| Match 1 | ||
|---|---|---|
| For What Is Chatteris… | ||
| National Shite Day | ||
Voting closed – see results
| Match 2 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Twenty Four Hour Garage People | ||
| Tending The Wrong Grave For 23 Years | ||
Voting closed – see results
| Match 3 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Every Time a Bell Rings | ||
| Them’s The Vagaries | ||
Voting closed – see results
| Match 4 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Everything’s AOR | ||
| The Light at the End of the Tunnel | ||
Voting closed – see results
Chris The Siteowner
OK, a suitably arcane draw will take place next Friday and Saturday, based on the IKF World Korfball Championship which starts then. We’ll have an additional level of randomness by allocating teams to represent each of the 8 songs based on Friday’s results, and then the draw will be made independently, based on Saturday’s results. I hope that’s unnecessarily complex enough. Here’s the spreadsheet. Voting will take place the following week (1 match per day, Monday to Thursday) with voting being open on each match for 7 days.
29 July 2019
Chris The Siteowner
Last 8 Album Update (Last 32 qualifiers in brackets)
Back In The DHSS: 0 (2)
Back Again in the DHSS: 0 (1)
McIntyre, Treadmore and Davitt: 1 (2)
This Leaden Pall: 0 (1)
Some Call It Godcore: 0 (0)
Voyage To The Bottom Of The Road: 0 (2)
Four Lads Who Shook The Wirral: 0 (1)
Trouble Over Bridgwater: 1 (1)
Editor’s Recommendation: 0 (1)
Cammell Laird Social Club: 2 (4)
Saucy Haulage Ballads: 1 (1)
Achtung Bono: 1 (5)
CSI – Ambleside: 1 (2)
90 Bisodol: 0 (3)
Urge For Offal: 0 (2)
No-One Cares About Your Creative Hub: 1 (4)
Five of 2015’s last eight have made it through again this time; those that made it last time but haven’t done this year are Trumpton, Bob Wilson and Evening of Swing. Three of 2011’s last eight have made it through again this time; those that made it in 2011 but not this year are A Country Practice (eventual winner), Trumpton, JDOG, Evening Sun and Evening of Swing. Only Light and Chatteris have made it to all three quarter finals.
There’s just one song left from the entire pre-2000 songbook, although there were only two last time and one in 2011.
1 August 2019
dickhead in quicksand
@CtSO – I suppose the semis could be the Mötley Crüe round, but feel free to choose some other name.
(Ta – best idea yet – CtSO)
1 August 2019
Two fat feet
Cammell Laird reinforcing its position as the band’s high-water mark, although the tide has been most definitely in since Bridgwater.
1 August 2019
Chris The Siteowner
Right, here we go. I’ll put the songs up for voting on Monday, leaving voting open for a week. Watch this space.
4 August 2019
dickhead in quicksand
On past form, I’m expecting some major mismatches in the IKF World Korfball Championship.
4 August 2019
Two fat feet
NSD 54%, 24HGP 57%, ETABR 70%, Light 53%
4 August 2019
Jeunesse d’ Esch
Chatteris 51%, 24H 58%, Bell 60%, Light 57%
4 August 2019
Daveu
Aaaarrgh! Match 4 disaster, two favourite songs drawn against each other. Think I’ll have to spoil my ballot paper…
4 August 2019
dr desperate
See post 72.
(Sorry – CtSO)
4 August 2019
parsfan
Results in the last round I had both wrong, both right, both wrong then both right again.
My winners have all been kept apart, but I don’t see them comprising the last four somehow.
4 August 2019
sera69
Match 1 = prefer Chatteris, winner Shite Day
Match 2 = prefer Garage People, winner Garage People
Match 3 = prefer Vagaries, winner Bell Rings
Match 4 = prefer AOR, winner AOR
5 August 2019
Transit full of keith
1. Prefer NSD … result NSD, but could be close.
2. Hard to choose. Love both songs. Probably Tending. Result probably 24HGP.
3. Very hard to choose. Like both, but don’t really think either should be final 8. Will probably vote ETABR if only to keep the new song in.
4. The definition of impossible.
5 August 2019
Gipton Teenager
Methinks penalty shoot-out/ golden point/tie-break/toss of a coin may be needed Chris.
5 August 2019
Lux inferior
Could the semi-finals perhaps be the ‘Four Tracks That Shook The Wirral’ round?
5 August 2019
Chris The Siteowner
Ooh, very good. A quick Twitter poll is now running to choose a name.
5 August 2019
Lux inferior
I’m not a Twitter member, so can’t vote, but I can see the feed – you changed ‘Shook’ to ‘Changed’ (not that it really matters much).
(It does matter, and I am an idiot. Hey ho. Put it down to Lux Familiar Cup Administration Stress Syndrome – CtSO)
5 August 2019
squemster
Chatteris v NSD is the toughest call for me.
Both songs in Match 3 punching above their weight, but it’s good to see a newbie make it this far.
5 August 2019
dickhead in quicksand
I’m not on Tw*tter either, but I vote for Wirral. Obvs.
6 August 2019
Two fat feet
First two are both tough calls for me, although the other two both go quite comfortably the way of the Cammell Laird stablemates. I will admit that my vote for 24HGP is swayed by its live persona, and having been in attendance for one of its last and greatest readings at Shepherds Bush, the high point of my first HMHB gig. Purely on the recorded versions it should have been Wrong Grave but this is competition all about subjectivity. My vote for Chatteris is probably only because I see it as the underdog here and it needs my support, when I really couldn’t justify placing one above the other for any other reason.
6 August 2019
Nagasaki shinpads
Match 1 and 4 have now got me in a three-course dinner dilemma…If you ever wondered how to get 2 from 4 you need an excellent red, a strong cheddar and a very sharp scythe for splitting such Euterpean Equilibrium.
6 August 2019
gok Wan acolyte
Some tough choices here, although I reckon that the other qualifiers will be desperate to draw the winner of Match 3 in the semis.
Depending on the arcane method used to make the draw for the next round, I reckon that we may be on for a re-run of the 2015 final
6 August 2019
Lux inferIor
Just thinking further ahead (quiet day at work), a suggested title for the LFC ‘19 denouement (or terminus, if you will): The ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Focus’ match. After all, it is the final act.
6 August 2019
Welsh goth
After the cup is over, will we have a female lux familiar cup for geraldine, doreen, joyce and the girlfriend finished with him?
And will ACP be allowed to participate?
6 August 2019
Cream cheese and chives
First two votes cast relatively easy. Tie 3 is the one which I am worrying about . It could split families and communities that one. The irony of TTV being a contender after it so ruthlessly saw off Terminus! Will it celebrate if it scores in this round?Will Terminus followers vote against it? Will the new kid on the block continue on its merry way? Is it in fact like that RB Leipzig outfit-all flash and fireworks without having paid its dues? So many questions. Join us with Jim Beglin after this break…
6 August 2019
Mark
I apologise for not checking for the previous rounds. Trumpton Riots has not made it thus far, how sad
6 August 2019
Gateuax
For me the strongest teams in the last 8 are NSD and AOR, but with the arcane lack of seeding, even if they win they could meet in the semis. Them’s the vagaries, I guess.
For the record I’m also going 24H to win match 2 and Bell for match 3 purely because of the shameless handball that saw TTV eliminate Terminus against the run of play.
7 August 2019
Bootleg mark chapman
Re-visiting Cammell Laird Social Club recently, think it remains the Sergeant Pepper of HMHB. So much there.
8 August 2019
Seany Mac
Chatteris vs Shite Day? CRUEL!
8 August 2019
INJURED BUZZARD
Match 3 was a dilemma. Egg sandwiches on coach trips in June swung it. Chatteris arrived on my random playlist as If to taunt me as I voted for Shite day. Match 2 was inseparable but had to give it to 24 hour, purely for the title. Light edged A.O.R. as my preferred set closer.
8 August 2019
Chemistryimp
Quarter finals 1-3 easy to choose for me.
Q4 what a quandary, two big favourites of mine.
9 August 2019
Clown in a yaris
Votes cast after listening to each song about ten times each. Hoping for some interesting debate after results. Always interested to hear why Biscuiteers vote for one song over another when they’re all clearly brilliant.
9 August 2019
Clown in a yaris
Totally agree with SEANY MAC in comment 29. Cruel indeed.
9 August 2019
John Smart
I trust NSD will not become the ‘go to track’ of the boys’ output, please?
I have been there, from the Wirral, since the beginning. Err… not from the Wirral now, Xhit, Mrs T did for me…
J
10 August 2019
Schoon
NSD
Bell
AOR
24
Personally my semis would be:
Bob Wilson
PRS
AOR
About 67 other songs which are all great, maybe Footprints. No Floreat Inertia I forgot that. Or Numanoid.
10 August 2019
Gipton Teenager
I think I might have stumbled upon a Luxtaposition variant with my picks for the semis.
Shite, wrong bell end.
10 August 2019
Mariner
For me Bob, Chatteris is one of the finest love songs ever written. The effortless switch from pathos to bathos and back again in these few lines is NB writing at his best.
“But what’s a park if you can’t see a linnet?
A timetable if your journey’s infinite?
My bag’s packed and I’m leaving in a minute
For what is Chatteris without you in it?”
Classic Nigel contrasts. From the heights of human feelings of love and hope lost to the mundane and funny detail of everyday life, without missing a beat.
No it doesn’t have the crowd pleasers of a fella in Millets, and I’m not going to have a go at NSD. But Chatteris is in a league of its own.
Sadly it’s not in a cup of its own and may soon be knocked out by the punters’ favourite.
10 August 2019
Transit full of keith
I’m not in the anti-Chatteris camp by any means, but for me, in a line-up of Biscuit love songs, Ode To Joyce reigns supreme.
10 August 2019
Two fat feet
Some of Nigel’s most romantic lines, for me, simply indicate the thought-process of somebody completely in love but whose world view may not be entirely conventional. “If you would come with me to Dawlish / I’d be like Stadler’s caddy for ya” possibly from the way it is sung, just sounds like somebody in love. “I’d like to rescue her from unicyclists” is clearly the most noble thing the character believes a man can do. The whole premise of Swerving the Checkatrade is somebody who is so besotted he would actually miss a non-essential football match for a potential relationship. There’s plenty of slightly more conventional stuff there too but fortunately he’ll never be full of the Moon in June. As a romanticist he is more real than most songwriters.
10 August 2019
Poopleby
NB’s love songs are far from conventional and while I have always thought of Chatteris as a song about lost love there’s a part of me that sees a possibility of bereavement in the lyrics. As for unusual love songs, Umberstone Covert is the epitome of “for better, for worse, in sickness and in health”.
10 August 2019
EXXO
Some of the thinking-that-pisstakes-of-love-songs are actual sincere love songs reminds me of some of the thinking you get on here from time to time that ‘cos Mr, B piss-takes religion a lot, he is religious. It’s hard to get beyond your own parameters sometimes.
10 August 2019
Lord leomInster
@ Exxo – As a newcomer to 90%+ of the HMHB songbook I have been struck and entertained by some of the recurring themes such as walking, disdain for the middle classes, geography, natural history and Christian tradition. I have sympathies and can identify with at least some of these themes. Coming at the songbook from the position that all the information I have is derived directly from these songs I have concluded that the songwriter likes to watch TV, observe people and places, go for a bracing stroll whilst taking in the scenery and is familiar with church tradition. I recognise that a song can be written from someone else’s perspective. Another theme is murder. I doubt that the songwriter has himself ever left a dismembered body on a golf course but I don’t let my own values lead me to conclude that my assumption is necessarily correct.
11 August 2019
EXXO
I suppose that’s the point I’m wondering aloud about – most listeners get the subject matter but not all of them get the cynical viewpoint – and maybe some, even some HMHB fans, who you would expect to be more cynical, are so brainwashed by the ‘romantic tradition,’ in which nearly every song you hear on the airwaves is trying to be a sincere heartfelt love song, that they even think that piss-takes parodying the same imagery and language are in fact actual heartfelt love songs? They may also be misled by aspects of particular genres – maybe they think it’s not a shouty, punky song so it’s more likely to be sincere, etc? Maybe they think a gospelly hallelujah vibe or an adapted hymn tune is more likely to be sincere too?
11 August 2019
Lord leominster
We can and perhaps should take the songs at face value but there is depth such that we only ever see glimpses of what lies beneath.
11 August 2019
Clown in a yaris
We all probably read much too much into some of the songs, but i personally cannot take the songs at face value. If i did, i would feel i was being conned out of something wondrous.
11 August 2019
Two fat feet
I don’t think I could identify any HMHB as being a straightforward love song; but he often populates his songs with somewhat quirky characters whose emotions are as real as anyone’s. The songs may be about somebody in love, or they might just contain a line or two about the emotions that everybody feels occasionally, but expressed in a very specific way. They may be piss-takes but they still describe it in a far more believable way than most of what you hear on the radio.
11 August 2019
POOPleby
That’s what I was trying to say, TFF, but rather less successfully. Yes, Exxo, I agree that cynicism and sardonicism are the band’s stock in trade but is it genuinely the case that everything is a piss-take? Knobheads on quizshows as well as on soccer sofas, as anchorpeople(?) etc are fair game but are we to accept that references to depression, bereavement, suicide, old age and the like are equally insincere even if presented in the same knockabout style?
11 August 2019
CARRIE ANNE
Mathematically Safe is very romantic, a little bit left field but in no way a piss-take
11 August 2019
Two fat feet
I think the piss-take element here would only be applied to love songs. I just think that while he never appears to be trying to write something that will have everyone with their lighters in the air at gigs for years to come, he still illustrates the emotions in a far more real context (however bizarre it may look from a distance) than those who do.
12 August 2019
EXXO
I can see why it’s hard to get the standpoint of the ‘voice’ in many of the songs, because it varies so much between tracks – it’s often sincere, it’s often parodic, it’s often dark, it’s often light. It occasionally seems to vary subtly within songs and there are a good number where you still don’t have a clue what’s going on after living with them for decades – which is often, surely, part of their greatness. But in many other songs it’s pretty obvious.
I wasn’t implying that everything about relationships was a piss-take or cynical. Even less that everything about other topics was cynical – the comedy is immensely dark, brutal and pessimistic (or just realistic, if you like) in many songs without any cynicism. Soft Verges and DBT spring straight to mind there. Perhaps even more so recent albums with songs like Constance, Terminus and Locksmith, but I was just lamenting out loud how it is possible to get that certain songs are not obvious parodies of love songs, or, separately, that religion is constantly debunked. There are obvvious piss-takes of the genre and language of old-fashioned love songs, like Chatteris, piss-takes of at least two different genres simultaneously and their language, like Joyce. That’s why I think Keith’s last point about Joyce was so good – ‘cos he managed to make his post a subtle piss-take of those who maybe don’t realise that Joyce and other songs are piss-takes (watch, he’ll deny that’s what he was doing now, but trust me, that’s a double bluff). My point I suppose, anlthough I was trying not to make everythin’ about one song and was hoping I could get away without mentioning the town hall brass band in the room, was how can anyone who knows, who feels the faintest thing about HMHB think that Chatteris is an actual serious heartfelt love song, which is something that comes up every four years on here when the ‘Commodores’ come in for the glory games? It’s like thinking Leuuwarden is a serious korfball anthem! The piss-takes of religion and love songs are two of the most obviously cynical things in HMHB, narrowly behind the piss-takes of all aspects of telly, music business, music bullshit, football punditry, fame and self-promotion.
Though yes, I whole-heartedly take 2FF’s point that the mastery of language and imagery of the comedy is so exquisite that it still has the possibility to suggest that it could belong in the realms of tragedy and actual true luv had it wanted to.
12 August 2019
Huddersfield’s very own Steve malkmus
Singing that you’d die for a lover might well seem like the ultimate romantic gesture, but it really isn’t: the prospect of such a dilemma arising is minimal, and it sounds like something a silver-tongued flavoursome buck in a coastal town might say to encourage a naive young lass into his seedy clutches.
By contrast, saying you’d rather spend time with your girlfriend than watch a midweek Mickey Mouse cup game doesn’t seem like such a sacrifice, but it’s altogether more real and testable.
Of course as Tranmere were probably still in the Conference at the time the song was written, Nigel was swerving the Checkatrade anyway.
Humour in a love song shouldn’t be mistaken for insincerity, even if it’s quite dark humour. I have more trouble “buying” the earnest syrupiness of Lionel Rich-tea than I do the wry wit of HMHB or the Silver Jews.
12 August 2019
GOK WAN ACOLYTE
@Lord Leominster (comment 42)
I think I doubt that the songwriter has himself ever left a dismembered body on a golf course but I don’t let my own values lead me to conclude that my assumption is necessarily correct. is possibly my favourite comment ever on this site
12 August 2019
Two fat feet
Back on topic, NSD gets through even less comfortably than predicted, while 24 simply brushes off its numerical neighbour.
12 August 2019
EXXO
My personal least favourite bit off off-topic though is that Swerving the Checkatrade got into this thread twice, with the same misapprehension both times. He is not swerving it for her, he is swerving it with her. Indeed she probably decided to swerve it before he did, the protagonist of this one being yet another who is less decisive than their respective emphatically-equipped female leads.
12 August 2019
The harbinger of nothing
@HVOS Malkmus: Some time ago I thought of Lionel Rich Tea as an alternative moniker for this site, but decided to stick with The HON, thinking that I’d either get it in somewhere in the end, or use it for a one-off post. Now you’ve beaten me to it. Although it has at least given me a reason to give it a mention!
13 August 2019
Lord leominster
@GWA comment 52
Given that this thread has shown that we should always be aware of the possibility that the writer means the complete opposite of what they actually say, I cautiously accept your comment at face value and say ‘you’re welcome’.
13 August 2019
EXXO
I can’t remember whose recent stand-up routine I saw or heard that contained a hilarious (if rather obvious) deconstruction of Rich Tea’s Hello, stopping and examining the creepy stuff that is going on in that song between each line. It might have been Micky P. Kerr, and it might be in his current Edinburgh show, which anyway I highly recommend to anyone who is up there. Themed around how (and how not) to make it in the music biz, its musical skits and parody music videos are a bit obvious, a bit Flight of the Conchords, but in a way that makes them all the more necessary in our extremely obvious times, musically-speaking. If you play your cards right when the audience is small, you can even get up stage with Micky, mess with his loop pedal and help with his build-your-own-Ed-Sheeran-song-in-3-minutes routine. I did mention it was obvious, didn’t I? But dead funny.
13 August 2019