The Good, The Bad & The Queen will headline the Saturday night of the Latitude Festival, taking place on 12-15 July at the Henham Park Estate, Southwold, Suffolk.

Arcade Fire, Damien Rice, Wilco, CSS, Magic Numbers and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are also confirmed. More info can be found at the Festival site - www.latitudefestival.co.uk

via Blur Fan Club

FULL LINE UP JOIN THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE QUEEN IN A FAREWELL TO HAMMERSMITH PALAIS

A line up of very special guests has been confirmed to join The Good, The Bad and The Queen at Hammersmith Palais on Saturday night (March 31st).

The Tony Allen Orchestra will be the first to take to the stage, followed by performance poet John Cooper Clark, and DJ Don Letts is also due to play a set before The Good, The Bad and The Queen is played. The night will close with a DJ set by Jose Carretas from Restless Soul Productions.

This line up should ensure a truly legendary farewell to Hammersmith Palais.

The Good, The Bad and The Queen is out now on Parlophone, the album features Damon Albarn, Paul Simonon, Tony Allen and Simon Tong.

Bit of a Blur by Alex James is published by Little, Brown Book Group on 7th June. Hardback £16.99

For Alex James, music had always been a door to a more exciting life: a way to travel, meet new people and, hopefully, pick up girls. But as bass player of Blur – one of the most successful British bands of all time – his journey was more exciting and extreme than he could ever have predicted. Success catapulted him from a slug-infested squat in Camberwell to a world of private jets and world-class restaurants. As ‘the second drunkest member of the world’s drunkest band’ life was always chaotic, but Alex James retained a boundless enthusiasm and curiosity at odds with his hedonistic lifestyle. From nights in the Groucho with Damien Hirst, to dancing to Sister Sledge with Bjork, to being bitten on the nose by the lead singer of Iron Maiden, he offers a fascinating and hilarious insight into the world of celebrity. At its heart, however, Bit of a Blur is the picaresque tale of one man’s search to find meaning and happiness in an increasingly surreal world. Pleasingly unrepentant but nonetheless a reformed man, Alex James is the perfect chronicler of his generation – witty, observant, frank and brimming with joie de vivre.

As well as still being in Blur, Alex James is now a farmer and a Visiting Scientist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Europe’s largest space research facility. He lives with his wife and children in the Cotswolds.

Pre-order Bit of a Blur now from Amazon.co.uk for only £11.21.
via Blur Fan Club

Via www.blurcentral.co.uk

(from this week’s NME, cover date: 3 March 2007) Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon look closer to revealing plans to work together again, after NME confronted the Britpop legends.

Last week (February 17), Coxon declared he’d been thinking about a Blur reunion, so when we were given a chance to talk to Albarn about The Good, The Bad & The Queen this week, we couldn’t help but enquire about his old band.

With a single and more live dates planned for GBQ, along with an ‘opera’ and new anti-nuclear weapons website, Albarn has plenty on his plate, but we still sneaked in a Blur question. Here’s what he had to say…

Read the full interview over at www.blurcentral.co.uk