CD (PROBE71), 20 October 2014
- Westward Ho! – Massive Letdown
- This One’s For Now
- Baguette Dilemma For The Booker Prize Guy
- My Outstretched Arms
- The Bane Of Constance
- Theme Tune For Something Or Other
- False Grit
- Old Age Killed My Teenage Bride
- Urge For Offal
- Stuck Up A Hornbeam
- Adam Boyle Has Cast Lad Rock Aside
- The Unfortunate Gwatkin
- Mileage Chart
“Urge For Offal” at the Probe Plus Store.
Album Reviews
“As fans will happily anticipate, Urge For Offal presents folk and punk rock-informed commentaries that wittily fixate on the pedantic surface to better reach the truths below” ★★★★
Ian Harrison, Mojo
“In a too often sterile and ugly world, we need someone to come along regularly and remind us that essentially we all inhabit the same strange and ridiculous reality and that it’s the odder details that are worth laughing at or crying along to.
Mark Whitby, Louder Than War
“Though Urge For Offal may feel a bit like Half Man Half Biscuit by-numbers, it acts as a reminder of what they represent. And that is something that be celebrated, albeit quietly.”
Luke Slater, The Quietus
“If Blackwell reminds me of any other songwriter, it has to be Jonathan Richman above all – simply incapable of taking himself seriously, or for that matter of taking himself any one way at any one time.”
Charles Exford, The Uffington Post blog
“The increased emphasis on guitars means that Urge for Offal is a considerably more accessible album for newcomers to HMHB and that’s no bad thing, as they deserve to finally have recognition as one of the UK’s greatest bands.”
Jon B, Backseat Mafia
“Urge for Offal, just like the rest of their catalogue, puts the emphasis on great songwriting, both in terms of melody and lyric, and in that sense it doesn’t disappoint.”
Nathan Richardson, the Nathan Richardson blog
“They may have a foot planted more firmly than usual in late night radio’s glorious past, but that’s sort of why us silly old sods listen to them and still take them so readily and happily to heart.”
The Six Days From Tomorrow blog
“During the recent World Series, viewers were subjected to a 30 second U2 spot during each commercial break. In moments like this the knowledge that somewhere in England’s north-west HMHB are preparing a new release is all that can stop you from binning music off altogether.”
Stephen Duffy, the StephenDuffyMedia blog
“It’s like a cryptic crossword of trivia set to music. Or like he’s setting us homework. But fun homework. I’m discovering more on each listen – it’s the gift that keeps on giving.”
Nick Walters, the It Scarcely Seems Possible blog
“It is very good, but it’s not quite a ‘McIntyre, Treadmore and Davitt’, as if that was in some way a criticism. After all, it’s like Doctor Who – you’re attached to your first one in a way unlike any others.”
John Dobson, the Dukla Prague Away Kit blog
exxo
38 long days to speculate about the content behind the brilliant, brilliant song titles (I always think this pre-release anticipation is the only time when that “HMHB – aren’t the song titles on their own great?” mentality is entirely justified).
12 September 2014
THe drummer out of flintlock
I saw the list of titles on twitter and assumed it was a wind up. Mind you, I thought the same when I saw the Mercury short list.
12 September 2014
toastkid
Brilliant, how exciting!
12 September 2014
Bobby SVARC
I did tell you yesterday
12 September 2014
Adam Boyle
Adam Boyle…
12 September 2014
Chris The Siteowner
Gwatkin Cider?
The Reverend Henry Melvill Gwatkin?
Willoughby Garnons Gwatkin?
Robert Lovell Gwatkin?
The Reverend Thomas Gwatkin?
Captain Roland Gwatkin from Dance to the Music of Time?
12 September 2014
GoK WAN ACOLYTE
None of those Gwatkins seem particularly “unfortunate”….
On the other hand, the Bain of Constance? Bain as a noun means a bath. That makes it sound more like a Divine Comedy song title (cf Bernice Bobs Her Hair*). The Bane (as in ruin) of Constance seems to make more sense, but I guess we will have to wait for the album to find out. Perhaps she’s ruined by her bath?
* I know it’s originally a F Scott Fitzgerald story
12 September 2014
Bobby SVARC
“Urge For Going” ?
12 September 2014
dirk hofman
Oxymoronic Military Intelligence had a massive letdown at Westward Ho! in 1943 when they used the beach to test ‘the great panjandrum’. Ell Gwatkin has an unfortunate twatter profile, Adam Boyle was in the Quite Nice Theatre Company… and hornbeam is a remedy for a familiar malaise…
12 September 2014
Jitsu_G
Released on same day as new Slipknot album
12 September 2014
exxo
Mick, I know you’ve probably had this conversation with Geoff already, but just like 3 years ago he and the band are losing money as soon as Amazon have their pre-order facility up and Probe doesn’t.
Already on the footy forums I frequent there are people wanting to order & give Geoff and the band all their money, as opposed to the fewer quids they’ll get through Amazon.
Can I at least give them Geoff’s email addy to express their interest in pre-ordering it? Or would it be best at this stage for there to be another email address created just for that purpose so as not to overwhelm Geoff?
NB I myself would volunteer to spend some time in L’pool in the next couple of weeks helping Geoff with the orders if he needs it…
12 September 2014
Chris The Siteowner
Me too, Exxo, I’ve been talking to Geoff for the past two years about setting up a pre-order web page, but he and/or the band just don’t seem to get it. Sites like this, and the Facebook group, could have really made sure that as many orders as possible came in directly, and (I hope) significantly reduced the amount of money going to multinational non-taxpaying corporations. However, in the end I just gave up. We’ll do what we can here, without any help from the band or the label, but I don’t know why we bother, ‘cos they sure as hell don’t seem interested. It’s a real shame.
As an aside, the tweets I posted this morning about the new album have already been retweeted enough times to have had a total reach of over 100,000 people. The response has been astonishing. I’m not linking to Amazon from there or here, but I suspect that’s where many people will find their way. I wish the band would realise that having something online promoting and selling the album is not “selling out”, like they presumably seem to think, but is actually helping the fans avoid lining the pockets of Amazon etc.
I don’t suppose the band will see this, and even if they did, I get the impression they’ve got better things to worry about; but it would be nice if they could make an effort to help us make an effort.
12 September 2014
exxo
I have to pretend not to be impressed by such things generally, but go on, getting an RT (yes OK I’ll stop pretending I don’t know what an RT is) off Pete Wylie? Well, I was mildly impressed.
In other news I acknowledged to Mrs. Exford the other day that her sat nav had its uses.
12 September 2014
Bobby SVARC
You should be able to pre order the new album from the Probe Plus Store next week, It’ll be posted on the Probe Plus site asap. (and here of course – CtSO)
12 September 2014
Schoon
“False Grit” made me laugh. Can’t wait and I don’t have to read these comments any more.
12 September 2014
Harry the Dog
I’m new. Never posted in here before. Just saying.
Hey, do I need to give a pound to an old geezer sat at a table just inside the front door? Hope so, I want one of those raffle-ticket ‘proof of entry’ tickets for my collection.
Anyway, oooooh! New album!
12 September 2014
dr desperate
Presumably one of those brilliant titles will turn out to be “You’re So Beige”.
New album!!! Sleepless nights ahead.
12 September 2014
Bobby SVARC
That be Geoff then
12 September 2014
BrumBiscuit
Echoing CtSO’s and EXXO’s comments, it would seem that the band’s anti-corporate stance, i.e. their attitude to pre-orders and the like, could perversely be aiding, abetting and enriching the Amazon’s of this world. I’d much rather give the band my money via PP than to some tax-dodging bunch of arse from which they would probably only get pennies.
12 September 2014
exxo
I suspect that the band would deny having an anti-corporate stance and just say they just want to do things without too much fuss so they can get on with their lives …. but yeah.
12 September 2014
Dr Desperate
And we know what that attitude can lead to, don’t we children?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lhv2lhGZsNU
12 September 2014
peter mcornithologist
If the urge for offal is not controlled then 90 Bisodol may be useful.
12 September 2014
Tez
Is this the first time a song title has been used as the album title on an LP?
12 September 2014
Mary dingo
I think it recognises Paul Gwatkin who swam for Warrington Dolphins. He swam Coniston solo in 3:08:00 when he was 11. The minimum age for recognition by the BLDSA is 12.
12 September 2014
TimBurrows
Sadly Tez, no.
This Leaden Pall takes that honour.
Suspect that Track 2 is the previously aired “You’re So Beige”.
13 September 2014
Vendor of quack nostrums
@Mary Dingo: One and the same?
13 September 2014
PADDY POWER
Due to the massive interest in the forthcoming CD ‘Urge for Offal’, here at Paddy Power we will be offering daily specials on the content of the lyrics.
First track one: ‘Westward Ho! Massive Disappointment’
4/5The lyrics mention rain, clouds or wind (see terms and conditions for the approved list of synonyms for these meteorological conditions)
EvensThe lyrics refer to the beach.
6/4Charles Kingsley is mentioned by name.
2/1The exclamation mark is not specifically referred to in the lyrics.
9/4The lyrics refer to that place in Quebec that has exclamation marks.
5/2At least two species of birds are mentioned in the lyrics.
9/4The lyrics refer to the nearby cliffs.
11/4The lyrics specifically mention the ‘Blue Flag’ beach award (or the safety of the bathing – see t’s & c’s)
3/1At least two resorts in Devon beginning with ‘B’ are mentioned in the lyrics.
6/1The TV programme ‘Coast’ (or any of its past or current presenters) is mentioned. But not that ITV one that’s a direct rip-off of Coast.
7/1That ITV one is mentioned.
8/1It’s a ‘talkie’ as opposed to a song with rhyming lyrics (see terms and conditions pages 345-387 for definitions)
9/1The Tarka Trail is mentioned.
10/1The lyrics refer to reading the book ‘Westward Ho!’ but not at all to visiting the place.
12/1The phrase ‘bring a (or the/my) flask’ is included (in any tense)
15/1Sir Francis Drake is mentioned.
20/1Nick Drake is mentioned.
22/1Nick Ross is mentioned.
24/1Paul Ross is mentioned.
25/1Les Paul is mentioned.
26/1Les Dawson is mentioned.
28/1The lyrics are about a fictional band called ‘Westward Ho’.
400/1The lyrics report the true story of an actual secret gig in Westward Ho! which is given a bad review by the lyricist himself.
13 September 2014
Bobby SVARC
Paddy, What odds will you give me on how many footballers will be mentioned in the forthcoming album?
13 September 2014
PADDY POWER
Wait a minute, this doesn’t work does it – how do we know who’s been having a sneaky listen to this record already?
Ah well it’s all good publicity I’ll just make it max bet £10.
None of the titles sound all that footbally do they really though? We’ll get back to you on that one Bobby.
13 September 2014
Bobby SVARC
Typical shitehouse bookie 🙂
13 September 2014
WARDEN HODGES
Biccipedia just been taken to another level!
13 September 2014
Chris The Siteowner
Jeez, I’m the truth is just dawning on me how much the A-Z is going to be all over the place when a new album comes out. Should I “add in” the release of all the new references at the appropriate alphabetical time (bearing in mind the existing ones are scheduled, so you’ll be getting more than one a day)? Or shall I just bung them all on the end (bearing in mind that “Zürich” really is several years away, as you’ve presumably worked out by now)?
13 September 2014
WARDEN HODGES
Thankfully, we are an eclectic bunch if nothing else. Re A-Z, carry on as normal then breakdown the references from the new album.
I’d slot maybe one per day from the new album in addition to two from the existing list. Any references from A-D then maybe merge the rest with existing list, by then we’ll be humming/whistling away.
13 September 2014
Chris the siteowner
Thanks Warden. Always reassuring to get guidance from someone in uniform. An extra item a day, from the new album, in alphabetical order, until we catch up with the existing A-Z, then I’ll slip the rest in, also as daily extras, at the appropriate alphabetical point. Nothing will start until we’ve nailed down the whole album though.
13 September 2014
Bobby SVARC
£10 on Les Dawson
13 September 2014
Dr Desperate
Some psychic bidding from Bex P on Tripadvisor here (she seems to be OK with ancient packhorse bridges, though)
13 September 2014
Dr Desperate
“Zürich”, ehhh?
13 September 2014
Featureless tv producer steve
Based solely upon the titles, I’m most looking forward to the title cut, followed by “False Grit” and “The Unfortunate Gwatkin”.
14 September 2014
Kendo nagasaki
My excitement knows no bounds. Old age killed my teenage bride excites me the most given just the titles. Hopefully we get a sneak preview on an upcoming 6music session that I am as yet unaware of.
14 September 2014
Bobby SVARC
Where’s da bookie?
14 September 2014
acidic regulator
“Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.” – James Joyce, Ulysses
Any takers for that as the idea behind the title? (I’m mildly surprised that NB10 has never lifted those last three or seven words.)
14 September 2014
acidic regulator
In other news, an email dated 13th September from one of those Wikipedia bots reads:
Editor’s Recommendation (EP) was linked from Slipknot (band).
.
14 September 2014
Schoon
13 songs on the 13th album.
14 September 2014
acidic regulator
@@Schoon I’m hoping for 666 songs on the 666th album.
14 September 2014
GoK WAN ACOLYTE
@Acidic Regulator – if you google the words “urge for offal” the only non-HMHB reference in the first three pages is here.
15 September 2014
paul f
@ Gok Wan Acolyte – A “darker and wilder” urge for offal no less. I wonder if that has implications for the tone of the album.
15 September 2014
Bobby SVARC
http://probe-plus.co.uk/index.php/news
15 September 2014
Schoon
@acidic even if you live that long (and you’d be over 100 I think) there would still probably only be 13 songs on the 666th album.
15 September 2014
Schoon
Can anyone tell what the songs sound like from just the titles? I’d like to save time when I get it and skip the talking ones.
Also is it OK to download the torrent if I buy the album?
15 September 2014
Schoon
This site is fantastic.
15 September 2014
Matt
http://probe-plus.co.uk/index.php/news
*loving the typo on “pre-oder”
15 September 2014
dr desperate
@Schoon Skip the talking ones? Skip the talking ones?? Would you skip ‘National Shite Day’? Or ‘Descent of the Stiperstones’? Or ‘The Referee’s Alphabet’ ? (Actually, come to think of it I do often skip ‘The Referee’s Alphabet’.)
‘Stuck Up A Hornbeam’ definitely isn’t a talking one, ‘Mileage Chart’ (from its position) might be, ‘Theme Tune For Something Or Other’ probably isn’t. My advice would be to listen to them all, just in case.
@CtSO ‘Urge For Offal’ will be PROBE71, according to the Probe Plus discography.
15 September 2014
Jeff dreadnought
@Schoon Were you perhaps hoping that this next album would be more “song-based”?
15 September 2014
Dave Cooper
I’m definitely thinking a Jay Rayner reference in the title track, his Observer articles rarely go by without a mention of offal of some sort.
15 September 2014
Paul the newt
Why is the pre-order from Amazon v Probe Plus debate such a big issue?
I can understand that Amazon cuts the profit margins to the Band and to Probe through their marketing methods. However, there must be some colaboration for Amazon to be able to release a track listing and offer pre-order so quickly.
But are we ignoring the elephant in the room?
It is the D**kheads that will upload the album to YouTube, or to a Torrent site that are the problem. This results in No money for the band and No money for Probe Plus.
15 September 2014
EXXO
You don’t get a national distribution deal at all (in shops) without including Amazon.
Amazon have more employees with more targets than any other company, and an established system for cornering the market quicker than anyone else therefore they have predictably marketed it quicker than anyone else.
Under the D. Deal, Probe are not allowed to market it before Amazon. Nor are they allowed to jump the release date*, nor undercut their price by any significant amount.
But each of the band members and Geoff will make a significant amount less, I’m guessing approx £1 per member _per album_ less, if you buy it through Amazon than through Probe.
It is therefore incumbent upon anyone who cares to spread the word to your mates and forums that please as many people as possible can you buy it from Probe, directly. Cos Probe and the band aren’t allowed to say that.
And that’s without any of the ‘Amazon tax scandal probably bribing the Tories in some way or other to lay off them’ considerations.
(and of course to do this without making it a fucking facebook or fucking twitter fucking campaign of any kind).
15 September 2014
Chris The Siteowner
You’re absolutely right of course Paul. But I think in this day and age there’s nothing that can be done about those who’ll distribute the album for free, and if people ain’t gonna pay for it, they ain’t gonna pay for it. To be honest, nowadays I’d never point people in the direction of uploaded copies of an album, or send them the files, yet 25 years ago I’d have been piling through a stack of TDK C90s for my friends as soon as I got an album.
I think the main worry here is trying to ensure that people who want to buy the album, and want to buy it from as close a source to the band as possible, aren’t disadvantaged. I’d be frustrated if Amazon were offering to deliver the album to me on the release date, and Probe Plus weren’t, and the fact that Amazon were able to announce the album first doesn’t fill me with confidence that this won’t be the case. Fortunately, last album, Probe Plus got all the preorders out as early (if not earlier) than the big distributors like Amazon. Even so, I know that a few people (because they mentioned it here) paid for a legit download just because they couldn’t wait for the post to arrive.
15 September 2014
Dr Desperate
Hoping to purchase one at Bilston. If not, I can wait till Probe Plus have it available, which last time was sooner than my other preferred option, a proper record shop (eg Jumbo in Leeds).
15 September 2014
EXXO
I’m only guesstimating here, but the difference in earnings for each band member between a copy of the album bought direct from Probe and one bought from Amazon is likely to be far greater than the difference between a copy bought from Amazon and one ripped off for nowt.
15 September 2014
Hermann
Is that Neil, the bass player on the cover?
16 September 2014
Dave
Like Dr.D i am hoping to pick up a copy at Bilston.
Roll on Bilston, roll on Offal.
16 September 2014
Chris The Siteowner
I’d love to find out, if there’s someone here who knows, how much a band typically makes from:
1. A CD bought directly (bearing in mind a CD costs money to make);
2. A CD bought through a record store;
3. A CD bought through an international retailer like Amazon;
4. A download from somewhere like the iTunes Music Store.
I know that in the UK, the market share for downloaded albums continues to grow steadily, but CDs still outsell downloaded albums about 2:1. The iTunes Music Store dominates the download market. Of course, the best markup of all is for a band to offer a download direct from their website. It’s quite possible nowadays, and indeed a band with a reasonably sized and well-connected fanbase like HMHB is exactly the type of band which could do that (in my dreams).
16 September 2014
Evan
I can partially answer your question, Chris…
As I understand it (my wife works for a indie label), the record company produce the CDs and then sell them via a distributer to the various retail outlets. The price they sell the CDs at have to be low enough for the retailer to make a mark up to cover their particular profit margin, while still covering their own costs and paying the distributor a percentage. When I worked at Tower Records a number of years ago, the buy price was typically about 50-60% of the sale price. I think they may also do deals directly with independent retailers, but I am not 100% on that.
When you buy a CD from a band at a show, they will have bought them directly from the record company. I would imagine that the cost price will vary, but it is at the band’s discretion how much they mark that up (although that itself may vary from label to label). This is the way for the band to take the biggest cut from the CD itself I believe.
If you buy a CD/Download direct from the record company, then this is the most profitable way of selling music for a record label. The direct to seller approach means cutting out the middle man, and therefore making the largest profit from the sale.
Downloads via the online retailers have the least over head costs, but I am unsure of the actual maths involved.
Hope that helps a bit
16 September 2014
Jitsu_G
Similarly hoping for a Bilston purchase. 90 Bisodol was available at the Leamington Spa gig prior to its official release date but not sure how long before the official date the gig was
16 September 2014
Dr Desperate
@Hermann As opposed to Neil, the baby?
16 September 2014
celery
Search YouTube for “1970s Coin Operated Ostrich Ride” and you get this one minute video of that Ostrich in action at Earnley Butterflies & Gardens in Chichester, East Sussex. Looks like good value at 20p a go.
16 September 2014
CARRIE ANNE
This must be the first release to feature an image of an actual band member on the front? Or is it Ken on Saucy Haulage Ballads?
Really hope it’s for sale at the Bilston gig, not that I’m excited or anything, but only 23 more sleeps to go.
16 September 2014
Bobby SVARC
@PaddyPower, Are you a happy bunny 😉
16 September 2014
WARDEN HODGES
If no purchase Bilston then PP on the Monday dinnertime then a pie and a pint in ‘The Post Office’.
16 September 2014
WARDEN HODGES
‘Old Post Office’ in fact.
16 September 2014
acidic regulator
@@Gok Wan Acolyte, that ‘Urge for Offal’ link you found on Google is seriously disturbing. Warm Goat Cheese Salad would be a cracking song title, though. (A Lay Cook’s Musings has promise too.)
16 September 2014
acidic regulator
@@Celery good value at 20p per go on that ostrich ride? It looks like a pain in the balls.
16 September 2014
DRab olive
Back to the Paddy Power piece ..
28/1 the name of a band is pinching money ……86000 Ugandan Dollars …Each Way…
Retirement plan …without Parky …or that old duffer nobody knows…
As ever a Ps…
…. Hovis ..Fletchers…Warburtons….
Thems the Bakeries…
17 September 2014
paul f
The band’s namechecking of other musical acts is clearly influential, as when viewing the Amazon page for UfO (I wonder if the initialisation is relevant at all?) I get a “customers who viewed this also viewed” including Sleater-Kinney, Bonnie Prince Billy and Annie Lennox!
17 September 2014
bobby svarc
It’s oh so quiet…
18 September 2014
Schoon
@Jeff dreadnaught
I was amused by your comment, but could not remember where it came from. Being a bit thick, it did not dawn on me it might be a HMHB reference. Ironically today I listened to Breaking News, a non-song-based-song, which I normally skip over.
18 September 2014
Schoon
What if it’s rubbish like The King of Limbs?
18 September 2014
celery
What’s the odds on ‘Theme Tune To Something Or Other’ being a… *deep breath*… instrumental?!
18 September 2014
Jeff dreadnought
@Schoon In a similar vein, does this being the 13th album mean only another eight to go before they dust off the bongos?
19 September 2014
@cawseetiger
I did ask Geoff (at Stowmarket) last year would the band every release a disc with some of the obscure / deleted tracks that crop up on ebay now and again, which go for high prices. He asked me to email him my suggestion (which I did) but I never heard back on whether it was something they (band) would consider.
I should add that I’d rather buy/pre-order via the PP web site than Amazon.
19 September 2014
@cawseetiger
Posted comments / link to this site on my FB page referencing the conversation about pre order availability, had a comment back to say Manchester’s Piccadilly Records have it on pre-order online.
A better option than Amazon?
19 September 2014
Harry the Dog
From what it says on the PP pre-order page, there’s 200 CDs in stock.
“£9.95 INCLUDING DELIVERY”
20 September 2014
Harry the Dog
PP now showing 196 left in stock after the two that I bought and a couple of others that have just been nabbed.
Do you reckon if we keep watching, they’ll sell faster… or is it like watching a pot never boiling?
20 September 2014
aiwacat
197 when I placed my order last night, now down to 190.
I expect a rapid dwindling of the stock once CtSO knocks up a more prominent link to the relevant page on the PP store.
Under 100 by midweek?
21 September 2014
WARDEN HODGES
Steady on now chaps! Having pre-ordered the last 3 CDs, I did fancy a walk past the Blue Coat chambers and handing my tenner in to ‘Steve’ ( a guy who tends to roll skins all day…..)
I assume there will be a reserve of 15-20 in the shop that day.
21 September 2014
aiwacat
The vinyl/CD combo is up for pre-order, for the traditionalists among you.
21 September 2014
Rob S
I know several folks have made this comment already, but does anyone have any idea whether the album will be available at Bilston? I’ll get my pre-order in otherwise.
21 September 2014
Chris The Siteowner
Selling an album ten days before its release would understandably cause upset in the distribution and retail community, so it’s unlikely. There might be some promotional copies around, but don’t turn up expecting Geoff to have boxes to sell. At Leicester, he’ll presumably have a vanful.
21 September 2014
Schoon
I’ve noticed every time I look at this site I get inundated with stuff about the new HMHB album. I expect the site owner is trawling through our data to try and sell us stuff just like Google.
22 September 2014
Chris The Siteowner
Whaaat…? When you say you “get inundated with stuff about the new HMHB album”, do you mean via messages on this site? In which case, sorry you don’t like them. Or do you mean via email? As a commenter, you will probably have had a single email from me yesterday, regarding the new album. I thought it would be useful, as people keep asking me for details, as if I were the record company or something.
I send out about one email every six months. Hardly “inundating” you. And I should confirm that (a) I don’t – and never will – pass on any email addresses used to sign in here to comment; and (b) I don’t make – and never have made – a penny from this site. Don’t make stuff up.
22 September 2014
toastkid
I suspect that when @Schoon says “get inundated with” he means “see”.
22 September 2014
Bobby SVARC
I’ve got some DP Football Figures, shit hot they are, 5″ high, only a tenner each, Also printed tea towels with King Richard III and Man Utd on them with the legend “Both Buried in Leicester” £6 or 2 for £15
22 September 2014
Jonathan
A bloke I know that writes books also says he loses money for every sale on Amazon. Buy from his site and he gets 100% minus production cost. Buy from Amazon he’s lucky to break even.
I now only ever use people’s own websites (like the Probe Plus one) or use Amazon Sellers who presumably have to buy stock themselves from source and also pay tax on their earnings.
Amazon is rarely the cheapest place to buy anything these days either.
22 September 2014
EXXO
Mick – If you can also arrange for Man United to lie undiscovered under a car park for 500 years, I’ll take the lot.
22 September 2014
schoon
@CtSO Sorry I was only joking.
22 September 2014
DESMONDO
Only £6.80 more than CD alone to buy CD and vinyl?
Bargain. Wish I could make Bilston (my 2nd fave HMHB venue, but at least being on a Welsh island will be some compensation).
22 September 2014
GoK WAN ACOLYTE
My early post queried “The Bain of Constance”. According to the Probe Plus site it is in fact “The Bane…” which makes more sense. (Thanks – CtSO)
Down to 81 when I ordered my copy earlier.
Just an aside, who actually buys HMHB fridge magnets? Is there some reference in the lyrics that I’ve missed which would make them a desirable item?
22 September 2014
JUST MARK
I followed the expert opinion about avoiding the evil Corporates and bought directly from Probe Plus, checked out and (out of habit) paid via PayPal.
22 September 2014
G100
Any odds on this terrific site, us or uber-fan pedantry in general getting a mention in one of the new songs?
23 September 2014
G100
I’m looking forward to the new contributor handles, surely Constance, Booker Prize Guy, Teenage Bride, Adam Boyle and Gwatkin will get taken sooner rather than later.
23 September 2014
The Bane OF CONSTANCE
I doubt Constance will bother to turn up on here, knowing what a hard time I’ll give her if she does.
23 September 2014
Bobby SVARC
Could be
23 September 2014
BrumbiscUit
Well, looks like I’ll have to wait until Leicester. I’ve tried on the iPad and a Windoze machine to buy one today and failed every time. The “buy now” button just doesn’t work for me. As Neil once said: “Oh no, techno fear!”.
Edit: Linux to the rescue…
23 September 2014
BrumBiscuit
And “Super Postie Delivery” costs the same as “Normal Postie Delivery”…
23 September 2014
BananaYogi
On the most effective way for a band to sell their music, I found this. It’s from 2011 but shows the relative merits of physical media, downloads and streaming, I’ve edited it a bit.
If the band sell the physical CD themselves for £9.99, they keep 100% of the profits, which is obviously the most profit-per-album a musician can hope for. But it’s also not the best way to reach the widest audience. Selling that same full £9.99 album online through CDBaby means the website gets a cut to the tune of £2.49, while artists get to keep the other £7.50 for a cool 75% profit. Unfortunately for new musicians, expensive record labels are often the key to getting an artist’s brand out.
The Record Label’s Slice of the Pie
Every contract is different, but the average high-end royalty deal with a ‘major’ record company will pay musicians £1 for every £10 retail album sale.
And it can be a lot worse than that; a low-end royalty deal only pays 30 pence per album sale — amazingly small for a CD purchase, especially considering that bands may have to divide that among several members.
iTunes
In the popular digital realm, a £9.99 download on a program like iTunes nets artists a modest 94p — less than a 10% cut. The record company takes £5.35 and Apple keeps the remaining £3.70.
Artists get nine pence for each individual song downloaded on Napster and iTunes. To put that into perspective, musicians need to sell 12,399 songs a month to earn a salary equal to a McDonald’s employee.
Streaming
Listeners have to stream an artist’s songs 4,053,110 times on Spotify to earn a monthly salary equal to minimum wage.
(Thanks to investinganswers.com for the original article).
So Spotify is the devil, and Apple is his second in command. I’ve pre-ordered from Geoff!
24 September 2014
Chris The Siteowner
Presumably with the traditional record label deal, however, the label pays for the recording costs and the CD production costs. For a band selling thousands (rather than millions) of CDs, like HMHB, that’s of course significant.
I guess recording an album and producing a few thousand CDs eventually works out at …what? £2 per CD? £5? This actually makes the retailer’s cut of the selling price (e.g 25% above) a far higher percentage of the profit, which is why buying direct might make two or three times more money for the band. It’s also why bands are so keen to sell CDs at gigs, as each sale may be the equivalent of several sales through a retailer.
With digital downloads, there’s only the recording costs to take into consideration, so there’s potentially more in it for the artists, especially if they can offer the downloads themselves.
24 September 2014
BananaYogi
I was always under the impression that in many cases with major labels (although this may be back in the olden days!) the band was given an advance amount on the record sales in order to fund the recording costs. So I think they paid it anyway?
As a bloke still resolutely refusing to sell his record collection, I still can’t get my head around buying via download and not getting any physical media at all for my money. Apart from the record itself, the LP sleeve is/was a thing of beauty, the CD sleeve less so but at least you might get the lyrics, a few photos, who played what when etc… Downloads – pah!
24 September 2014
G100
The thing about the big labels, which is not to be sniffed at if you are going for world domination, is that they have huge marketing power which will be supplied as part of your deal. Selling CDs at gigs or directly on your own website is only ever going to reach a small audience whereas prime time radio play / interviews with the global media etc gets your product out there to lots more people.
Not saying that’s necessarily a good thing but it clearly works as there are so many appalling bands out there who are very successful.
24 September 2014
BananaYogi
@G100
That’s right – obviously depending on your potential market. 10% of 10 million sales is a whole lot more than 100% of just a few thousand. Although with that sort of ‘investment’ you suspect that the record company might have a pretty beady eye on your artistic endeavours in the studio and might object when the bulk-ordered bongos started to arrive…
However the sales come – I just hope UFO (as nobody calls it) makes enough to keep the lads in the jet-set lifestyle they are accustomed to.
24 September 2014
Bobby SVARC
UFO, Yeah good one, wasn’t Phil Mogg the lead singer?
24 September 2014
Tez
I’m not sure whether Spotify is the devil. I pay my subscription and recently have been playing nothing but HMHB. So I’m contributing to the band by the album AND Spotify. Come to think of it I also bought 90 Bisodol on iTunes because I couldn’t wait.
So my conclusion is that I’m a moron who spends more money than he needs to.
24 September 2014
BananaYogi
@ TEZ: From Spotify’s own web site, they say that royalties are between ‘$0.006 and $0.0084’ per stream. So once you’ve listened to 1000 HMHB tracks (at 3 mins a track that’s about 50 hours listening) they’ll get about 7p. Divided between the four of them. I’m sure every 2p counts, but I don’t think you are making a significant contribution to the band’s already bursting pension fund by using Spotify. I’m not criticising you at all (I use Spotify myself occasionally, and even then it’s the free version!), but if Spotify was the only outlet for musicians to make money – there’d be very few musicians making money.
24 September 2014
Chris The Siteowner
Not that bad, Bananayogi, surely? At (say) $0.0075 a song, they’d get $7.50 (£4.50) for 1000 listens. Not great, it’s true, but there’s a lot of Spotify users who’d listen to the album there who’d never buy it, and if 1,000 listen to the 13-track album once, that’s £58.50 the band wouldn’t have had otherwise. So better than a kick in the head. Slightly.
On the other hand, I’d have to listen to the album 100-200 times on Spotify for the band to make as much as selling me a CD directly. I’m not sure why some artists don’t just ask all their fans to put albums on constant rotation on Spotify, even when they’re asleep or out.
Here’s another good article, which in true web fashion, links to even more…
24 September 2014
BananaYogi
My maths is poor, obviously. Yours, equally obviously, is better! Add an inability to tell the difference between dollars, cents and sterling and it’s a toxic mixture…
I sit corrected.
24 September 2014
Chris The Siteowner
Mind you, looking at it another way, I have music on all day every day, and I’ve been recording that at Last.fm for a few years. Although Half Man Half Biscuit are the band I’ve listened to the most by far (nearly 2,000 plays), even if it had all been on Spotify they’d have only made a tenner out of me, which is ridiculous.
24 September 2014
Allan
Bananayogi’s right, the label would pay recording costs and so forth up front but this would be repayable by the band once the records were on sale. Several of the big rock bands had no idea that they were making no money at all on the deal.
25 September 2014
PaUl f
@bananayogi *cough* see post 74.
25 September 2014
toastkid
I think that the people of the future will look back at the 20th century as a time when, for a while, music makers, who’d always lived on performing, made money from recordings. The 20th century ended, and the music makers went back to living from performing. When something can be trivially copied it loses its intrinsic value. Hence albums become low-value, and gigs (a unique experience every time) become high-value, in people’s minds. Recordings basically become free adverts for the gigs, or things for DJs to play at club nights, which are sort of like a gig (in terms of being a unique unrepeatable experience).
You can see this trend with the increase in concert ticket sales, in both price and volume. Even our beloved Wirral lads seem to play live a lot more these days.
25 September 2014
Chris The Siteowner
I agree, which interestingly may make it hard for certain genres of music to survive, namely those which it’s hard to perform live (or which would be boring to listen to live, but great at home). What chance another “Tubular Bells” or “Ambient 1: Music for Airports”, I wonder?
How much can a band ask for nowadays if, for example, it sells out a 750- or 1500-capacity venue? My last experience of putting on bands (yep, Ents Sec) was in the mid-eighties, when tickets cost £3.50, so I have no idea.
25 September 2014
GoK WAN ACOLYTE
@CtSO – a Stipe Records showcase by any chance?
25 September 2014
Dr Desperate
While we’re waiting, anybody care for a bracing round of ‘Offal Placename Bingo’?
1. Choose a placename at random and post it here.
2. Buy the album (for method see below). Listen to it.
3. Anybody whose chosen placename is mentioned in a song wins.
4. In the event of nobody winning outright, the placename closest (on Google Maps) to one mentioned wins.
I’ll go for Mold.
25 September 2014
CARRIE ANNE
@Dr Desperate – Possibly rule out a few places which NB10 has mentioned recently when performing some of the newer material. I can think of Crewe, Delph (near Oldham) and Liege? I know it should have an accent, but I have no idea how to add one on here.
25 September 2014
aiwacat
I’m liking the sound of that, Dr Desperate.
I claim the Lake District village of Torver.
25 September 2014
BrumbiscUit
Put me down for Tolpuddle, please.
25 September 2014
Bobby SVARC
Market Bosworth
25 September 2014
Chris The Siteowner
Wivenhoe.
Anyone want to set up a custom Google map and add the entries as they come in?
25 September 2014
Bobby SVARC
Actually I’ll change mine to Stoke Golding, it rhymes better with Michael Holding.
25 September 2014
Chris The Siteowner
Over on the Facebook group, they’ve been doing “things which are going to get mentioned in the album”. Here are the contributions to date:
The annoyance of Piers Morgan; Gareth Bale’s heart celebration; the social obscurity of Louis Walsh; the choice of tomatoes in Lidl; the remastering scam; Apple queues; Richard Stilgoe; Bruce Forsyth will never die; Dwelling on the Anglo Italian Cup; Pavements and chewing gum; Ron Pickering; the One Show; Whitstable; Martin Roberts from Homes under the Hammer; Gilson Lavis; Beige; Crossfire; Adverse cambers; Why does no one deliver the milk; Kabaddi match fixing; Pwllheli; Loon pants in the moshpit; Savile and his ilk; the butchers in the high street; the sad demise of Bovril; People calling Japanese pants ‘Japants’; Neil; the wonderful social skills of Andy Murray; Julian Assange’s living arrangements; Someone presenting a pithy defence of the ‘caveman diet’; Jeremy Kyle; Clare Balding’s haircut; Cheating bastards in the Great British Bake Off; Pointless Celebrities; Offa’s Dyke; Pam Ferris; the M6 Toll Road; Missing the Pick’n’Mix at Woolworths; Sly fag in pub bogs; the Storming of The Kabin; Climbing a yew tree; Rousing comeback singles; the fact that the song you have had in your head regularly for 35 years is something by the New Seekers; Robson Green being shite at fishing; Robson Green just being shite in general; the nutter from River Monsters; meeting a kid in a Ramones t-shirt who is actually into them; Dogging in Daventry; Memo to Ant and Dec; Ostriches in Oswestry; University boat race – hey ho let’s row, hey ho let’s row; Half past four and we’re 3-0 down; Beeching Report deniers; Channel 4 news; the treacherous defection of Susanna Reid; Operation Yewtree; Leeds Service Crew to Samaritans volunteer in 30 years; Susie Dent; Rafa’s house on the hill; Carlisle border patrol; Celebrity checkout at Waitrose; Sham 69 still touring; Kenny Dalglish’s barber…
25 September 2014
Carol V.
Waited all day to post something commemorative on the landmark number with no action on the Project and then ‘Stoke Golding’ brought it up, typical. Stoke bloody Golding.
Anyway uncanny isn’t it that if you take the total number of HMHB tracks picked over by pedants, including those on the forthcoming album, multiply by the number of sides on a vinyl copy of that album, subtract the total number of studio albums and add the number of members in the band, multiply by the number of years John Peel has been under the ground and again by the number of HMHB albums he never got to hear, and you get the number of posts on this Project as of just now. Who’d’ve thunk it.
Hearty congratulations to one and all at the Project!
Carol x
25 September 2014
BrumbiscUit
That Homes Under The Hammer twat is a pretty safe bet seeing as his peculiar hand-wringing habit has been mentioned at at least two gigs I’ve been to.
25 September 2014
Bobby SVARC
Grayson Perry must be at short odds
25 September 2014
PADDY POWER
A lot of it does seem more like stuff that might get mentioned between songs but never graduate. But I’m surprised nobody slipped in ‘Doctor Jozef Venglos’ from the new (beige) song that’s already been played live.
Anyway, we’ll give you really good odds on the stuff that’s just too mainstream, obvious enough for say ‘Mock the Week’ (Piers Morgan, Savile, Yewtree, Bruce Forsyth). If you can think of it it won’t be in. You’ve got to think Venglos rather than Rafa & King Kenny sort of thing.
Anyway @ Dr. Des we had a run of bets on Bideford and Barnstaple from someone who seemed to think they would be the Ely & St. Ives of the Westward Ho! song.
Had to close the market – suspicious betting patterns from the Leicester area.
25 September 2014
WARDEN HODGES
Cheshire Oaks (across the M53).
25 September 2014
G100
My entry would be –
Place: Monkey World in Dorset
Things that might be mentioned: fashionable beards; food being ‘piping hot throughout’; meme theory; fluorescent running gear.
Just realised that ‘capturing the zeitgeist’ is exactly what NB10 does best.
How many goes do we get?
26 September 2014
peter mcornithologist
Leighton Buzzard.
Leighton James aka Lollipop Man of the Year
26 September 2014
Bobby SVARC
I’m just about to clean up on the two rookie Yanks shoving it up Poulter so I’ll stick the winnings on Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in “Westwood Ho” if I can find a bookie I can trust.
26 September 2014
EXXO
@G100 – I think there a few ‘Zeitgeist’ songs like ‘Paintball’ and ‘Shite Day’, but mostly it’s ‘you know what you can do with your zeitgeist’.
Paddy Power’s right (about 6 posts below), the names he mentions are surely way too obvious and ‘Mock the Week’, as are the likes of Ant & Dec and (by now) Jeremy Kyle, who has been mentioned live as more mainstream names sometimes are.
At first though I thought whoever suggested Waitrose might be taking the Biscuit for the worst suggestion – what would NB10 know about bloody Waitrose? But haven’t they started to service stations? NB10 doesn’t drive, but maybe on the way to a gig? Anyway it’s still a crap suggestion, too obvious as satire.
26 September 2014
schoon
The bloke off it takes a thief to catch a thief (world’s worst TV program).
Place: Sturry.
26 September 2014
G100
@Exxo, I agree, but even outside the deliberately zeitgeisty songs there are plenty of references to things that have just sort of ‘taken hold’ – Pashley’s with baskets, Lowe Alpine clothing, kids called Fred, Archie or Rain and much, much more. In fact the list would be so long you would have to alphabetize it and post one item each day for several years to do it justice.
I was meaning that actually even by mocking or ranting about it, he’s capturing it. It’s just that it’s captured in a way that we can all collectively roll our eyes if we like.
26 September 2014
SIMON P
Craig Charles.
Nuneaton.
26 September 2014
Alan
“What chance another “Tubular Bells” or “Ambient 1: Music for Airports”, I wonder?”
Of course the other stream of revenue for artists these days is TV spots, whether it’s in adverts or as part of TV shows/films. which I guess would be a good potential avenue for more ambient music. Or go the whole hog and do a soundtrack specially (for example, I imagine Ólafur Arnalds did not too badly from the wonderful score of “Broadchurch”).
This is a bit of an advertorial for the article writer’s services but does contain the surprising (to me at least!) point that a worldwide advert can earn between £50k-£250k, which certainly trumps Spotify streaming in terms of a good payday!
26 September 2014
atombowl
The selling direct to the fanbase scenario is an interesting one. Whilst short-term it probably maximises the profit per cd for the band/record company it completely screws the indie record shops who have to take a punt on how many cds they buy in (unless you’re HMV or Fopp in which case, due to the record industry’s desperation to maintain a High St presence, it’s sale or return, which harms indie shops more than anything). If they buy in 10 they may only sell 2 because the diehard fans have already pre-ordered them from the band’s website. This is fine up to a point but you then lose the goodwill of the record shops who have historically done a great deal to promote bands via word of mouth and in-store promotions. Release day for certain indie bands used to be a big deal for the indie record shops (the difference between a good week and a bad week) but it’s a complete non-event now because the fans have already got the album direct from the band. Maybe this isn’t a problem, but I suspect that there is a hefty degree of natural wastage on email lists and whilst good for a couple of albums the numbers are likely to dwindle long-term, although possibly less so in the case of HMHB. Not having a go at anyone, but I’m convinced that the continuing decline of the indie record shop will ultimately have an impact on indie bands.
26 September 2014
Rubber Faced Irritant
Offal can refer to edible animal innards or, more generally, to something rubbish. As can tripe. Which would rhyme nicely with Stipe (more recent output of).
26 September 2014
EXXO
As far as this thread’s concerned I’m only interested in what’s good for our lads, which is basically buying direct from Probe Plus. Not even buying from Probe Records, a great institution but not Geoff’s company for many many years, will be anywhere near as good for the lads as buying from Probe Plus. If you want to support a particular local record shop more than HMHB then buy from there, and give the owner of that company more money than any single member of HMHB will get from your purchase, but in the end there’s 4 lads who made the music and I want them & Geoff to get my money.
I try not to think about the fact that if they do make loads of money from the album they’ll inevitably do even fewer gigs.
26 September 2014
EXXO
I can get quite sentimental about the old record shops too, but to say they did a lot for indie bands is stretching it. John Peel and the NME did more to promote in a week than a thousand shops could do in a year. The music was good so people went and bought it somewhere, preferably somewhere indie & cool that was in NME, etc, where they could find all the stuff and some gig tickets.
Now the music is shit people wouldn’t be going out and buying it in the shops even if they were still there, and if there is any good music out there no-one’s playing it, and the heirs of Peel are criminally neglectful. Yes Gideon Coe I’m looking at YOU. You might play our lads but by and large your taste is soporific CRAP. When’s the last time you launched anyone’s career? Six Music Recomends MY ARSE.
26 September 2014
atombowl
Music isn’t shit now, there’s some brilliant stuff out there and I think that you underestimate the power of word of mouth in communities served by indie record shops. Something you absolutely don’t get with HMV and Fopp, but if that’s what you want to be left with fair play. Personally I think they’re shit pastiches of a record shop and sooner or later they’ll drop off the perch completely and we’ll all be buying from Amazon or the Supermarket. Yes you can buy from the band direct, but that is a a very limited marketplace for them. Peel is dead, the NME is shit and not all that influential anymore. Either you want the band to reach a wider audience in which case you achieve your aim of doing what’s best for the lads or you want it to remain a culty little secret in which case their income will be by definition limited. Avalanche in Edinburgh is a case in point. Kevin used to stuck the entire HMHB catalogue and all the Prob merch. Now there is no Avalanche and that is pretty much down to HMV and Fopp distorting the market by being able to sell at a price less than the Indies are expected to buy for (with no money changing hands up front btw). That leaves the capital city of a country not having a shop that holds anything more than the latest album (if you’re lucky) which strikes me as a bit of a shit result.
27 September 2014
EXXO
As I say I loved the old indie record shops, but they never made me buy anything I hadn’t gone in for, except second hand of course, cos I’ve never had much spare cash. So maybe that’s part of why I’ve hardly ever bought anything – CD, book, or anything much on “word of mouth”. I’ll borrow stuff or record stuff on word of mouth but I certainly won’t buy it. Clearly I prefer independent shops to horrible big chains but it may interest you that I’ve never heard of Fopp, whoever they are, and wasn’t sure that HMV were still going. I have so little disposable cash these days that I rarely go near a city centre, if that’s where they are.
As for the band being a “secret”, they are what thy choose to be. Clearly they could sell twenty times more ‘units’ if they made a choice do certain types of promotion, but they can’t. There is no point me, or any of us, wanting them to be any more or less popular than they are, but I’m glad they are exactly what they are because I can use it to help justify my own rejection of similar types of materialistic “success” whenever it suits me.
All I’m saying is it’s obvious how to buy the latest record if you want the band to get most of your money, and to have notions that somehow you can help save the indie record shop as well is just delusory.
27 September 2014
EXXO
Just been googling Fopp. Sounds like I didn’t miss much.
27 September 2014
bobby svarc
There used to be 3 indie record shops in Hinckley, all pretty good as well as Woolies and WH Smith, at the last count it was down to one but I don’t venture in to town much so that maybe shut now, the fantastically named Nervous Records was always my first stop, always had a good selection of punk and metal, an old girlfriend insisted on calling it Shatter Records just to let everyone what the shops logo font was called, she went on to be a graphic designer and married a Skate
28 September 2014
atombowl
To the best of my knowledge, Fopp are HMV, they’re just dressed up to look like an Indie but are still propped up by the major labels and given unsustainably favourable deals that allow them to undercut smaller record shops. The reason for this is that they are desperate to maintain a High Street presence at all costs. Prior to the last (or last but one) HMV meltdown Fopps started popping up all over the country, only to shut a few weeks later. There’s still one in Edinburgh, maybe a handful of others. I’m not saying that buying a HMHB album from an Indie shop will save the shop, merely that of the many factors that make life nearly impossible for a small shop to survive by selling music, buying direct from the band is one of the major ones. It is also ultimately detrimental to most bands. Bands like Frightened Rabbit have always acknowledged the leg up that they got from shops like Avalanche with instores and promotions and shop exclusives helping to build a local fanbase which then goes on to expand as word gets around.
28 September 2014
Matt
So, some mates and I put out a small indie record a few years back. Effectively acting as our own label, with CD Baby handling the distribution for us. For physical sales they take a flat $4, and for digital stuff, they take 10%.
What I’m sharing is our complete digital sales data.
Most of what little money we make comes from sync-licensing. We let our music be used on people’s YouTube videos and in return YouTube pays us more than we’ve ever made from actual sales.
All prices are in US Dollars.
I think to date we’ve made about $70 in total from this, which other than our time and a few CDs we made, we’re actually making beer money from this now. Of that $70, over half is sync licensing. We’ve also made more money from 3 CD Baby album downloads than we have from all of our downloads and streams from other people.
Anyway, enjoy some real numbers.
29 September 2014
Chris The Siteowner
That’s interesting, Matt! Thanks. Also backs up what Alan wrote above, that opportunities other than good old record sales can be as good as anything these days.
29 September 2014
EXXO
Remind me how I get rid of the twatter feed off here. Horrible person with clown make up showing off that she’s heard the record and “doesn’t think it’s great”. Asks some fella if he’s heard it yet when she knows full well he can’t have cos he hasn’t had access to wahtever priviliged copy she’s had. Yukk.
29 September 2014
Bobby SVARC
What a stupid cow
29 September 2014
Chris The Siteowner
Calm down gentlemen, if you follow her conversation, she says the album is on Spotify (which it isn’t), and that’s why she’s asking her correspondent if they’ve heard it. She obviously thinks an older record is the new one. I notice that “Saucy Haulage Ballads” was only recently added to Spotify, and has been incorrectly dated as August 2014, so it’s probably that. No showing off involved.
29 September 2014
EXXO
OK then.
1. Tell me how to follow a conversation on there.**
2. Tell me how to delete the twitter feed off here.
**Not that I intend to do this much, but nothing in that feed ever makes much sense cos you just can’t tell who’s an idiot who quotes HMHB randomly for no reason or who’s an idiot who quotes HMHB on some far-too-obvious prompt like every time Hebden Bridge or asparagus or blue badge abuse gets mentioned by someone.
29 September 2014
Chris The Siteowner
1. Click on the time on the tweet, that’ll take you to the tweet itself, you should see the conversation there.
2. Cover it up. I’ve just tested it, and found my right hand works well.
29 September 2014
bobby svarc
The Baby Squad
29 September 2014
EXXO
1. Thanks. I’ll try it.
2. Thanks. Might have to learn to do a lot more things left-handed …
29 September 2014
EXXO
This pre-release tension is a killer though isn’t it?
I feel like a jumpy septuagenarian Home Guard character who’s just reported the local footballer who boasted suspiciously about being good at penalty shoot-outs or a shame-faced Hartlepudlian realising he’s just hung a monkey.
29 September 2014
Cardinal
Went to Probe Plus to have a look into pre-ordering the vinyl, turns out it’s out of stock, presumably meaning it’s all pre-ordered out. Shame for me, good news for the vinyl record industry I guess?
Being in the US though, I wonder if the preorder is the way to go. I may have to contact a London-based friend to check out the shops once the album is out and pick it up on my behalf and ship it.
30 September 2014
Chris The Siteowner
I think the situation is that technically Probe Plus aren’t really out of stock, because like everyone, they don’t have any stock. But (and I’m only speculating) they’ve set themselves a limit of how many orders they can cope with on release day, which has now been reached. Proper Music should be a good alternative – the album is in “top sellers” on the right now.
30 September 2014
peter mcornithologist
Dear Mr Exxo as an elderly Hartlepudlia I am proud that my ancestors saved this isle from an invasion of gorillas.I am however truly concerned about the plight of my beloved football team.The persistence of playing a headless centre forward can only lead to fixtures against Nuneaton and the like.
30 September 2014
Bobby SVARC
Man, the Boro’ are deeper in the shilo than Hartlepools, The CEO was arrested at a charity bash at the Ricoh on Friday night and resigned on Sunday.
30 September 2014
EXXO
Dunno about the vinyl but the Probe Plus ‘in stock’ numbers for the CD went from 200 down to zero quite quickly and then back up above 200 again immediately (and may have done so a few times already, ‘cos I noticed it for the last album but haven’t really been watching this time) – the ‘in stock’ number doesn’t seem to be the real number available – Mick (Bobby Svarc) presumably knows why – it’s definitely not about orders they can’t cope with ‘cos Geoff will be taking on extra staff around release day & maximising their potential as good team players who will take your input in and put their output out immediately, without shaking it all about, and I’d once again reiterate to buy from Probe Plus and only Probe Plus if you want the band to get as much as possible of your money.
30 September 2014
GoK WAN ACOLYTE
@Exxo I only just worked out the Twitter feed thing and blow me if one of the recent ones isn’t me being “an idiot who quotes HMHB on some far-too-obvious prompt” Sorry if giving the band a mention in an environment that isn’t here is not the done thing, but a) I’ve discovered a few other fans as a consequence and b) got a few people interested in them. You also need to remember that what might be a too obvious reference to you and other long-time fans isn’t going to be to someone who’s only just dipping their toe into the water.
30 September 2014
Bobby SVARC
I wonder if Dr Fox is on the new album?
30 September 2014
toastkid
Bobby, was that a reference to this? Or coincidence?
1 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
Probe Plus open for business again.
1 October 2014
G100
Anyone else reminded of Bernie Clifton when looking at the new album cover?
1 October 2014
Alice van der meer
Given Geoff’s tendency to write notes on the back of people’s envelopes, it would be interesting to see how many copies get dispatched before he gives up in disgust with RSI…
Is it the done thing to mention that Proper records always have a stall at Cropredy?
2 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
Geoff may have moved his business into the eighties and had some sticky labels done.
2 October 2014
EXXO
@Alice – as long as they don’t have one at Cornbury.
And talking of Tories, I realised that I couldn’t remember a single thing that the late Lynsey de Paul wrote or recorded, so I wiki-ed her and was informed that she penned the classic “Vote Tory, Tory, Tory for election glory” in 1983. That must have been the moment when Michael Foot realised the game was up.
2 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
An old girlfriend was always singing ‘Sugar Me’, as usual I got it all wrong
2 October 2014
Dr Desperate
As it happens, there was a HMHB stall at Cornbury when they played there in July 2008. I bought CSI:Ambleside at it (not as quick off the mark in those days).
2 October 2014
EXXO
I realise that, but presumably that’s where NB10 had whatever encounter it was that prompted “Tories to Cornbury”.
2 October 2014
dr desperate
Quite so. I missed David Cameron when he attended Cornbury that year (but only by a few inches).
3 October 2014
Schoon
I hope that annoying Scottish bloke on CBBC gets a mention. I wonder if NB10 watches CBBC.
3 October 2014
RUBBERFACEDIRRITANT
Can anyone tell me when payment will be taken? Is it as soon as you pre order or upon dispatch?
3 October 2014
Matt
My order of a vinyl record has shipped to the US as of this morning.
4 October 2014
jedenáct československých ligových titulů
Just pre-ordered UFO fro Probe Plus. Whilst there I also had an urge to order 4LWSTWirral, as part of my slow journey to becoming a HMHB completist… I hope that ordering one album that’s available and one that isn’t yet doesn’t cause too much confusion at PP… Who knows, maybe I will mistakenly be sent UFO straight away then 4LWSTW on UFO’s release date….?
5 October 2014
jedenáct československých ligových titulů
suggested place name for the UfO bingo: Wem
5 October 2014
BananaYogi
Well I’ve just had a message from Probe that my order for UfO is now ‘complete’ and that it should arrive shortly!
5 October 2014
Kendo nagasaki
I have had the same message. As an aside I hate the term pre order. The pre bit is entirely superfluous. I have merely ordered it
6 October 2014
celery
Re: Dr Desperate’s ‘Offal Placename Bingo’.
Now it’s not the best walking country I agree, but if Nigel happens to own a copy of Ordnance Survey Explorer Map no. 260 Nottingham/Vale of Belvoir, he could find a few place names that might be worthy of inclusion… We have the twin villages of Bunny and Gotham, the delightful meandering River Smite, and if a Leaden Pall of melancholia should strike he could do worse than the former pit village of Cotgrave.
6 October 2014
Matt
I know someone who lives in Gotham. He makes games for toy soldiers.
7 October 2014
peter mcornithologist
@ Celery. In Co.Durham there is the former pit village of No Place. While just outside of Bradford one finds the wonderfully named Idle Working Mens Club.
7 October 2014
Bothy on the Knoydart
Did any of you guys who’ve had messages order the vinyl?
I did and haven’t yet, but a week or so ago when I asked Geoff he said he wouldn’t have them before the 9th.
Placename bingo entry: Pleck
8 October 2014
EXXO
So Gideon Coe might well play something off the album tomorrow night, extrapolating from his twitter.
Gideon is no John Peel, and in recent years has tended to be a boring waste of 6Music air time, but he does have his uses. In this case to make me feel a bit better about not being in Bilston, with all that will entail for the lucky throng.
8 October 2014
EXXO
As if to prove a point, I switch over to his boring programme to see if he mentions HMHB tomorrow and he’s playing bloody ‘Albatross’.
‘Albatross.’ Lovely tune from 40 years ago but what the hell’s the point of playing it at the time of night when some NEW MUSIC EDUCATION with a bit of LIFE ABOUT IT would go down a treat. If we want ‘Albatross’ we can have it any time we like.
Yeah anyway play us some HMHB tomorrow you otherwise pointless waste of space.
8 October 2014
Peter Gandy
He played ‘Albatross’? I think he should be immediately replaced by a champion of new music. What’s George Lamb doing these days.
9 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
2 Shit Gigs
9 October 2014
EXXO
Well that’s it now, isn’t it? It’s out there. Gideon Coe is tweeting about the record and some of you will presumably acquire it tonight. Please try not to gloat too much and we’ll try not to be too jealous.
I wonder if any of you in Bilston will buy it from Geoff and then go out to listen to it before the band come on?
9 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
I bet they will Exxo, they can’t wait. My mate says there’ll be an exclusion zone in the hall
9 October 2014
John AndErson
Gideon says he’ll be playing tracks on his show tonight. It’s bound to be more entertaining than England v San Marino.
9 October 2014
Rob S
Offal acquired at Bilston. CD only?
9 October 2014
EXXO
By the time I’d heard there was a ‘spoiler’ from Gideon Coe and went to see what it was, it’d gone. I reckoned whatever it was, someone else on here is bound to give it away before I hear the record, so I thought I might as well take a peek.
I’m going to do my very best to keep it off the site, Charles (see below) – CtSO
9 October 2014
Chris The Siteowner
Spoiler-Free Review
So I now have in front of me the new album, as do quite a few people (who, unlike me) are at the gig tonight, so it’s time for a brief first run-through. This review will be spoiler free, because I know how irritating it is when you come across a really cracking line in a HMHB song and you’ve already been told about it.
Overall I would say that it’s a goodie – slightly more immediate than 90 Bisodol, although it’s not as full of classics as, say, Achtung Bono. But then again, what is? Also, the last two albums continued to grow on me for far longer than I thought they would, so I imagine this one will too – especially once you lot start unearthing the lyrical gems.
Stylistically, there’s nothing dramatically new here …fortunately. Would we want that? No we wouldn’t. I could describe most of the songs in terms of having a similar style to something-or-other from an earlier album. Opener “Westward Ho!”, for example, is an absolute belter which will have the moshpit going as mental as it does with JDOG.
The production on the record is once again – how shall we put it? – average, in line with the last few efforts, where it moved up a notch from the traditional awful. I expect this is as good as we’re ever going to get. Musically, the band are also as decent enough as they’ve ever been. As for the lyrics …well, NB10 hasn’t let us down. There’ll be plenty to keep this site going for months, both in trying to work out what he’s singing and what he means. I’ve listened to every track 4 or 5 times today, and there’s loads which I don’t get at all.
The album standout for me (as I think it will be for many others) is “The Unfortunate Gwatkin”. It’s the closest we get to “Shite Day” or “Bad Wools”, but in just four minutes. A similar rambling first half …then the band launch into the most surprising, funniest chorus I think they’ve ever written. Imagine a combination of a chant-along like “Fred Titmus” with the hilarious surprise of *that* line in “Leeuwarden”. It’s utterly, utterly brilliant, and will have halls full of 50-year-olds punching the air and screaming it out at the tops of their voices for years, I hope. But here’s the thing: you do NOT want to know what the chorus is until you hear it for the first time, whether recorded or live. That initial hearing is something I wouldn’t want to deny anyone. Gideon Coe gave it away on Twitter today, and then nobly deleted the tweet when I pointed out what a spoilsport he was being. I’ll try to stay on the ball and keep any references to it off this site until after the album’s in most people’s hands.
All attempts at transcribing the lyrics to any song are of course welcome – email them to me at chris@chrisrand.com. Full credit on the site in perpetuity for anyone who does so. I’ll add the songs steadily after 20 October.
9 October 2014
themightybiscuit
I should be in Bilston but I’m on the way back from Oxford on the M40, feeling terrible as I know UFO is there and lots of lucky people will have it, but to cheer me up on the drive home Gideon did indeed play a track, Westward Ho! Massive Letdown. sounded great and lively, couldn’t make out all the lyrics but Nigel did mention the blue flag beach as someone on here guessed. He’s going to play another one around 11:15. I try not to read spoilers so cheers Chris, (Gid did mention his faux pas) but I couldn’t resist listening to the track broadcast.
9 October 2014
Schoon
@ctso great appetite wetter. Did you pre order from Probe?
9 October 2014
Chris The Siteowner
I was lucky enough to get a promo copy from Geoff (never had such a thing before, feel I’ve made it in life). Assume a few people got them, as Gideon Coe’s playing a couple of tracks tonight. If you’re listening on iPlayer I think “Westward Ho” was played about 40 minutes in.
9 October 2014
EXXO
Having tried a few times to decipher the words to ‘Stuck up a Hornbeam’ from the Shepherd’s Bush gig video, and thinking I’d failed each time, it’s uncanny that the track sounded exactly the same just now on the radio and I felt I knew the words already.
9 October 2014
THE ALMOST ILLEGAL ELTON WELSBY
Delighted to pick up the album at Bilston tonight. Listened to it on the way home, and while it’s no Achtung Bono, it is worth every penny.
The guy who filmed the whole gig in front of me tonight better be a Youtube dad. I’ll be looking in the morning.
9 October 2014
EXXO
Shit, when we found out we couldn’t go to Bilston we at least thought ‘ah well we can go and see out old friend Attila the Stockbroker in Leeds on Thursday night’, but Mrs E so busy and me so distracted by the 6Music session etc that I just forgot to go. I need a diary or a calendar or something clever like that don’t I?
There’s no official HMHB calendar but I’m gonna produce a bootleg 2015 ‘Urge for Offal’ Calendar and stick a few on eBay*
*no I’m not.
9 October 2014
themightybiscuit
I’m not at all jealous* of those with the album, but for those without, ‘Westward Ho!’ is at 37:28 and ‘Hornbeam’ is at 2:11:03 on iPlayer.
*I am
10 October 2014
Kendo nagasaki
The 20th of October seems so far away. I need ufo now! On the plus side westward ho! Is an absolute belter
10 October 2014
bobby svarc
@Exxo Your pining will soon be a thing of the past. Signed, Sealed, Delivered… It’s yours.
10 October 2014
Queen of quick wit
If the track names on Gracenote are duff then it’s my fault, but I’m sure that they’re OK. The appearance of the CDs was an unexpected bonus at an excellent gig.
10 October 2014
EXXO
You’re a star Mick, and I’ll re-imburse & buy you a couple of beers in Leicester.
I’ll just have to make sure the dog doesn’t get to the post before I do tomorrow. Loves the bubblewrap our Muttley.
I don’t know if this counts as the sort of spoiler that will be redacted – I love that word though it has very sinister overtones – but for what it’s worth I personally think Chris is overstating the ‘surprise value’ of Gwatkin’s brilliant chorus, and telling people to expect the most brilliant chorus ever may in itself be setting some fans up for a let-down, work of genius though it undoubtedly is.
(I happened to hear the song via an industry insider just after Chris’ build-up on here)
Will be interesting though to see how the track performs in the next Lux Familiar Cup. We could even have a separate category for favourite-songs-with-sweary-chorus?
10 October 2014
EXXO
Then again I’m the sort of person who has never ever, not even once, wanted to avoid finding out the score before watching the highlights, so perhaps I just don’t like surprises.
10 October 2014
Chris The Siteowner
You may have a point, Exxo, although when I first heard it, walking down the street, I laughed so loudly that folks did indeed stop and stare. And Gideon Coe’s now deleted giveaway tweet shows that he reacted similarly. But you obviously found it a bit “meh”, and a friend I just played it to was more excited by the namechecking of two astonishingly obscure golfers. So to anyone who finds Gwatkin a bit of a letdown, I apologise!
Talking of the Lux Familiar Cup, I suppose we should do it every four years, so incredibly it’s probably only three months away. We just need to get the Qataris to get their chequebooks out.
10 October 2014
EXXO
I didn’t say it was ‘meh’. It’s certainly not that. It’s a great chorus, brilliant, but as a line it doesn’t make me think “glad-I-hadn’t-heard-the-line-before-I-listened” like I did for say (mm, let me think) “Is your child hyperactive, or is he perhaps a twat?”
But another ‘then again’, is that I never LOL much for thought patterns which are similar to my own, cos they don’t surprise me. (e.g. Mrs. E gets frustrated that nothing in ‘The League of Gentlemen ‘ amuses me as much as it amuses her, cos those characters are just how I perceive most people to be anyway).
It is certainly a wonderful track, though, with many, many angels on the head of its pin.
10 October 2014
CARRIE ANNE
Just arrived home after the brilliant Bilston gig last night, and have stuck on the UfO cd purchased there – the Gwatkin track made me laugh out loud too, Chris.
10 October 2014
John AndErson
Without giving anything away, I’ll buy a pint for the first person who can unscramble the opening line in verse 2 of Westward Ho! Massive Letdown.
10 October 2014
Chris The Siteowner
Stand by, everyone, I think I’ll put the two songs played on the radio up for discussion over the weekend, as everyone can hear those two already.
10 October 2014
SIMON P
@John Anderson, no I can’t make head nor tail of that line either, everything else is pretty clear…
10 October 2014
Dr Desperate
Got my copy at Bilsto (doesn’t everyone call it Bilsto?) and listened to it three times on the way home – thanks, M1 roadworks.
I think I’ve got the beginning and the end of that line.
10 October 2014
Dr Desperate
Personally, I think there’ll be more air-punching and screaming to the closing chorus of an earlier track.
10 October 2014
Me In Drab Olive
I might be missing something but none of the outlets for the new album seem to offer downloads. Perhaps after the release date? Call me mad but while I would very much like to pay for the album, I don’t actually want a physical copy.
11 October 2014
CARRIE ANNE
@John Anderson. I’m fairly sure I’ve deciphered the line question. I’ll post it when CtSO opens the song’s discussion page. If I’m right, how do I claim my prize?
11 October 2014
Cyberfoggy
UFO just been received through post from PP. Christmas has come early.
11 October 2014
Dr Desperate
I asked Neil after the Bilston gig if it was him on the cover of UFO, and he admitted that it was, backstage at Leamington Spa Academy. The ostrich stands there between two Egyptian sarcophagi, close to the Dalek and Tammy Wynette’s pink caravan. Crazy venue, crazy people.
He also promised to wear the ‘Hats Off To Hanley’ T-shirt at The Ritz, if he could find it again.
11 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
Don’t forget the smurf and the dodgem DrD, and it’s the Assembly, me’ duck 😉
11 October 2014
EXXO
I thought it was there, cheers for clearing that up, John, been searching for some photos of the backstage wonders at Leamington to check on that, but they must be on a deceased computer. Under this sofa probably. That’s the trouble with digital memories, they die with dead computers.
11 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
I’ve got a few Exxo
11 October 2014
John AndErson
@Carrie Anne The race to win this fabulous prize is hotting up. You’re the second person to get in touch. May have to book a function room at this rate.
11 October 2014
EXXO
Function room? We’re having a Congress mate.
As soon as I can organise that multi-lingual covers band we’ll make it “The International HMHB Congress”.
Do you want to be the Master of Ceremonies.
All in aid of the local hospice of course.
I’m just translating ‘Gwatkin’ into Esperanto as we speak.
11 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
Message from Probe Plus. http://www.probeplus-store.co.uk/
11 October 2014
EXXO
So who are all these new artistes on the Probe Plus site then? Anyone had a chance to check out their stuff (obviously I mean check it’s the length it claims to be) ?
11 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
New?
11 October 2014
Dawlishian
As someone who has the misfortune of visiting Westward Ho! almost daily (and it’s almost always a letdown), I’ve had a quick go at the lyrics. Apparently it’s “Adventure Golf”…
(Thanks – got them; we’ll do the discussion when they’re up, tomorrow – Chris)
11 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
They all have a go!
11 October 2014
Schoon
When’s the next album, after UFO out?
12 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
Next album is called ‘Strangers In The Night’ out in 2018
12 October 2014
Schoon
Westward Ho! Massive Letdown
12 October 2014
PaUl f
Ooh look at me I’ve been to Sorrento!
Pathetic. 😉
12 October 2014
Jim in the caribbean sea
Probe Plus no longer taking advanced orders for CD or vinyl. (Sobs uncontrollably)
12 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
It’s a shame that some people blurt out random lyrics from UFO giving no thought to others who are yet to receive their own copy, Ah well.
13 October 2014
Kendo nagasaki
Apparently Mr Coe played another track last night. Does anyone know what time it was on iPlayer as I would rather not have to listen to hours of his bleating trying to find it
14 October 2014
TimBurrows
Played “This One’s For Now” about half an hour in (37 mins and 40 secs to limit Coe exposure).
14 October 2014
EXXO
Brilliant – as suspected from its live outings, ‘This One’s For Now’ contains five separate football references and another reference to the qualities of turf.
Thought that was one of Gideon Coe’s better shows by recent poor standards, and Sleaford Mods song ‘Tiswas’ perhaps deserves a mention in another thread on here.
Don’t want to bite the hand that feeds the band (I want to bite that hand so badly), but the radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools… Where other shows might have a theme and get listeners to text in their tedious ideas over a couple of hours, this fella has an idea that isn’t particularly interesting and builds it up for a whole month before a single themed show, as if it’s the most fascinating idea ever thought of by a DJ. It isn’t.
And while it wasn’t a bad show last night, any fellow Prefab Sprout haters need to know that they were the song before HMHB (though there’s a massively tedious link before the HMHB, so up to a minute before and you’re safe).
14 October 2014
Chris The Siteowner
Oh Charles, how very, very wrong you are about Prefab Sprout. But what do I know about music? Something on UFO made me think of an early Yes album. Meanwhile, we’ll do the lyrics to “This One’s For Now” later in the week, to tide us over until next Monday.
14 October 2014
EXXO
Ha, there’s a word in there that I suspect non-Merseysiders might struggle with, and I urge those who know the relevant spot (no I’m not talking about Rock Ferry) to refrain from submitting the lyrics while we watch the wools struggle with its deeper meaning.
14 October 2014
cyclops
Hiya lovelies, just got to ‘ Theme tune for something or other’ whilst driving back from ma’s.(I’ve got a cd player in my vehicle, by Jove). An instrumental has never caused me to have an inane grin before but today it happened and track number 6 on ‘ Urge for Offal’, will be emblazoned in my mind, causing me a great deal of mirth……. well……. forever, thanks lads. Still processing the 1st five tracks, like the punkiness, sounding good and but will be looking at the reviews from the big brain fans out there,heading for track 7 and beyond, cheers now
14 October 2014
toastkid
I think i’m going to have to unsubscribe from the daily emails while i wait for my cd, it’s driving me mad with frustrated envy.
14 October 2014
John AndErson
@exxo I think I know what you’re talking about and, you’re right, as a born and bred southerner I’m flummoxed. I’m guessing it might be an abbreviation or nickname for a pub.
14 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
I thought they were a football team.
14 October 2014
John AndErson
@Bobby Svarc Not that bit, the third word after.
14 October 2014
schoon
I told my kids about a month ago: “Gerry Gow was the funniest picture from my Football 76 collection”.
14 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
@ JohnAnderson, Yep got it, Cheers
14 October 2014
EXXO
@Toastie
To be fair we’re only discussing 3 of the 4 songs that are already in the public domain via Gideon & last week’s bootlegs.
Talking of which, did the Biscuiteers listen to Iggy Pop’s John Peel lecture on 6Music last night? While it was really just a long statement of the obvious, it was a hugely entertaining, wonderfully charismatic one and one which indirectly made me v. proud to be a fan of a band like HMHB and proud of the way that, on here and elsewhere, some of us have been doggedly trying to get the punters to order this album from Probe Plus.
14 October 2014
BananaYogi
My ‘pre-release ordered’ (is that better, Mr Nagasaki?) copy arrived today, so anyone waiting shouldn’t be kept on tenterhooks much longer.
Very good it is too!
15 October 2014
Cygnus
Nice one Bananayogi, glad your copy has arrived. Alas I’m still a Sensitive Outsider (not at all jealous of course). Maybe tomorrow…
15 October 2014
TERRENCE OBLONG
To celebrate the new album, I set myself the challenge of writing ten offal-related short stories in the month running up to release date. With less than a week to go I’m currently on 7 offal tales – if you’re interested in my offal writing the stories can be viewed here: http://www.abctales.com/collection/urge-offal
15 October 2014
Mr Larrington
Mine has arrived too. Yay!
15 October 2014
Kendo nagasaki
UFO has just arrived. Sounds very good. Chris you in no way oversold the genius of the unfortunate Gwatkin. Genuinely awesome
15 October 2014
Kendo nagasaki
And yes Bananayogi that is better, having said that simply the word order will suffice quite nicely
15 October 2014
Pete
Midge Ure looks like a millipede?
16 October 2014
EXXO
The fact that nobody’s even mentioned ‘My Outstretched Arms’ being second track on Gid Coe last night presumably means most of us have got the album by now and are listening to it without his facilitation. Thanks Mick!
I love this stage of things, the only time every few years that I really bother firing up the big stereo in the corner with the proper arl graphic (dramatic, late) equaliser (leading to extra time and penalties) and I sit still straining for the lyrics.
The HMH bike lads are keeping very quiet about it though, eh, LOLs etc.
16 October 2014
Schoon
Well I haven’t got it and I ordered it first batch, 189 approx still in stock. Mind you it does take time getting stuff to the Isle of Thanet from the mainland.
16 October 2014
BananaYogi
Since we all use our real names on here, Schoon, Geoff is obviously sending them out in alphabetical order! 🙂
16 October 2014
Tim Burrows
Sadly not. Although I’m hopeful that it’ll be awaiting my return from work
16 October 2014
EXXO
It seems that in fact Geoff has prioritised those named after characters in the songs.
I’ll bet there’s another copy been sent to Hughes Lane in Oxton if anyone’s passing.
16 October 2014
Tim Burrows (AKA junction 16)
Bugger.
Although I once played a charity football match in midfield with Gerry Gow
(or Geoff Merrick-I forget. One of the Ashton gate 8 anyway.)
16 October 2014
Schoon
Well my real name is Bob Wilson Anchorman, so I should have got mine first. Not today either.
16 October 2014
Radar
Mine arrived yesterday (smug level: amber). Listened on the way in to work today, Old Age Killed My Teenage Bride is an insta-classic for me
16 October 2014
surprised of anglia
Baguette and Theme Tune wouldn’t sound out of place, musically, on a Discipline compilation. Them’s the Fripperies.
16 October 2014
paul f
@Radar – I’d agree with that. Brilliant song.
16 October 2014
GORDON BURNS
22nd May 2008 was the last time I made a contribution to this site – the first comment in “On the ‘Roids”.
Anyway, nearly 6 and a half years later here goes…Cracking Album
16 October 2014
Kendo nagasaki
What has happened to the half man half biscuit society on Facebook. It doesn’t appear to still exist or have I just been thrown out in shame for some reason
16 October 2014
Chris The Siteowner
Alive and well and lurking here Kendo. Linked to from the home page on this site. It seems to have taken over as the casual chat group from the Yahoo! mailing list now.
16 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
Loads of punters just quoting HMHB lyrics left, right and centre, someone the other day took a picture of the top deck of a bus, shouting Helllllllllllllllllllen, Pretty crap really
16 October 2014
BrumbiscUit
Better than the twatter feed though.
I’m on the farcebook thingie and the main use I’ve found is in trying to get a complete Barnstoneworth United team together. Looking promising too. Crapper already dibbed, rather surprisingly.
16 October 2014
Kendo nagasaki
It’s bizarre Chris. I click on the link and it just says error loading. Maybe I have been cast asunder for some unknown misdemeanor. I am greeted, not just with awkward silence but with “The page you requested cannot be displayed at the moment. It may be temporarily unavailable, the link you clicked on may be broken or expired, or you may not have permission to view this page.”
16 October 2014
Eric olthwaite
Mine’s here! I think I ordered from the first batch of 200, postmark is 9th oct so I reckon they’re staggering posting them at different classes of post to sort of get all the pre-release orders arriving at roughly the same time.
16 October 2014
PAT BOONE ON THE COUNTY BASSOON
It is an excellent album, and agree with CtSO earlier on the immediacy. Westward Ho and Teenage Bride are my highlights but I would say there isn’t a duff track on there
16 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
Too right Andy, Have you seen the boozer info?
16 October 2014
Kendo nagasaki
It is definately a grower. Listened to it about 5 times now. Gwatkin, Adam Boyle and Urge For Offal are my highlights. On another note does the admin of the Facebook group also reside here. Would like to know why I appear to have been banned from said group.
16 October 2014
EXXO
Come on Kendo admit it, you know why – you’re off to the Slipknot/Korn gig at the Arena, and as you wouldn’t promise to take a machine gun he’s banned you.
16 October 2014
Kendo nagasaki
I’ve only got 6 bullets and there are seven of them
16 October 2014
dirk hofman
Not long after a sausage sandwich this morning, the postie dropped the ‘physical goods’ through the letterbox, so I’ve been sharing UFO with the neighbours since. It’s great to have the chance to get it early and not have to i-player the annoying Gideon Coe or wait in an annoying indie record shop to get it. Earlier posts on this thread speculated about what HMHB should be doing to ‘shift units’, as Noel Gallagher might say, and how little the rewards are from spotify and the like – hard work to earn a living from your music in the music business, I feel. Anyway, I had a rummage in the attic and found a cd of an Andy Kershaw programme from radio 3, Manchester Commonwealth Games show, HMHB on, NB10 interviewed or rather badgered by an enthusiastic Kershaw about the seemingly low output from the band, NBs response was that it was enough, he got his season ticket and it was enough and that the secret to “quiet happiness…was limiting your aspirations”. Anyway – great album,isn’t it?
16 October 2014
Kendo nagasaki
@dirk a sentiment he echoes in mileage chart
16 October 2014
EXXO
I don’t think any of us are in any doubt that NB10 doesn’t seek riches, turns down promo opportunities, contracts & festivals at every turn & generally seeks to do as little as possible to get by, and any ‘shifting units’ mentions in this thread were surely either ironic or comparative … but you can’t help at the same time feeling (i) an urge to help promote the album via Probe Plus in the spirit of this week’s John Peel lecture but (ii) kind of surrogate frustration on their behalf too – for example right now the Probe Plus site says “sold out” again, like a shopkeeper putting up a sign ‘cos he’s sold too many of his lovely shoes and can’t cope with the deluge of pesky customers. They’ve only sold a few hundred of them fer chrissakes, and the punters won’t all come back. Some will go straight to the likes of Amazon and lose the band and Geoff around £1 each. I think that sort of thing, though ultimately it is none of our business, is what was really being discussed above.
16 October 2014
EXXO
I meant to mention that the shoe shop comparison is inspired by a lovely little film that’s doing the rounds of an Adidas shopkeeper in Argentina who’s got loads of rare vintage Adidas stuff from the 80s, unobtainable elsewhere, but wouldn’t sell it all to the British collectors who were drooling over it. Google a film that’s promoting an upcoming “Adidas Spezial” exhibition in that Manchester.
16 October 2014
TERRENCE OBLONG
My copy arrived on Monday, I thought something astonishing had happened to Probe Plus, but reading the above comments I was just lucky to be in the first pile.
The album is rather fine, My Outstretched Arms seems to be the track I’m playing most, though there are several tracks I’m looking forward to hearing live, mostly from the second half of the album.
16 October 2014
SIMON P
Mine arrived this morning with the CD case pretty much smashed to bits. Thanks, Royal Mail. Nothing that can’t be fixed with a replacement case, but really … same thing happened with the last CD that came through the post too.
16 October 2014
SIMON P
Songs That Will Never Be Played Live … I go for “Baguette”, “Theme Tune” and “Mileage Chart”. Outsider … “Urge For Offal”.
16 October 2014
Iguana andy
Another cracking album, very excited to receive mine yesterday too. Definitely a grower in some respects and perhaps not as widely accessible as some but an instant hit with me. Roll on Leicester and Manchester gigs.
17 October 2014
PaUl f
The CD case has to be one of the worst ever designs to become a universal standard.
17 October 2014
EXXO
Talking of CD case design, I was wondering yesterday if it had resulted in any recipients thus far having missed the inlay’s extra out-takes from ‘Gwatkin’, and missed the opportunity to ponder on the significance of the frothy reddish effluent depicted there?
And there was some strange modern minimalist above saying he didn’t want a physical copy of the album. He probably has a lime Dyson in a cupboard under the stairs.
17 October 2014
toastkid
PAUL F – my candidate for this would be cat 5 cables (aka ethernet cables), with the little flimsy plastic bit at the end which snaps off so easily. The internet is held together with these shoddy items.
Never really had an issue with CD cases.
17 October 2014
dirk hofman
Hi Exxo,remove mention of Gallagher and his phraseology from my above comment..i will endeavour to listen to the ever interesting IP giving the JP lecture as soon as poss..
17 October 2014
celery
Got my CD off Probe which came in the post yesterday… but now I feel guilty every time I listen to it.
Consider this: by ‘firing up the big stereo in the corner’ (cheers Exxo), or slipping it into my yawning boombox I’m actually depriving Geoff and the band of the extra revenue which they would receive if I choose to listen to it through Spotify. The best thing I could do would be to buy but never actually play my physical copy.
Of course, it’s probably not up on Spotify yet, which means I should be guilt-free. But there will be a finite amount of times that I listen to the album and every one I do now is one less that I could be doing on Spotify later.
Should I wait? I find myself in a dreadful dilemma (“nice motors, dilemmas” – cheers Ted!).
17 October 2014
Jackie Reader
PETE: Midge Ure looks like a milk thief?
(Redacted as a spoiler – Ed)
17 October 2014
EXXO
I feel that in hurried defence of my complicated interweb construct, I should say that I don’t know what spotify is exactly but when I said “fire up the big stereo in the corner” I was just contrasting its lyrical clarity over the tiny little stereo in the kitchen, which is always on.
17 October 2014
paul f
It did occur to me that such a stereophonic behemoth would be useful in identifying lyrics, as nothing I currently own has any graphic equalisation beyond bass and treble.
17 October 2014
Schoon
Is there a new album out? What’s it like?
17 October 2014
Chris The Siteowner
I’ve been experimenting with some digital processing which isolates the vocals (for obvious reasons), and if anyone has any experience with this, I’d be pleased to hear any ideas. I’m not looking forward to songs like “Baguette Dilemma”. The best method I’ve found is to use Audacity to remove the centre channel (the normal method for attempting to make instrumental backing tracks), then subtracting this from the original song using a noise removal routine, to get the centre channel alone. It’s not great, but it is a small improvement over listening to the original (in terms of just hearing the vocals, of course). Obviously you can then use some bandpass filtering to get rid of the frequencies above and below Nigel’s voice too.
Then again, none of this helps if you have no idea what “The Blob” is or have never heard the names of many obscure golfers.
17 October 2014
EXXO
“Never heard the names of many contemporary golfers,” perhaps? ‘Cos they really aren’t obscure at all to someone who follows it. The first golfer named on ‘Gwatkin’ is a massive name, and one toyed with on stage by NB10 before, too. Clearly the golf is now nearly all on bloody Sky, so I don’t follow it, but I do frequent a lot of dark corners of the internet where young men are addicted to sport and gambling and Sky and I notice what a good job they’ve done into turning North American golf into something you can bet on (or just follow and pay your TV subscription for) when their football coverage has finished for the day.
When I was 16 I would have known the names of all the golfers ‘cos I was genuinely interested and played a bit. NB10 perhaps still feels the same. But there are loads out there now who know them just ‘cos they bet on the tournaments, week in week out all year round, hoping for the big one, given that such bets do inevitably have juicy odds.
Anyway, teamwork will see us through, ‘cos I reckon ‘Baguette’ is gonna be easy (mucho local knowledge) compared to ‘The Bane’….
17 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
When the pike fishing was dog slow we’d often make up daft games like naming the last 30 National or FA Cup winners, one day we did American golfers, I’d name one then my mate would, lasted for ages, I think I won it with Brad Faxon.
17 October 2014
paul f
And then Sporcle turned your game into big business Bobby. I’d sue.
17 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
Tis true Paul, There was nothing like going to bed and trying to sleep whilst thinking of some sporting fact that you knew but couldn’t get,…. Kids today eh?, tell em and won’t believe you.
17 October 2014
Jozef venglos
Hi – long time reader, first time contributor – loving your work.
UFO arrived this morning. After reading the insert reference to the Horned Woman of Saughall, and doing a bit of Google-work, do we perhaps have an explanation for the visit to the British Museum before the Shepherd’s Bush gig in March?
17 October 2014
cyclops
Saw this at work and did a double take and went “NO” after listening to ‘This ones for now’ and ‘Urge for offal’ off the brilliant new album. I have since been informed it’s actually Delph in Lancashire not Delft in Holland (thanks Chris) which is a pity, because we won this picture for coming a respectable 4th (out of 4 teams) in the North Sea Cup in the Hoek of Holland 2013 (no open top bus when we got back to show it off either).
Also I have partaken in writing certain things in grime on lorries in my tenure as a port operative on the Humber, so Immingham and beyond as well as Harwich.
17 October 2014
Treadmore
Anyone else noticed a couple of the song titles on the CD itself?
My player picks up
Westward Hope!-Massive Letdown
and
The Bain of Constance
(not Bane)
That aside, quite a few songs are similar to previous efforts…
17 October 2014
cyclops
What does Midge Ure look like anyone? I can’t get it dammit
17 October 2014
Chris The Siteowner
It’s redacted a few comments above, but if you click/highlight it…
17 October 2014
EXXO
This site is on course towards clocking at least a thousand comments in the first two weeks of properly discussing the album.
About how long did it take to reach the first thousand, Chris?
18 October 2014
NEILTHECHIMP
@Cyclops
The Midge Ure line had me baffled until today when I had the CD on in the car. Moment of clarity….
“Midge Ure looks like a milk thief”
A reference to his awful muzzie I presume?
Give it a listen again and see what you reckon.
(Redacted as a spoiler. Only a couple of days to go – Ed)
18 October 2014
surprised of anglia
It’s an exponential grower.
18 October 2014
bobby svarc
Any winners on the UFO Bingo? Or remotely close?
18 October 2014
Schoon
Well I won’t be getting mine before October 20th. Anybody else?
18 October 2014
EXXO
Somebody put him out of his misery and send that man some mp3s (I can’t soz).
18 October 2014
Chris The Siteowner
@Exxo – the site is indeed bombing along, although it’s had some prolific bursts in the past, particularly in Summer 2011 when we had the Lux Familiar Cup followed by 90 Bisodol (Crimond). This time last year was the busiest of all, however; the A-Z has had a big impact.
First comment was 23/10/2007
Comment 1000 reached on 15/02/2009, 481 days later
Comment 2000 reached on 01/03/2010, 379 days later
Comment 3000 reached on 09/09/2010, 192 days later
Comment 4000 reached on 05/03/2011, 177 days later
Comment 5000 reached on 16/05/2011, 72 days later
Comment 6000 reached on 30/07/2011, 75 days later
Comment 7000 reached on 14/10/2011, 76 days later
Comment 8000 reached on 28/02/2012, 137 days later
Comment 9000 reached on 03/08/2012, 157 days later
Comment 10000 reached on 24/02/2013, 205 days later
Comment 11000 reached on 29/09/2013, 217 days later
Comment 12000 reached on 07/12/2013, 69 days later
Comment 13000 reached on 04/03/2014, 87 days later
Comment 14000 reached on 09/06/2014, 97 days later
Comment 15000 reached on 25/09/2014, 108 days later
…but we’re easily on target to break the record at the moment. We’ll do it if we get to Comment 16000 by 3 December.
That said, I wouldn’t encourage quantity over quality.
18 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
I’ve just had a scarey thought, I maybe won’t need a season ticket by the time the next album comes out
18 October 2014
EXXO
We’ll be at 16,000 in about 4 days I reckon.
18 October 2014
Ian (Slidge) lees
3 1/2 days at this rate.
18 October 2014
EXXO
Blimey Dobbo on that Twitter feed’s making up for lost time isn’t he?
Wonder if while he was waiting for it to arrive he was just hoping nobody else he knew would be tweeting these gems before he did.
18 October 2014
Gordo
hopefully this won’t re redacted as a spoiler
https://flic.kr/p/oMb38K
19 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
Latest news from Sir Geoff
http://www.probeplus-store.co.uk/
19 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
The Bane Of Constance is pure class, sad though
19 October 2014
surprised of anglia
It’s quiet…… too quiet. There must be something out there……..
All the the best for tomorrow, Chris. I’ll buy you a limeade on Mill Road in December, should we meet.
19 October 2014
chris the siteowner
Yes, you did see that right: an MP3 download of the album available through the Probe Plus Store.
20 October 2014
bobby svarc
Exclusion Zone
20 October 2014
Dave n barbara
Out of stock. Out of stock. Always out of stock. I’m off to somewhere I can actually buy the thing, not just feel good about myself while not buying it. Sad, but it’s not good enough.
20 October 2014
CARDINAL RICHELIEU
Like a child opening in his presents on Xmas Day, I bought a digital copy of the album off the Probe Plus site. But the download won’t work. I’m getting lots of 403 Forbidden type messages. Anyone else had this problem? Oh well, it’s just out on Spotify anyway. Hopefully someone will get back to me re: my inability to download!
(Let us know here if you’ve downloaded from Probe Plus successfully or unsuccessfully please – CtSO)
20 October 2014
Darren
Just downloaded the album. Be great if someone could help Geoff out with the file tagging next time. It’s a tracklisting shambles.
20 October 2014
Darren
I take it all back! Windows Media Player is a tracklisting shambles.
20 October 2014
sandii39
Hi Treadmore, I got the same tracklisting titles as you for the same two songs, but rather bizarrely, only on the stereo in my car, on Windows Media Player it was fine.
20 October 2014
oFFICER cADET rALPH bLAND
Whilst waiting for your hard copy, you can listen to it on Spotify.
20 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
@EXXO: Can this day get any better, I don’t think so, UFO officially out today;-), My eightfold American football acca has come in and now £11 has just landed in my PP account. I think I’ll open that bottle of Veuve Clicquot I was saving for the birth of the new royal sprog in April
20 October 2014
toastkid
Nice one OC Bland. My CD should arrive today but i can’t wait.
20 October 2014
Graham KIDA
Is it me or is there quite a few melodic blasts from the past stitched into these new tunes?
“For you I’d lose my self esteem – For Crewe I’d use Junction 16.” Epitaph quality!
20 October 2014
Chris The Siteowner
As an update to the notes above about the number of comments coming in, fellow trainspotters might like to know that we just had our busiest week ever on the site – here’s the data – as well as the half-millionth view of the home page. I’m trying not to look at the website hosting costs.
20 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
Funny you should mention trainspotting, I’ve just seen a grid through Hinckley
20 October 2014
THe drummer out of flintlock
I bought the CD from Fopp this morning, but after reading some of the comments on here decided to download it from Probe Plus instead of getting it back out of the car.
No technical problems, assuming it really was recorded in 2049.
20 October 2014
WalkleyBlade
I may be preaching to the converted here, but you may have noticed that Adam Boyle was a founder member and guitarist of the Australian metal band Psi.Kore. They toured with Cradle of Filth in 2001, although Adam had already left by then, while the band were still compiling their first (presumably hand-written) setlist.
Citation here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psi.Kore
20 October 2014
Floreat ultonia
Afternoon all, album successfully downloaded. Thanks for the email this morning telling me how.
Is this Gatehouse of Fleet’s first mention in song? Like a Galloway Giltrap or something.
20 October 2014
Aonoch
Most probably is Gatehouse’s first, and Creetown as well. But has Kirkcudbright been mentioned in a HMHB song before tho?
20 October 2014
GeordiePaul
Does anyone know if you get a free download if you buy the CD from Probe?
20 October 2014
GeordiePaul
I’ll guess it isn’t and just buy the download from Probe anyway. I might get the CD at the Ritz next month. I really want to listen to it ten or more times today and I forgot to pre-order.
20 October 2014
JERSEY city foam party
CD purchased from ProbePlus, paid for in Pounds Sterling. Off to Spotify while it wings its way across the pond.
20 October 2014
John C
hi – i ordered the vinyl version when it was first available, but still not received it despite getting an “order complete” email on the 1st Oct. Has anyone else received the vinyl version or is it just me?
20 October 2014
JERSEY city foam party
By the way, I really want the Motorway t-shirt but they’ve only got it in Small.
20 October 2014
Geordie Paul
I’ve paid for it now and I wish I hadn’t because I haven’t the slightest idea how to listen to it. I wish I’d bought it from Amazon or iTunes. WTF is a compressed zip file? I might have to just get it from I-tunes now anyway and regard the six and a half quid I’ve just wasted as a donation to the band. Like they are Ethiopians and every pound that you pay for the record will literally go into a starving child’s mouth.
(Paul, just double-click on a zip file and it should open nicely in most operating systems – CtSO)
20 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
Dead easy man, Piece of pi55.
Locate the compressed folder that you want to extract files or folders from.
Do one of the following:
To extract a single file or folder, double-click the compressed folder to open it. Then, drag the file or folder from the compressed folder to a new location.
To extract the entire contents of the compressed folder, right-click the folder, click Extract All, and then follow the instructions.
20 October 2014
Geordie Paul
Thanks Chris And Bobby. I’ve finally got it onto iTunes. It was literally the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.
So far I’ve heard the first 3 seconds of each song plus nearly all of mileage chart.
20 October 2014
Geordie Paul
Is “This One’s For Now”, “Tommy Walsh’s Eco House” II?
20 October 2014
Dickhead in quicksand
@JOHN C I nipped over to Probe today hoping to pick up a copy on vinyl but they only had the CD. Bloke said it’s been delayed. I asked Geoff at the Bilston gig and he said he was “getting them next week” ie, last week. Hopefully he’ll have some in time for Leicester. Piccadilly’s release date’s gone from 20th to “expected soon”.
20 October 2014
John C
OK, Thanks Dickhead (it just sounds wrong typing that after you have been so helpful, you should really change your moniker 🙂 ). Hoping to be at the Leicester gig so will check then
20 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
LATEST VINYL UPDATE: “Please note that the release date has been put back to 10th November, however we are expecting the stock to arrive by 24th October and orders will then be despatched.”
20 October 2014
EXXO
Lammo played his first track – ‘For Now’ – just now. Said he got the album yesterday, he name-checked a couple of his other favourites so far, and then said but they’re all good really.
20 October 2014
Sera69
Oh it’s good! Nice to hear them upbeat and punky again, and I don’t think I’ve smiled so much at a HMHB lyric as Baguette Dilemma’s…
6 civic dignitaries, idiots all
Heading out to Hillbury, I wouldn’t go that way
Dickheads in quicksand an hour from now
I should have a word but I’ve not had me dinner
A place on the promenade’s got what i need
Do I scream for the Beadle or go for the ham
Go for the ham…
Yep. Nigel’s back 🙂
PS Many thanks to Chris for the updates and notifications… I don’t post but often visit!
20 October 2014
warden hodges
Decent walk is West Kirby to Hilbre, soft sand guaranteed. Prefer the Marine Lake circular walk.
20 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
Anyway who’s made it onto the album and is now looking over their shoulder for the grim reaper? Poor old Lynsey
20 October 2014
acidic regulator
History of the Adam Boyle Wikipedia page:
“Nominated page for deletion using Page Curation (speedy deletion-no context)”
“Declined – Identifying the subject of this article is easier than pissing in the shower”
20 October 2014
CHARLES (WHO “KNEW” IT WAS Cévaër) EXFORD
It’s what you’re all thinking so it might as well be my name.
20 October 2014
LAure
@Geordie Paul – I started listening and thought it was ‘hook-a-duck, candy-floss, balloons’ and then played to the end. Ah, so did they.
Separately; Harwich, Christ.
20 October 2014
Chris The Siteowner
Jeez, I go and watch some football for an hour, and the site goes to pieces. To anyone who wants to contribute some lyrics, thanks so much, but please email them to me. I’ve removed all the lyrics submitted on this page, and will reinstate them on the correct page when we do that song, and – if I can – the subsequent comments. As you were.
20 October 2014
PaUl f
I am sure I speak for the whole class when I say “sorry sir”.
20 October 2014
Schoon
But the album’s not out till November, are you lot making this up? I can no longer read these comments, far too many spoilers, despite the sterling efforts of ctso. On the plus side I am useless at working out lyrics, so by the time I finally get the album I can benefit from your excellent work. Assuming it arrives before the oil runs out.
20 October 2014
atombowl
Sorry about that, my fault , I was bored on the bus and couldn’t find the contact link. I’ve just spotted it.
20 October 2014
EXXO
I knew it would all get wiped in a few minutes but went along for the ride anyway. Unapologetic here.
20 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
I’ve got a thick book on my arse, Just in case
20 October 2014
PaUl f
Cevaer is still there though Exxo.
20 October 2014
EXXO
Cévaër will always be there like an albatross around my drooping neck of shame, the neck of the guitar I wish I could play along with all the other albatrosses that bent that guitar of failure into an abyss of under-achievement. I thought I knew something but the more you think you know, the less you really know. Every time Phoebus rises he will show up my shame, and when he sinks there will be no hiding place.
Still I expect I shall get used to it. I usually do.
20 October 2014
Paul
Getting the download took a bit of working out.
For anyone else perplexed, here’s what you need to do…
1. Buy the album. This does not bring up a download link.
2. Go to “Your Account”
3. Click “Your digital downloads”
4. This should show your download. On the right is a small icon that’s shaped like a white folder. Click on it.
5. When it’s downloaded, open the file.
6. Your computer should havew opened a zipped folder. At the top should be something saying “Extract all” or similar. Click it, and make a note of where it’s being extracted to. On a PC, the folder it’s extracted to will automatically be opened anyway.
7. Import to or Play on media playing program of your choice.
20 October 2014
Mick-Exclusion Zone
Dean just rang me, not pleased
20 October 2014
CARDINAL RICHELIEU
Tried your steps Paul, but where the white folder should be, it simply says “Expired”, even though it also says the expiry date is shown as 22nd October. Not heard back from Probe, tried both the Geoff and the “info” Probe-Plus addresses. The waiting game continues!
21 October 2014
dirk hofman
A few soft drinks get mentioned, whether it constitutes a theme or not I can’t say. In J Cope’s recent book-131, one of the characters, a poet, has had some pop songs in the charts that are soft drink based – Last Tango in Paris…
21 October 2014
Tony F
This is only the second time I’ve posted on here but I just had to mention that, on hearing the chorus to ‘Gwatkin’, for the first time, on headphones, on a bus, during the rush hour…well I’m sure I don’t have to go on.
21 October 2014
Strumski
Amazed to hear mention of Gatehouse Of Fleet on the album, a town I know well from childhood hols.
Am on umpteenth listen and the album has grown on me after each listen, great stuff as always.
21 October 2014
CARDINAL RICHELIEU
Russ from Probe got in touch and all my problems are now sorted (well, my HMHB problems anyway).
As has been previously mentioned, Scotland was under-represented when it came to HMHB lyrics, so it’s pleasing to hear so many in the latest album, not least the Antonine Wall which used to run past the back of my house (and was a popular drinking den for underagers with a penchant for World Heritage sites).
21 October 2014
Mr larrington
It sounds a bloody sight better with a working subwoofer
21 October 2014
Mr larrington
And as I was saying before Something et the rest of my post, two thumbs up to Highes TV & Audio for getting said new s/w to Larrington Towers six days ahead of the Mega-Global Sounds Like A Big River Corporation of Seattle, USAnia’s “estimated delivery date”.
21 October 2014
Bothy on the Knoydart
So the vinyl’s delayed again? I was hoping to get it before the Leicester gig. Nurse…!?!
These free CDs are nice and all that, but not when they are inside the sleeve of the vinyl you are waiting weeks for.
Guess I just go for the media hat-trick and buy some lovely mp3s.
21 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
It’s all gone very quiet
21 October 2014
Chris The Siteowner
Well, get yer teeth into this review of the album, the first I’ve seen…
21 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
What a Silly Billy
21 October 2014
Jozef venglos
Interesting to see another of the album reviews on that link – I feel a song coming on….
21 October 2014
nobby
having had a few someone please tell me does Gwatkin reference the cider or the vicar? the what the f**ck wer we derinking suggests the former but cresta? i dunno actually i dont really care come to that
21 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
I Don’t think so mate, His bride broke her leg on Sunday, There’s bound to be someone at the gig from out that way who’ll give you a lift
21 October 2014
Ben w
Hello, been enjoying the site for a while but this is my first post. Like others I had problems downloading the album but just had an (unprompted) email from Probe with the album attached as a zip file. Assume a few must have had the same issues and they’ve emailed everyone who paid for the download; it seems to work fine now.
Been listening to it on Spotify in the meantime – like others I laughed heartily upon hearing the chorus of Gwatkin, but thankfully I wasn’t in public.
21 October 2014
Matty
Cor, it’s a bit good isn’t it? A grower too, so the gift that keeps giving.. and again, another victim of listening to Gwatkin whilst on a busy rush hour bus.. what a line
21 October 2014
EXXO
That review Chris has put there is another one of those “I only like one thing about this band and instead of admitting they do loads of other stuff and trying to describe what it is, I’ll just say this doesn’t do what I like as well as the bits I like best” efforts. I.e. no effort at all.
That fella who irked us a few months ago from ‘The Barmcake’ vanzine (=vanity fanzine – I just coined that, I think) only liked the funny talky songs with very clear lyrics and couldn’t be arsed with the rest of the output. Meanwhile this latest reviewer says he only likes obvious direct contemporary social satire, and doesn’t get the rest. But remind me Ian – precisely what were the contemporary issues that ‘Bisodol’ put the world to rights about? Variety of stock in mid-wales chandlers? Lack of clue on soccer sofas? Tedious eco-house programmes? Eels in wheely bins?
21 October 2014
Paul
On first hearing, I think the reviewer had a point.
It’s not a bad album, but there’s nothing that really jumped out and grabbed me in the way that, say, National Shite Day did, first time I heard CSI Ambleside. Nothing really bad there either. Just never quite hit the heights somehow.
Only listened to it once so far though, so perhaps some of it will grow on me.
22 October 2014
Kittymc
Thanks, think I’m getting it. So “Latest Comments” is the post-match lager in ‘spoons, so to speak? I signed up to this site a few months ago, but the only notice I get of posts is the daily A-Z of HMHB, which doesn’t tell me what anyone’s said. Is that how it works, or am I missing something? Do you have to come onto the site to see what people have posted day to day? Obviously, that’s no hardship, considering the children of the Calcutta railways and all that, but I am perhaps backwards here. Forgive savage ignorance and what not … I’m probably missing something dead obvious. How do you know when someone’s had a PBR, for example? Do you have to come on to the site, or can you get it sent to your email so you can congratulate them in a timely fashion? Westward Ho!
22 October 2014
G100
Well, for what it’s worth I am on the side of those who describe it as a ‘grower’. It’s at the very least good to start with and Westward Ho! has been stuck in my head since first hearing it, but with each listen I fall in love with the album a bit more. Teenage Bride is, I think, potentially the best track on the record, somehow dark and happy at the same time. I can see why a reviewer after one listen might not regard it as the height of their career, but this is the thing with reviews, they don’t usually reflect how an album impacts you over time.
Great to hear Mollington and read Saughall getting a mention. My Nan has lived in Saughall all my life so I know those two places well. (She doesn’t have horns by the way).
23 October 2014
Jeff dreadnought
Who the hell does Ian D. Hall think he is?
23 October 2014
Chris The Siteowner
Not a review, but this is a bit more positive, by Paddy Shennan in the Liverpool Echo.
23 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
Put a PayPal Donate link up Chris, Don’t lose money man, I’ll willingly bung you a flag.
(Thanks Bobby, I’m happy to cover costs for now, but appreciate the thought – CtSO)
23 October 2014
Chris The Siteowner
Hi @KittyMc – welcome to the site (just in time for it to go AWOL for a day). You’re right, the signing up is just for our “A to Z of…” daily/weekly email list, and we don’t post all the comments out by email. I think that would be a lot of emails, although you’ve just given me the idea to include a link to this page in those emails. You could also follow the comments using RSS if you’re that sort.
23 October 2014
Gravetending AMATEUR
(longtimelistenerfirsttimecalleretcetc)
Seem a lot of nonsense is being written about UFO, especially in comparison with 90B(C). I’d say UFO is a better album overall, perhaps not hitting the heights of Stiperstones or Bad Wools, but certainly more consistent… except for Mileage Chart. UFO does *not* end well, which might be provoking negative reactions. That said, anyone who opens a review with “The rage of satire, the cleverness of using the English language to its fullest, most surreal and outspoken is something that should be encouraged daily.” should be discouraged from writing. Daily.
23 October 2014
Chris The Siteowner
You have to scroll down a long way, but it’s worth it. Not often we see Half Man Half Biscuit in the charts. Savour that.
Original here – may have been updated by now!
23 October 2014
EXXO
@Shennan’s excellent piece.
Got all the first 15 right on the John Peel quiz and then blew the last two… 🙁
Hope Peel will be remembered tonight in some form. I was gonna make a banner if I’d been able to go… would be great if he got a chant from the crowd – great way of trying to persuade the lads to do a second encore, for example?
23 October 2014
Wervin turnpike
UFO, like many of the others, is definitely a grower. After 4 or 5 complete listens there’s stuff in there I’ve not figured out despite the lyrics being completely intelligible, and there is always the nagging feeling that something I don’t get should be completely bleeding obvious but needs to be pointed out to me by you lot. Just now I caught myself lustily joining in with the hummed and sung refrains on ‘Adam Boyle…’, so it’s all moving in the right direction. False Grit and Baguette Dilemma are starting to burrow into my subconscious as well. This might take a while but I think it will be worth it.
23 October 2014
KITTYMC
Thanks, Chris. I see what you mean about emails… I’m just awful lazy and a little bit lonely. Thanks for the advice about RSS feeds. Don’t entirely understand it, but I take complete responsibility for that one. I won’t swear anymore. Sorry about that. I just got giddy … I blame the Cresta chorus. Am now putting my earnest energies into deciphering exactly what the Booker guy’s dilemma is. Should he go for the ___ or the ham? I have a feeling the whole story rests on this.
23 October 2014
Saint Steve
Loving Gwatkin … Genre rated as Audio and spoken word? and Westward Ho comes up as Westward Hope on Car CD player!?
23 October 2014
Neil
First chance to listen today, enjoyed most of it straight of the bat and it only gets better. Haven’t thought of or drunk Cresta for 30 odd years, brilliant…
23 October 2014
PAT BOONE ON THE COUNTY BASSOON
Apologies if this has been mentioned but cannot be bothered really to scroll right through – note the reference for the late Lynsey de Paul in False Grit, in conjunction with the former Glamorgan all-rounder Rodney Ontong, up to something at the Antonine Wall. RIP Lynsey.
24 October 2014
G100
Is anyone else minded of Sultans of Swing when listening to Urge for Offal?Not just the tenuous fictional band link, but the solo has a little Mark Knoplfer sound to it too… Probably just me.
24 October 2014
slow dempsey
OK, you’ll have to bear with me on this but…
I’ll take you back to August 2010 and the Marc Riley Session, which was the first time we heard a number of new songs including Tommy Walsh’s Eco House. We spent some time trying to work out the lyrics to the new songs. You can find the discussion here.
One line of Tommy Walsh was proving impenetrable – the capturing the zeitgeist and widening the motorway bit. It turned out this was because in the live performance the line got slightly fluffed.
We were getting nowhere with our decyphering when the following contribution was made (it’s at no 65 on the list):
“Is it possible that with it being live he simply forgot the lyric entirely at that point?
If this were the case I’d hazard to suggest that the line could be ‘while you’re capturing the zeitgeist, they’re widening the motorway’.
Great site by the way.”
I am getting to the point…
This contribution, it transpired, was spot on. Now, the pseudonym adopted by the contributor was “Nelson Umbongo N’danga O’Reilly”.
I hope I’m not breaking any embargoes with this, but a close variant of that name is in the lyrics on this album.
Many of us take our pseudonyms from the songs, but we, naturally, do so after the songs have been written.
So does this mean that someone who had that name in mind for a future lyric was giving us a helpful prod in the right direction?
24 October 2014
atombowl
Don’t really understand some of the less than enthusiastic reviews. After a week of living with it I think it’s got more staying power than 90B and Achtung Bono. I loved both of these for a few days and while there is some great stuff on there, I started to lose enthusiasm for some of songs I liked best to begin with. This one is the opposite. Songs I was slightly underwhelmed by on first listen are getting better and better and I’ve not had the urge to skip tracks due to over-familiarity. It reminds me a bit of Godcore in that respect where it seemed to take ages for me to see what was great about it. The other plus was not having heard most of the album in radio sessions beforehand, I think the only song I was vaguely familiar with was Hornbeam.
Gwatkin, and Bagette and Adam Boyle are current highlights but I’m sure this will change over time.
24 October 2014
acidic regulator
@@Slow Dempsey I think you’ve just resolved a dilemma.
24 October 2014
EXXO
I believe it’s “beadle” Kitty – a chap who could alert the relevant authorities to the quicksand-bound dignitaries. Hence the dilemna.
24 October 2014
PAT BOONE ON THE COUNTY BASSOON
Agree with Atombowl.
24 October 2014
Age-old Eel
I’m with you Pat, and Atombowl, but more so. This is the band at the top of their game. Best album since Achtung Bono?
Err, actually I could make a strong case for this being their best ever. I’m not kidding either. Is anyone else’s favourite track Stuck up a Hornbeam?
Just me then……
….8 words giving me the green light to wallow…….
25 October 2014
acidic regulator
Fewest obscure literary references on an HMHB album ever?
WTF, it gets better and better on repeated listening.
26 October 2014
BullsHit at the Coalface
“Midge Ure looks like a milk thief”
Who else would conceive of such a lyric in 2014?
After only a couple of tracks I was hooked. Already multiple disillusioned references to various aspects of day to day life, a shout out to Standard Liege and an unexpected callback to ‘Fun Day In The Park’. If only Peel were still around to champion them.
The opening guitar on ‘The Bain of Constance’ sounds very like ‘D.I.Y. Meat’ by The Fall to my ear.
Special shout out to ‘Baguette Dilemma for the Booker Prize Guy’ and to ‘Adam Boyle Has Cast Lad Rock Aside’, as it has numerous refs to my favourite film of all time: The Wicker Man.
Nigel, you’ve done it again.
26 October 2014
Kendo nagasaki
I’m very confused my the slightly negative press also. It is most certainly a grower and not as immediate as some albums have been but it is destined to be one of the best. Gwatkin, Adam boyle, urge for offal are my faves at the moment but the whole album is fantastic. It’s also amazing that they managed to reach the heady heights of 39 in the chart
26 October 2014
EXXO
Any reviews in any conventional mass media yet? The only thing I’ve been slightly irked about is one or two of the fan reviews making it all about Nigel – it’s pretty clear that Neil’s been responsible devising for some of the most storming tunes on this album, and rightfully deserves his place on the cover.
26 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
I agree, and they’ve even given him some hair. Cracking cover photo
26 October 2014
Cardinal richelieu
Adam Boyle tune… “He’s bought stuff on Topic for which he’s not geared”.
A cursory search on Google leaves me no wiser. What is Topic?
26 October 2014
Cyberfoggy
It’s a record label that releases folk music. Especially known for stuff like Ewan MacColl.
26 October 2014
Chris The Siteowner
@Exxo – I’m shocked there’s been nothing, even on the UK-based independent music review sites. It’s a TOP FORTY ALBUM. Is there a sack of promotional CDs hidden under someone’s discarded coat in the corner of the Birkenhead sorting office or something?
I’ve compiled a quick list here of some websites and publications which ought perhaps to be reviewing the album. If everyone who reads this comment emails just one of them and suggests they review it, we might see a few results. Go on. Pick one at random and email them. I just have.
26 October 2014
Adam Boyle
@Cardinal, there used to be a very iffy website called topix on which you could buy and sell all manner of substances ( so I hear ) but it was shut down. However, Topic is what it sounds like to these ears also and ‘ off topic ‘ or OT is often used when someone jarringly changes the gist of a discussion thread. Much like this post
26 October 2014
peter mcornithologist
@ Only been listening for the last 2 -3 months but it was love at first note. What I am interested in knowing ,is which album/albums are the most highly adored by you guys who have been listening for 28years.It’s all new and magical to me and I truly can not as yet arrange any order of preference.Oh well perhaps Trouble Over Bridgewater! PS R.I.P Jack Bruce
26 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
Haven’t got a particular favourite album, I love BITDSSS basically because I can still remember listening to Annie Nightingale on the way back from Snetterton race track when she played DPAK, I had to pull over as my van had a shite radio, loved it, I went into Nervous Records in Hinckley the next day and asked Gordon for it, He just bust out laughing so I left him my phone number, he rang the next day to say that he’d located a album on cassette for me.
26 October 2014
acidic regulator
BITDHSS for me too I suppose {senile cackle}, if only for that “dafuq?” moment when I first heard God Gave Us Life. Oh, and BAITDHSS, because when I first heard AIWFCIADPAK (on John Peel) I wondered how the hell NB10 knew so much about my childhood. But it’s all a bit like being asked to choose your favorite child – and I’m certainly not getting tired of UfO yet, this CD’s a grower (which could be a reason for bad reviews).
@@Peter McO, are you by any chance a member of the Teesmouth Bird Club?
26 October 2014
Alice Van der meer
I’m assuming that Nigel is railing against the missing comma in the Cresta slogan that, frankly, makes it sound quite disgusting. Compare “Cresta It’s frothy man” to “Cresta It’s frothy, man”…
26 October 2014
acidic regulator
Probably old hat, but I’ve just been reminded of the rewrite of I can’t believe it’s not butter! as “Fuck me, it’s marge!
26 October 2014
Alice Van der meer
Me again… just listening to UfO – what on earth is the song that Mileage Chart sounds like? It’s doing me head in trying to recall it.
26 October 2014
EXXO
I’m not sure, but to me it’s a much improved ‘Problem Chimp’ sort of tune, inspired by something deep in the funkier sections of Neil’s record collection.
26 October 2014
paul f
Responding in no particular order to some of the points raised above.
Mileage Chart strikes me, in its intro, as something that could conceivably been done by another band – something that may be unique in the HMHB back catalogue. In other words it sounds like “normal” music.
Trouble Over Bridgewater is also one of my favourites but I agree with others that BITDHSS/BAITDHSS is an important historical record for understanding what they are all about. My introduction came via a late night (possibly Peel, possibly not) radio play of The Trumption Riots, and my interest was further piqued by the hearsay around school of their song titles, as well as the fact that the teacher who took my General Studies A level Art classes was the late lamented Sam Davis (who together with Geoff made up “the Bald Brothers” who I think produced the Trumpton Riots EP, and who was also better known as Eric Shark in Deaf School).
26 October 2014
acidic regulator
This is more like it!
27 October 2014
kittymcdermott
He was a shagger, that Ewan, apparently. I mean, apparently a really shit dad. Poor old Kirsty! Apparently 1930s Salford was the most densely populated area in the world at the time. My uncle Tom told us that. However, in the unlikely event that anyone ever asked me to choose between “The Manchester Rambler” and “They Don’t Know,” I’d go for “They Don’t Know” anytime. I once heard/probably imagined that Ken’s a big fan of Kirsty … makes sense to me. Yeah, she got into coke and Bono … but “There’s a Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis” is still, I reckon, a fucking brilliant song and watching her singing it is a joy.
27 October 2014
Stale craig
Has anyone got their mitts on a vinyl copy yet?
27 October 2014
I, troll
Liked the “As told to a boil on a cab driver’s neck. Again” line.
A nod to the “All of our songs sound the same” coda from Lord Hereford’s Knob.
Confirms, to me, that most of the songs on UFO are old HMHB tunes with a new set of lyrics.
Stuck Up A Hornbeam is already one of my favourite HMHB songs, however.
27 October 2014
John AndErson
This is the second successive HMHB album which kicks off with a track which references a chance meeting with a couple on holiday.
27 October 2014
peter mcornithologist
@ Acidic Regulator.I used to be a member of the North Northumberland Club many years ago.Still a massive interest of mine.Ps the Dukla Prague track has the same effect on me,including being told to get out by the fierce Mrs.Whitehead. I shall now spend time trying to understand what zeugmas are!
27 October 2014
aiwacat
@Acidic Regulator Whilst it’s good to see a positive review, I can’t help but wonder if the lads used a full-on forklift truck, or made do with a jigger, when they shifted their musical pallet.
27 October 2014
EXXO
Kerching one more sale for Probe Plus, no wonder it’s number 39 on word of mouth(*1). The BT engineer was here for two hours (*2) and a conversation that started with me St. Pauli sweatshirt soon turned to the Leeds punk scene including a couple of mutual mates, so then I knew I could turn the ‘Offal’ CD back up that was playing when he arrived. Soon asked about it, said his kids like singing along to old HMHB in the car but didn’t know there was a new record out. His birthday coming up on All Hallows so Geoff, speed that order to him for Saturday.
(*1) should I have left that as ‘word of moth’?
(*2) Got various cables coming into this house from previous contracts so I never knew I was getting me BT internet through overhead phone wires, never mind the original 80 year-old ones, which he says they defo were.
27 October 2014
Buzz Killington
The intro to ‘mileage chart’ reminded me of New order, if that’s any help,
@Alice
27 October 2014
Nick WaLTERS
BREAKING NEWS!
My esteemed colleague Dr Chubbington Rivers told me that he was watching a Live At The Apollo from 2004, and Ross Noble did the ‘why does the winner of Mr Universe only come from earth?’ joke!
Talent borrows, genius steals?
28 October 2014
FOGHORN
The line in the title track about Urge For Offal being emblazoned on the back of lorries got me thinking. With winter approaching, the time when lorries get proper filthy in no time, how about HMHB fans heading off down the nearest transport café and leaving Urge For Offal on the back of each truck? Guerrilla advertising for the masses……
29 October 2014
EXXO
Get a ‘Foghorn Blog-horn’ going and let us know how it goes. Regular instagram updates on twitter will soon have the masses involved.
29 October 2014
SIMON P
@Foghorn: I live half a mile from the biggest transport hub in the UK … and I’ve got the rest of half term
29 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
UFO…
29 October 2014
dirk hofman
Is that on Bridge Street,Bobby?
29 October 2014
ExxO
Will rock historians remember ‘U.F.O.’ as the album that was sprayed more than it was played?
29 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
Strangers in the night by UFO was a mighty fine live album.
29 October 2014
peter mcornithologist
@ saw them bobby -excellent. Also my pal Eugene Twatt and I saw 3 UFOs on Mainland Orkneyin1972. Few believed us.
29 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
@PeterMac: In one week in the early eighties at the DeMontfort Hall in Leicester I saw, Gillan, The Scorpions, UFO and Budgie then on the Saturday night we went over the wall into Coventry and saw The Handsome Beasts at the General Wolfe, They were the days my friend….
29 October 2014
BrumbiscUit
Talking of Cov, Mick; did you see HMHB there in the late-90s? We were trying to recall the name of the venue last week.
29 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
@Brum: I think it was Godiva’s, But I know I didn’t go because I was in Wroxham.
29 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
Yes it was Lady Godiva’s, I’ve just checked on the HMHB site. I can remember that it was the last weekend of the pike fishing season and something had to give 🙂
29 October 2014
acidic regulator
@@BB grrrr no I didn’t. The General Wolfe sounds very plausible though. Steamy high-ceilinged backroom, could squeeze in a couple of hundred, saw John Otway there. Missed Bo Diddley because I was in the States at the time, double grrr. Does this look familiar? Plastic beer, pretty grim pub as the outside view suggests.
29 October 2014
acidic regulator
Rats, proved wrong by facts.
29 October 2014
ExxO
@ Chris FFD
You’re right that the coroner seems remarkably untroubled by this batch of songs, with the only definite clog-popping occurring by natural causes.
I don’t think there’s a suicide in ‘My Outstretched Arms’ – the protagonists voice continues narrating in the past tense till the very end.
There may be one in the title track – does Stale Craig blow his brains out or merely damage it irreparably with substance abuse?
You’ve got to assume the RNLI pull the dignitaries out of the quicksand in ‘Baguette Dilemna’- they usually do.
However, what will happen to Adam Boyle when he reaches his final western isle?
I hope we shall find out one day.
29 October 2014
Featureless tv producer steve
I’m trying to be patient as the lyrics all go up, but in “The Unfortunate Gwatkin”, can anyone tell me what word they’re yelling before the line “What the fuck were we drinking”? It just sounds like “Crashta!” to me.
29 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
Cresta innit
29 October 2014
acidic regulator
Cresta!
29 October 2014
Featureless tv producer steve
Thanks! I was about to follow up with “What’s Cresta?” but a quick google search answered that question. So now I have another: Which one of you updated the Cresta wikipedia page to say that Cresta is mentioned in the new HMHB album?
Don’t lie. I know it was someone here.
29 October 2014
ExxO
Steve – that sounds more like HMHB facebook club behaviour.
Anyway, do you have an actual physical copy of the album? The inlay gives a good guide as to the appearance of the frothy liquid that a dodgy polar bear pusher encouraged us to imbibe in the 70s. It looked like the effluent from a chemical plant in Ellesmere Port (on the outskirts of which the song is set), so that’s what it indeed probably was. Although you will have gathered from Wikipedia that Cresta came in several flavours, it is the red one that is depicted on the sleeve.
29 October 2014
ExxO
Forgot to mention that the HMHB facebook club are our deadly rivals and we hate them. Before gigs we all meet up in a forest and fight it out, to keep the violence away from the actual gig venues. No rules except we don’t stamp on their heads when they’re down cos we’re cool like that.
29 October 2014
Featureless tv producer steve
God, I love this site.
30 October 2014
ExxO
Have you seen the movie ‘Green Street’, Steve? I picture you coming over for a HMHB gig in London town, and getting sucked gradually more and more into the brutal but strangely addictive violence that takes place around their gigs between rival desperadoes.
“You’ve changed, Steve” [pleads a loved one]
“Yes, but goddam I love these guys.”
To be continued (PS get a Cresta badge on ebay, you know you want one)
30 October 2014
BrumbiscUit
If the Farcebook posse* are the Lyric Project’s arch rivals, where does that leave the Twatter bunch? The latter quite often make the former appear as if they were bards.
* I have been known to straddle both camps, so to speak.
30 October 2014
ExxO
Yeah but faceless internet trolls never show for a straightener in Delamere Forest – and I should know. I waited long enough.
30 October 2014
acidic regulator
I have been known to straddle both camps, so to speak.
OK.
30 October 2014
acidic regulator
Where was the clue?
30 October 2014
ExxO
Why Mr. Kowalski (I knew it was you all along but i was trying to stop the Project firm from tearing itself to bits following the whole facebook club camp-straddling betrayal revelations shocker).
30 October 2014
Dr Desperate
Mike Harding’s Interweb Folk Show http://www.mikehardingfolkshow.com this Sunday 2.11.14 is a special on Topic records, the label that Andy Kershaw called “the most important record label in Britain”. It’s the oldest independent label in the world, 75 years old this year, and to celebrate he’ll be playing tracks from:
Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger
Paddy Ryan
A L Lloyd
Martin Carthy
Carthy Swarbrick and Diz Dizle
Rambling Jack Elliot
Billy Bennett
The Oldham Tinkers
Nic Jones
Phoebe Smith
The Watersons
Dick Gaughan
Ray Fisher
Martin Simpson
Tom Anderson and Aly Bain
Paul Robeson
Lal Waterson and Oliver Knight.
(This much has been gleaned from his Facebook page.)
30 October 2014
G100
Re: Deaths. I reckon Stale Craig went the way of Kurt Cobain.
30 October 2014
The Ifield Windmill
While trying to glean some scrap of meaning from the second verse on ‘Baguette…’ I stumbled on this…
“Always the Dennison, never the Norm” perhaps?
30 October 2014
cold in Dundalk
Long time lurker, occasional contributor. Great site and great job Chris
Not really sure how widespread this review will reach from Ireland but stumbled on it today. It seems to be relatively active site…
30 October 2014
ExxO
Haha – “another discussion on the state of the UK motorway network”, according to that review.
Listen again and then read this, which I sent to an online periodical:
“warm, languid keyboards and chunky guitars wash over us as Blackwell’s lyrics take us on another road trip down the M6, past “The matrix sign near Arleigh Hall” and as far as the M6 Toll …. until “it starts to crawl”. It is as if Neil is driving the band’s Birkenhead Van Hire vehicle down the motorway with Nigel in the passenger seat, as his bassline drives the frontman’s lyrics. This is when we realise that this song isn’t just a love song to the mileage chart in Nigel’s trusty road atlas. “Based upon those calculations, I stayed at home”, he tells the chart …”I think you changed the way I feel”. It’s about his attitude to the music charts, not just the mileage ones:
“Then limiting my aspirations, a quiet happiness ensues,
I never tried to reach for the stars, I never had platform shoes…
Armageddon notwithstanding, in Lower Nowhere I will stay;
For higher calling and tomorrow I couldn’t give an ETA.”
“Come what may” he adds, as if to say “so please don’t expect me to go anywhere, or do anything, as even a polite refusal can offend.”
Through all the myriad of voices and personas adopted by Blackwell in his songs, this may well be the nearest we ever get to a full-on explanation of why he can’t agree to regular gigs and promotional appearances up and down the country. He just can’t do the miles. He tasted the endless touring in 1985-86, and sold tens of thousands of records as a result, but it seems that he hated it and simply couldn’t do it anymore.
So for this latest album there has been the usual well-oiled HMHB promotional routine: none whatsoever. No promotion, no touring, no interviews – leading to zero reviews in the mainstream media – yet it is simply such outstanding song-writing that John Peel’s heirs on 6 Music have eagerly picked up their copies and have been playing enough tracks to push it straight to ‘number 39 in the pop charts’, and ‘number 13 in the Indie charts’, whatever those numbers are worth these days. If you did compile a chart only for records which have been utterly unpromoted, because the front man simply can’t do it, this album would surely be number one for months.
For ‘Lower Nowhere’ in that final song, read ‘Lower Tranmere’ in reality. If the release date around Peel’s anniversary was no coincidence, the fact that the release occurred precisely when Crossley and Blackwell’s beloved Tranmere Rovers Football Club hit rock bottom, 92nd place in the football league for the first time in nearly 30 years, was pure fate. You can’t change the team you follow, and they will often let you down. But you’re free to change the band you follow, and maybe, just maybe, they never will.
(My full piece is a bit fan-zy so they probably won’t want it. I’ll put it up on another blog if not.)
30 October 2014
NicK WALTERS
Thanks for that Mr Exford. One of the most insightful pieces of writing on HMHB I’ve ever read.
30 October 2014
Peter Gandy
It’s Arley Hall Exxo.
30 October 2014
Nick WaLTERS
My review here.
(Thanks Nick – best one yet. Now added at top of page – CtSO)
2 November 2014
nathan richardson
A fantastic analysis, Exxo. Very good indeed. I can’t wait to read the entire piece.
3 November 2014
dirk hofman
After a bit about Peel and the Fall, UFO gets a mention…
6 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
Another vote for “Slug Dempsey” in that URL.
6 November 2014
toastkid
Listening again, it seems like this album is full of cryptic crossword clues (is the title one?), and not many answers. Maybe we should compile them all on a special page, see if we can figure out answers, and then compile an actual crossword to be sent to NB57 for marking.
6 November 2014
SEan macreaVy
Congrats Chris, you’ve done it again. After finally getting my vinyl & CD copies from Geoff on Thursday, I did my customary first listen driving to work and back. Nothing hit me much beyond the bullseye hit of singling out Westward Ho for a kicking, I found the rest frustrating because Nigel’s vocals are mixed quite low, the songs sounded a bit like re-treads. And then THAT moment, the pay-off after the tantalising ‘Then came the song…’ Brought the biggest smile to my face after a shit week and a failed job interview. That ignited the album for me, and then the real dividends…
Beer in the Man Cave, virgin vinyl, and the lyrics project in front of me. The emerging genius just seemed to spring out at me. How could I have missed those gems in ‘This One’s for Now’? Your site really does add so much enjoyment to this great body of work Chris. You’re a Trojan and a gent. Cheers!
Ps. And what’s all this about Nigel taking a swipe at no apostrophes in the Cresta advert? Anyone like me who tasted the bleedin’ murky, syrupy stuff would tell you it was just shit!
8 November 2014
SEan macreaVy
Exxo and Toastkid, you’re both spot-on I reckon.
8 November 2014
Chris The Siteowner
Review from The Quietus…
13 November 2014
EXXO
OK, soz. Quite hard to navigate to this page now, but anyway. Not much insight in the ‘Quietus’ review, but then it is written by someone who thinks “satire is a strong word”.
14 November 2014
Steve
Hey, I wrote a review of UFO, it’s here: http://wp.me/p2pjgL-ay
14 November 2014
EXXO
Good stuff Steve. We’ll agree to disagree about ‘Mileage Chart’ for now. I think a lot more people will ‘get it’ when the lyrics are analysed on here. I think the lyrics are so different from anything he’s ever done before, but the laid-back accompaniment and the fact that it’s the final track is seeing them largely ignored as of yet.
Anyway, my own fan review is here for now.
14 November 2014
Dr Desperate
Excellent work, Exxo. Summer-is-a-comeuppance is particularly fine.
14 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
@@Exxo I don’t understand the “meh” reactions to Mileage Chart either. Is Armageddon a candidate for the “death” list? it going to involve quite a lot of them.
Has NB10^57 ever quoted Wilfred Owen? I can’t think of an occasion.
I feel compelled to point out that Phoebus was a Greek name later adopted by the Romans (the spelling .is a giveaway).
14 November 2014
EXXO
“Caverns and abysmals” is Owen writing about Shelley, Mike.
Phoebus was a Greek description of Apollo, meaning bright – like they would say “Apollo the bright.”
However it was the Romans who brought it into widespread use as a virtual synonym for Apollo, and you do often see Apollo-Phoebus as a loose pairing on those Zeus-Jupiter, Artemis-Diana lists.
14 November 2014
Bobby SVARC
WTF…
14 November 2014
peter mcornithologist
@ Bobby Svarc. Pity the poor sod who won 20 crates of that. PS – Do you think Roy looks like Alan Biley?
14 November 2014
Matt
Vinyl landed in the US yesterday.
15 November 2014
Android, Eyes Rolling
Re the picture in #484 – is that polar bear blind? He’s wearing impenetrably dark glasses and his head is looking up well away from what he’s doing, in the manner of Stevie Wonder playing piano. Or is it just that his mortal frame cannot endure the radiance of Roy Race’s immortal beauty?
16 November 2014
Horatio
Which Adam Boyle is he on about or has he actually just made the name up and got lucky? Discuss!
23 November 2014
Amethyst deceiver
My first ever post so go easy…
Could Adam Boyle be Steve Craddock from Ocean Colour Scene? The reason as to why I am suggesting this is because he has formed a folk band and is set to play at the Skegness Folk Festival Weekender in Skegness in a couple of weeks time.
Mind you, I’m not sure Steve Craddock was Lad Rock. He could be Dad Rock. The problem is it is hard to tell nowadays. Lads appear to be dads and dads appear to be lads.
Whatever happened to hating your parents musical taste? I hated my dad’s taste and he hated mine and that’s the way we liked it!
23 November 2014
John AndErson
I’m certain Adam Boyle is just a fickle, generic fan who’s swapped allegiances in a desperate bid to keep up with current trends.
I doubt that any established rock performer would have to book two weeks off at the end of July.
23 November 2014
Dr Desperate
Gordon Giltrap is also on at the Skegness Butlin’s Folk Weekend. I shall be there to cajole him.
24 November 2014
aiwacat
Flicking, half-heartedly, through the current issue of Mojo and found a late, but four-star, review for the album by Ian Harrison.
Lucky thirteenth LP for National Institution
Can it be three decades since Back In The DHSS began Nigel Blackwell’s trenchant interrogation of popular culture and life’s mundanities? But if bygone targets including Dani Behr and Howard Marks have faded into obscurity, he and his vehicle endure. As fans will happily anticipate, Urge For Offal presents folk and punk rock-informed commentaries that wittily fixate on the pedantic surface to better reach the truths below – see frowny song of bored self-obsession This One’s For Now (“you’re so beige I bet you think this song is about someone else”), or Adam Boyle Has Cast Lad Rock Aside’s cheery anatomising of a former Oasis fan who’s converted to beards and the Topic Records catalogue. The title track, meanwhile, brings a wrongfooting surge of emotion with its portrait of a long-split group who never made it. Don’t ever stop, Nigel.
25 November 2014
EXXO
It’s that “his vehicle” thing again isn’t it? You can understand it of course, since Neil has even less tolerance for the limelight that Nigel, but he isn’t just the driver of the vehicle. I was told that for this album Neil wrote the tunes for 5 tracks and plays all the guitars on the album for them, solos and all: ‘Westward Ho!’, ‘The Bane of Constance’, ‘Teenage Bride’ (we could have guessed those three), ‘Urge for Offal’ and ‘Adam Boyle’.
25 November 2014
Jeff dreadnought
Some of those reviewing Urge For Offal have suggested it’s not as dark thematically as the previous one. Whether or not you agree, I’m not sure it’s quite straightforward as that. Anyway, here’s my take for what it’s worth (based largely, it has to be said, on the thought-provoking insights offered by other contributors).
At first glance it seems that, in the same way that the themes of suicide, mass murder and necrophilia loom large in 90 Bisodol (Crimond), Urge for Offal is very much dominated by the subjects of insanity and self-delusion, which feature heavily in most of the songs.
In the opening track we have the disturbed dream of a narrator on whom it has dawned that what Westward Ho! has to offer in reality doesn’t merit the exclamation mark in its name. The narrator of This One’s For Now has split up with his girlfriend (presumably) and is attempting to write a break-up song, but is unable to keep his mind on the job in hand, being more preoccupied with an incident that happened some 30 years ago and from which he has clearly yet to recover: the disappointment of three Gerry Gows in one bubblegum pack, and his subsequent humiliation at the hands of the newsagent who sold him it.
For the Booker Prize Guy, the job in hand is to rescue six dickhead dignitaries, but a ham baguette has equal priority. More self-delusion here: he is afflicted by what appears to be a James Joyce complex, and it is hard to imagine that his Booker Prize nomination is anything other than a figment of his imagination. By contrast, the narrator in My Outstretched Arms is at least aware of his deluded state of mind – “to sacrifice sanity thinking such things, I must have been mad from the start”, as he memorably puts it, which makes this song more comic and less tragic than some of the others.
Meanwhile poor old Vince is cast adrift in a tiny craft of his own (possibly a lilo on a sea of insanity), and Constance is no nearer to understanding Vince’s state of mind by the end of “The Bain”, although she is now probably way more concerned than she was to begin with.
There’s more black humour in the character of the suicidal manic depressive in Stuck Up A Hornbeam, whose mind like a “thickening fog” reminds you of the low cloud base on the Clwydian Hills in Depressed Beyond Tablets. And who the hell does Adam Boyle think he is, now that he’s cast lad rock aside? It’s not just a beard he’s affected, it’s a whole new self-deluded persona.
If the album was solely about wretched characters who have lost their grip on reality, then it would reach its climax with the Unfortunate Gwatkin, arguably the most far-gone of all the unhinged characters on the album. But of course this is not how the album ends, which brings us on to the other category of songs on the album (and incidentally, make what you will of Theme Tune for Something or Other, but I think there’s something slightly unhinged about it that fits in with the first category of songs).
This second category is made up of the songs featuring lucid protagonists who don’t reach for the stars and keep their sensible shoes planted firmly on the ground. It’s been suggested that these songs are more “autobiographical” i.e. that the narrator in False Grit is not fictional, and that Mileage Chart – the note on which the album ends, tellingly – is the lyricist’s most autobiographical song yet. I agree, and would say that the teenage bride character in Old Age Killed My Teenage Bride is similarly based on her creator. As such, the song makes me think of Flaubert and Madame Bovary, but it’s other way round: in Flaubert’s novel, the anti-heroine’s romantic delusions lead to a painful, unnatural early death; this contrasts with the teenage bride’s “quiet ambition”. And those words are close to the ones used in Mileage Chart: “In limiting my aspirations, a quiet happiness ensues”.
But then what about the title track? I would say it falls into both of the above categories. Stale Craig apparently wrecks his brain, presumably in a deluded attempt to “live the dream”, and although the bassist recognises that the gigs were not a success, he still ascribes his brother’s withering scorn for the band to the fact that Steve was “truly square” rather than to any shortcomings of the band itself. But the song also has an autobiographical element to it: after all, we’re reliably told that its “a rather melancholy nod to all those groups we formed as teenagers which only ever lasted until the next set of traffic lights but are still recalled with fond nostalgia”. So in many ways, the one EP and two shit gigs really did make it the “best time of our lives” – although the nostalgia for those more innocent days seems to have just as much to do with the simple pleasures of the Libby’s pear halves that the bassist so fondly remembers.
26 November 2014
EXXo
Outstanding overview there Jeff.
Oh and NB10 also told me that while there is nothing remotely suicidal about the protagonist of ‘My Outstretched Arms-‘ – he merely swoons melodramatically – the fella in ‘Hornbeam’ is “definitely up there to do a job on himself”.
26 November 2014
schoon
Vote for UFO as abum of the year.
27 November 2014
schoon
Oops.
27 November 2014
Jeff dreadnought
Thanks Exxo. So the Hornbeam guy’s not kidding, then.
27 November 2014
Nick WaLTERS
Quotes:
Oh and NB10 also told me that while there is nothing remotely suicidal about the protagonist of ‘My Outstretched Arms-‘ – he merely swoons melodramatically – the fella in ‘Hornbeam’ is “definitely up there to do a job on himself”.
By contrast, the narrator in My Outstretched Arms is at least aware of his deluded state of mind – “to sacrifice sanity thinking such things, I must have been mad from the start”, as he memorably puts it, which makes this song more comic and less tragic than some of the others.
That is interesting – to me My Outstretched Arms is the most tragic song on the album and the narrator definitely seems suicidal. It clearly wasn’t the author’s intention, but all art is open to interpretation (even if it is wrong), despite what the creator intended.
29 November 2014
Ian (Slidge) lees
From the North Devon Journal…
9 December 2014
Dr Desperate
Slightly idiosyncratic review of UfO (among other HMHB-related items) at the digital lads’ mag sludgefeast (presumably named after the Dinosaur Jr song), issue 2. http://sludgefeast.co.uk/download.htm
21 December 2014
Chris The Siteowner
That’s an extraordinary piece of HMHB coverage, that. Do take a look at the whole thing – HMHB everywhere, including “Free Half Man Half Biscuit Trump Cards”. Anyone know who’s involved in producing it?
21 December 2014
Dr Desperate
It’s a Paul Mallinson (presumably not the 3rd Baronet, who died in 1989). Writer, designer, photographer, animator, according to his YouTube showreel.
Internal evidence suggests he’s probably visited here recently, though I have no way of knowing whether he posts (??This Leaden Paul).
21 December 2014
Dr Desperate
Now that the dust’s starting to die down on identifying references in UfO, I believe it’s time to announce the winner of the great Offal Placename Bingo game (post 121 above, et passim).
Interestingly, although the locations on the album were distributed fairly well over Great Britain from Ullapool to Deal, most of the entries appeared in a strip across the Midlands (a region known to 70’s musos as the Black Sabbath Belt).
Nobody hit a target directly, but the closest was Cheshire Oaks, less than 2 miles from the Wervin Turnpike, so congratulations to Warden Hodges!
1 March 2015
Warden Hodges
Gee thanks. Forgot about that!
1 March 2015
EXXO
Wonder if I can milk any glory from having mentioned Hilbre in the “Dee” thread 3 months prior to release?
2 March 2015
Warden Hodges
Re Exxo- I would say yes OK then.
Reminds me of schoolboy football when if a final ended in a draw, the schools would share the cup 6 months at a time and none of this dreaded penalty shoot-out malarkey.
2 March 2015
bobby svarc
An envelope dropped onto my doormat a year ago today, no letter, just a CD with “HMHB copy” written on it. Where the hell has that year gone?
20 September 2015
dickhead in quicksand
Suggestions welcomed for improvements to the much-expanded Wiki article, added to even since yesterday.
Has anyone got a proper citation (volume, issue, date, page no.) for that review in Mojo? I’d like to include it.
11 February 2016
John Anderson
Good work. I should point out, though, that Freddie Slade wasn’t a fictional dubbing mixer.
http://tinyurl.com/zn379l4
12 February 2016
Dr desperate
Thanks to Mojo’s habit of dating their magazine a month early and their unforgivably late reviewing of UfO, it actually appeared in the January 2015 issue (No. 254, page 95). It’s not stored in a data retrieval system, and their archive doesn’t even mention it.
12 February 2016
featureless tv producer steve
Had the evening to myself, so naturally I spent it cranking out HMHB. Listening to this album, I was struck (once again) by the juxtaposition of “Baguette Dilemma” and “Outstretched Arms.” I find the former to be one of HMHB’s hardest songs to listen to, and the latter to be one of the easiest.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I love “Baguette Dilemma”, and I think it’s a great song, but I’ve always found it…difficult. It rewards the listener in the long run, but it takes some real effort to acclimate oneself to it. For me at least, it’s taken honest work to appreciate it. Whereas “Outstretched Arms” has a very easy rhythm and pop feel that ingratiated itself to me instantly.
Does anyone else think the positioning of the songs in the album was intentional? Sometimes when I listen to this album my ears feel like “Outstretched Arms” is a reward of sorts for taking the time to appreciate “Baguette Dilemma.” Just wondering if anyone else has had the same reaction.
4 July 2016
Peter Mcornithologist
@ Steve Oregonus. I have only been aware of this band for 2 years. Immediate love. Still bewildered. Urge For Offal initially a tad disappointing. However there is an upturn for me. Heartbreaking memories . Bane of Constance and The Title Track make an old lad recall beautifully.
4 July 2016
Bobby svarc
Good God, Two years since. Frightening.
20 October 2016
BOBBY SVARC
3 years ago today ”Urge For Offal” master copy arrived though my door, it’s one of my 100 most treasured items. This time next year eh…..
18 September 2017
hendrix-tattoo
Hopefully earlier than that.
18 September 2017
Mike
One thing that has fascinated me about this album is the face on the cd. It’s a chap in what first sight appears to be a flying helmet who is gritting his teeth in a way that only interwar explorers do.
I think it is a picture of Maurice Wilson. An ‘interesting’ figure from the time when Mount Everest was still unclimbed. His body remains in the glacier, making periodic reappearances as the ice carries it down the slope and is exposed by the melting.
Look him up, he’s fascinating. He led an unconventional life after the end of the first world war and I still don’t know if I should think if him as a brave and courageous adventurer or something of an idiot.
28 August 2022
Chris The Siteowner
This is the Urge For Offal CD, Mike. You’re not referring to this, are you?.
28 August 2022
FERENCVáROS FAN
@Mike: thanks for this. Whilst rarely progressing beyond hill-walking myself, I do love a good mountaineering book or documentary. A little bit of research tells me that, when it comes to reading about Maurice Wilson, who I knew nothing about until now, ‘The Moth and the Mountain’ by Ed Caesar is the book to get. I’ll add it to my to-read list. Thanks again.
28 August 2022
EXXO
Funnily enough while rooting around in my travel/outdoor gear this morning I came across a random loose CD cover from CSIA, with Maurice Wilson’s pic & quote there.
28 August 2022
Chris The Siteowner
Aha, it’s CSI:Ambleside Mike was referring to.
28 August 2022
Old tige
I don’t see songs from UfO on recent setlists. Has it been disavowed?
30 August 2022
Chris The Siteowner
I’m not sure about disavowed, but you’re right that it’s out of favour.
According to the Giant Setlist Chart, three songs (Teenage Bride, Hornbeam and Constance) were played frequently in the 28 gigs from the end of 2014 and mid-2018, but in the 26 gigs since then, there have just been 14 live appearances of UfO songs: Constance (4), Westward Ho! (3), Hornbeam (2), and Baguette, Mileage Chart, Teenage Bride, Gwatkin and Urge (1 each).
The last outing was Westward Ho! at Bristol, the final gig before all the unpleasantness gave us the 20 month long break. Since gigs resumed, there have been no UfO songs performed live at all (0 in the last 11 gigs).
It’s a shame, because several of those songs were more than decent live (especially Teenage Bride and Constance). Indeed, Constance, Gwatkin and Westward Ho! all had particularly great bits for the audience to get hoarse ‘singing’ along to.
Midge Ure must be disappointed.
30 August 2022
Old tige
Thanks Chris. I never noticed the setlist spreadsheet. I’m glad to see a quantitative approach applied to our field of study.
31 August 2022
EXXO
Get yerself a job in the Fantasy Biscuitball League Tige. Hendrix Tattoo FBC is rumoured to be on the lookout for a top, top quantitative analyst.
31 August 2022