A decent-enough part of the country, but one which doesn’t seem to have had any lyrical references from what I can see. Let’s hope this previously-postponed gig makes up for it. Pools panel said “home defeat” first time around. What did you make of the evening?
Ben
Yer archetypal Biscuits gig.
Somewhat sparsely (initially) attended gig, although it did fill out later on – in one of those ‘new’ type venues, anyone who’s been to Cambridge Junction would find themselves at home here. Which leads to good ‘sightlines’ but a somewhat weird sound.
Decent support from ‘Dead Shores’ who didn’t fear our wraith despite possinly over extending their show, perhaps they thought having a song called ‘I’ve got Nigel Blackwells Autograph’ gave them carte-blance.
Good to hear A Country Practice and one or two less familiar run outs ‘99% of Gargoyles’ couldn’t remember hearing that for a while, Lilac Harry Quinn etc.
Cover was Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves, which didn’t descend into mayhem as predicted. Tommy Walshs Eco House and one other of the recent 6 music shows were deffo aired. Other completists will I’m sure fill you in.
Goodnight!
13 November 2010
Greasby Shark
VERY boisterous down the front, more so than at any other gig this year (I think the fact that it was Friday night rather than a week night made a difference).
Pringles a very reasonable 88 pence. At least two of Nigel’s pre-arranged friends in the queue behind him wanted to purchase some Cheetos and another wanted a can of Lilt (she might be better off trying a chippy for that). Oh, and garage man was listening to ‘Bad Medicine’ by Bon Jovi on his I-pod.
Great set, particular highlights for me being ‘A Lilac Harry Quinn’, ‘Uffington Wassail’, ‘Everything’s A.O.R.’, ‘Country Practice’ and ‘Tommy Walsh’s Eco House’ (already a classic in my mind).
Disappointed I’ll be missing Durham, but will be at Holmfirth.
13 November 2010
Charles Exford
Necrosis of neurons, axonal degeneration, demyelination, lower IQ, behavioural changes and concentration disorder. Just a few of the symptoms of the lead poisoning at this end of my street. Either that or there were too many elbowing, shoving, nutting nutters in the mosh, as there often seem to be in West Lancs.
I know it can’t have been down to the legendary Brewdog “Paradox” (10%, matured in old single malt whisky barrels on the Isle of Arran) in the Bitter Suite opposite the venue, I know that’s one thing I wouldn’t forget, and I’m told they ran out of this incredible ale just before we arrived, with little else available that was fit to lace its boots, though the “Dynamild” was interesting, gastrically-speaking.
Whatever the cause, I find myself remembering less and less of these nights when I awake upon the morrow, but often moments of the show are so stand-out that they cannot but be vividly recalled. So I’m just going to review one song, for now, and the highlight of a fine evening for me was another stellar version of “A Country Practice”. If anyone ever doubted Blackwell’s efforts to keep his performance fresh every single time, here are just a few of the tweakages to the lyrics of this one that I can recall from Friday night’s gig:
“The public appearance of bitter ex-soap stars who think they can go on and do other things instead” (two or three ex-soap stars were listed at this point, the first being Julie Goodyear I think)
“…The centre court amusement at the ‘antics’ in the veterans tournament…” (then something about Henri Leconte trying to be funny)
“I had a good walk from Moreton shore to New Brighton yesterday… an opinionated weather forecaster had told me to be careful in the stormy weather, but I quite like a bit of stormy weather, so stick to the facts…” (sincerely hope it wasn’t high tide though Nige, otherwise you are risking it going along that bit by the Derby baths in a force nine – a few doggies have been swept in just there)
“…opinionated stadium announcers telling me to ‘have a safe journey home’ at the end of the match; my journey home is none of their business… I might want to take a few risks!”
“Traffic warden being lowered down into the grave, but after all the family and funeral-goers have left, he wakes up out of his coma and he’s banging on the coffin lid and screaming ‘I’m still alive! Let me out! Help! I’m still alive!'”. “Sorry mate”, the gravedigger shouts down, “Nothing I can do about it now. The paperwork’s been done.”
Adrian/Sophie’s pronouncements included the word “matey”
“I’m incredibly bored with Chinese lanterns…” (Ah, as Dr. Johnson said, when a man is bored with Chinese lanterns, he is bored with life. Why not move onto a flight path like us, Nige? Great fun to be had).
“They’re all just a bunch of flaming drongoes”, says the old woman, “cos they’re not David Dickinson, they’re not Cash in the Attic, they’re not A Place in the Sun …”
“She died with her telly on, alone and confused, ‘cos all the money’s been used on the Olympic 2012 preparations.”
All this and another three points for Rovers on Saturday too. Splendid stuff. Roll on Durham.
14 November 2010
Lobster
The second coming. Having driven down for the first (postponed) gig, I thought I’d give it another try. Six-hour drive each way from Aberdeen, and no beer! Seeing the band completely sober is something I recommend. You tend to catch more of Nigel’s ramblings.
A fairly standard affair in a very open venue. Quite a mental moshpit. Highlights for me were Tommy Walsh, Running Order Squabble Fest, Uffington Wassail and Evening of Swing.
Heard some woman complaining that the door price was not the same as the advertised price? Somit to do with the bookin fee allegedly. Over £100 on petrol and I would have gladly paid another £100 just to get in. Almost as happy as the gravedigger burying the traffic warden.
15 November 2010
Charles Exford
Roger Green gives us one of his more detailed reviews of this one, perhaps because he had more room than usual to swing his pencil lead in this over-sized venue. Personally I am particularly relieved that Roger has clarified precisely what it was that was available for £4 at Sainsbury’s. All most of us could hear at the very beiginning of the gig, during the usual faffing bit, was that something was £4 at Sainsbury’s and that it was the location of the find, rather than the price, which was the surprise.
Thanks too to Roger for mentioning the Lancashire Evening News interview, which might otherwise have escaped us. Although it starts unpromisingly with the far-too-often-repeated Tube story, the criminal comma in the band’s name and the mis-spelling of “Titmuss”, it is worth persisting with for the insight into the new songs as works-in-progress (no way new album for a good many months yet, methinks?), the refusal to be too showbiz-pally in the Dean Friedman story, and the credulity of the reporter when it comes to the Nerys Hughes story. Well, given Nigel’s track record, it couldn’t actually be true …could it ?
Some of Roger’s remembrances have triggered others from me, so more will follow. I’l try not to review his review, or to be too curmudgeonly about those cheeky support band chappies. In, fact to be fair like, I’m going to give their gift-horse album a couple more open-minded listens before I lambast it. Laters.
15 November 2010
Chris The Siteowner
Better than average recordings of Fred Titmus, Trumpton Riots and Bob Wilson – Anchorman on YouTube
15 November 2010
Germ
Keep yer Christmas! I’m more excited about losing my HMHB live virginity (at the tender age of 45) at Durham….if my tickets arrive in time.
Thanks for the links Chris,let’s me know I’ll not be the only old fool who should know better.
15 November 2010
John Anderson
“venerable TV presenter Fred Titmuss.”
Oh dear.
15 November 2010
LOM
well in for the nu bo namecheck
LOM
16 November 2010
Vendor of Quack Nostrums
Whilst reading the highly original Lancashire Evening Post article, it occurred to me that Judith Dornan has hidden a perfectly passable HMHB song within her copy. Respect and give it up for Judith!
Wryly titled debut,
Cult popsters.
Never made the mainstream,
Ultimate anti-popstar.
Second division minnows.
Thatcher’s Britain.
Venerable TV presenter,
Championed by DJ Peel.
Never made the mainstream,
Hilarious postpunk popsters.
Burst on to the post punk scene,
With a fixation on minor celebrities.
Massive primetime TV music show, The Tube (x8)
Satirical songtitles touched the nation’s funnybone,
Current national reality TV obsession.
They never made the mainstream.
They never made the mainstream.
They never made the mainstream.
Not so sure about the tune, but as all of the songs sound the same, I’m going for a cross between A Country Practice’ and ‘4 Skinny Indie Kids’.
16 November 2010
John Anderson
That looks more like a Fall lyric to me.
16 November 2010
Charles Exford
Who the hell does Charles Exford think he is? Writing more about the support than the Biscuits themselves? Got a feeling I’m going to regret this, but…
Ooh, ooh, what’s to do, it’s a Bad Review
The Dead Shores at 53 Degrees, Preston
We’d been told HMHB would be on at 8.30, as per the original October 3rd schedule, so we sidled across the road at 8.20. Mrs Exford, who missed the Bilston gig, was just asking me if I thought they’d play all four of the new songs again. I said I wouldn’t mind as long as we got the two more up-beat new ones, namely “Left Lyrics” and “Tommy Walsh”. So imagine our surprise in the lobby as we collected our invisible web-tickets to hear the distinctive chord pattern of precisely the last-named track, “Tommy Walsh’s Eco House”. Oh no, The Biscuits were on early!
We rushed round the corner into the auditorium, but it turned out to be the support band, The Dead Shores, doing their song “Sick and Tired”, to exactly the same chords and rhythm, only with slightly less eccentric timing. Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” riff featured as a comic interlude in the track, too, much in the way that, say, “Left Lyrics” features that Black Sabbath riff.
Hmm, OK, alright then. We didn’t have time to ponder on the likelihood of this band having taken the tune from the 6Music session and got it down on their brand new CD, all since the 11th of August, or whether both HMHB and The Dead Shores have ripped off the same track by someone else because from then on the similarities only became more disconcerting. A song called “Day Sessions”, about going out to see Liverpool v. Man U at the pub and staying there for 11 hours and 23 minutes until totally blathered, features a talky bit which in some of the turns of phrase and rhythm are very reminiscent of the talky bits of “Wrong Grave” or even “24 Hour Garage People”. The delivery is excellent – Craig is a very charismatic front man indeed, with a good strong voice, plenty of movement and command of the stage, but the lyrics are far too banal to adequately complement his theatrical delivery, and to elicit laughs of a sort he resorts to shouting about getting dogshit on his new trainers and losing his cigarettes.
The most interesting part of their next song is the trad. arr. bit that uses the “This Old Man” rap, as in HMHB’s M6-ster. “I want this, I want that, I want Nigel Blackwell’s autograph” are Craig’s lyrics, so at least the influences and borrowings are acknowledged. Nothing wrong with that (and I’m always aware of how ironic it is that anybody should debate what is original when Half Man Half Biscuit nick so many songs and lines from all over the place themselves), but the odd thing is that another of their songs, with a different tune of course, features the same “This Old Man” interlude too, with more banal lyrics this time (“You came home at half past three, banging on the door you forgot your key”). It turns out, when we investigate their album later on, that these two songs are almost adjacent on their album. Odd numbered tracks 5 and 7, and an odd similarity. It’s not as if he doesn’t know any other football chants, and he may well have learnt most of them from HMHB songs because next up, on track 8 we get the chant “She’s got sexy legs, she’s got sexy legs” to the “oops upside your head” tune, echoing the Biscuits’ “I don’t wear stripey kecks, babe, I don’t waer stripey kecks”.
Track 6 on the album ends with lines something like “I’m going to Churchill for cheaper home insurance and I’m going to pick my nose and thank your lucky stars that you don’t know I’ve wiped your snot on the back seat of your car.” If it were all as borrowed as this, we could all have a great time picking the collage apart to find out which Biscuit tracks and which adverts it all comes from, just like we can do with Blackwell’s lyrics themselves. And if it were all as nonsensical as this line, then I wouldn’t take it as seriously as I am. But it isn’t all like that, and even more unfortunately there is not much other witticism to take its place. When there are “targets” for a bit of social satire, as in the track “Modern Men”, they are too obvious “Zoo and Nuts, FHM, GQ, Loaded, sun beds, Fitness First, they all have the same tattoo”… And, reminding us of “Petty Sessions” for a moment, this song does mention a “man bag” too.
Craig, as I say, does have a great singing voice, much “better” in a pure singing sense than, say, Blackwell’s, and has great range in his singing style, and plenty of mimicry of different styles. On Track 1 on the album he does a great David Gedge, and the thrashy late 80s guitars and subject matter (sexual jealousy of course) is very Wedding Present too, as is the title, “Flirt”. On another track he sings about his skill in mimicry of Ian Curtis’ dance moves too, and when we saw him do the said moves on the last song they played live (I think it was called “The Music Club”), it was so true that I almost expected Craig to get the JD oven gloves out – I bet he’s got a pair. The song was wonderfully anthemic, a great set-closer which I’d certainly like to hear again, but that one isn’t on the free album so I guess I’ll have to shell out on your second album (well you won’t be giving me another freebie, not after this little Jeff Dreadnought hatchet jobbie, will you?) Any song that mentions Jonathan Richman is fine by me, but then before tonight, I would have said any song that mentions The Teardrop Explodes (track 7) or Nigel Blackwell for that matter (the aforementioned track 4) is fine by me, but now I realize it isn’t that simple.
All this taking-it-all-too-seriously that I’ve ended up doing here, well, it all comes down to the fact that if you’re going to deliberately evoke comparisons then you have to be able to stand up to comparison, and this band don’t. If the idea that “they play good tunes, have a great front man who can sing and they throw in a few Biscuity bits” is enough for you to latch on to, you’ll enjoy The Dead Shores as a support band. But if you’ve got the Biscuits on a pedestal where you get all defensive about them, and at the same time you’re self-conscious about how ridiculous and absurd it is that you get all defensive about them, then this band will tie you up in knots as they did to us, and you’re better off staying in the pub till 8.50, just before your heroes amble onstage shambolically. Not having a drink at the venue itself will then serve both as a protest about how crap the ale always is in such studenty places, and will mean that you don’t need to go for a piss mid-mosh at 10pm.
I must finish with one defence – The Dead Shores didn’t over-run, as a previous reviewer has suggested, and with one more compliment. I really like the bit in “Chopped Tomatoes” where Craig says something like:
I’m going into work on Monday
To tell the boss exactly what I think of him
And the way he runs his site
I’m going to tell him that he’s got it all wrong
And that I might mention it in one of my songs
It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to be this song
It could be the next one, or the one at the …come on! (guitar solo)
Good lines those last ones. So thanks for the free album lads and folks don’t take it from me – check them out online yourselves, and I think if you ask nicely you’ll find they may send you a free album too.
PS: while internet searching to check that “I want Nigel Blackwell’s autograph” isn’t in fact some sort of I, Ludicrous quote (dunno why something in my subconscious suddenly told me it might be, to my shame I don’t know many I, Ludicrous songs) I’ve just come across a random interweb post from last Friday, in which somebody claimed that “Richard Littlejohn is a HMHB fan.” Christ, that is depressing. Way beyond tablets. What’s the point in ever writing anything, really?
18 November 2010
Chris The Siteowner
It’s a shame that HMHB tend to write about people who are merely irritating, rather than utter twats, otherwise one short song could quickly sort out any fondness Littlejohn may have for them. But I’m not sure he does. He describes them as “legendary” here but he’s not praising them, just using them in a bigoted rant against trans-sexuals (because apparently anyone who is trans-sexual is half man, half woman; see what he did there?).
18 November 2010
s.g.d A Shropshire Lad
As Charles Caleb Colton once said:
IMITATION IS THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY
I first got into Half Man Half Biscuit because they reminded me of Norwich’s Serious Drinking,so I have no problem with the Dead Shores looking for inspiration.
“Sick and Tired” was the b-side of a single that was on sale at Probe Records last year so perhaps NB57 has also been looking for inspiration.(this space reserved for an annoying winky smiley).
I agree with you that the last song of their set was a great set-closer,so give their album another go and then search out some more I Ludicrous, you will not be disappointed.
18 November 2010
Charles Exford
Cheers SGDA, will do. And apologies to The Dead Shores if they were the ‘original’ ones with teh Tommy Walsh riff. Mrs. Exford reckons they both might have got the riff from “Parklife”. I’m not so sure. Anyway, “Good steal Nige” as they say in some crap sport.
As promised, some more Preston recollections about the main feature this time, prompted by Roger’s review.
“…..before the gods that made the gods woke up and made the gods
That’s when Ken said
That’s when Ken said
Bus lanes would soon become widely abused.”
Bandits at one o’clock! This gig’s “spotted in the audience” was Bradley Dredge. Have you ever noticed that the minor celebrity NB57 spots and gestures towards, in the manner of one of those “an audience with” type shows, is nearly always located somewhere between one and two o’clock from Nigel’s point of view?
“They watch World Cup matches down the pub
They watch World Cup matches at the pub
They watch World Cup matches at the Hungry Horse
And they Sky Plus Masterchef.”
There are 3 Hungry Horse pubs on the Wirral. Basically these are Greene King’s characterless “family” pubs on trunk roads, roundabouts, etc. The nearest to NB57 is probably the Arrowe Park. And talking of the Wirral, between songs, The Toy Story “You’ve got a friend” song was adapted to:
“You’ve got a friend in me,
You’ve got a friend in me.
When the road looks rough ahead
And you’re miles and miles from Birkenhead
You’ve got a friend in me.”
One song was introduced irkingly as “This is a song called Peking-O by Can.” Maybe it was “Everything’s AOR”, maybe “Monmore”.
The language of 24HGP is becoming ever more dramatic. Stuff like “He hates me because he’s got to trudge…” And the adverbs proliferate. The metal drawer thing now “separates us culturally and socially as well as physically.” Or something like that.
Graeme’s playing Bejewelled, as he has been for a while now. His mug is Twilight Zone and his T-shirt is “Friends of Siverstone”. Or perhaps the other way round. I’ve got a vague memory that he was reading Ken Follett, but that might just be the terrible series with Ian McShane on Saturday nights that’s made me dream that the author was mentioned at the gig.
As other punters have pointed out, two of the pre-arranged friends in the queue behind wanted Cheetos and one was thinking about asking Graeme for a can of Lilt. Then something about Graeme not knowing if they make Lilt anymore, cos NB57 certainly doesn’t, though if he did want some, or want to know if they still make it, he’d probably try a chippy. Then he shook himself out of his reverie (NB57, not Graeme) by sighing something like “Tangents” and then he’s like “That would be a good title for a New Order song”.
(See. “He’s like” is actually much more honest language use than “He said.”)
And in response to some audience in-joke banter about person or persons unknown, said third parties were at various moments given the “his dad invented the pedalo” treatment or a swipe of the old “Face of Home Bargains”.
20 November 2010
Groucho Merckx
The riff in “Tommy Walsh’s Eco House” was actually stolen from a 1994 Status Quo B-side. Fact.
9 June 2011
ExxO FROM OXTON
“Aren’t you the face of Home Bargains?” made regular appearances as one of the front man’s go-to put-downs for gobby hecklers in the 2010-2011 gig season.
I couldn’t help recalling this when I saw who will be the faces of Home Bargains from next season onwards. Thus ends the longest sponsorship deal in British football. It might take more time convincing her, now that baby you’re the face of Home Bargains.
17 April 2013