Half Man Half Biscuit
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Half Man Half Biscuit, often abbreviated to "HMHB", is a UK rock band from Birkenhead, active sporadically since the mid-1980s, known for its satirical, sardonic and sometimes surreal songs. The group consists of Nigel Blackwell (lead vocals, guitar), Neil Crossley (bass), Ken Hancock (lead guitar) and Carl Henry (drums). Throughout their career they have been signed to Probe Plus records.
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[edit] History
The band's first single, "The Trumpton Riots", topped the British Independent Chart in 1986, and they went on to perform a set at the Glastonbury Festival, rapidly becoming tipped as the 'next big thing'. Their sound at the time was very much in the post-punk tradition, with similarities to Josef K or The Fall. However as their second single "Dickie Davies Eyes" entered the national top 40, lead singer Nigel Blackwell announced his retirement claiming that rock and roll success had led to him missing too much daytime television. 1986 saw the release of a compilation album and Nigel's return to the dole.
The band reformed in 1990, beginning to tour and give interviews. Their third album, McIntyre, Treadmore And Davitt, showed a move forwards in terms of musical technique, and a wider musical palette. Since then, the band have produced a new album every two or three years, and remain a much loved fixture on the British music scene.
Half Man Half Biscuit were long championed by DJ John Peel, for whom they recorded twelve sessions before Peel's death in 2004, and it was on his programme in 1990 that the band announced their return.
The band played live more and more infrequently, preferring one off gigs to tours, driving home each night to sleep in their own beds and arranging concerts to co-incide with Tranmere Rovers' away fixtures.
Their musical styles often parody popular genres, while their lyrics are dense with cultural allusions, usually to UK popular culture and geography (Blackwell often refers to North Wales, often in the context of hillwalking in Snowdonia; he also appears fond of Shropshire, East Anglia and Oxfordshire) or to the more obscure backwaters of the lower divisions of British or international football. It is unlikely that any one person would be able to recognise all of the terms and allusions in the songs, and websites such as hmhb.co.uk provide information to help decipher them. Blackwell's enthusiasm does not only encompass popular culture; to give just a few examples, explicit references to Sylvia Plath, the works of Thomas Hardy, and the Bible are all to be found in his lyrics. In the context of HMHB's enthusiasm for football, Blackwell's close resemblance to footballer Jaap Stam has been frequently commented upon.
As the nineties progressed Nigel's love of blues and folk became more and more apparent both in musical style and lyrical references, as befits a group who perhaps more than any other record the minutae of everyday life and culture. In 2002 Andy Kershaw dubbed them "the most authentic English folk group since the Clash". Bassist Crossley's musical tastes include many late-70s/early-80s new wave or post-punk bands, and at gigs HMHB have been heard to perform covers of tracks by acts as diverse as Joy Division, Tim Buckley and The Beach Boys.
Blackwell has also started making references to various fictional bands who appear not only on the sleeves of HMHB releases (for example "Joe Public And The General Consensus") but also in the songs -- a long essay on "Evil Gazebo" (and that band's relationship to "Pankhurst") appears on the liner notes of Trouble Over Bridgwater and both bands are mentioned in the songs. Assorted fake cover version acts have also been mentioned in HMHB songs such as "I Can't Believe It's Not Focus". In interviews Nigel has alluded to the possibility of there being a HMHB tribute band called "It Ain't Half Man, Mum", most recently in a BBC Radio 3 interview with Andy Kershaw prior to last summer's appearance at the Brampton Live folk festival, where they headlined on Saturday night. However as yet no one has come forward with any evidence to support the existence of said tribute act, and the likelihood is that the whole thing is one of Nigel's own creations to amuse / confuse journalists and fans.
[edit] Lyrics
A full understanding of HMHB lyrics is probably predicated on being born on Merseyside in the mid/late 1960s, being unemployed (or at least not working, to permit exposure to daytime television) in the mid-1980s/early 1990s, and an obsessive hoarder of books, records, soccer trivia, and memories of obscure television programmes. Blackwell's personal mythology covers a wide range of topics which are often juxtaposed in counter-intuitive ways.
The interpretation of the title of the band's first album, Back in the DHSS (1985), requires three items of background information: that the Beatles wrote a song called "Back in the USSR"; that the DHSS was the UK state welfare agency, and that at that time unemployment stood at high levels. Ironically, The Beatles song was itself a parody of Chuck Berry's Back in the U.S.A..
"Mention The Lord of the Rings just once more and I'll more than likely kill you" is the first line in the surprisingly emotional 'Dickie Davies' Eyes' (the title of which conflates Kim Carnes' 1980s ode to Bette Davis and legendary ITV sports presenter Dickie Davies). A line from this song, "Brian Moore's Head Looks Uncannily Like London Planetarium", spawned a football fanzine devoted to Gillingham F.C..
Other sports commentators come in for similar mockery; 'Gubba Look-a-likes' imagines a world full of clones of the ginger soccer commentator, and in 'Tonight Matthew, I'm Gonna Be With Jesus' we're treated to some new lyrics to 'You're Sixteen': You come on like a dream, Julian Bream, lips like David Vine...
A particularly celebrated couplet comes from the 1996 song "Eno Collaboration":
- I know Bono and he knows Ono, she knows Eno's phone goes thus:
- 'Brian's not home he's at the North Pole, but if you'd like to leave a weird noise....'
Another Blackwellism merging football and pop-cultural references are the final lines of "Fear my Wraith"; I read the news today, oh boy, Svarc rejects new Layer terms. Which requires the listener to know both Beatles lyrics, and the history of Colchester United football club for a full appreciation.
A more recent example of this lyrical style is the line "When you're in Matlock Bath, you don't need Sylvia Plath" from the album Cammell Laird Social Club (2002).
Occasionally Nigel turns his attention to the absurdities of everyday life: There's people who can't spell 'weird' right driving 'round with thousands in the bank, but I get by; got a lot on my mind; I get by, got allotments on my mind ('Turned Up; Clocked On; Laid Off'). The same song later picks up some cues from 'American Pie': The three men I admire most -- the father, son, and Mickie Most -- took the last train for the coast, to rendezvous with Peter Glaze to kill Don Maclean. The pun here refers to Dons McLean and Maclean, seventies record producer Most, and Maclean's Crackerjack sidekick Glaze, and the dig is at Maclean's rather earnest religious breakfast show that used to be on Radio 2.
Lyrics which attract the most attention from fans at the band's live performances and which with audiences tend to join in with particular enthusiasm include "There is nothing better in life than writing on the sole of your slipper with a Biro", "No frills, handy for the hills, that's the way you spell New Mills", "Fuckin' 'ell, it's Fred Titmus" and "I can put a tennis racket up against my face and pretend that I'm Kendo Nagasaki", the latter being a reference to a professional British wrestler famed in the 70s and 80s for appearing only when his face was covered by a samurai-style mask.
[edit] Trivia
- The band are huge fans of Tranmere Rovers, and once famously turned down the chance to appear on seminal 80s rock show The Tube, as Tranmere were playing that night, even though Channel Four offered to fly them by helicopter to the game following their take in the studio.
- Nigel once provided the voice over for a BP television advert.
- The band came up in discussion on a summer program on Australian radio station Triple J featuring English comedian Ross Noble, and the band were decided to have "the worst band name of all time".
[edit] Discography
[edit] Albums
- Back in the DHSS (1985)
- Back Again in the DHSS (1987) (later re-released as ACD).
- MacIntyre, Treadmore and Davitt (1991)
- This Leaden Pall (1993)
- Some Call It Godcore (1995)
- Voyage to the Bottom Of The Road (1997)
- Four Lads Who Shook the Wirral (1998)
- Trouble Over Bridgwater (2000)
- Cammell Laird Social Club (2002)
- Achtung Bono (2005)
[edit] Singles/EPs
- The Trumpton Riots EP (1986)
- "Dickie Davies Eyes" (1986)
- The Peel Sessions (1986)
- "Let's Not" (1990)
- "No Regrets" (1991)
- "Eno Collaboration" (1996)
- "Look Dad No Tunes" (1999)
- Editor's Recommendation (2001)
- Saucy Haulage Ballads (2003)
[edit] Misc
- "David Wainwright's Feet"; on the charity album Colours Are Brighter - October 2006
