At the suggestion of Paws For Thought, Twang welcomes Malc, Dr Volume, Fenton Steve and Paws to the pod to discuss the band and their brilliant strain of indy punk folk and their superb hilarious and often deeply affecting lyrics. Much laughter transpires and HMHB newbie Twang becomes a fan for life.
The Afterword #88: The Half Man Half Biscuitcast
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Great effort, lads. There’s no official band website, but for those of you wanting to find out more (and as a home-from-home for the real fans, of course), everyone’s welcome to join us at the Half Man Half Biscuit Lyrics Project – http://halfmanhalfbiscuit.uk . There were a few bits of the podcast which had me jumping up and down, idiotically wanting to join in with something that had already been recorded:
• As for “where to start” with the band, regulars at the site are currently getting under way with the latest quadrennial “Lux Familiar Cup”, where we vote for the best songs – last time’s top 32 are on a Spotify playlist (see the ‘about’ page below).
• Are they a cult band? I should point out that last year’s album made the national Top 40! I think a lot of Afterword bands would kill for that nowadays.
• For a half-decent beginners guide, see the links at our ‘About This Site’ page: http://halfmanhalfbiscuit.uk/about/
Enjoy the world of the band of which John Peel once said: “In a decently ordered society members of Half Man Half Biscuit would be routinely carried shoulder high through the streets of every city they visited.”
Nowadays you can make Top 40 on a few hundred sales!
That many ??
I read somewhere this week that this is the first week in chart history (singles) to have a completely unchanged top twelve.
Thanks Chris, saves me adding the link to the site. I think we could have gone on for hours, and was hoping to mention the Lux Familiar Cup at some point but never quite managed it. I’d certainly recommend anyone whose interest has been piqued to start with the ‘About This Site’ page.
A mini (or mighty) biscuit mingle at Cambridge Junction on 6th September anyone?
That is a possibility. I didn’t realise the April gig had been postponed, as I was going to Piroshka across town. In the event, I didn’t got to that either…
Oh yes. We had a mini one at The Flying Pig in place of the postponed April gig, as several biscuitistas decided to have a couple of days in Cambridge anyway. We’ll doubtless do something similar in September. Keep an eye on the “Pre-Gig Chat 2019” page on the Lyrics Project.
Oh balls, it is now sold out. I couldn’t have gone anyway, as Mrs F will be away. Well, I could have dragged two grumpy teens along at vast expense.
My pals Model Village are the support, so go down early and say “hello”.
Here’s Paws’ HMHB playlist of choice cuts.
When one sees a playlist, the first response is “what’s missing?”.
May I add Breaking News
Bob Todd! Jim Reeves! Every time A Bell rings! A Country Practice!
I have a long sprawling playlist on my phone “Mantra Filled Oompah” (and I half-inched that for my blog title too 🙂 ). Always a delight. And just saw them again at The Boiler Shop in Newcastle, who they were reliably great. First time was back in 1991 at Sunderland Poly, when Polys still existed. The group of three of us who went missed the last train out and didn’t have enough money for a taxi, so we ended up walking the A690 in the middle of the night to get back to Durham. I found a football on the central reservation, so we had a kickabout at around 2am.
Thats’s a mighty fine plate of Biscuits right there, and a great starter for the band. I’d finish on this one (mentioned on the Podcast although I may have called it Footsteps …doh). HMHB go full Velvet Underground while namechecking Adge Cutler, The Shend before going into a magnificent Nigel monologue with a magnificent pay-off – and ends with cracking coda based on ‘The End’ by the Doors.
We need @pawsforthought to add it as it’s not a public playlist so only he can do it.
Oops, will do
@twang @pawsforthought It wasn’t an instruction just a suggestion, great playlist as it stands
That is a great album. I’ve always had abiding love for 13 Eurogoths. Great tune. And Improv Workshop Mimeshow Gobshite
A few years ago I spent a couple of hours in the company of Pete Hooton (The Farm) on a train from Newcastle to Edinburgh. He and his mate were talking with me and my wife about music, when his mate pointed at Pete and said he used to be the singer in a band. As I’d spent 6 years living in Liverpool in the 80s/90s I thought there was a chance I might know the band, so I asked him which band. When he said The Farm I felt a right pillock. Of course it was!
Anyway, we got on to the subject of Half Man Half Biscuit, as I’d not long since gone to see them in Holmfirth, and Pete said he played 5 a side with Nigel every Sunday. Apparently, Nigel is the world authority on the history of the Wirral. There’s absolutely nothing he doesn’t know.
Nice blokes, Pete and his mate. They invited us out with them in Edinburgh, but we couldn’t as we were already going up there for a do. They were meeting Irvine Welsh. Instead we went to the wife’s Auntie’s 60th. D’oh!
I’m sorry but someone has to say it so it might as well be me. A-hem!
That sounds like a pretty groovy train!
Would you believe me if I said that I’d never thought of that, cos I genuinely hadn’t! Waiting for the missus to wake up now, so I can say it to her!
Glad to be of service!
As it happens, I was out seeing HMHB this very night, at Edinburgh’s Liquid Rooms. They were excellent, of course. However I was struck by the fact that Nigel was not playing guitar, which gave the show a different sort of vibe. He was quite animated in the singer role – almost liberated, I’d say – and threw some entertaining rock star moves. On the whole, I liked the change.
However, I’m curious – when did it come about?
Seems to be a recent thing (after new guitarist Karl joined) – I get the impression that it’s only been the last couple of gigs or so.
Reviews will appear here: http://halfmanhalfbiscuit.uk/theyre-gonna-be-unveiling-some-new-material/liquid-room-edinburgh-gig-14-june-2019/
It seems I am with the consensus!
I think I read somewhere that Nige has back trouble.
When I saw A Certain Ratio recently, bassist Jez sat on a chair during the songs he doesn’t sing.
It seems to be related to age. Are we getting old?
My first exposure to HMHB was in a record shop in the mid 80s. They were playing Dukla Prague Away Kit – a song about playing Scaletrix amd Subbuteo. The lyric “when it came to half-time, I was losing four-nil, each and every goal a hotly disputed penalty” made me openly laugh. I didn’t go and ask who it was though. I wasn’t really confident enough to do that kind of thing when I was a youngster.
I was lucky. I didn’t have to. A mate school back in 1985 gave me a tape and said, “You’ve got to listen to this. you’ll like it”. He was right. Thanks, Broke. Back in the DHSS, Trumpton Riots EP and the Peel Sessions EP. Sold. Listened to them incessantly.
Went out and bought the album that weekend.
Oddly, that tape also contained a couple of other songs to pad the c90. One was the Wedding Present’s version Felicity (which is still my favourite of theirs as I’m not a rabid fn, but don’t mind them) The other is a song I’ve never been able to place – a song about Brian Jones, “who was in the Rolling Stones…”
That song’s Godstar by Psychic TV. Big in my Sixth Form common room back in the day.
That was a lorra fun, hats off to my fellow Corgi-registered participants – great to have Twang’s input coming at HMHB as a newbie and he’s absolutely right, there’s some real songwriting craft there to marvel at.
Wonderful podcast on what is my favourite group in the world, bar none. Thank you to everyone.
I could ramble on here for hours about their admirable disinterest in self-promotion, how much their continued existence owes to the saintly Geoff Davies at Probe Plus prodding Nigel to keep making albums, and even how much the sound at Cambridge Junction has improved in recent years, but I’ll leave it at two personal comments:
1. If you’re looking for a tender love song then last year’s Harsh Times In Umberstone Covert has literally had me in tears at times, and
2. My nomination for the greatest HMHB lyric is “Your optimism strikes me like junk mail addressed to the dead” from Depressed Beyond Tablets.
So much more than just the greatest comedy band to have ever walked the Earth.
On a similar kind of theme: Terminus. What a song that is. If someone had written that as a poem, the “serious” mess would be all over it, praising its poignancy. Plus a great gag at the end. for several reasons right now, it makes me think of my dad, and and my late mam, who would be there together on the bus.
Worthy of Larkin, that lyric.
Couple of weeks ago Mrs B and I were on our holi-bobs in Dalyan where large ex-pat Brits contingent gather in a bar on a Sunday night to do a pub quiz . As it wasjust down the roadfrom our hotel we popped in to partake,. On the table was the ubiquitous picture round, this one being name the TV quiz host. Picture 4 was the erstwhile host of the Krypton Factor and thus provided the inspiration for our team name…. yes that night we were…. Nero Fiddle’s while Gordon Burns.
BTW last year when we spent a few days over there and our HMHB team name that Sunday saw the quiz host announcing … The first man into space was Captain Bligh.
Brilliant!!!
I would’ve first heard Half Man Half Biscuit around ten-fifteen years ago – perhaps around the time of CSI Ambleside or John Peel’s death. Nigel Blackwell is one of our finest lyricists and I think the highest testament I could give him is that there are hundreds of lines of his that I wish I’d thought of first. That being said, their music hasn’t always been well represented where I live and there are still a number of albums (perhaps four or five) I haven’t heard yet.
Incidentally, my twitter biog is Half Man Half Dipstick, which would be the name of my HMHB tribute band.
Of course I mean ‘compliment’ and not ‘testament’.
To add to my comments about HMHB. The wonderful thing about the band is that it’s almost impossible to say what their ‘best’ song, or their most ‘representative’ song is. There’s so many that I’d put in my top ten it would end up being a top fifty – ‘Running Order Squabblefest’, ‘Tour Jacket With Detachable Sleeves’, ‘Trumpton Riots’, ‘For What Is Chatteris’, ‘Restless Legs’, ‘Fretwork Homework’, ‘Tending The Wrong Grave for 23 Years’ etc.
To me they seem to be one of those bands I can imagine myself being in. Nigel Blackwell makes it look easy, but when you try to imitate his writing you realise it’s actually very difficult.
I think that could be true for their albums as well, in terms of ‘best.’ That said, I do have favourites, but I’m sure my ideas are not what everyone else has. Bit like all music and bands in that respect, except this lot are probably better.
Musically they have certainly evolved. The first album back in those dim and distant days was a bit ramshackle, but then it was basically only recorded to test some studio equipment, if the stories I heard are true. I love the fact that there sa lot of texture in there, both lyrically and musically now, but it’s all worn very light; NB doesn’t beat us over the head either explaining what stuff means, not does he keep trying to tell us how clever he is. He just seems to write stuff, and assumes we’ll understand. And given the (good-natured) arguments about things in the lyrics project sometimes, he’s mostly right 🙂
I saw them at Glastonbury in ’86 on a very small outdoor stage and ramshackle suited them perfectly. Who’da thunk they’d still be going today.
Fascinating cast.
Somehow, the Biscuit has passed me by, although I did see Attempted Moustache at Eric’s, the band his brother was in before.
Wasn’t there a mass voting on the Guardian website to make them Readers Number One Album of the Year? They were also Afterworders’ number one, weren’t they? I think I’ll start at the end and work my way backwards.
I’ve long regarded Cammell Laird Social Club as their finest hour and probably the most accessible album for novices. It was the only album in my car the first time I dropped my (now) wife home. Listen Honey, they’re playing our song… “Bin men, thin men, lexicographers. Squid yes, not so octopus!”
I find the HMHB Lyrics Project greatly enhances the listening pleasure.