Really good show. Thought the crowd was a bit flat for most of it but it was a cracking set. I was delighted to hear Footprints and Thy Damnation Slumbereth Not. I’m sure someone will provide the full setlist but started with Light At The End Of The Tunnel and Evening Sun, ended with Everything’s AOR and encore was Fix It, cover (see comment #2), Time Flies By and Joy Division Oven Gloves.
15 May 2016
Jim Jones
A cracking night was had by all, far from flat where I was, a joyous celebration of all things, good, great….all things HMHB. The complete set list was;
Light At The End Of The Tunnel Evening Sun Old Age Killed My Teenage Bride Mountain Bikes Bob Wilson A Lilac Harry Quinn Stuck Up A Hornbeam Dukla Prague Turned Up Clocked On Laid Off Paintball Running Order Squabblefest Look Dad No Tunes Bane of Constance Footprints For What Is Chatteris Thy Damnation Slumbereth Not Slipknot Bob Todd National Shite Day We Built This Village On A Trad Arr Tune
Everything’s AOR Fix It So She Dreams Of Me Sospan Fach…(which was brilliant) Time Flies By Joy Division Oven Gloves
15 May 2016
Hendrix TATtoo
Thanks for Damnation Boys, Off to steal lead of the roof’s. #1 *off the roof* (Sorry folk’s I was drunk whilst writing) Woke up this morning feeling that someone was in my head, Tapping a little hammer. Thanks Again Dr.D/Jitsu-G/Thorsten and also the lovely ladies for your charming and excellent company. Thoroughly enjoyed the Gig, And as @Ben_W mentioned delighted to hear Footprints and Thy Damnation. Noticed that Neil has a Tattoo on his arm was this the inspiration for S.A.B T
Beats me how ‘Sospan Fach’ is always described as a traditional Welsh song. It was only written about 140 years ago and is basically a version of ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ with nursery rhyme lyrics isn´t it? So ultimately it probably derives from a speeded up version of a Scottish folk song via an American one.
16 May 2016
Jim Jones
Sospan Fach is sung mainly by fans of Llanelli RFC, or the Scarlets as they’re known these days. It describes life in the town, famous for its tinplate works. A folk song? Aye, why not, and the boys did a belting version of it, the best I’ve heard….and I’m from Llanelli.
16 May 2016
EXXO
The song was adopted much later by Llanelli fans by association with the industry you mention, but was not written about it, nor with it in mind. It was more about traditional mid-Wales life round the cottage fire. Mynyddog (Richard Davies) was very much a bard of rural mid-Wales, and though Talog whatsisname, from Merthyr added a verse, and made it popular at the Eisteddfods (of mid-wales) the latter was mainly responsible for the tune, which in my opinion is definitely derived from ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ The fella hardly wrote another tune in his life.
Anyway only 120 years old I should have said. In no way ‘trad arr.’
16 May 2016
EXXO
Just realised Jim might have thought I was commenting on the band´s choice of the song or their performance of it.
I wasn’t, just quibbling (in the A-Z sort of spirit) about the trite description you often hear of it as a ‘traditional Welsh song’as if it was trad arr.
16 May 2016
Peter Mcornithologist
I saw Man Man Man many times in an earlier life. On one occasion ,the introduction saw The Froncysyllte Male Voice Choir sing Sospan Fach. I shall never forget the power and beauty.
16 May 2016
dr desperate
I dare say I’ll be posting a few thoughts on Southampton and Cardiff when I get back from Electric 50 in Manchester tomorrow, but for the time being here’s the previous top version of ‘Sospan Fach’, by the Max Boyce tribute band, Boycezone (actually I just wanted to write ‘Max Boyce tribute band, Boycezone’). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5TN26-8pTw
16 May 2016
dr desperate
Sospan (or Sosban) Fach means ‘little saucepan’. The tune is thought to be of Norwegian origin, from Hornindal in the pleasingly-named district of Nordfjord.
Llanelli fans sing two extra lines commemorating The Scarlets’ victories over touring teams from New Zealand in 1972 and Australia in 1992: “Who beat the All Blacks? Who beat the All Blacks? Who beat the All Blacks? The good old Sospan Fach. Who beat the Walla-Wallabies? Who beat the Walla-Wallabies? Who beat the Walla-Wallabies? The good old Sospan Fach.”
NB10 attributes these victories to ‘Joni Bach’, harking back to the Talog Williams version. Enormous thanks to Mark Foster for filming this on Saturday. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qdct4q8j-aU
16 May 2016
dr desperate
Incidentally, the juxtaposition in Williams’ first verse of ‘fach’ and ‘fawr’ (little and big) has resonance for us, does it not?
@DD. Some good posts there,cheers. I can remember watching the famous 9-3 on Sportsnight with Coleman back in 1972 that era of Welsh rugby dominance made Max a TV star. I quite liked him, innocent family viewing but my dad hated him, Svarc senior was strictly a Mike Harding man.
Just remembered that my deranged, idiotic, ignorant, worst kind of Christain sadistic rugby f*ckwit of a headmaster, John Albert Gwilliam, was captain of Wales and Llanelli.
Like my previous posts, this has nothing to do with this thread. I´m just putting it here as this site does so well in google results. Maybe somebody googling John Gwilliam, captain of Wales, Newport, Llanelli, etc will come here one day and see what we (all of us) thought of the horrible d*ckhead tw*t. Who knows, maybe he might even google himself at the age of 93.
17 May 2016
Brumbiscuit
Perhaps he was related to our Welsh, sadistic twunt of a PE teacher; Dai Blackmore?
17 May 2016
EXXO
@Dr. Des
That “it is claimed” footnote on Wikipedia (if that´s where you found it), talking as if Sosban Fach was actually a trad. arr, seems more than a tad credulity-straining (though not untypical of desperate half-arsed amateur musicology). Even if it was a trad arr., where is the evidence for any Norse folk song having ever had any influence on the Welsh or indeed other only sparsely colonised parts of Britain? Maybe in Shetland, which was properly colonised over centuries, but even then no one song could ever be directly traced to any one song.
Having only found one version of the Norwegian thing on youtube, I am far from convinced it has more than a passing resemblance.
Anyway it wasn´t a trad arr. melody Talog Williams gave to the lyric, but one he made up, or rather I believe adapted from a popular American tune of 30 years earlier, which also happens to be about a ´Johnny´.
17 May 2016
Bobby SVARC
I went to school with Diane Rear.
17 May 2016
Jim Jones
I was Exxo, excellent posts anyway.
18 May 2016
dr desperate
The second gig in the band’s ‘Intoosity in Two Cities’ tour (reference, anyone?), Caerdydd was a little cracker. Everyone involved was almost freakishly good-natured, starting with the Showsecs who told punters they were searching their bags for chocolate, applauded my King of Hi-Vis jacket (“You’ve obviously thought this through”) and asked for one of the triple A’s dangling from my lanyard.
The venue, less than a year after opening, had already developed the stickiest floor I’ve ever adhered to, which may account for the almost complete absence of moshing later, though “tiredness” amongst those who’d been to Southampton the night before (Roger, Tony, Kaz, Daz, Thorsten, Caitlin etc) may have also been a factor.
JD Meatyard was delighted by the warm reception he received from a crowd he viewed as fellow Celts, and took up my suggestion of adding Dylan Thomas to the namechecks in ‘Standing On The Shoulders Of Better Men’. He’d apparently quoted him at his father’s funeral.
Walking on to ‘Men Of Harlech’, NB10 greeted the crowd with a cheery ‘Nos Da’, and spoke Welsh several times during the evening, including at one point what sounded like a recitation of that village in Anglesey with the longest place name in Europe.
The mapbook route from Soton to Cardiff was painstakingly elaborated, with a sneer of “Satnav – Schmatnav”. Ken apparently read Philip K Dick all the way across. Having got our Dicks and Sturgeons mixed up in Holmfirth I attempted to redress the balance by suggesting the book might have been ‘More Than Human’, but Nigel wasn’t fooled.
He claimed the ‘Manics’ reference in ‘Paintball’ as a true story, citing as evidence his ownership of a tape of ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’, and also mentioned Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark’s ‘Red Frame, White Light’, suggesting that they might one day remake it as ‘No Frame, No Light’. The telephone box in Meols to which it refers is apparently on his bike ride, and still has the same number as the chorus of the song (6323003, factfans). The M53 was described as the dividing line in the Wirral beyond which people like OMD.
Mention of Eurovision around 10pm prompted a comment that we could have been watching the voting by then, followed by the assertion that ‘Chatteris’ was written as a Eurovision entry, and could have come 8th or 9th but for the monetary demands of the Ivorians (a phrase which I’m sure will turn up in a song one day).
Nigel admitted that Tony’s Theremin joke from the night before had gone completely over his head, and he’d only just got it.
In guitar news, Nigel’s Fender strap mysteriously appeared the right way up, and there was a welcome return for the Airstream, which actually made it through two songs without having to be abandoned. We were informed that the deal-breaker that sold it to him was the control knob set into the caravan wheel, and that another advantage was that he could keep it at (presumably Chapel-En-Le-) Frith over the winter. Neil, the bassist and Ken swapped axes for ‘Bane Of Constance’ and ‘Footprints’ (Oh yeah, they did ‘Footprints’! With “You stupid, stupid bastard” amendment!)
The cover was a stomping version of ‘Sospan Fach’, definitely not a trad arr song. When it came to the verses about beating the All Blacks and the Walla-wallabies Nigel asked if there was anyone in from Llanelli, to which the bloke in front of me roared and shook his crutch. His metal crutch, that is (no, that sounds worse).
Post-match lagers (including a gluten-free and extremely nasty ‘Celia’) were taken in the City Arms, chosen for its proximity and closing time of 2am.
Ar i Cambridge!
18 May 2016
Schoon
Ted Nugent.
18 May 2016
dr desperate
Give that man (or woman) a packet of broken biscuits! (Though I got it from Wayne’s World, and now I come to look at it, it’s ‘Intensities’.)
18 May 2016
TOASTKID
Great review DrD, almost feel like I was there. Cheers!
19 May 2016
Nagasaki Shinpads
I am putting up.a shout out for The Clash’s “English Civil War” re Johnny and his military march home-coming. Great song off Give’Em enough Rope I dare to remember..
19 May 2016
dr desperate
And another for Steve Earle’s ‘Johnny Come Lately’, ditto off ‘Copperhead Road’.
Hendrix TATtoo
Thanks for Damnation Boys, Off to steal lead of the roof’s.
14 May 2016
Ian a
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sosban_Fach
15 May 2016
Ben_W
Really good show. Thought the crowd was a bit flat for most of it but it was a cracking set. I was delighted to hear Footprints and Thy Damnation Slumbereth Not. I’m sure someone will provide the full setlist but started with Light At The End Of The Tunnel and Evening Sun, ended with Everything’s AOR and encore was Fix It, cover (see comment #2), Time Flies By and Joy Division Oven Gloves.
15 May 2016
Jim Jones
A cracking night was had by all, far from flat where I was, a joyous celebration of all things, good, great….all things HMHB.
The complete set list was;
Light At The End Of The Tunnel
Evening Sun
Old Age Killed My Teenage Bride
Mountain Bikes
Bob Wilson
A Lilac Harry Quinn
Stuck Up A Hornbeam
Dukla Prague
Turned Up Clocked On Laid Off
Paintball
Running Order Squabblefest
Look Dad No Tunes
Bane of Constance
Footprints
For What Is Chatteris
Thy Damnation Slumbereth Not
Slipknot
Bob Todd
National Shite Day
We Built This Village On A Trad Arr Tune
Everything’s AOR
Fix It So She Dreams Of Me
Sospan Fach…(which was brilliant)
Time Flies By
Joy Division Oven Gloves
15 May 2016
Hendrix TATtoo
Thanks for Damnation Boys, Off to steal lead of the roof’s. #1 *off the roof*
(Sorry folk’s I was drunk whilst writing)
Woke up this morning feeling that someone was in my head, Tapping a little hammer.
Thanks Again Dr.D/Jitsu-G/Thorsten and also the lovely ladies for your charming and excellent company.
Thoroughly enjoyed the Gig, And as @Ben_W mentioned delighted to hear Footprints and Thy Damnation.
Noticed that Neil has a Tattoo on his arm was this the inspiration for
S.A.B T
15 May 2016
CARRIE ANNE
Roger Green’s review on Gez’s website http://cobweb.businesscollaborator.com/hmhb/guest/index.htm
16 May 2016
EXXO
Beats me how ‘Sospan Fach’ is always described as a traditional Welsh song. It was only written about 140 years ago and is basically a version of ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ with nursery rhyme lyrics isn´t it? So ultimately it probably derives from a speeded up version of a Scottish folk song via an American one.
16 May 2016
Jim Jones
Sospan Fach is sung mainly by fans of Llanelli RFC, or the Scarlets as they’re known these days. It describes life in the town, famous for its tinplate works.
A folk song?
Aye, why not, and the boys did a belting version of it, the best I’ve heard….and I’m from Llanelli.
16 May 2016
EXXO
The song was adopted much later by Llanelli fans by association with the industry you mention, but was not written about it, nor with it in mind. It was more about traditional mid-Wales life round the cottage fire. Mynyddog (Richard Davies) was very much a bard of rural mid-Wales, and though Talog whatsisname, from Merthyr added a verse, and made it popular at the Eisteddfods (of mid-wales) the latter was mainly responsible for the tune, which in my opinion is definitely derived from ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ The fella hardly wrote another tune in his life.
Anyway only 120 years old I should have said. In no way ‘trad arr.’
16 May 2016
EXXO
Just realised Jim might have thought I was commenting on the band´s choice of the song or their performance of it.
I wasn’t, just quibbling (in the A-Z sort of spirit) about the trite description you often hear of it as a ‘traditional Welsh song’as if it was trad arr.
16 May 2016
Peter Mcornithologist
I saw Man Man Man many times in an earlier life. On one occasion ,the introduction saw The Froncysyllte Male Voice Choir sing Sospan Fach. I shall never forget the power and beauty.
16 May 2016
dr desperate
I dare say I’ll be posting a few thoughts on Southampton and Cardiff when I get back from Electric 50 in Manchester tomorrow, but for the time being here’s the previous top version of ‘Sospan Fach’, by the Max Boyce tribute band, Boycezone (actually I just wanted to write ‘Max Boyce tribute band, Boycezone’).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5TN26-8pTw
16 May 2016
dr desperate
Sospan (or Sosban) Fach means ‘little saucepan’. The tune is thought to be of Norwegian origin, from Hornindal in the pleasingly-named district of Nordfjord.
Llanelli fans sing two extra lines commemorating The Scarlets’ victories over touring teams from New Zealand in 1972 and Australia in 1992:
“Who beat the All Blacks? Who beat the All Blacks?
Who beat the All Blacks? The good old Sospan Fach.
Who beat the Walla-Wallabies? Who beat the Walla-Wallabies?
Who beat the Walla-Wallabies? The good old Sospan Fach.”
NB10 attributes these victories to ‘Joni Bach’, harking back to the Talog Williams version. Enormous thanks to Mark Foster for filming this on Saturday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qdct4q8j-aU
16 May 2016
dr desperate
Incidentally, the juxtaposition in Williams’ first verse of ‘fach’ and ‘fawr’ (little and big) has resonance for us, does it not?
16 May 2016
Chris The Siteowner
CULT favourites Half Man Half Biscuit brought their flippant brand of post-punk to a jubilant South-Wales audience… (South Wales Argus)
17 May 2016
bobby svarc
@DD. Some good posts there,cheers. I can remember watching the famous 9-3 on Sportsnight with Coleman back in 1972 that era of Welsh rugby dominance made Max a TV star. I quite liked him, innocent family viewing but my dad hated him, Svarc senior was strictly a Mike Harding man.
17 May 2016
Bobby SVARC
Great video here, if you have a spare hour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0Kv9FXqs1k
17 May 2016
EXXO
Just remembered that my deranged, idiotic, ignorant, worst kind of Christain sadistic rugby f*ckwit of a headmaster, John Albert Gwilliam, was captain of Wales and Llanelli.
Like my previous posts, this has nothing to do with this thread. I´m just putting it here as this site does so well in google results. Maybe somebody googling John Gwilliam, captain of Wales, Newport, Llanelli, etc will come here one day and see what we (all of us) thought of the horrible d*ckhead tw*t. Who knows, maybe he might even google himself at the age of 93.
17 May 2016
Brumbiscuit
Perhaps he was related to our Welsh, sadistic twunt of a PE teacher; Dai Blackmore?
17 May 2016
EXXO
@Dr. Des
That “it is claimed” footnote on Wikipedia (if that´s where you found it), talking as if Sosban Fach was actually a trad. arr, seems more than a tad credulity-straining (though not untypical of desperate half-arsed amateur musicology). Even if it was a trad arr., where is the evidence for any Norse folk song having ever had any influence on the Welsh or indeed other only sparsely colonised parts of Britain? Maybe in Shetland, which was properly colonised over centuries, but even then no one song could ever be directly traced to any one song.
Having only found one version of the Norwegian thing on youtube, I am far from convinced it has more than a passing resemblance.
Anyway it wasn´t a trad arr. melody Talog Williams gave to the lyric, but one he made up, or rather I believe adapted from a popular American tune of 30 years earlier, which also happens to be about a ´Johnny´.
17 May 2016
Bobby SVARC
I went to school with Diane Rear.
17 May 2016
Jim Jones
I was Exxo, excellent posts anyway.
18 May 2016
dr desperate
The second gig in the band’s ‘Intoosity in Two Cities’ tour (reference, anyone?), Caerdydd was a little cracker. Everyone involved was almost freakishly good-natured, starting with the Showsecs who told punters they were searching their bags for chocolate, applauded my King of Hi-Vis jacket (“You’ve obviously thought this through”) and asked for one of the triple A’s dangling from my lanyard.
The venue, less than a year after opening, had already developed the stickiest floor I’ve ever adhered to, which may account for the almost complete absence of moshing later, though “tiredness” amongst those who’d been to Southampton the night before (Roger, Tony, Kaz, Daz, Thorsten, Caitlin etc) may have also been a factor.
JD Meatyard was delighted by the warm reception he received from a crowd he viewed as fellow Celts, and took up my suggestion of adding Dylan Thomas to the namechecks in ‘Standing On The Shoulders Of Better Men’. He’d apparently quoted him at his father’s funeral.
Walking on to ‘Men Of Harlech’, NB10 greeted the crowd with a cheery ‘Nos Da’, and spoke Welsh several times during the evening, including at one point what sounded like a recitation of that village in Anglesey with the longest place name in Europe.
The mapbook route from Soton to Cardiff was painstakingly elaborated, with a sneer of “Satnav – Schmatnav”. Ken apparently read Philip K Dick all the way across. Having got our Dicks and Sturgeons mixed up in Holmfirth I attempted to redress the balance by suggesting the book might have been ‘More Than Human’, but Nigel wasn’t fooled.
He claimed the ‘Manics’ reference in ‘Paintball’ as a true story, citing as evidence his ownership of a tape of ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’, and also mentioned Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark’s ‘Red Frame, White Light’, suggesting that they might one day remake it as ‘No Frame, No Light’. The telephone box in Meols to which it refers is apparently on his bike ride, and still has the same number as the chorus of the song (6323003, factfans). The M53 was described as the dividing line in the Wirral beyond which people like OMD.
Mention of Eurovision around 10pm prompted a comment that we could have been watching the voting by then, followed by the assertion that ‘Chatteris’ was written as a Eurovision entry, and could have come 8th or 9th but for the monetary demands of the Ivorians (a phrase which I’m sure will turn up in a song one day).
Nigel admitted that Tony’s Theremin joke from the night before had gone completely over his head, and he’d only just got it.
In guitar news, Nigel’s Fender strap mysteriously appeared the right way up, and there was a welcome return for the Airstream, which actually made it through two songs without having to be abandoned. We were informed that the deal-breaker that sold it to him was the control knob set into the caravan wheel, and that another advantage was that he could keep it at (presumably Chapel-En-Le-) Frith over the winter. Neil, the bassist and Ken swapped axes for ‘Bane Of Constance’ and ‘Footprints’ (Oh yeah, they did ‘Footprints’! With “You stupid, stupid bastard” amendment!)
The cover was a stomping version of ‘Sospan Fach’, definitely not a trad arr song. When it came to the verses about beating the All Blacks and the Walla-wallabies Nigel asked if there was anyone in from Llanelli, to which the bloke in front of me roared and shook his crutch. His metal crutch, that is (no, that sounds worse).
Post-match lagers (including a gluten-free and extremely nasty ‘Celia’) were taken in the City Arms, chosen for its proximity and closing time of 2am.
Ar i Cambridge!
18 May 2016
Schoon
Ted Nugent.
18 May 2016
dr desperate
Give that man (or woman) a packet of broken biscuits! (Though I got it from Wayne’s World, and now I come to look at it, it’s ‘Intensities’.)
18 May 2016
TOASTKID
Great review DrD, almost feel like I was there. Cheers!
19 May 2016
Nagasaki Shinpads
I am putting up.a shout out for The Clash’s “English Civil War” re Johnny and his military march home-coming. Great song off Give’Em enough Rope I dare to remember..
19 May 2016
dr desperate
And another for Steve Earle’s ‘Johnny Come Lately’, ditto off ‘Copperhead Road’.
19 May 2016