Half Man Half Biscuit

Half-Man Half-Biscuit.

Even the name gets me. To most of the world they get a "Who?!" and sometimes a "What?", but to those who've sampled this rare, odd, surreal delight theres just a wide knowing grin.
First half heard on (often plugged, favorite radio station) 6 music The song was a reworking of Ian Dury and the Blockheads "Reasons to be cheerful" - Reasons To Be Miserable. Now I'm a geek for wordplay and puns (read: pretensious english student) so this stuck in my mind.

Confused and more than a little intruiged I found myself to be an unknowing Half Man Half Biscuit fan. It's funny what you find out about yourself.

A year later I hear a fast paced near punk style track "Joy Division Oven Gloves". And yes, the track is about said oven gloves. This gives some clue to what HMHB can build a song on. Bloody anything. From daytime TV, pancake day, Scalectrix, to Dukla Prague football team away kits.

So whats good about them?

It's absurd, surreal, but bad sounding enough to avoid being novelty. Its cynical observations about things not even worth knowing. Everything you'd never want to hear about in a song.

Lyrics like "is your child hyper-active, or, is he perhaps a twat?" are just perfect, its a license to be a lunatic because you (and probably, just you) know it's from some HMHB tune. What other band offers the pleasure of lamenting about staff at a petrol station like the track "24 Hour Garage People"?

"You curse my soul if I don't want petrol
You curse my sould if I don't want petrol,
I only came down for a tube of pringles..
..sour cheese and chives"
"and you say, "£1.33!".
Instead of "that'll be 1.33 please sir"
this is done to annoy me, but has the opposite effect
of amusing me,
because now I've got plenty of other things to have..
and plenty of time on my hands.."

You'll be singing "I'll have ten kit kats and a motoring atlas!" within seconds. Its mental, and thats why I love it. It's quintessentially British, the musical equivalent to Monty Python surrealism. But working class, on the dole, and from Merseyside.

They "formed" in the mid 80s, disbanded and reformed all over the time between then and now. Their first LP Back in the DHSS (1986) was the biggest selling LP of the independent chart -recorded for £40 by a mate at the studio where Nigel Blackwell (lyrics, vocals, guitar) was a caretaker.

John Peel got a copy and loved it.

Rock and Roll exess followed -after 1986s single "Dickie Davis Eyes" Nigel decided to retire and go back to the dole because he was missing too much daytime TV.

They also (twice) turned down appearing on Channel 4s "The Tube" rock show because Transmere Rovers were playing, dispite good old Channel 4 offering a helicopter to get them back to the game.

Just shows the sense of dedication to rock and roll. (I'd call it shambolic, but I've heard the Libertines described such, .. I won't even give them the pleasure..)

It's this pointless lack of ambition, unpretensious throw away tracks about everyday boredom, thats what makes me a fan, a fan who's only heard one album and countless interwebbed MP3s.

- to hear random crap that doesn't take itself seriously. Musical moanings about anything - modern culture. inde kids (we've got tie die we've got lo fi.. stickers on guitars..a tape for Steve Lamaq, but what aint we got?, we aint got mates) Pancake day. Countryside road signs. Guerrila Gigs (just been performing a guerrilla gig, in the middle of another bands guerrila gig, well surely thats the ultimate guerrila gig, but still they cried like girls) Motley Crue. ("help me Mrs Medlicot I don't know what to do, I've only got three bullets and theres four in Motley Crue") Pete Doherty's tattoos. Glastonbury. (you call Glastonbury"Glasto", you'd love to go there one day, once they've put up the gun towers to keep the hippies away)

Maybe listening to them will cause nothing but a temporary giggle, and a "what was that?", it's charmingly odd. And charmingly odd is part of the national psyche. You could call them naff rubbish sounding novelty - all Half Man Half Biscuit would do is take another sip of beer and turn up the volume for the Transmere Rovers game.

Stand out tracks-

"24 hour garage people"
"Four Skinny Indie Kids" "..drinking weak lager in a camden boozer"

"Paintballs coming home"
"Joy Division Oven Gloves"
"CORGI Registered Friends" - "in the kingdom of the blind it's said the one eyed man is king, and in the kingdom of the bland, it's nine o' clock on ITV.."

Hear them-

The nice and detailed fan site, complete with section telling you what the hell the lyrics and references mean. Also, plenty of old Peel sessions and Andy Kershaw recordings which are well worth checking out.

What did you think?