It’s no secret that Damon Albarn has long been a fan of Hong Kong and Chinese culture.
In fact, when some of us were with EMI Music, we took the Blur frontman and his Gorillaz collaborator Jamie Hewlett to a riotous karaoke session at a club in Kowloon where the “repertoire” included bloody horrible versions of “Careless Whisper” and “Love Me Tender”.
More importantly, that trip resulted in Damon writing the song with the title “Hong Kong”, which had nothing to do with this city other than being “hatched” here- the Grand Hyatt Hotel, to be exact.
Now comes a new Blur album- the band’s first in twelve years- and with material written during their last tour of Hong Kong.
Titled “The Magic Whip”, here’s the very Hong Kong-centric track listing. We’ll leave it up to your imagination as to how and where the songs might have developed.
Blur aside, with Albarn and Hewlett back together and working on the further adventures of Gorillaz, we can’t help wondering about our fave Chinese rock iconoclast- Noodle.
Will she surface amidst her own Umbrella Movement? And will the feisty little Noodle stand up to Hong Kong’s Chief Executive CY Leung whose Lunar New Year message as we welcomed in The Year Of The Ram was that we should all, basically, fall into line “like sheep”.
Baaaa baaaaa to that!
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