Irk the Purists
Half Man Half Biscuit, originally uploaded by alister.Half Man Half Biscuit
Live, Edinburgh Liquid Rooms
Wednesday 15th November 2006.
It's time for the annual visit of Half Man Half Biscuit to Edinburgh hurray! Heavy rain and roadworks made my bus trip incredibly slow meaning that I missed support act The Hussy's who I had been looking forward to seeing. But my mate informed me that they had a nice bouncy set.
Andy Kershaw once remarked that Half Man Half Biscuit were the greatest British folk group since the Clash and I think that is a good description. Not a novelty act more like slightly curmudgeonly social commentators with a healthy disdain for all things pretentious or idiotic, with extra references to obscure musicians, composers of Nineteenth Century church music, television shows from the 70's and Winter Olympics bronze medalists thrown in for free.
HMHB kicked off with Vatican Broadside a charming terrace singalong about the Pope's disdain for death-metallers Slipknot. And from there it was into a nice selection of both classics and obscurities. Personal faves, The Light At The End of the Tunnel, Everything's AOR, We Built This Village on a Trad-Arr Tune, Them's the Vagaries and of course Joy Division Oven Gloves ("The plates are too hot/You'll never guess what/I've got Joy Division oven gloves").
The undoubted highlight was the rendition of the ever-mutating song '24 hour garage people' whose tale of tormenting surly youths working in said 24 hour garages was boosted with the addition of the faintly heard strains of their iPod (simulated with a tape deck and featuring various 80's classics.) Not so sure about the encore of 'Mrs Robinson' though...for purist-irking purposes no doubt.
Before heading off back to Birkenhead in the van they left us with this thought "There is nothing better in life than writing on the sole of your slipper with a biro (on a Saturday night instead of going to the pub)"
No 'Ballad of Climie Fisher' though unfortunately.
:: | 11:39 am |Save This Page | |
|
1 Comments:
Sounds like great fun. They seem like their intelligence is projected, to the crowd.
By
Frank Partisan, at 1:53 am
This is an archived story. See current posts here!