On this day in music history — as most of my Jams of the Day tend to be — is another anniversary, notably for the self-titled debut of Gorillaz, a project between Blur’s Damon Albarn and Tank Girl co-creator Jamie Hewlett. This project, a collaboration that has lasted 25 years to date, has made Albarn and Hewlett recognizable names worldwide, most notably in America, where Blur hadn’t made as big a splash as they did in their home country.
With their newest album The Mountain available for nearly a month, alongside a new animated short that pays homage and a terrible amount of reverence to mid-60s Disney xeroxing (of note, The Jungle Book as a particular inspiration), it feels like a better time now than ever to look back to the video for “Clint Eastwood,” which is what many fans and those unacquainted had first witnessed these characters through.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a retrospective of a 25-year-long endeavor without a rundown of the basics. The animated members of the group, serving as the traditional actors in each of the albums’ stories, are as follows:
- 2-D – Damon Albarn-voiced, representing the lead vocals that he himself provides. Not-all-there synth keyboard proprietor who became injured by two incidents involving bassist Murdoc, whom he now owes a debt to.
- Murdoc – rough-and-tumble bassist, symbolizing the evils of rock and roll under the guise of a perpetually-incarcerated Satanist swinger. Responsible for the group’s union.
- Russel – American drummer who, after surviving a drive-by, became host to spiritual possession that enabled his musical prowess.
- Noodle – Japanese guitarist who came to the band’s doorfront in a shipping crate at 7. Learned she was a sleeper agent of a disbanded secret project, and recovered her abilities to speak English as well as hunt demons.
These characters have been involved in a bevy of storylines and plots that have played out over the course of the project, involving islands made of trash in the middle of the ocean, a surprise crossover with The Powerpuff Girls for a while, and the aftermaths of the many, many arrests of Murdoc.
As for the video itself starring these wild four, Del, the featured artist in the song, is portrayed as one of the friends of Russel who were gunned down, emerging as a ghost to deliver the rap verses. This is the beginning of a tradition for the band, utilizing a format that, while not officially sanctioned, became a term to refer to the style: a “Flimsy Steve,” where the guest rap verses in a Gorillaz song are of much more metaphorical meat, so to speak in the context of talking about societal ills or internal conflicts, with the chorus, sung by Albarn, representing nothing in particular yet serving as the connecting tissue, for example, singing about a character named Flimsy Steve for whom he cannot find.
The visuals are astounding for a 2001 animated music video, the direction by Hewlett and Pete Candeland for Passion Pictures is of utmost clarity: zombies, ghosts, zombie gorillas, our cast fighting zombie gorillas: it’s a showcase of the themes to come from in terms of supernatural, speculative, and horror-inspired elements, with references to Peter Jackson’s Braindead, George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, and a shout-out to the Resident Evil series with “T-Virus” on 2-D’s shirt. This is something new, but it’s paying homage to everything that inspired them before it.
Looking back to this formative era of Gorillaz is like looking into the past. 9/11 hadn’t yet occurred, Dubya was well into his first 100 Days and didn’t have any giant mistakes made yet (except, of course, for his tax cuts, religious focus, and schooling initiatives), and music that, while not quite as mainstream, was hitting the highs as well as the charts. Not to say it’s all been downhill from here, but we’ve been seeing an exact period of 1956-1974 happen in varying lengths since those years happened, with analogous events in that time, in that order. Gorillaz touched on this particular issue as well, with the plotline for the album Cracker Island focusing on an immortal cult of silent film stars conducting a sacrificial ritual every 25 years.
And yet, maybe that’s what life is all about, the sacrifice of the same thing over and over again, but with the refreshing taste of something new, like if Sisyphus could put stickers on his boulder. Gorillaz are the stickers on the boulder, in this analogy.
