The Half Man Half Biscuit Lyrics Project

Busking this at Embankment Tube tomorrow

149 pop songs picked over by pedants!

Hum along to yourself

Slight Reprise is a 55-second instrumental. All theories about its deep meaning and reason for existence gratefully accepted. Anyway, I left the easiest until last, and that finishes off Trouble Over Bridgwater, still for me not only the finest album title in HMHB’s discography, but one of the best titles by anyone, ever.

At this stage, we’ve also completed Achtung Bono, Cammell Laird Social Club, CSI: Ambleside, Editor’s Recommendation EP, Eno Collaboration EP, Four Lads Who Shook The Wirral, McIntyre, Treadmore and Davitt and Saucy Haulage Ballads. I’d say that from all those songs, there are fewer than half a dozen lines or words which nobody seems sure about, and no more than a dozen or so which remain at all contentious, so we’re not doing badly. Mind you, with revelations like the handwritten lyrics to Joy Division Oven Gloves revising our consensus on the first line of a much loved song, who knows what surprises are still in store between now and the voyage to the bottom of the road?

10 Letters Sent:
  1. Mr Larrington

    I’m sure there should be a in there somewhere ;-)

  2. Charles Exford

    Reason for existence: pisstake of the pretentious idea of the instrumental reprise, e.g.by Oasis on their third album, 1998 ish, called something like “Look Here Now we are Dinosaurs” or some such gubbins.

    “Slight reprise” is often used in describing symphonies, operas, shows, etc., and doubtless the Jimi Hendrix ensemble were so stoned that they ended up with “Slight Return” instead.

    Deep meaning: none.

  3. Norbert D

    “Trouble Over Bridgwater, still for me not only the finest album title in HMHB’s discography, but one of the best titles by anyone, ever.”

    Except that it had already been done……. http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/9495/trevorcrozier.jpg

  4. dagenham dave

    I’ve just had a look at that link, I reckon it’s going to give me nightmares !

  5. Wow, I’d never heard of that before. I wonder if that was the case with NB57? I haven’t seen any doffing of the cap to the “Scrumpy & Western Troubadour

  6. Norbert D

    It’s easy to believe that he’d have heard, or at least heard of, that LP. Not so easy to believe he’d nick a title like that. For a line in a song, yeah. An LP title – I dunno, doesn’t seem like his style to do that, and besides, it’s not like he’s short of good titles. Maybe great minds just think alike.

  7. Peter Gandy

    Fantastic titles on that album too: ‘Dead Dog Scrumpy’, ‘I Like Bananas’, and didn’t someone mention ‘Tavistock Goosey Fair’ in the discussion of ‘Totness Bickering Fair’?

  8. Bonnevilleinbits

    “A Pub With No Beards ” is pretty good too.

  9. Exxo

    Thanks for the revelations about Crozier’s album, etc., everyone.

    And just when I got me to a-thinkin that “Tavistock Goosey Fair” must be a trad arr. tune, up googles this thread to tell me the lyrics are (c) C. John Trythall, 1912

    http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=4976&messages=27

    Note the ‘original’ lyrics two thirds of the way down the thread (wheras the lyrics one third of the way down the thread seem to be a more recent version, remembered and written down by someone else ), with their ‘orrible attempt to transcribe the Devon accent. I suppose this could still have been Mr. Trythall’s version of a trad arr., especially if he was a folk song collector.

    Anyway, ‘ere it be sung in stripped-down scrumpycore-style, courtesy of the British Library:

    http://sounds.bl.uk/View.aspx?item=025M-C1002X0090XX-4000V0.xml

    Tune not dissimilar to Lord Hereford’s Knob …but then nor are most English folk song tunes I suppose !

  10. Dave Betts

    What are Trevor Crozier’s ‘Friends’ like? Is he a known quantity in Bridgwater? So many questions based on a single photo.

    I hope the curse of HMHB hasn’t struck…

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