The Half Man Half Biscuit Lyrics Project

Busking this at Embankment Tube tomorrow

110 pop songs picked over by pedants!

Notes on recently-added lyrics from Voyage To The Bottom Of The Road

Let me hear you say hosepipe ban

A Shropshire Lad gets its title from an epic poem by AE Housman which I’ve just been told off about for not knowing (apparently it’s really famous). Anyway, it’s nice to be back after a summer off, and I promise there’ll be more frequent additions to the site now than the last few weeks’ pitiable close-season performance.

Flirt with brass and later rue it

Monmore Hare’s Running is a nonsense song which is more endearing than it probably deserves to be. Brilliant if for nothing else than getting that title into a song.

Runrig with special guest Mike Peters

OK, so I’ve taken a longer than usual break from posting up lyrics, and therefore as penance let’s do a song which nobody ever seems to have quoted online before and which I’ve been dreading doing. PRS Yearbook (Quick, the Drawbridge) has some fairly baffling content anyway, but the muddy production just makes it even harder to get to grips with. I expect more than a few comments and corrections on this one.

Those funeral arrangements

Dead Men Don’t Need Season Tickets is one of those glorious songs which touches on a subject which probably shouldn’t be touched on, but you can’t help but smile when you think about it.

Chelsea, Chantelle and Jordan

He Who Would Valium Take is a hymn. Well, sort of. With a church organ, bad singing and everything. Wow. Who saw that one coming?

Hang with Chrissie Hynde

Eno Collaboration is more poking fun at pretentious bands, although this time a bit more major league than the usual indie targets.

Who the hell does Jeff Dreadnought think he is?

Bad Review is another dig at self-important bands (see also Four Skinny Indie Kids, Running Order Squabble Fest, etc). It’s all quite amusing, if trivial, until the unexpected and quite extraordinary last four lines which caused John Peel to say of the band: “when I die, I want them to be buried with me.”

They’ve got nothing but total respect for Annie Lennox

Even if yer missus doesn’t “get” Half Man Half Biscuit, Paintball’s Coming Home is the one she’ll still laugh at.

In return for my Sally James scrapbook

Listening to CAMRA Man, I don’t think Nigel likes Real Ale Bores. Must have had a bad experience with a beard as a child or something. Cheap Trick Live At The Budokan sounds even scarier though.

The New Romantic Craft Fair

I have no idea why I recollect this so clearly, but the first time I heard Deep House Victims Minibus Appeal was on a Peel Show, while I was driving around the M25. That snippet of information was something that really, really did not add anything to the collective usefulness of the interweb. Sorry.

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