#HMHB

Someone set up a hashtag on Twitter recently, #lyricsyoulove.  I thought of all my favourites immediately, but as only as I reached the eighth or ninth I realised with a bittersweet combination of chagrin and regret: I hadn’t mentioned Half Man Half Biscuit.  They seem to be a band that everyone knows, a kind of musical equivalent to a nodding acquaintance. Few can claim to love them; many can claim to know of them.

What do I like? I’m from Liverpool, so I used to sing Beatles songs in school.  I love The Smiths, but recently fell out of love with Morrissey; since he became Nigel Farage with a quiff.  I adore the fact that John Grant can sing the most about the most harmful, toxic things to happen to a human; so mellifluously.  I love the lyrical puzzles of Donald Fagin and Walter Becker.  More recently, no-one is expressing the rage of a divided nation as articulately as Jason Williamson of Sleaford Mods. 

But Half Man Half Biscuit.  Named, allegedly after a portly employee of the late, unlamented Birkenhead record shop Skellington.  33 years in existence, on their thirteenth album (not including compilations). An incredible, intelligent band, which use biblical quotes, poems, the blues, and parodies of well-known songs to chronicle the sheer banality, frustration, and often (but not always) joy of human existence.  They are still, stunningly on the same label: Probe Plus.  An offshoot of the Liverpool record shop, where it was often a Scouse rite of passage to be insulted by Pete Burns.

And there are bands out there, which use humour to get their point across.  Carter USM, The Beautiful South, Shellsuit, The Lancashire Hotpots.  These all have their own evangelists, claiming that they use laughter to distract us.  We can argue forever about the psychological effect of humour, to mask horror.  Let’s leave it to the psychologists.  They know best.  Possibly. 

Perhaps the ire and the fire of HMHB come from the fact they are not a Scouse band (a common misconception), but Birkenhead.  For those who don’t know it, Birkenhead is the dark side of The Mersey, literally and figuratively.  Once through a looking glass of a tunnel, you are looking back on the Liverpool skyline.  If you support Liverpool or Everton, you’re a ‘tunnel rat’. Appropriately enough, the band are Tranmere Rovers fans, a club who have a song that goes ‘Fuck your cathedrals and fuck your Pier Head/Don’t call us Scousers/We’re From Birkenhead’.  The wrong word, the merest glint of a wrong look can lead to an altercation.  I should know, I lived there.

 

No-one does what they do: the day to day doledrum of living, the hope that there might; possibly be a better life out there, the ameliorative effects of bad TV, football and laughing at the foolish and banal concept of ‘celebrity’. Considering this process began in 1985; and it is easy to see why you can call them more of a working class prophet than any sensitive soul with a low grade in AS Level and within earshot of a Nick Drake album.

They are not often on the radio, sadly.  Joy Division Oven Gloves became the theme to the campaign to save 6Music from closure.  Having been successful, it’s only Gideon Coe; the erudite, phlegmatic soul of the station plays them on a regular basis.  I would urge you to put your tablet down and download some of their albums.  Or maybe go to Probe and meet with the holier than thou vibes of the staff. Another reason to do so:  you won’t get every line, every joke, straight away.  It’ll percolate down, like a nice, intellectual cup of coffee. 

We live in strange times.  The country is represented by idiots, careerists and ideologues.  The lights grow dimmer and the price of bread rises.  As things change, we should be angry: but thoughtful at the same time, laughing in the face of entropy, the use of your voice in some satanic plot.  We need to be mindful, but disciplined. Or, to use the title of their latest album: No One Cares About Your Creative Hub, So Get Your Fuckin’ Hedge Cut.