Half man Half biscuit: OPO-line

New album "early 2008", including the track "Bad Losers At Yahoo Chess"

anyone heard their recent Marc Riley session? or sharing it on slsk?

didn't know about that, but I'm hunting for it now.

Very much looking forward to new album, it's about bloody time.

Also, gig in striking distance of London please

since they never play over here, heres Irelands HMHB tribute act

http://www.halfarsedhalfbiscuit.com/

which album should I get first?

All of them.

Although if you have to get just one, go with 1998's "Four Lads Who Shook The Wirral", and work backwards and forwards from there.

session

I've got six of them, and they're all magnificent. I wouldn't describe this as my sort of thing at all on paper, but matches are never decided on paper, are they? Stick it on...a combination of deep-ingrained folk/church/terrace tunes, slyly intelligent (sometimes downright unpredictable) song-structures, and above all the best lyrics money can buy whisks you away into a place where England is a bit shitty but hey at least there's a lot to laugh at and besides you'll always find something to warm your heart. Listening hint: take each album in one whole go. You'll understand what's going on far more quickly.

I'd argue that of the ones I have, Trouble Over Bridgwater is the most wonderful. It's close, though.

Man, just listening to "Totnes Bickering Fair": "I want a suntan/Not Vashti Bunyan"

I don't actually have that song. Albums I got are

Back In The DHSS
Trouble Over Bridgwater
Achtung Bono
Four Lads Who Shook The Wirral
Voyage To The Bottom Of The Road
Cammel Laird Social Club

Favourite line atm probably a toss-up between "Chris De Burgh Sun Ra Del Amitri John Coltrane" and "I picked up all the elastic bands dropped by the postman on my driveway and took them up to the pub on a Thursday evening cos that's where he likes to go for the quiz. He believes he is needed for the music round; his friends obviously humour him. Anyway, I place myself at a nearby table and whenever he tries to light up a cigarette I fire it out of his mouth with one of the elastic bands, which he finds most annoying...most annoying."

anyone think the newer stuffs better then the old stuff? sorry i know thats a horrible cliche...all their albums are great cept for 'mcintyre, treadmore and davitt' btw. fave is 'cammell laird' which just about edges 'trouble over bridgewater' (the 1st hmhb i heard)

MT&D is great! Outbreak of Vitas Gerulitas and pragvec at the melkweg are cracking

HMHB are better as a folk act than as a quasi-punk act, this is true

For a month I went all floppy just to see where I'd end up
The morgue was my considered guess, or maybe Martinique
Instead I stayed exactly where I was and suffered endless Feltz

What, only one line? Oh. Er... Love Froth Tuesday, Lime Sky Spooky Pills, or thereabouts, thanks.

Oh! Lovefroth Tuesday already claimed (but no Lime Sky Spooky Pills, guess I got the order wrong). Uh... "we'd better let him in, he's got a theremin"

the Brampton session on the hmhb websitre is a good 'un, especially the 24 hour garage party people with added hal an tow and especially there stands the glass

'corgi registered friends' drips with so much anger. but its like yknow really really really funny and stuff. hmhb are offically my fave band. god i love em.

also to reiterate doms statement new album now!

also the version of 'no regrets' is getting a lot of play too.

Look Dad No Tunes is still my favourite

Could anyone please re-up that Riley session, please, please, please...

HMHB are better as a folk act than as a quasi-punk act, this is true

hmhb top 10

faithlift
fear my wraith
the light at the end of the tunnel
24 hour garage people
corgi registered friends
a country practice
all i want for xmas is a dukla prague away kit
depressed beyond tablets
four skinny indie kids
turned up clocked on laid off

(hon mention)
i, trog
deep house victims minibus appeal
dickie davies eyes

Okay I will have you ILMers know I still have the bloody Len Ganley stance on LP. So get out of my way.

Deep Blue, in 1997 I voted for you, as Sports Personality of the Year

I ring up Dial-A-Pizza and say “That’s not how I’d spell Hawaiian”

Final decision, the best line from the new album is:

"Paris Fashion Week caught me off-guard/ I was busy with trellising the yard"

"I'm going to feed our children non-organic food and with the money saved I'll take them to the zoo."

Brickbats for Sottsass/Bouquets for the chuckling footstool

This works for a while, but then I encounter Primark FM

He'd only been locked up for public nuisance offences, one of which saw him beachcomb on the Dee estuary, found a dead wading bird, took it home, parcelled it up, and sent it off to the rubber-faced irritant Phil Cool, with a note inside which read "Is this your sanderling?"

Need to give the full verse of that:

I try to put everything into perspective
Set it against the scale of human suffering
And I thought of the Mugabe government
And the children of the Calcutta railways
This works for a while
But then I encounter Primark FM

"C is for the continual criticism i receive from the touchline. Get back in your technical area."

"But he also gave us Lionel Bleurggggghhhhh"

"a no-rosette situation for Mr. Galbraith"

"You come on like a dream, Julian Bream, lips like David Vine,
When a sneeze doesn't come,
I look up to the sun, and I praise him for making it shine,
Yesterday Matthew I was a Factory completist,
But tonight Matthew I'm gonna be with Jesus"

Timing..

David Vine RIP

How long before everyone mentioned in HMHB songs is dead?

Flip N Fill better watch their backs.

Is this the first computer game to quote HMHB?

Revive, because I still can't listen to Breaking News without laughing out loud at "Lisa Riley", also that bit Louis quoted upthread about little bit Bridget, a little bit Ally...waiting for them to weigh in at Newton Abbot.

I have zillions of HMHB on my iPod and I have been listening to little else for days, to the puzzlement of anyone sitting near me on a bus. The randomness of "not long now until lollipop men are called Darren" set me off yesterday. Is anyone going to see them in Glasgow?

"Fresh Broad Beans And Aubergines"
Euphemisms Audrey, euphemisms.

is probably my favourite HMHB line. It's the absolute peak of one of their best numbers. The scansion and delivery are perfect and in the context of the song, which deals with the conflict between paranoia and parochialism (a common source of humour for them) it hits the perfect blend of mockery and affection for both of those unfortunate states.

From the new album;

"There’s a girl I’m told who rolls her eyes / at the Gok Wan acolytes"
"Put the wrong bin out on the / wrong day again"
"And know Chesil Beach is far away in time"
"A jar of language pills"

and the whole of the National Shite Day MkII that is "Rock'n'Roll is full of Bad Wools" about the complete muso c*nts that appear on "Soccer AM"

"But then disastrously / they ask him casually
“You come from Leigh-on-Sea, Do you ever get to Roots Hall?”
which to him means fuck all
Can only look askance / And cast a sideways glance
Could use some help with this / But Heston’s gone for a piss"

Oh, and "Tommy Walsh's Eco House" ....

"Sixteen teams are taking part
Sixteen camps of hope
Some contain top, top players
Some are just a crock of shit"

Have a very soft spot for their purely bucolic lines, like

"Please don't tell me what you think while I tell you about
the copse that I retreat to where I'm hemmed in by the larch" (Numanoid Hang-Glide)

"When my grave's waist-deep in meadow grass" (Malayan Jeulutong)

"yet by the stream in summertime
The charming lark, the country chime
Smite this faithless pantomime.
Welcome to the daylight at the back of my mind" (Even Men with Steel Hearts)

Other than that, I find it hard to improve, just as a line, on "deck quoits with the French trance vets". It expresses balance of word weight and selection and meaning that wouldn't be out of place in Wallace Stevens, but is only the furthest extension of something Nigel does all the time. (You get something similar on Tommy Walsh's Eco-House - The elements of whimsy and his encyclopedic knowledge of all minor celebrity allow a flexibility to put words together for the pleasure of their sonic and cultural poetic adjacency.

I'm not sure I find them funny that much, although they certainly put a smile on my face. More important to me is the way they're able to transform domestic misery and forlorn love into things that are not entirely fucking awful, which really they are most of the time. For this alone I am thankful every day for their continuing existence. The quality of their anger is, I suppose because of their defences of love and kindness, also amongst the most satisfying and righteous I can think of.

All that said, I think my favourite line from the last one might be 'Iguana Andy and his... iguanas'.

Also love the great exposition of that specific time of night that is contained in the line "But when it's too late for drunks, and too early for milkmen, give me the moonlight, give me a spade".

also "Break out from grouting, Willie, lay down your puzzle, Jan."

And all of Fix It So She Dreams of Me, especially:

"And she lives somewhere you wouldn't want to get stuck
That can't be found in the Domesday book
Cromwell's troops never billeted there
Dick Turpin never had Bess shoed
Where this girl, i'm told, rolls her eyes at the Gok Wan acolytes"

"Hey, where did that bloke go who said I was vital? "

new one out, tomorrow is it?

i got so enraged by a v irritating gig (the fans not them, but they sort of encourage it) that I've been off them for a while now. Will obviously get this though.

stretching the definition of a line here, but w/e i can't go past.

"And then there’s the person who collects all things Pierrot and loves Siamese cats and
thinks they’re sophisticated ‘cos they eat Fry’s Chocolate Cream,
and they’d do anything to spend the night with that fella off the Turkish Delight advert who’s full of Eastern monosodium glutamate"

magnificent & otm fizzles post above. latest one is worrying though. embarrassing fans? o no

just a sort lumpen bloke culture, imago. it's tiresome enough when you encounter it out and about - a large number in one place chanting and it got a bit wicker man.