User:Vapourbug/The Good, the Bad & the Queen

History
Formation and The Good, The Bad & The Queen

Albarn first met with Simonon on Joe Strummer’s wedding in 1997, where Simonon was there with the Clash. Later in 2000, with the release of The Best Of, where Albarn added a new track with reference to Tony Allen, Allen reached out to Albarn after hearing the song. In 2002, after Graham Coxon left Blur, Albarn started collaborated with Tong, who was recruited to support the Think Tank tour as the guitarist and later.

The Good, the Bad & the Queen began as a solo project by Albarn with production by Danger Mouse. However, by July 2006, the project had become a band. They played their debut gig in a village pub in Devon on 20 October, followed by a performance at the London Roundhouse in Camden on 26 October as part of the BBC Electric Proms. Later, the band released their first single "Herculean" on 30 October. In November 2006, the track listing for this album was disclosed for the first time by Albarn and Simonon in an Uncut interview. The next month, the band performed a secret launch gig exclusive to 300 chosen fans for Myspace's new feature The List in Wilton’s Music Hall, East London, on 12 December. On 13 December, the band performed four tracks from the album for a recording session of Live From Abbey Road at Abbey Road Studios.

On 12 January 2007, the band released the second single "Kingdom of Doom", which became their first Top 20 single. On 2 April 2007, the third single "Green Fields", which was at No. 51 in the first week after its debut.

On 21 May 2007, a previously unpublished acoustic section of The Bunting Song from The Good, The Bad & The Queen was released exclusively in the Adult Swim compilation album Warm & Scratchy by Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim.

The band then released their self-titled debut album The Good, The Bad & The Queen on 22 January 2007. This album was voted by the Observer Music Magazine as the Best Album of 2007. Simonon talked about this album to the magazine that "It's not a commercial record, so OMM's award shows that you can make music that moves people without going down the obvious route." At this point, Albarn said the band was "nameless", that The Good, The Band & The Queen was the album title and not the band name. Simonon also said "we didn't properly name the band, because a name is for a marriage."

Later, a deluxe edition of the album including a bonus DVD featured rehearsal and recording footage was released on 24 April 2007. One song performed in this footage was the prototype of "On Melancholy Hill" of the Gorillaz album Plastic Beach (2010).

By this time, Albarn said the group had "permanently finished"; however, they reunited to perform at the 2008 Love Music Hate Racism carnival. In November 2011, the Good, the Bad & the Queen played a show at London's Coronet Theatre marking the 40th anniversary of Greenpeace, the first time they had played together in almost three years.

Tong and Simonon also appeared on Albarn's next project, the third Gorillaz album Plastic Beach, and participated in the tour in support of the album. Allen collaborated with Albarn again on the 2012 album Rocket Juice & the Moon. Allen and Tong appeared on Albarn's soundtrack for the opera Dr Dee (2012).

Reunion and Merrie Land

In October 2014, Albarn announced that a new album had been written, and was waiting to be recorded. In April 2017, in a new interview with Q, it was reported that a new album was still in the making but that recent events had caused the group to start afresh. Albarn told Q that Brexit had "given us a wonderful starting point". On 17 October 2018, the band announced their second album, Merrie Land, produced by Tony Visconti. It was released on 16 November under the new label Studio 13 created by Albarn as “the right circumstances came about”. This album was described by Albarn as “a reluctant goodbye letter” responding to the occurrent Brexit process and “a series of observations and reflections on Britishness in 2018.”

After a seven-year interval since their last time performed together in 2011, the band released the self-title track "Merrie Land" of their second album Merrie Land on 23 October 2018 with releasing the music video on YouTube. Later, they made their first public appearance in seven years with the title track on Later…With Jools Holland on 30 October 2018. On 5 November 2018, they performed the second single "Gun to the Head" of this album on the same show.

The band performed the first gig for this album in Tynemouth on November 26th 2018, which was the start of an eight-date warm-up tour in UK. The band then started their Europe tour from March to August in 2019.

On 16 August 2019, on the last performance of the tour in support of the album at Lowland Festival, Albarn told the crowd: "This is our last gig. After this, poof. Done."

Artwork
Simonon contributed to a large portion of the artwork of the debut album, while the back cover was designed by Jamie Hewlett.

Same as the first album, the artwork of the second album was also mainly created by Simonon. In an interview with NME, Simonon revealed that the cover featuring a malevolent ventriloquist’s dummy was an idea inspired by the film Dead of Night (1945).

Besides appearing on the album cover, The ventriloquist’s dummy was also brought into in music videos for the second album. The dummy mask used in videos was specially created by Millennium FX with six-day work, including a series process of casting from Albarn's face, sculpting, and painting before applying onto Albarn's face.