When Blur burst onto the British music scene Damon Albarn claimed ‘I want to destroy grunge’ which is a fair enough statement I suppose, set your stall out and all that. Whilst Alban used the grunge term I think he was referring mainly to the American dominance of popular culture at the time, certain in term of music bands. Sure enough to celebrate Britishness and all that is fine but to denounce all American influence was a little short sighted. Clearly Graham Coxon held different views. On their self-titled 5th album ‘Blur’ Coxon was given more creative control of the band and off went The Kinks records and on came Pavements et al… It turned out Coxon was a big admirer of all the same underground bands that Kurt Cobain championed. Coxon’s solo output is as impressive as his main bands but without any overtly pop stuff. What you get is all those great guitar bands but with a touch of eccentric Britishness thrown in. You would have to strap me to a chair to get me to listen to a full Gorillas album but I’m a huge, huge fan of Graham Coxons solo efforts.