I was a big Blur fan. In the mid to late 1990s, before I had regular access to the internet, listening to Blur had a markedly alien appeal due largely to the fact that much of their music was so defiantly British. It was more than Damon Albarn’s British accent: the records they were releasing were entirely different than anything that was happening in American mainstream music. It took me many trips to many mall-based ‘Sam Goody’ and ‘The Wall’ locations before I was able to complete my ownership of their main discography. I, however, am not the type of person who is satisfied owning the ‘main discography’ of a band I love: I have always been compelled to hunt for the less common releases as well. In the case of Blur, the majority of these came in the form of over-priced import CDs which usually offered the addition of one track which was not present on the North American copy of the album such as the addition of the song “Sing” to the Japanese version of Leisure (it should be noted that this song was also available on the much more reasonably priced soundtrack to Trainspotting as well). This driving need to own Blur’s entire musical output encouraged me to look through every single CD placed in the ‘B’ section of every music store I had the chance to enter, (I usually checked all of the ‘A’ section and ‘C’ section releases as well, just in case something was mis-filed),in the hopes of coming across any sort of rarity.
By the time I was halfway through middle school, I knew nearly all of Blur’s music. I also had become familiar with their biography and music videos; this brought a sense of acquaintance with each of the individual band members and their contributions to the music. I, like many others, felt an affinity to Graham Coxon: the brilliant guitarist who shied away from the spotlight and shaped the sound of the second half of their career.
Near the end of the summer after seventh grade, I stopped at Tunes, (one of the independent music stores near my hometown in Southern New Jersey), and I casually thumbed through the CDs in the ‘Blur section’, (as labeled by a white plastic divider). It was here that I first found out about the existence of The Sky is Too High by Graham Coxon.
When I first found it, I had no idea what it was. The cover art was crude in comparison with the other CDs in the ‘Blur section’ and the lettering on the packaging was sloppily handwritten and very hard to read. There were no spaces between the words ‘graham’ and ‘coxon’; it took me a few minutes to figure out what the term ‘grahamcoxon’ even meant. As soon as I figured it out, it was unquestionably an immediate purchase. As I rode home in the passenger seat, I stared at the mysterious cover art and read through the long, incoherent ranting printed inside the linear notes.
As soon as I returned home, I threw my new purchase into the 3-disc/dual-cassette Aiwa stereo in my family’s living room and expectantly pushed ‘play’. The album starts off with some folk-pop acoustic guitar and Graham’s slightly nasal singing before it shifts into a massive, lo-fi, distortion, freak-out accented by pounding drums. The pinnacle of the track is an eloquently executed feed-back solo which is somehow as harsh as it is melodic. As the strumming fades out, the second song, “Where’d You Go?”, fades in.
”Where’d You Go?” is as fragile and gentle as the opening track, “That’s All I Wanna Do” is raw and bombastic. Its poorly-recorded finger-picked guitar and yearning vocals mystified and entranced me then and they have not lost any of their effect. I love this song. It was “In A Salty Sea”, the third track, which really sold me with its peculiar intensity and mysterious lyrics which decorated many of my eighth grade textbooks (as well as my personal CD player).
Shortly after completing my first listen, Evan Sherman came over from next door and listened through with me. Today, each song seems great but back then, I remember having a hard time discerning the charms of “Waiting”. I also remember telling Evan that the flamenco-tinged percussion section of “Hard & Slow” made me think of tap-dancing poodles. I believe that it was the listening of this album which cemented a few important segments of our collected knowledge: Graham Coxon is the most important member of Blur and there is a distinct charm and value to home-recording.
Eventually, both Evan and I began recording our own albums on 4-track cassette. I strongly believe that the friendly and casual appeal of Graham’s debut lead us to prefer tape-hiss to studio sheen. It is true that there were many important documents in the home-recording genre which were released before The Sky is Too High but, for us, this was it: the gateway album.
The Sky is Too High is thrillingly sloppy and personal. Even when the lyrics are overly simplistic, they work in the context of the record. Even though Graham has released many more albums under his own name, none are as great as his first but then, how could they be?
