God Gave Us Life:Half Man Half Biscuit @ The Electric Ballroom.

"There's a man with a mullet going mad with a mallet in Millets" - National Shite Day

 

Back in 1985 I bought Half Man Half Biscuit's debut album Back in the DHSS and rushed to my teenage bedroom to play it. Though very much from the same kind of post-punk milieu as my then favourites The Fall, New Order, and Echo and the Bunnymen there was something distinctly different about Half Man Half Biscuit.

They were funny. Not funny music. They weren't clowns. But the lyrics were wry, amusing, and caustic and seemed to reference subjects other bands, perhaps wisely, avoided. There were songs about snooker referees (The Len Ganley Stance), Benny Hill sidekicks (99% Of Gargoyles Look Like Bob Todd), and a certain Liver Birds actress (I Hate Nerys Hughes (From The Heart)). As well as a drug referencing cover of a song from the children's television show Chigley, Time Flies By (When You're The Driver Of A Train).

I never got to see the band in the first incarnation. I lined up for a gig at The Electric Ballroom in 1986 in hope to see them but they'd split up earlier that week. An acquaintance of mine took me to the Sir George Robey in Finsbury Park to see The Young Gods and a hot new band called My Bloody Valentine instead but that's a whole different story.

Since they reformed in 1990 though, I've seen them loads of times. About fifteen years back Shep and I would make an annual trip to a provincial town to check out one of their gigs, explore the town, and (usually) get drunk. We visited Bath, Blackpool, Derby, Norwich, Shrewsbury, and Wolverhampton and the gigs were always brilliant.

The combination of acerbic wit, industrial basslines, snarling Wirral accented vocals, and thrashy guitars couldn't fail to win me, and thousands of others, over. Those who know why Half Man Half Biscuit are so good just know. There's no debate. That's why people travel far and wide, often decked out in Dukla Prague away kits or, sometimes, in Joy Division oven gloves, to see them. They are, more or less, a cult.

A friendly cult and one I was looking forward to rejoining yesterday at, of all places, the Electric Ballroom. I'd finally get to see HMHB at that venue nearly thirty-seven years after queuing up for a band that had, briefly, ceased to exist.

The gig was not a disappointment. The band raced through new tracks, many already crowd favourites like Awkward Sean ("airwair boots, surgical gown, counter-majority views"), I'm Getting Buried In The Morning ("see you later undertaker, in a while necrophile), and Renfield's Afoot ("who the fuck are you trying to govern everybody's bat walks?) and mixed them with early tracks like Fuckin 'Ell It's Fred Titmus, Sealclubbing, and Trumpton Riots ("Windy Militant leads his Basque-like corn grinders to war").

 

There was so much else though. The Light At The End Of The Tunnel (Is The Light Of An Oncoming Train), Bob Wilson - Anchorman ("I've even been to look for Jim Rosenthal, found him on his knees at the Wailing Wall"), What Made Colombia Famous, Look Dad No Tunes, Tommy Walsh's Eco House ("back to back Cadfael, Ross Kemp on Watership Down"), and All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit.

The only downside of the gig was that it was simply too packed. Possibly there were the usual amount of people but the expanding waistbands of middle aged men (and it was probably 80% male, 20% female split) made it feel even busier than it already was. That's known, I was told by a former Sounds journalist, as "Specials syndrome".

Also, because HMHB tend to attract a lot of pissheads with weak bladders (or at least that's the term I coined last night), it felt like wherever you stood there was either somebody pushing past you, sometimes spilling beer everywhere, to get to either the toilet, the bar, or, nearer the stage.

Minor quibbles in a gig which saw Nigel Blackwell musing sarcastically from the stage about air fryers, log burners, and Beth Tweddle and included a grinding, almost incandescent National Shite Day, a jaunty We Built This Village On A Trad Arr Tune ("yonder the deacon in misguided trousers"), and the insanely catchy Everything's AOR ("I can put a tennis racket up against my face and pretend that I'm Kendo Nagasaki").

 

Every song was cheered, smiled warmly at, and sang along to but perhaps the two best received were For What Is Chatteris (Nigel fucked up the first line but the crowd were on hand to remind him - cue shouts of "one way system") and, of course, Vatican Broadside which tells of a pontiff not being overly impressed by the 'singer' out of Slipknot. That must be the first song that HMHB write on every set list and there is something rather lovely about being in a room of a few hundred people shouting "who the fucking hell are Slipknot" at the top of their voices.

For an encore we got I Fought The Law (HMHB always chuck in at least one cover) and the urgent mosh pit anthem Joy Division Oven Gloves. I'd been tempted to take my own Joy Division oven gloves along but after some cad had stolen one of them at a previous Biscuit gig some years back, I decided against it. I actually use them as my oven gloves. I don't want to lose them.

What a great gig it had been. Thanks to Shep (who joined me for a walk along the canal and Regent's Park beforehand), Pam (for the snaps - as ever), and Stu (all four of us had a pint in The Spread Eagle and a vegan burger in Temple of Seitan (Nashville Hot for me) before and me, Pam, and Stu found ourselves in The Good Mixer afterwards and also it was lovely to bump into Ol at the gig too.

That's the thing with Half Man Half Biscuit. They put on bloody good gigs (and they don't play that many so they're always fresh and motivated) but they also provide the setting for what always turns out to be a good night out. What did Half Man Biscuit give us, Neil? Half Man Half Biscuit gave us life, Nigel. Sure did!