Damon Albarn has made a rare public reference to his former band Blur, during his indie rock supergroup The Good, The Bad and the Queen’s headlining set at Latitude Festival tonight (July 14).

With the recently reported news that the original line up of Blur are due to reconvene in the studio for the first time since 1999, Damon Albarn took the opportunity to reference their classic single, “Song 2″ while introducing The Good, The Bad & The Queen song, “A Soldier’s Tale“.

“I met a squaddie who’d been in Iraq,” he told the Obelisk arena audience at Latitude.

“He told me that they used to play ‘Song 2‘ before… you know” –the suggestion being before they went into combat — “so I guess this is for him.”

The Good, The Bad & The Queen - featuring Clash member Paul Simonon, played their debut album in its entirety, closing the second night of this year’s sell-out Latitude festival.

via Uncut

Graham has been in the studio with the modfather Paul Weller and the results are available to download from iTunes now!

Talking about the collaboration, Graham said “As a long time admirer of Paul I never dared imagine getting a chance to work with him so I was bricking it when we first met…but he is an absolute gent and a shockingly great singer and musician. It’s been a total pleasure.” Paul returned the compliment saying “I’ve always been a big fan of Graham’s and love his work, so it was exciting for me to work on something new with him.”

Lead track “This Old Town” is a Coxon/Weller collaboration. There are also two B sides: “Each New Morning” is a Graham Coxon composition, while “Black River” was written by Paul Weller.

The limited edition 7” vinyl is available on July 30th, on Regal Recordings.

You can see Graham and Paul perform “This Old Town” live on the Jonathan Ross show on BBC1 this Friday night! (6^th July ‘07)

Edit: Added video of Jonathan Ross performance.

via www.grahamcoxon.co.uk