Check Your Sheds, Check Your Sheds, I Think I've Lost My Mind

For Webbie and any other interested readers- Half Man Half Biscuit played one of their rare gigs in Leicester on Thursday night. There was a full first team plus substitutes of middle aged men in Dukla Prague away kits and HMHB's merchandise stall with cassette singles from the eighties still being offered. Echolocation, friends of mine were supporting them, and played their customary experimental set, being greeted with both applause and bafflement. HMHB arrived on stage at 9 ish and then played 29 songs in under two hours. Opening up with a tribute to two recently departed icons (Poly Styrene and Fred Titmus) they played songs from their whole back catalogue, from The Trumpton Riots up to new and unreleased ones, with top quality between song banter- especially the bit about an argument guitarist Ken had at Bradgate Park about whether you should have salt on boiled eggs. Speaking to Geoff, manager and owner of Liverpool's Probe (shop and record label), he said the new album should be out in September with at least eleven new songs. However by this point I had drunk quite a lot, and my memories are a little blurry. H, guitarist in Echolocation and long standing campanero of mine, recorded the whole gig from the mixing desk. Towards the end, during the song Them's The Vaguaries, my drunken voice shouting out the next line of the song ('Bin Men, thin men , lexicographers') is clearly audible during the breakdown in the middle of the song. Apologies for that. This is set closer (I think, it was towards the end if not the final song) We Built This Village On A Trad Arr. Tune, live in Leicester two nights ago. How's that for blogging service? This song contains more great lines than most people manage over an album- the title of this post for example, 'Yonder the deacon in misguided trousers', 'It fills me with joy to see moshers out jogging, it fills me with joy to see joggers out moshing', 'It's a cricketing farce with a thickening plot, Act One Scene One Brenda Blethyn gets shot' among them. They may be our finest folk band I think.

we built this village on a trad arr. tune (live in leicester april 2011).mp3