The Half Man Half Biscuit Lyrics Project

And yet another album joins the completists’ factory, as Faithlift finishes off T-shirt favourite Some Call It Godcore. Clan Of Xymox actually did a couple of real 4ADCDs, you know.

…and if they ever did, I’m quite sure they’d do it to the backdrop of some Casiotone toy keyboard, as hinted at in £24.99 From Argos. I’m sure someone will tell us the exact model being played.

Fretwork Homework rather excellently captures the spirit of being in a band with yer college mates. More importantly, I’m extremely concerned for Lisa Dominique’s welfare, as her website doesn’t seem to have been updated since 2002. I only hope she hasn’t gone the way of that one out of Climie Fisher.

One of the classic Half Man Half Biscuit titles. Styx Gig (Seen By My Mates Coming Out Of A) is probably a feeling we’ve all felt at one time or another. The lazy sods at the national dailies have all lifted a story today from the HMHB-approving Word magazine about Gerry Rafferty having disappeared. He was in Stealers Wheel, who shared a drummer with Strawbs, you know. Now who’s the reigning county champion huh?

Extensive academic research into Sensitive Outsider taught me that the tennis player scratching her bum in that poster was called Samantha, something it’s probably very important to know. I wondered if the curse of HMHB had been bestowed upon Athena, but they do still have some shops, apparently, even though they’re still trading off that picture, bless ‘em.

Just in case anyone was beginning to think they could spot a pattern in the lyrics going on this site, I’ll prove it’s all random with I, Trog, an obscurity hidden away towards the end of Some Call It Godcore. Another song about misfits.

I’d saved doing the lyrics to Tour Jacket With Detachable Sleeves because it’s one of my favourite Half Man Half Biscuit songs, and I always thought the lyrics would look great, transcribed in full. I assumed others might have thought likewise, but how wrong I was – whereas there are hundreds of (bad) transcriptions of, say, The Trumpton Riots material on the web, Tour Jacket was nowhere to be found – so this is yet another first for this site. And what a first! A cautionary tale, in prose, full of marvellous references to obscure footy, prog rock and more, spoken in a way which would put many professional actors to shame (try reading it out loud yourself). And once again, an everyday tale which we can all relate to. Well, until the end. Genius.

Sponsoring the Moshpits is a Good Idea put to music. Probably. Sparks never came from Germany, even if their keyboard player had that odd facial hair. They did have a song called “Girl from Germany” though. Keith Prowse isn’t a person either, and not a lot of people know that. It’s two people, whose surnames were “Keith” and “Prowse”. And they were eighteenth century ticket salesmen. Really.

Friday Night And The Gates Are Low is perhaps the archetypical HMHB football song.

How can you not love a song which starts with the Keats reference “Vespers done…”? Or one which makes reference to minor Col U legend Bobby Svarc (who seemed to follow Jim Smith around a lot)?