The Light at the End of the Tunnel (is the Light of an Oncoming Train) (2002)
vs.
For What Is Chatteris… (2005)
Two favourites from the last ten years, and once again, anything could happen. How did they get here? The Light at the End of the Tunnel beat Dickie Davies Eyes, Bob Wilson – Anchorman and Evening Sun; and For What Is Chatteris beat 24-Hour Garage People, National Shite Day and Evening of Swing.
Result
The Light at the End of the Tunnel (is the Light of an Oncoming Train) 135
vs.
For What Is Chatteris… 142
Brian Duffin
Tough, tough, tough.
Gone for Chatteris in the end as it’s my favourite piece of whimsy from HMHB.
I’ve a feeling that whichever one wins this tie will have a mountain to climb in the final though.
6 June 2011
Chippy Minton
This is a hard one as both songs are played frequently in the car as I drive around. Chatteris is class but I still enjoy the open lines of Light…close one here
6 June 2011
Chippy Minton
Lights has just nicked it for me
6 June 2011
Bonnevilleinbits
At the weekend I cycled through an old railway tunnel, so what can I vote for but, er, Chatteris..(sorry I just like it more.)
6 June 2011
Dave Cooper
Chatteris has beaten some tough opposition, the momentum gained will see them through.
6 June 2011
worrichy
I think I will have to stop looking in and voting, even though Chatteris is nice little tune the prospect of it representing the best HMHB has to offer, as selected by their fans, is making me sad. So many great tunes with powerful biting and poiniant lyrics that really resonate with my own experience. Chatteris does none of this I’m voting for The Light At The End Of The Tunnel but the other songs it has beaten were better.
6 June 2011
SteveG
It’s The Tunnel for me … where else could you find the sublime of “aphids in Piacardy”? … plus we translated it into latin for our motto at work once
6 June 2011
Third Rate Les
With Featureless TV Producer Steve runs away with this fixture for me. Just that line is a nice little illustration of both acerbic humour and a great ear for rhythm – Shakespeare rarely came up with an iambic pentameter as good as that one.
Chatteris is nice too. But nice isn’t enough to win it.
6 June 2011
Kingsbeef
Couldn’t agree more Worrichy although Chatteris does resonate with me. The other semi should be the final. Everyone talks about the lyrical whimsy of Chatteris but Tunnel’s portrait of a broken man is every bit as good lyrically and has a superb opening.
6 June 2011
BrumBiscuit
Chatteris is as close to twee as HMHB get & maybe I’m missing something, but it washes over me, so TL@TEotT(ItLoaOT) for me.
6 June 2011
Littlegrafter
Peak District vs the Fens, no contest, Tunnel all the way (though still only my 4th favouritre from Cammell Laird)
6 June 2011
TWO FAT FEET
Two songs whose route to the semi-finals reads like a litany of slain titans. Chatteris could be said to have had the harder task to get here, but look at the scores and you can see that LATEOTT has hardly had to break a sweat so far.
It’s Chatteris for me this time but neither of these ties is a foregone conclusion, and indeed anyone could win this now.
Apart from Damnation of course (sob)
6 June 2011
Lollipop Man Darren
Chatteris for me; so many lyrical gems wrapped up in the sweetest tune. The “drive-by shouting” lyric may well be my favourite by any band ever.
However, Tunnel is a quality song too (where else in popular music will you hear the word “swain”?) and if it makes it to the final, it will get my full support.
6 June 2011
poolio
Smooth and commendable… dependable, awards in the Lords, clean streets and linnets, brass bands… nowt, if you’re not there?! Sickly sweet love song…?
Ethically sound weak beak from Leek, New Mills… Capri… tale of abandonment…
Depends on how you’re feeling… n’est ce pas?
Feeling a bit tired and spent this evenin so…. Gimme that ole time religion!!
6 June 2011
2 Chevrons
Love both songs, but I love the way that Chatteris is pictured as being the perfect place with so much going for it.
But, if the love interest isn’t interested, the story teller may as well be in Ely or St. Ives (ie anywhere in the Fens)
6 June 2011
Sandy Coloured Clown
Tunnel for me, I once put this on a mixtape sent to a girl who’d left me to move down to that London (didn’t do me any good, tho’…), so for personal reasons this wins for me. I do think Chatteris is the best and most interesting of the class rants, similar to Paintball in it’s back-handed humour but with more going for it as a song in it’s own right.
Am I wrong to think of Chatteris as a middle-class rant? It seems to take the piss out of comfortable village life…
The nice thing about this cup is that, like a genuine cup tournament, next year we would probably have a different winner and even a different last four, with the same starting entrants (but I think l’Enfer and Tommy Walsh would be up there, and who knows what else is in the pipeline?)
7 June 2011
aiwacat
I like Chatteris; it’s a perfectly serviceable little ditty, but it lacks the bite or abrasiveness which I like in a really good HMHB track. For that reason, the sentiments expressed, and the stomper of a tune, I cast my vote for Tunnel.
7 June 2011
Pete T
Tunnel, as I said once before, seems to me to be Biscuit by numbers. Excellent lyrics, but the tune, is a bit meh, for me. Would rather have seen others through, but it has to be Chatteris.
7 June 2011
LaL
Tough tough tough last minute extra time winner from the light at the end of a tunnel,sort of sums up life in many ways…;)
7 June 2011
Simon Smith
Chatteris is the ‘straightest’ song in the Biscuit, I hazard the word, oeuvre. Its adoration fills me with a nameless dread. Sentimentality is destined to win. Though I daresay ‘I Just Called To Say I Love You’ would ace a Stevie Wonder vote. It’s as if ‘Continuous Cremation’ had won such a vote in 1987. When titillation was a major part of the appeal for those who bought in their droves.
9 June 2011
David Peace
Inspired by the Rand Family’s video frolics, I have written them a movie treatment which I hope they’ll agree to collaborate on, ideally with the help of their video camera and Chris’ old subbuteo set. I hope you will be able to envision scenes like this from my last film as you read through this dramatic scene, set in the Chatteris dressing room before the Quarter Final.
ASSISTANT MANAGER: Alright boys, socks up, everyone in, a few final words from the boss before the match.
BOSS: Alright boys. You’ve seen the headlines, you know what they’re saying about us. [The camera pans around the dressing room. Blank, nervous looks]. They say we’re just a busy little market town team but we lack quintessence [The boss holds up headline from the Evening Sun newspaper. Underneath the red-top banner saying “Evening Sun goes down 10p” we see the headline “Chatteris lacks quintessence – jilted resident”] Well, do we lack quintesence , lads?
TEAM: No boss.
BOSS: I said DO WE lads??
TEAM: [much louder] No boss!
BOSS: Well today we’r e going to show ’em, aren’t we lads?
PLAYER 1: Errm boss?
BOSS: Yes Chandler?
PLAYER 1: What’s quintessence boss?
BOSS: It means the very essential essence of something, dunnit? It means some Biscuit songs are surreal juxtapositions , some collage together all kinds of wonderful snippets from literature and the media and the music business and that, it means some of them are bitingly angry and sum up how grumpy old men all over the country feel about the age we live in. It means some of them have wonderfully mysterious characters like Stringy Bob and others have archetypes we can all relate to like the Christening Party Arsehole or the 24-hour Garage Twat. They think the winning song should best represent as many of these things as possible, especially if its going to represent the whole proud Biscuit nation in Europe. They say we’re a great song but they think Evening of Swing captures the Biscuit zeitgeist better than we do.
PLAYER 1: Well that’s true, innit boss?
BOSS: Of course it’s true, Butcher, but do we care?
PLAYER 1: No boss, not really.
BOSS: Did we care that it sounded as if National Shite Day was the kind of masterpiece Nigel Blackwell and Neil Crossley had been waiting to put together for 25 years, while it sounds as if our Chatteris outfit, brilliant and highly amusing though we may be, was thrown together in an afternoon jogging along the River Birket while listening to the Town Hall band CD?
TEAM: No boss.
BOSS: What did we do to the National Shite lads?
TEAM: We knocked ’em on the bonce boss.
BOSS: Too right we did. And did we care that 24-hour Garage People is the song that has done more than any other to transform Biscuit gigs into the unpredictable, improvised, never-the-same twice experiences they are today? [camera pans to old headline saying “We’ll curse Chatteris’ soul” – 24HGP boss].
Well, did we?
TEAM: No boss.
BOSS: They said they’d curse our soul, but what did we do to ’em?
TEAM: Knocked ’em on the bonce boss.
BOSS: Too bloody right we did! And then what did we do to their bloody garage after the game?
TEAM: Drive by shouting boss!
BOSS: That’s right lads! Now, today’s game. Evening of Swing. This lot are gonna open with one of the greatest opening lines in Biscuit history. Some would say there’s more feeling in the opening syllable of this one than in all of Chatteris put together, as Blackwell summons up the combined spirits of a dozen old testament prophets to curse a world gone mad, possibly more powerfully than he ever has to date.
PLAYER 2: I’ve always thought the vision most closely resemble that of the prophet Enoch boss.
BOSS: True Butcher, it does seem to be most notably the prophet Enoch. But that doesn’t m….
PLAYER 2: I can’t mark him boss, he’s apocryphal.
BOSS: You certainly can’t Butcher, but you _can_ mark the Christening Party Arsehole right out of the game. Wherever his bloody Sat-nav takes him, you follow, even if he goes for a piss down a bloody ravine at half-time. Even a christening party arsehole can’t do nothing without space to work in. Then you know what to do, don’t you lads?
TEAM: Drive-by shouting boss!?
BOSS: No, lads… what have we been working on? They’ll be asleep at the back early doors. Enough room to drive the team bus between those boulders. So you knock ’em on the bonce while you’re going past! Now lads, tell me where’s our name?
PLATER 1: On the back of our shirts, boss?
BOSS: No boys, our name is on the fucking cup. Dan Brown, Ezekiel …. they’re household names, but in the end – they’re just 90,000-pound-a-week pricks. Butcher, Chandler, what are you gonna be today?
B & C: Prick Barriers, boss?
BOSS: That’s right – we’ve got you two great big lovely prick barriers at both ends! Let’s see their gnarled faces when you lot have finished with them. Now go out there and irk those bloody purists!
[Through soundtrack of cheering crowds and scenes of goal celebrations, we cut within seconds to the headline: PURISTS IRKED AGAIN AS CHATTERIS MARCHES ON]
9 June 2011
PEACEY
Suddenly remembered I might have left some pearls here a few years back.
Let’s see. Yes I must have cast them over here somewhere… anyone see them?
19 October 2015
EXXO
Yep, looked forward to some classic match previews again from the usual suspects. Bring it on.
19 October 2015