The Half Man Half Biscuit Lyrics Project

Excuse me for getting a bit excited, but every now and then you come across a Half Man Half Biscuit song which you’d sort of forgotten about, and which turns out to be brilliant. And Thy Damnation Slumbereth Not fits into that category. It’s the A Country Practice or National Shite Day of Cammell Laird Social Club and it contains so many great references, I don’t know where to start. So I won’t, I’ll just let you get on with it.

You don’t have to like football to find The Referee’s Alphabet amusing - although it’s the sort of song only a lower-league terrace-dweller would be inspired to write. Now even more than when the song was written, umpteen million football fans are screaming “Surely a bit of controversy is part of the game’s appeal?” at the TV every Saturday night when Hansen and company drone on about wanting video replays for refs. Sorry, rant over. Great song. And one of only two Half Man Half Biscuit songs (I think) to mention an Ipswich Town player. Makes me swell with pride, it does.

Them’s The Vagaries is (of course) another bunch of amusing observations; I don’t know why I find the “squid” line so funny. Regarding the “aviaries” stuff at the end, Nigel said: “Yeah, that’s where we do get silly. Sometimes I don’t care. But you can’t be stern-faced all your life.”

I’d better get a move on, we have more subscribers to the blog now than songs transcribed. It’s also time to get on with Cammell Laird Social Club. Anyway, San Antonio Foam Party has a go at officialdom assuming it knows what you think (see also A Country Practice) and suggests Britain’s two best tennis players at the time of the end of the century party were robots. And the relevance of the title of the song? I’ve no idea.

When The Evening Sun Goes Down is one of those great songs which brings together a stack of brilliant but unrelated lines. Almost every one is a gem.

If I had possession over Pancake Day makes a couple of Robert Johnson-related references and then links them together via the medium of lemon juice.

Half Man Half Biscuit’s “list songs” are always good, especially when - as with Breaking News - they give Nigel the chance to fit as many things as possible into three minutes which irritate him. And indeed, probably most of us.

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.