Half Man Half Biscuit
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Half Man Half Biscuit (often abbreeviated to "HMHB") are a UK rock band, active sporadically since the mid-1980s, known for their satirical, sardonic and sometimes surrealistic songs, and often championed by DJ John Peel. The band are huge fans of Tranmere Rovers, and once famously turned down the chance to appear on seminal 80`s rock show The Tube, as Tranmere were playing that night.
The musical styles often parody simple popular genres, while the lyrics are dense with cultural allusions, usually (but not exclusively) UK popular culture. For instance, the interpretation of the title of the band's first album, Back in the DHSS (1985), requires three items of background information: that the Beatles wrote a song called "Back in the USSR"; that the DHSS was the UK state welfare agency, and that at that time unemployment stood at high levels. It is improbable that anyone else, with the possible exception of Frank Zappa, could have began a popular song with the words, "Mention the Lord of the Rings just once more and I'll more than likely kill you". This led into the surprisingly emotional 'Dickie Davies' Eyes'. (Conflating 1980s ode to Bette Davis and legendary ITV sports presenter Dickie Davies, with remarkable badger style hair), which also spawned a football fanzine devoted to Gillingham F.C. in the shape of Brian Moore's Head Looks Uncannily Like London Planetarium, a line taken from the song, the somewhat tenuous link being that Brian Moore had previously been a director of the club. A more recent example of this lyrical style is the line:
- "When you're in Matlock Bath,
- you don't need Sylvia Plath"
from the album Cammell Laird Social Club (compare Buena Vista Social Club: Cammell Laird is a UK engineering company). Fortunately, there is a web-site [1] (http://www.hmhb.co.uk/) dedicated to helping people to make sense of this sort of thing.
The humour of HMHB was comparable to the magazine Viz - both of which drew on 1970s and early 1980s popular culture, and in particular children's programmes. Hence, HMHB 'borrowed' wholesale from Trumpton and turned a song about being the driver of a train into an ode to hard and soft drug use. Some references (Nerys Hughes - one of the Liver Birds) are easier to pick up than others (Len Ganley - snooker referee).
Discography:
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Singles / EPs
- The Trumpton Riots (1986)
- Dickie Davies Eyes (1986)
- Let's Not (1990)
- No Regrets (1991)
- Eno Collaboration (1996)
- Look Dad No Tunes (1999)
- Editor's Recommendation (2001)
- Saucy Haulage Ballads (2003)
Albums
- Back In The DHSS (1985)
- Back Again In The DHSS (1987)
- MacIntrye, Treadmore and Davitt (1991)
- This Leaden Pall (1993)
- Some Call It Godcore (1995)
- Voyage To The Bottom Of The Road (1997)
- Four Lads Who Shook The Wirral (1998)
- Trouble Over Bridgwater (2000)
- Cammell Laird Social Club (2002)