The Half Man Half Biscuit Lyrics Project

Busking this at Embankment Tube tomorrow

179 pop songs picked over by pedants

Here’s Judie Tzuke to take us up to the news

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. Thanks to Patrick, gnick and eskimoeric

See lyrics to When The Evening Sun Goes Down

34 Letters Sent:
  1. 1

    steve

    Isn’t it

    I’m ending on this rhyme deep in injury time.

    Maybe not but that’s what I always thought it was what with that being the end of the song

  2. 2

    Bob

    I hear “attending on this rhyme” ??

  3. “sending on this rhyme” over here. Connotations of sending on a substitute in a foopball match.

  4. 4

    Andrew Daley

    This was used as the theme tune for Ross Noble’s Radio 4 series. He is a fan.

  5. 5

    Paul F

    I’ve always heard it as “ending”.

  6. Definitely “sending on” IMHO. As in sending on a sub deep in injury time.

  7. 7

    paulie

    “sending” – imho

  8. 8

    Informant

    The “deep in injury time” points towards “sending” I’d say. As in sending on a sub deep in injury time in a football match.

  9. 9

    Neil G

    How do the road gritters get to work? That’s a question I’ve been asking quite a few people recently? One suggested that they sleep in their lorries all night. I hadn’t thought of that.

  10. 10

    TWO FAT FEET

    Don’t the road gritters get to work BEFORE the snow to grit the roads in preparation?

    Actually no, they probably don’t and it shows.

    Had this song as my ringtone for a bit, then I changed my phone and couldn’t work out how to program it in again.

  11. 11

    Norbert D

    I always hated that road gritters line, as it really did seem like the kind of whimsical, bad-stand-up line HMHB usually manage to steer clear of (hence the radio DJ patter that comes after it, maybe).

    But it’s a fair point, isn’t it? I still don’t know how the road gritters get to work.

  12. 12

    Charles Exford

    Given the contents of the adjacent lines, I’ve always assumed it’s a piss-take of people (particularly people like stand-ups & DJs) who think it’s original to say things like “How do the road-gritters get to work ?”, which you hear every bloody winter from people who think it’s original, when it’s fairly obvious that the gritters usually go out before the snow falls, and that if the roads were truly impassible they wouldn’t get to work.

    After all, NB57 himself is not actually in a position to give out a cruise, wheras the kind of DJ who plays Judy Tsuke might be.

  13. 13

    TWO FAT FEET

    I have to say I felt much the same as Norbert, the road gritters line seemed like a rare slip from Nigel. It was only when I heard him do the song on an Andy Kershaw session that it clicked, that the whole verse was a send-up of crass DJs. Pity Judie Tzuke had to be denigrated by association though, I quite like that song she had.

  14. 14

    Norbert D

    Yeah, that’s what I thought/hoped. Still grates a bit for me, though, anyway.

    It’s that “questions in corners of my mind that lurk” bit too, like the bad comic on an episode of The Simpsons – “I think about weird things. Like what if ET married Mr T? Then you’d get Mr ET, wouldn’t you? ‘I pity the fool that doesn’t phone home’.”

    I’d have thought NB57 would be quite into Judy Tzuke. Not sure why.

  15. 15

    TWO FAT FEET

    Probably cos it’s a great name.

  16. 16

    Dave Cooper

    Utterly pedantic but I think “Judy” Tzuke should actually be “Judie”.

  17. Oh bloody hell, thank you. What a howler.

  18. 18

    Dave F.

    After the Pat Boone line he sings it as “dow-wow-wow-wown”

  19. Indeed he does. But I’d still contend that’s spelt “down”.

  20. 20

    Gregg Z

    I’ve always been interested in the line: “Opposite the Bannister & Shamrock/Which used to be the Rose & Crown”. I’m perfectly willing to enjoy HMHB songs without over-analyzing the lyrics, but is this a sly observation on traditional British pubs giving way to “authentic” Irish bars, in certain trendy areas of England?

    Hate to be the typical ignorant Yank, but I’m intrigued by this. Haven’t been over there since the ’90s, so my frame of reference is a bit dusty. Welcoming comments of every stripe.

  21. 21

    Bobby String

    @ Gregg Z

    You’re probably right about the ‘authentic’ Irish pubs thing and I think it’s maybe also to do with so-called ‘chain pubs’ where they all have similar names and all look exactly the same inside, which a lot of Britain’s ‘Irish’ pubs do, kind of like McDonalds but with beer. Here in South Africa we have the ‘Keg’ chain where each pub is called the Keg & something. Our local is the Keg & Eagle, a reference to the African Black Eagles that have bred in this area for the past forty or so years. However, despite the ‘local’ connection in the name, being inside the Keg & Eagle is just like being inside any other Keg pub in South Africa. We even have a chain of ‘Irish’ pubs called O’Hagen’s!

    Ô¿Ô

  22. 22

    Charles Exford

    Gregg and Bobby I think you are both quite right about the Irish re-branding name parody. But could there be a sort of visual joke in the satire as well, in that an Irish visual cliché, the harp & shamrock, does look a lot like a bannister and shamrock ? Yes I know I’m probably trying too hard.

    It may also interest you to know that amongst Birkenhead’s pub names which could have subliminally influenced the lyric we find:
    *The Rose & Shamrock (used to be a common pub name), rough as the Irish Sea, quite recently closed down.
    *The Barristers – now knocked through with a bigger pub next door and amalgamated to form something else.
    *The Crown
    *The Cushion and Crown (“The Cush”, so’s not to confuse it with The Crown of course).
    *The Rose and Crown just a mile and a half over the state line, in Bebington.

    Meanwhile what was (in the nineties) one of the all-bare-woodwork-and- bannisters “Tut’n'Shive” pub chain (see also “Tap & Spile”) became “Leprechauns Bar” (I know, pass the sick bucket) for a while in the late Noughties, but eveything’s closed down round there now.

    There’s a pub inear Cammel Lairds that in recent years has changed its name from “The Castle” to “Hotel California” but I haven’t yet had the undoubted pleasure of a pint of pink champagne and the warm smell of colitas. Whatever they are.

    Does anyone still drink in The Swan I wonder ?

  23. 23

    Vendor of Quack Nostrums

    Colitas are a desert flower with a warm, heady smell according to one Don Henley interview, but it is also a name for marijuana in Mexico, which fits the song better. Other suggestions include a cigarette (or joint) butt in Spanish.

    All these possibilities make much more sense than what I thought it was for 20 years, which was ‘warm smell of Colitis’. Colitis being an inflammation of the colon or large intestine. I never quite understood why anyone would set the scene of pleasure and magnificence by referencing the stench of ulcerated bowels. It gnawed away at my faith in American soft rock until the advent of the internet revealed the truth to me.

  24. 24

    Helen!!!

    ‘Rose and Crown’ Cheapside, off Dale St, Lpool 1.

  25. 25

    Germ

    Colitas,if I’m not mistaken that’s some kind of bladder infection isn’t it?

  26. 26

    Bobby String

    Nah, I’m sure Colitas is some obscure South American goalkeeper that only Nigel has ever heard of! :-)

    Ô¿Ô

  27. 27

    Bobby String

    Actually, I suppose it should be some obscure South American goalkeeper that only Nigel and Don Henley have ever heard of.

    Ô¿Ô

  28. 28

    Vendor of Quack Nostrums

    Will this never end?

    Are these my ultimate pyjamas
    Is this my final dressing gown

    Both these lines need question marks at the end of them.

  29. 29

    BrumBiscuit

    Harking back an awful long way in this thread; I used to work at a council depot where they based the gritter lorries, and the mundane answer to how do the gritters get to work is that they walked there. This was in the West Midlands, so I don’t know the answer to those remote motorway-side depots.

    And didn’t Judie Tzuke have inordinately sized teeth?

  30. 30

    Deckard

    To better suit the Wirralian accent I’d go for the pajama spelling of pyjama. And on the version I’ve just listened to on line I don’t hear the and before here’s Judy Tzuke but then I’d always heard it as now – must grab iPod…

  31. 31

    Dave Wiggins

    Vote for Stop The Pigeon Party! What next, Exxo? Cafe Bars and Idiots, presumably?

  32. 32

    Charles Exford

    Don’t be daft, David, I’m talking a far more dastardly menace that cheeses off even those beastly pigeons themselves.

  33. 33

    John Burscough

    Ombudsman with capital O? See JiL comments, posts 64 + 66.
    (Sorry if this sounds like a crossword clue.)

  34. 34

    John Burscough

    Although “obscenities” makes more sense, I think it may actually be “I shout all my obscenity from steeples”.

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