1. 1

   Chris The Siteowner

   I think it’s time for a revival of “Thy Damnation Slumbereth Not”. I’d swap having heard the only recent live performance of “Hair Like Brian May Blues” to hear that again.

   Jul 26th, 2011

2. 2

   Vendor of Quack Nostrums

   Give a man data and he will revel in the statistics for a short while; give a man a spreadsheet and watch him produce his own statistics and really waste his time.

   In answer to the question you didn’t even know you were asking about the average position of each song within these set lists, I can exclusively reveal that:

   Corgi Registered Friends (average position in set list: 5.7)
   The Light at the End of the Tunnel (is the Light of an Oncoming Train) (5.8)
   Fuckin’ ‘Ell It’s Fred Titmus (5.8)
   … are the songs played earliest at gigs (in order to get everyone in the party mood no doubt).

   Whilst…
   Joy Division Oven Gloves (21.9)
   Everything’s AOR (22.0)
   A Country Practice (22.5)
   I Hate Nerys Hughes (From The Heart) (26.8)
   …are the songs most likely to be encores.

   Mid-gig sees some hardy perennials such as:
   For What Is Chatteris… (14.0)
   Look Dad No Tunes (15.8)
   Twenty Four Hour Garage People (16.9)
   Vatican Broadside (17.2)

   I could go on but I sense the glazed expression beginning to descend onto your face.

   BTW, FTR I arbitrarily decided on a play count of at least 10 gigs for qualification, otherwise all sorts of statistical bollocks occurred.

   Jul 26th, 2011

3. 3

   Richard Lovell

   Stellar work chaps.

   A Biscuit-fest and a spreadsheet in one. It doesn’t get better than this.

   Apart from writing on the sole of your slipper with a biro that is.

   Jul 26th, 2011

4. 4

   Hagerty F.

   Some real classics have missed out here – Prag Vec, Honved and Soft Verges are just a few. Not so surprised about Visitor for Mr. Edmonds or Slight Reprise though…

   Jul 26th, 2011

5. 5

   incrediblestringbiscuitman

   Yes but the very posh Radio 3 announcer did namecheck “£24.99 from Argos” before Nigel’s appearance on the Andy Kershaw Show the summer we went camping on Anglesey when our Liam discovered fishing (bit hazy about the actual year in earth years). I think this elevates the song way past more commonly sung faves.

   And also my wife and her sister got the giggles bigtime 2 years ago when a clergyman pointed out a landmark as “Lord Hereford’s Knob” so maybe local A&Es have begged Nigel not to sing this just in case there’s an outbreak of medieval-style hysteria a la Ken Russell or Dodd…

   Jul 26th, 2011

6. 6

   Charles Exford

   Great stuff, but where did the gig I itemised disappear to? (Honestly, I’ve no idea – Ed) And I was looking forward to listing more gigs when I came back off me hols but I didn’t bank on you lot being even more obsesed.

   Vendor, loving your work and I’d have done much the same thing albeit at a slightly more laid-back pace – I’m still stuck three-fifths of the way through me Kendal gig review. I did mean to say, when I road-tested Chris’ spreadsheet, that we ought perhaps to put in brackets which songs were encores, because we’ll surely have need of stats on that, but I can’t have anyone thinking A Country Practice is one of the tracks “most likely to be an encore” because of its late average position. It is in fact most likely to appear very late in the main set, but is very rare as an actual encore – only about once in the last 7 years, and only about 4 times in total. It’s surely a question of pace.

   The result I found most surprising was Squabble Fest. Instinct told me that this should have one of the earliest, if not the earliest average positions of all, not a set-opener but so often inserted to rouse the rowdy chantalong rabble. But the stats show that it has also had periods of being deployed fairly late in the set, before settling again into the early-but-not-quite-as-early-as-in-the-early-years-of-this-century position it enjoys today. What I’m saying of course is that averages can be deceptive.

   But this vital, life-affirming research must continue. A wistful sigh for the times gone by when we could have got a grant for this.

   Jul 27th, 2011

7. 7

   Chris The Siteowner

   Why Have You Stopped Playing That Song?

   Improv Workshop Mimeshow Gobshite – played 8 times 2000-2006, 0 times since;
   Venus In Flares – played 11 times 2000-2006, 1 time since;
   C.A.M.R.A. Man – played 9 times 2000-2006, 1 time since;
   Third Track Main Camera Four Minutes – played 10 times 2000-2006, 2 times since;
   If I Had Possession Over Pancake Day – played 19 times 2000-2006, 4 times since.

   Wouldn’t it be great if NB57 read this and the next gig featured all the old ones the band had forgotten they’d stopped playing? Mind you, we have just had the revival of Moody Chops – played 0 times before June 2011, then 2 times in the last 2 gigs. So maybe we shouldn’t be greedy.

   Jul 27th, 2011

8. 8

   Chris The Siteowner

   For those of you who want to have more Excel-related fun, I’ve updated the spreadsheet to include the album each song came from, and the “popularity” of the song, based on the number of people who voted for it in the qualifying groups for the Lux Familiar Cup. See what you make of that, rather than wasting time writing on the sole of your slipper with a biro.

   Jul 27th, 2011

9. 9

   Chris The Siteowner

   If you look at the plays by album, you can see how the band debuted* 8 songs from Cammell Laird Social Club (from the 13 songs on the album!) at Sheffield in November 2002. There hadn’t been a gig for a year at that point though. She’s In Broadstairs has only ever had one more outing since, and Tyrolean Knockabout has never been played live again.

   Achtung Bono songs were first heard at the Nottingham gig in February 2005, when four of them were played. Of these, Asparagus Next Left would not be heard again until 2010. CSI: Ambleside songs were introduced more gradually, as has happened with the next album; Blue Badge Abuser had a run-out at Carlisle in November 2006, but nothing else was played until the BBC Radio Merseyside gig the following September. Ten of the thirteen songs on the album have been played since, most of them regularly (the exceptions being Give Us Bubblewrap and On the ‘Roids which have only ever had 2-3 outings).

   It looks to me like Some Call It Godcore has all but been erased from the band’s history, in terms of live performances in the last 10 years. Anyone want to analyse the popularity of albums in terms of appearances on the set lists, taking into account the debut dates of the three albums above?

   * One song, Paradise Lost (You’re The Reason Why), had been heard live before, over 18 months previously.

   Jul 27th, 2011

10. 10

    Hagerty F.

    Shockingly, there appears to be a mistake on your spreadsheet. No songs have a Play Count of zero, leading me to guess that each song is listed as being played once more than it actually has been? I’m sure that this is just a faulty Excel equation, but I can not rest until this has been sorted.

    (Feel free to rest easy, it’s now sorted, and was just down to my lack of Excel ability – Ed)

    Jul 27th, 2011

11. 11

    BrumBiscuit

    I am 99% sure I heard PragVec at either the March 2010 gig or the Kentish Town Forum gig in 2008. I think I did the list for the Cambridge gig and it’s not on Roger’s list, but I’m fairly sure I heard it early on in the gig. Can anyone confirm?

    Jul 27th, 2011

12. 12

    BrumBiscuit

    I’m not casting nasturtiums or owt like that, you understand, it’s just a nagging feeling…

    Jul 27th, 2011

13. 13

    Charles Exford

    We’ve lost gods, we’ve lost -isms, some of us have decided not to have kids, we’re not at all sure about human nature.

    But if we lose faith in Roger Green’s setlists we are left with nothing.

    I don’t remember it in Cambridge and I don’t usually do London, but in Roger I trust.

    Jul 27th, 2011

14. 14

    Vendor of Quack Nostrums

    Beware of the man bearing PivotTables, for he will produce statistics of no discernible use whatsoever, in order to inform you of things which you do not know whether you are better off knowing or not.

    So in this spirit…..

    There are 172 songs on the spreadsheet of which 47 have never been played live this century (that’s 27% if you’re interested). 74 songs have a play count of between 1 and 10 gigs, which can be considered to be the rarely played category. Combining these it can be demonstrated that 65% of the recorded output of the band is never or rarely played live. This startlingly uninteresting observation can only be furnished with meaning by comparing it to other bands’ recorded output to live performance ratio. Hopefully such data does not exist. Of more interest to me is why 65% of the songs are never or rarely played. Is it because the band doesn’t like them? Or do they think that the audience won’t like them. Or perhaps they are too difficult to play live. Or maybe they don’t work as well live as the band would like. Maybe the outcome of this spreadsheet based madness should be a bit of beseeching. Personally I’d love to hear Epiphany done live. I hear they sing about Billing Aquadrome. I’ve never been to Billing Aquadrome. Let me hear about Billing Aquadrome. Please will you sing about Billing Aquadrome.

    At the other end of the scale, 15 songs (or 9% of the recorded output) have been played at over half the gigs. These are;

    Vatican Broadside
    The Trumpton Riots
    The Light at the End of the Tunnel (is the Light of an Oncoming Train)
    Twenty Four Hour Garage People
    Fuckin’ ‘Ell It’s Fred Titmus
    Look Dad No Tunes
    Everything’s AOR
    Running Order Squabble Fest
    Joy Division Oven Gloves
    For What Is Chatteris…
    We Built This Village On A Trad. Arr. Tune
    Bob Wilson – Anchorman
    All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit
    Restless Legs
    Tending The Wrong Grave For 23 Years

    No surprises here, all these songs received an approval rating of between a third and two thirds of the votes in their groups during the Lux Familiar Cup. The earth shattering conclusion we can draw is that the band appears to regularly play songs that the audience to want to hear. But how could they possibly have known that before the Lux Familiar Cup and this spreadsheet malarkey? That’s one of the problems of data analysis. It tends to tell you things that you already know in words that you can’t understand.

    Jul 27th, 2011

15. 15

    Charles Exford

    HMHB play a phenomenally wide range of their material live, especially when you consider that they they are semi-pro, rehearse together once a week and play so few gigs.

    A 40-50% turnaround between consecutive gigs is nothing unusual.

    Some other bands (not many) might do a higher turnaround than that in a year or two, but that would be between _tours_. And those are bands that rehearse together rather more than once a week.

    I don’t know a band that puts more obvious thought and consideration into its setlist. 26 years of audience reaction at gigs, through personal contact, correspondence, etc can give a band as useful a set of feedback as a website poll.

    Jul 27th, 2011

16. 16

    TWO FAT FEET

    One could almost draw upon these data to draw up what would be the quintessential HMHB set list – combining data about the most commonly-played songs and their average position within the order, and then applying it to the gig history to see which was the definitive gig.

    I did say ‘almost’, although I expect Vendor’s already onto it.

    And let’s not assume that the recently played new songs, particularly those that featured on 6Music last year, will even appear on the next album given how long ago they debuted in any medium. I would almost feel short changed if a third of the new album featured songs I’d already been listening to regularly for over a year.

    Jul 29th, 2011

17. 17

    Hagerty F.

    I took your advice, Chris the Siteowner, and decided to work on some data by album. From the spreadsheet, it is possible on a slow day to work out the average amount of songs per album one can expect to find per gig (add up the amount of times each song from the album has been played and then divide by the amount of gigs played since that album was released). The results were:

    Achtung Bono – 5.00
    CSI: Ambleside – 4.83
    Non-album songs – 3.69
    Back In The DHSS – 3.50
    Trouble Over Bridgwater – 3.20
    Cammell Laird Social Club – 2.82
    Voyage To The Bottom Of The Road – 2.13
    McIntyre, Treadmore And Davitt – 1.70
    This Leaden Pall – 1.63
    Four Lads Who Shook The Wirral – 0.85
    Back Again In The DHSS – 0.70
    Some Call It Godcore – 0.15

    But then I realised that this was dreadfully unfair on Back Again In The DHSS (8 songs) and far too biased towards the Other Songs category (25 songs). So what I decided to do, in order to find out which album Nigel Blackwell subconsciously prefers most, was to divide the above number by the amount of songs in the album. So for the final Half Man Half Biscuit albums league table, I came up with this:

    1. CSI: Ambleside
    2. Achtung Bono
    3. Cammell Laird Social Club
    4. Back In The DHSS
    5. Trouble Over Bridgwater
    6. McIntyre, Treadmore And Davitt
    7. Voyage To The Bottom Of The Road
    8. EPs, Peel Sessions And Other Songs
    9. This Leaden Pall
    10. Four Lads Who Shook The Wirral
    11. Back Again In The DHSS
    12. Some Call It Godcore

    The performance of Some Call It Godcore (whose top scorer was Fretwork Homework, with three live plays) was reminiscent of Derby County’s 2007-08 premier league escapades, but it’s no surprise to me that the three most recent albums are also the top three.

    Incidentally, is there any way to get to this page from the Homepage? (I’ll see what I can do – Ed)

    Jul 29th, 2011

18. 18

    Charles Exford

    Good work, HF.

    OK, there are 25 “other songs”, but of those the ones that get played are basically from the last two 2 EPs, which altogether add up to almost an album’s worth of songs. So I’d like to see where that notional “album”, let’s call it ‘Editor’s Saucy’, comes in your list. I suspect still in 3rd or 4th place, certainly 3rd place if you counted all ‘Foot Up in Europe’ refrains (I suspect not all Foot Up in Europe refrains have been even recorded on setlists because they have sometimes been so brief).

    But anyway, HF,where’s the “does not equal” symbol on here when you need it? What I wanted to write was HMHB does not equal symbol Nigel Blackwell. And there’s nowt ‘subconscious’ about it. One of the factors about material selection most often alluded to by NB57 (onstage, in response to requests, and elsewhere) is that this is a democratic band. And they clearly consider their choices of material consciously a great deal. It seems there are tracks he wants to do and other members won’t, and vice versa. It seems that it took him six years to persuade Neil to let them try ‘Asparagus’ (an NC57= track) live, for example, despite popular (ahem) demand and despite the frontman’s instinctive awareness that it would go down like a power cut on Dylan’s 1965 tour.

    There have also been regular inferences that such band discussions in the practice room hinge largely on ability to play the songs in question reasonably well, and by implication on amount of practice required or degree of perfectionism imposed by a reluctant band-mate. What can be done in the studio after plenty of takes is clearly not the same as what can be done on stage after arriving late at the Deptford Abyss. Different sounds, effects, instruments, for a start.

    So yes, since Vendor has speculated about this, I’d say the relative difficulty of a certain track (learning, practising, perfecting, reproducing ) must be a huge factor, in balance with how the band perceive the worth, the entertainment quality and the popularity of each song. But don’t forget that material selection is also about enjoyment for the band, too. As some members of the band are clearly a lot more relaxed about live performance than others, it’s perhaps those who are more nervous and less comfortable who can be reassured that they don’t need to play anything they are not totally confident about playing, or in at least one case not totally confident the others can do adequate justice to.

    And at least one of the most oft-played tracks is partly there to give the poor drummer a short rest during 2 hours of stamina-sapping skin-thumping. Which explains 24HGP’s relatively consistent set position. Likewise ACP.

    Anyway, for what its worth that’s the informed speculation of a bystander approaching his first half century of Biscuit gigs.

    Jul 29th, 2011

19. 19

    Charles Exford

    PS – I forgot to mention “keeping it fresh” as a factor. For them, but also for us. They do seem to realise that a few us see quite a lot of the gigs. Not many bands take that into consideration

    Jul 29th, 2011

20. 20

    Hagerty F.

    I can now reveal the following:

    Saucy Haulage Ballads on its own would have finished in 6th, ahead of McIntyre, Treadmore And Davitt.

    Editor’s Recommendation on its own would have finished in 3rd, ahead of Cammell Laird Social Club.

    The two combined (I’m going with Saucy Recommendation) would have also finished in 3rd.

    I have spoken. Let there be no further debate about it.

    Jul 29th, 2011

21. 21

    Dave F.

    The reason many of the songs with keyboards in them don’t get played is because, well… they don’t have a keyboard.

    Jul 30th, 2011

22. 22

    Bobby String

    @ Dave F. I’m sure they could get one for £24.99 from Argos.

    Ô¿Ô

    Jul 30th, 2011

23. 23

    Mac

    I’m sure that the one time his millennium the band played “Rod Hull Is Alive – Why?” at Rock Cafe, Stourbridge it was performed as “Ross Kemp Is Alive – Why?” or did I dream it?

    Sep 17th, 2011

24. 24

    This Leaden Paul

    Mac, that’s certainly how I remember it; it didn’t work very well, people kept singing the ‘real’ name.

    Sep 18th, 2011

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