5 Oct 2007
And now it’s all Eva Cassidy…
I first heard The Light at the End of the Tunnel (is the Light of an Oncoming Train) on a Radio 1 session – the HMHB website records it as being broadcast on a John Peel show, although the session was more memorable for the tracks Andy Kershaw broadcast and laughed his socks off over. Became a live favourite, and there’s another good version knocking around from the BBC Radio Merseyside gig broadcast in September 2007. In the HMHB Tour of Britain, this song is the one with the most Peak District references!
Lyrics of The Light at the End of the Tunnel (is the Light of an Oncoming Train)
24 Letters Sent:
Ian
I reckon it’s brooding “alone’ by the runnel. (These things are not important, Except they are)
Dec 4th, 2008
Fredorrarci
Seconded. Also, I think it’s “For when you’re in Matlock Bath..”
Dec 4th, 2008
Dave F.
Hi
I’m going for ‘for’, but I’m sticking with ‘along’
I don’t hear ‘one’ as in own, but ‘ong’ as in, well, along. Sorry.
Chris The Siteowner, how pedantic do you want us to get? Because personally I think there are a fair few punctuation marks missing. Commas especially, which I think, in songs/poetry, make a big difference in how they’re interpreted.
Dec 4th, 2008
Chris The Siteowner
Get as pedantic as you like. And make no apology for it.
Dec 5th, 2008
Aubrey
I disagree, there is always room for Sylvia Plath.
Jan 24th, 2009
Aubrey
I am looking for references to the guitar (such as they are) solos in HMHB albums so that I can have T-shirts printed up for my really fat mates. Any suggestions?
Jan 24th, 2009
Mr Larrington
HMHB curse strikes again: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hi6sOBC44Z5PkAMVRW-hCRTtdJwAD968E8701
Buena Vista Social Club bassist Orlando “Cachaito” Lopez has died…
Feb 10th, 2009
Bill Stow
One of the things that has attracted me to Half Man Half Biscuit over the years is how they seem to connect with my own tastes, thoughts, observations etc. Music, football, cricket in other words all the things that really matter. One of my early memories concerns attending a live concert by a folk artist called Mike Absalom who was a resident of Notting Hill and who had put out a humorous LP on the Vertigo label about sex, drugs and bent coppers, the album cover of which featured an early Roger Dean design. Connections therefore between ‘Light at the end of the tunnel’ which mentions Notting Hill and drugs, and ‘Dickie Davies Eyes’ which mentions a Roger Dean poster, which can’t be bad. A follow-up Mike Absalom album featured the song ‘Hector the dope-sniffing hound’ – ‘one bark from that nark sent you down’.
I am currently into my sporadic lists phase and my three favourite HMHB records at least as for today are, not in any particular order, ‘Back again in the DHSS’, ‘Cammell Laird Social Club’ and ‘McIntyre Treadmore and Davitt.’ And I agree in the early verse its ‘alone’ not ‘along’ the runnel.
Mar 8th, 2009
Chris The Siteowner
That’s probably enough votes for “alone” for me. I listened to all three versions I have, and it’s still debatable.
Also, I noticed it’s “For when you’re in Matlock Bath” rather than “But when you’re in Matlock Bath”. Not often I correct myself.
Mar 8th, 2009
Doomhammer
Could it be “The Beacon link is weak”? (Dunno why though…)
Jun 9th, 2009
Charles Exford
Mr. Hammer,
Are we to assume the old nose-candy is not known as “beak” round your way then ?
Talking of hammers, I thought I saw a Cirl Bunting on Friday but now I reckon it was a juvenile Yellowhammer.
Jun 9th, 2009
Dave Wiggins
Mr Exford is, of course, spot-on. “But the beak in Leek is weak . . .”
Jun 11th, 2009
Doomhammer
Ah.. I am enlightened! Thank you, kind people
Jun 30th, 2009
Rusty Spanner
Always heard it as ‘hayfields in Picardy’, personally, but only have the studio version.
Superb site BTW, cheers for all the hard work!
Dec 5th, 2009
Neil G
Rusty (we’re all on first name terms here),
It’s definitely ‘aphids’. Eva Cassidy is famous for ‘Roses In Picardy’. In the awful world experienced by the singer of the song, the roses have all been attacked and destroyed by aphids. Everything is going wrong. It’s depression, I think.
Dec 6th, 2009
Rusty Spanner
Ta Neil, makes more sense!. Always try to listen to the lyrics at gigs, but usually too busy bouncing around in the podge pit to make them out.
Dec 6th, 2009
Ben
I was informed today that there was a shop (not sure what it sold) for a short time (post CLSC) called No Frills actually in New Mills, it might be apocryphal by was told this by another leaseholder of retail premises in said Derbyshire town.
May 27th, 2010
Mark Boyle
Despite what Nigel may say, the ‘No Frills – Handy For The Hills – That’s The Way You Spell New Mills!’ is lifted straight from one of those cheesy ‘regeneration’ adverts during the 1980s that were so beautifully parodied by Alexei Sayle’s ‘Welcome To Milton Springsteen’.
Sep 9th, 2010
Peter Gandy
@ Mark. Maybe, but also with a nod to Dillinger’s ‘Cokane in my Brain’, with the lyrics:
A knife, a fork, a bottle and a cork
That’s the way you spell New York
Sep 9th, 2010
Charles Exford
Cheers Mark, for reviving a vague memory of something along those lines. As NB57 so often says in interviews, he collects good lines for our delectation from all over the shop and does not necessarily claim originality in the individual bits that make up the brilliant collage.
(Nor do the development agencies I guess, Peter!)
Sep 10th, 2010
Dodgybloke
@Mark,
Your memory is playing tricks on you, I suspect. I sincerely doubt that a development agency would have chosen a motto that fits *exactly* with the pattern of lyrics in a drug-related reggae song. The Dillinger track is the true and only inspiration for the line.
If you still think different, state your source!
Sep 11th, 2010
Mark Boyle
@Dodgybloke.
That particular style of tune used in the ‘No Frills – Handy For The Hills’ section is actually to be found in the far better known The Clapping Song by Lincoln Chase, covered and ripped off by just about everybody (best known in the UK when Shirley Ellis and later the Belle Stars had hits with them) – something any PR firm’s hardly going to have kittens over.
Anyone that’s actually listened to the Dillinger track in question (its on You Tube in several places) will agree that the section in question doesn’t even remotely sound like that on ‘The Light At The End Of The Tunnel’. You may as well namecheck the Boomtown Rats year earlier song ‘Dun Laoighaire’ (which does a similar ‘I’m going to teach you the way to spell [insert name]‘, something of a music industry running joke at that time) as the inspiration if you want to stretch credulity to these sort of lengths.
Sorry, but this whole ‘Dillinger’ take seems more people wanting to make the influence sound more ‘kewl’ and ‘hardcore’ than it really is (‘oh wow, a nod to a song about drugs, maaaan!’) and Nigel happily playing along with it for his own private amusement as ever.
The Biccies have often plundered offbeat UK cultural references, particularly TV ones such as the ‘Old Fridges Can Kill!’ adverts – that’s part of the joke in many of their songs – and this is just another. Whereas most people – including I suspect Nigel – would never even have heard of the 1979 Dillinger number until it was used in ‘Grand Theft Auto – San Andreas’ in 2004.
Sep 27th, 2010
Simon Smith
Leafing through back copies of Q magazine (Liverpool v Villa in the background hardly thrilling my bones) I came across an entry in the Q Charts by Andrew Collins about TV sidekicks and at No.8, the allegedly “fragrant” Carol Vorderman. The last line of the entry reads ‘bound to married to featureless TV producer called Steve’
The issue is Q120. September 1996. Coincidence?
Dec 6th, 2010
MATLOCK BATH
I think it’s not “featureless tv producer Steve” but “Teacherless TV producer Steve”, a scathing reference to Teachers’ TV, the digital channel for teachers. I moderate focus groups for a living and I once moderated some for Teachers’ TV – so have met a Teachers’ TV producer. He wasn’t called Steve but I bet his girlfriend was from Derbyshire.
Mar 25th, 2011
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