The Half Man Half Biscuit Lyrics Project

The Chief Executive, fresh from Reykjavik

Chris The Siteowner — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:53:46 +0000

This one always makes me smile. It’s just a list of management-speak gobbledegook, culled mainly from job adverts, but what’s striking about ITMA could well be how few of these terms have become quaint since 1997. I suppose most of the people who were writing business bullshit back then are still writing it today. Thanks to Rob, Sarah and Grev

See lyrics to ITMA

As you put another Roger Dean poster on the wall

Chris The Siteowner — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:39:05 +0000

Despite the legendary curse of HMHB, the one song which mentions “all those people who you romantically like to still believe are alive, are dead” didn’t have any of the four it namechecks let the side down until almost twenty years after it was written. Oh the irony. And even now, over 22 years since the song’s release, three out of the four are still with us. Dickie Davies Eyes is one of those early songs which is known to the “Half Man Half Biscuit – didn’t they do that song about…?” brigade, mainly because it still gets the occasional national radio airing (he said, just having heard it on BBC 6 Music). Thanks to Nigel and EskimoEric

See lyrics to Dickie Davies Eyes

The film trivia book at the bog-side

Chris The Siteowner — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 14:56:01 +0000

You didn’t really think that Song Of Encouragement for the Orme Ascent was going to be about “Llandudno’s Mountain”, did you? Thanks to the magic of Peel Sessions, another song, like Trumpton Riots, available in both guitar- and banjo-flavoured varieties. Thanks to discopocalypse, David and Sarah

See lyrics to Song Of Encouragement for the Orme Ascent

I was a pain in the diocese

Chris The Siteowner — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:03:02 +0000

And yet another album joins the completists’ factory, as Faithlift finishes off T-shirt favourite Some Call It Godcore. Clan Of Xymox actually did a couple of real 4ADCDs, you know. Thanks to gNick, Gary and Martin

See lyrics to Faithlift

They can preach naked from the waist downwards

Chris The Siteowner — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 07:57:10 +0000

With the Peel/BBC Sessions material being so readily available online nowadays, it’s the EP-only obscurities which are probably the least well-known HMHB songs. Ecclesiastical Perks can be obtained – expensively – online if it somehow passed you by! There are a couple of guesses towards the end, which some of you might have thoughts on. Thanks to Sanchez and Sarah

See lyrics to Ecclesiastical Perks

Ivan Mauger on my car

Chris The Siteowner — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 08:22:41 +0000

M-6-ster is somewhere up around the pinnacle of the very small hillock that is Great British Road Songs. As with many of the noisier songs from the HMHB songbook, there are a few indistinguishable lyrics – from the five people who submitted this, we got five different takes on the last verse, and – more surprisingly – four different takes on the chant at the end. So I’ve just gone with my favourites, although your mileage may differ. Thanks to Grev, Jon A, gNick, Jon F and Grim.

See lyrics to M-6-ster

Sylvian and Fripp discuss whippets

Chris The Siteowner — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 08:44:18 +0000

…and if they ever did, I’m quite sure they’d do it to the backdrop of some Casiotone toy keyboard, as hinted at in £24.99 From Argos. I’m sure someone will tell us the exact model being played. Thanks to Martin, Jon F and gNick

See lyrics to £24.99 From Argos

Hum along to yourself

Chris The Siteowner — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 08:55:30 +0000

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?

You’ll have to join Jools for the jam sketch

Chris The Siteowner — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 08:54:26 +0000

Moody Chops is about all those musicians who continue to play the impoverished, tortured artist even when they’re on the way to sharing G&Ts in the Long Room with Mick and Sir Tim. Or at least that’s how I’ve always read it. One or two people seem to think it’s specifically about Morrissey though. And by the way, the Dutch were never going to decide they could reclaim the IJsselmeer after all, and achieve it in six years, by 2003. Apparently. Thanks to David

See lyrics to Moody Chops

A no-rosette situation for Mr Galbraith

Chris The Siteowner — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:18:46 +0000

The title of Third Track Main Camera Four Minutes refers to some bizarre captioning which made a fleeting appearance on Match of the Day a few years ago, comfortably telling you which camera Auntie Beeb was using (presumably as a response to Sky’s interactive select-your-own-camera facility). Like so many great HMHB titles, it then has no relationship to the song. Frampton Comes Alive! does have an exclamation mark, and gets namechecked in Wayne’s World 2: “Everybody in the world has Frampton Comes Alive. If you lived in the suburbs you were issued it. It came in the mail with samples of Tide.” Thanks to Sarah, Neil G, Jon A and Peter

See lyrics to Third Track Main Camera Four Minutes