Half Man Half Biscuit. Where to start? Formed in the early 1980s in Birkenhead, HMHB are perhaps the best band you’ve never heard of. Nigel Blackwell’s sublime lyrics mix social commentary with sardonic surrealism, and a healthy portion of god-awful puns.
I just got hold of Achtung Bono – their recent tenth studio album. Whilst track one, “Restless Legs” is perhaps oddly underwhelming, it’s followed by “CORGI Registered Friends”, an acerbic attack on vacuous middle class bores. The opening trilogy is completed with the actually quite touching “For What Is Chatteris…”, essentially a love song about the pointlessness of the quaint country village once your love has left it behind, in which Blackwell introduces the irrisistable phrase “drive-by shouting”.
Shit arm, bad tattoo” is a thinly-veiled attack on The Libertines, the title and refrain refer to the cover of their eponymous second album.
Witness:
When she wakes up in the morning, she writes down all her dreams. Reads like the Book of Relevations, or The Beano or The Unabridged Ulysses… –The Libertines, “What a Waster”
versus
If you’re going to quote from the Book of Revelation, don’t keep calling it the Book of Revelations. There’s no “s”, it’s the Book of Revelation. As revealed to St. John the Divine. –HMHB, “Shit Arm, Bad Tattoo”
“Surging Out Of Convalescence” is another rant about the things in life with which we’re all familiar, but only Blackwell has the nerve to actually mention: “Is your child hyperactive, or is he perhaps a twat?” rails against the trend of applying labels rather than correction to wayward youth, whilst “I wrote to the Horse and Hounds, to gloat over what I’d done. I’d stored their magazine, in a data retrieval system” highlights the stupidity of the copyright blurb in the first pages of every bloody magazine you buy, of which nobody is ever going to take the slightest bit of notice.
“Upon Westminster Bridge” begins with a bass guitar picking out the melody of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, and just when you think it’s going to turn into another of their “list songs” (ITMA, Referee’s Alphabet, Breaking News), Nigel comes out with “If Jesus came to Earth today, they’d crucify him straight away, upon a cross of MDF, and they’d use ‘no need for nails’”. Then a time signature change and we’re finished off rather nicely with a somewhat unorthodox version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas”:
Spoiling good Friday, my true love sent to me:
12 drummers singing
11 chairmen dancing
10 mascots whinging
9 stewards flapping
8 christening invites
7 cows a-barking
6 vicars strumming
Nick fucking Knowles
4 boring words
Carphone Warehouse and Matalan
And a pulled-up at Bangor-On-Dee
“Joy Division Oven Gloves”, quite aside from being the best song title I’ve seen in several years, not only manages to be both the catchiest and most surreal song on the album, but also makes some kind of point about the incessant commercialisation and capitalist culture marauding its way into the last holy ground – music itself. It then segues into traditional song to end with “My Grandfather’s clock was too tall for the shelf, so I sold it and opened up a stall… selling Joy Division Oven Gloves”.
“Mate of the Bloke” I already knew from a performance on Andy Kershaw’s show a few years back, and is a rousing endorsement of the side-benefits of being a “mate of the bloke who sets up the PA”, whilst “Asparagus Next Left” warns of the unseen gruesome dangers lurking behind the roadside signs imploring drivers to stop for assorted fruit and vegetable produce: “‘Ooh, ooh, rhubarb – let’s go!’ She’s still not been accounted for…”
“Depressed Beyond Tablets”, quite aside from garnering praise simply for lifting the title from Chris Morris‘ gloriously biting Brass Eye series of yesteryear, not only perhaps deservingly chastises the recent music scene’s love of songs of depression and angst (Emo, argh), but manages to sum itself up wonderfully for the sake of this paragraph with the one-upmanship of “Belle Epoque sang ‘Black Is Black’? Yeah, well I sing ‘Black is Black is Black is Blacker’”.
“Bogus Official (public information tune)” is exactly what is says on the tracklist, and swiftly brings us to “Letters Sent”, which although on ocassion is lyrically perhaps a little impenetrable, still contains the joyously downbeat “Leisure centre cashpoint. Always out of order. And there’s too much chlorine in the pool”.
“Twydale’s Lament” is probably the most musically complex piece, managing to effortlessly flirt between a range of time signature and keys, wonderfully conveying the rage of the opening line “Indicate then, you stupid bastard – how was I supposed to know that you intended to go left, I’m not a mind reader… You should be cast away into the fiery pit – and in the fiery pit there are eternal sleeping policemen. ” The mid-section riffs along to Nigel’s spoken monologue about taking elastic bands discarded by his postman and taking them to the pub in order to flick cigarettes out of his mouth. Then we mellow out for the closing refrain of “Gouranga gouranga. Yes, I’ll be happy – when you’ve been arrested for defacing the bridge”. If you’ve ever driven under a certain motorway bridge in the north-west, you can’t help but punch the air in elated agreement with this particular line.
Finally and all too soon, we close with “We Built This Village On A Trad. Arr. Tune”, not only a terrific riposte to Starship’s worst song ever, but a jolly upbeat finale containg gems such as “It fills me with joy to see moshers out jogging”, and “graduated to solids disturbingly early”, themselves shoved unceremoniously aside by the awe-inspiring “It’s a cricketing farce with a thickening plot- Act 1, Scene 1: Brenda Blethyn gets shot”.
Twelve tracks. Forty minutes. Anyone who didn’t grow up in the UK in the 80s or 90s won’t understand most of the references, and it won’t make any impression whatsoever on the charts – but it’s my record of the year so far.
always loved HMHB, from the glory days of “back in the DHSS” to the inspired “some call it godcore”, glad to see their still churning ‘em out.
good review btw, i may even go buy the album rather than hunt it down on limewire (though i don’t think they’d mind…) – you ever considered writing for a living?
nb. your AJAX* comments system is pish. ;-)
* we used to call AJAX dynamic HTML when i did it…
I’m still catching up on the back catalogue – had loads of odd tracks here and there from Kazaa back in the day (Fred Titmus, Dukla Prague Away Kit, Lock up your Mountain Bikes, etc), and now I’m slowly buying up the albums – got DHSS, ACD, Trouble over Bridgewater, Voyage to the Bottom of the Road and now Achtung Bono. Oh, and I’ve just ordered Cammel Laird Social Club.
And they say downloading kills music – I wouldn’t have bought any of those albums if I hadn’t “stolen” those few songs to start with…
Writing for a living? I got a ‘C’ for English at GCSE (yes, I’m bitter), so never really explored the avenues of professional writing when I was still laughably pursuing an education. So I’m not really sure where I’d start.
Re AJAX, yes I know, and yes I know :-)
grades mean jack shit in the real world and you know it. once you’re past 28 then your education was 10 years ago – how relevant is that?, not very… – seriously, your writing is top notch, at least as good as any review in the grauniad.
oooh, i comment and it shows me someone elses! excellent!
/sarc
oooh, then it shows me a comment i made on may the 15th! – time travel too – i wonder what next?
I’ve just found the twiddly option thing for turning AJAX commenting off.
It may make things better or worse…
Hmm, seems better. Sorry, would have done that ages ago if I’d known it was there.
Cheers for the flattery too! Things like that make all this typing worthwhile, y’know :-)
good job. hint – i know k2 is beta but jeez man, that was some ropey code. (and i know it aint urs….) ;-)
oh yeah, your comment about the lyric from “shit arm bad tattoo” regarding “the book of revelation” would make more sense if you got rid of the extraneous “s”.
cheers for the tunes, listnin’ now. ;-)
;-)
Doh! Fixed :-)
OMFG!
This was ace.
Saw them live in Exeter last year…the BEST gig I’ve ever been to..and I’ve seen a few from Gong to Pink Floyd!
HMHB have GOt to be THE best band eveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer
Nice work, dude
btw…can you sort out the missing lyrics for me… ;)
Surging Out of Convalescence
—————————-
Darts in Soap operas
Oh So Wrong, oh so wrong
No-one scoring and there’s too much chat between each throw
Worse than this, though is when cheers are raised then for the bull
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx a double and a xxxxxxxxx
I know they don’t know they’re born
I propose ‘No Soap Darts!’
Is your child hyperactive, or is he perhaps a twat?
Sometimes I like to watch wave-rage down at Fistral Beach
Last Ash Wednesday I had Tantric Sex and it was shit
Next Ash Wednesday I might strive to lick my elbow
Strive in Vain
For they say few succeed
I wrote to the Horse and Hounds to gloat over what I’d done
I’d stuck their magazine in a data retrieval system
Well, let’s face it
What’re they going to do?
It’s not as if they know where I live
And anyway I cooked the caper back in 1984
Ha! Broken matrons
Ha! Joyless beds
xxxxxxxx whose souls xxxxxxxxx
And if I get to Heaven’s gate I’ll doubtless have to wait
Whilst St.Peter investigates the inevitable asterisk
The inside of a Haymans freestyle table-tennis ball
Smells much like you’d expect it to
Ah, one of my favourites!
I think it’s
and
and
Sorry, can’t get the last bit, will let you know if I do!
Cheers Barry…you have brouht me ever closer to a good night sleep :)
btw…if anyone out there wants guitar chords to any HMHB song let me know
Coz I play loads on the guitar ;) (Just thought I’d add that lol as my last post made me sound like I was selling something lol)
RESULT!
I think in reference to hospital beds, the missing line is:
Heartbroken matrons on joyless beds
For those whose souls we ironed and vented
What do ya reccon?
Could well be – it’s so mumbled that I can’t be sure though! Someone’s going to have to just ask Nigel… :-)
lol got his number?
“The inside of a Haymans freestyle table-tennis ball, Smells much like you‚Äôd expect it to”
I struggled with this line, and searched for table tennis balls on ‘tinterweb and come up with “The inside of a Halex 3 star table tennis ball / smells much like you’d expect it to”
as this actually exists.
ps saw them in Derby last week, they played surging out of convalesense (sp?)
I had considered investigating table tennis paraphenalia in order to verify that line, but couldn’t be bothered :-)
Thanks for saving me from the tedium, and I’m extremely jealous about the Derby gig! Was meant to be there – gutted!
I found this site as I was searching for the lyrics – the only hit if you put “I wrote to the horse and hounds” into google – now there’s something to be proud of.
Sorry to break it to you, but the gig was excellent!
anyway, I’ll leave you with my favourite HMHB lyric of the moment
“I’m off to see the bootleg beatles, as the bootleg Mark Chapman”
LMAO I seached for table tennis balls too lol…couldn’t find one, so did the usual ‘shoehorn a word that SOUNDS like what Nigel’s singing’ lol
btw…in case yer interested…I’ve decided to try my hand at a website. It’s called ‘Taking the Biscuit’ and lives at:
http://thebiscuit.syxe.com
It’s dedicated to the great ‘Biscuit
:D
Nice work Wes, will check it out!
Testing AJAX comments again :)
Hey Ant…think I saw ya on me site!
Hope HMHB gig soon…haven’t seen them since last time they played Exeter :(