Daltrey.

Tony Clayton-Lea