Forty Minutes Of January And February Songs

A month ago I had the idea that at the end of January I'd put together a January mix, songs with January in the title or lyrics, and then maybe repeat throughout the rest of the months of the year. For one reason and another it didn't happen and now it's February. No problem, I thought, I'll just roll January and February together, and do that. It turns out I have not very many January songs and even fewer February ones- the only February songs I could find were Lou Reed's Xmas In February and Billy Bragg's 14th Of February and neither really fitted with the vibe I started the mix with. I extended February's reach into Valentine's Day and that, no surprise, made it much easier. All of which is a long winded way of saying here's a forty minute mix of songs about January and February. 

Forty Minutes Of January And February Songs

• The Orb: Perpetual Dawn (January Mix 3)
• M- Paths: January Song
• The Durutti Column: Requiem For A Father
• My Bloody Valentine: Soon
• Lizzy Mercier Descloux: My Funny Valentine
• Charlotte Gainsbourg: Deadly Valentine
• New Order: 1963
• Half Man Half Biscuit: Epiphany (Peel Session)

Perpetual Dawn is an Orb classic, remixed twice by Andrew Weatherall in fine style. For their album Aubrey Mixes: The Ultraworld Excursions, released and deleted on the same day in 1991 The Orb remixed songs from Beyond The Ultraworld, finding new shapes and sounds for seven essential early Orb tracks including the January Mix 3 version of Perpetual Dawn- early 90s ambient house at its best.

M- Paths release ambient/ electronic music, sometimes for Mighty Force and sometimes on their own label. Now down to the core figure of Marcus Farley, who also records as Reverb Delay, this track came out a year ago, at the start of January 2025, an archival M- Paths recording for the new year.

Tony Wilson, TV presenter and founder of Factory Records, was also from 1978 the manager and friend of Vini Reilly. When the original band version of The Durutti Column split in 1978 Wilson decided that the future for Durutti was Vini Reilly and whoever else was around but that Reilly was such a talent that he should make Durutti Column his own. Wilson also decided that he would put all Durutti Column records out on Factory and that he would manage DC/ Vini along with fellow Factory founder Alan Erasmus. Wilson formed a management company on the 24th January 1978 and called it The Movement Of The 24th January, borrowing the name from the Situationist students who formed their own International Movement on 22nd March at Nanterre University 1968 (Mouvement 22 du Mars). Here is a copy of the letterhead Wilson designed for his company...

Requiem For A Father is from The Return Of The Durutti Column, the debut album released in January 1980, Vini's guitar playing and Martin Hannett's echo and delay devices and synths in perfect harmony, Vini playing a song for his Dad and Hannett making a rhythm out of a digital machine that sounds like a cat purring close up. 

My Bloody Valentine have been never very far away this year to date, their songs soundtracking much of January 2026. Soon is from Loveless in 1991, a track that did things with guitars that genuinely hadn't really been done before. Kevin Shields' guitars following Vini Reilly's is exactly where my head is at right now. 

Valentine's Day is less than a week away lovebirds. 

Lizzy Mercier Descloux was a French punk, friends with Patti Smith and Richard Hell, published Rock News and moved to New York where she set up ZE records with her partner Michael Esteban. Lizzy released several albums, minimalist punk/ No Wave, wrote poetry and painted, retired to Corsica to write books and lived a full and varied life. She died in 2004. Her cover of My Funny Valentine, the Hart and Rogers song, is from her 1986 album One For The Soul which had Chet Baker guesting on some of the tracks including this one. 

Sticking with French artists, Charlotte Gainsbourg released Rest in 2017, her fifth solo album and one that dealt with the death of her father Serge and alcohol addiction. Deadly Valentine was a single and is dramatic synth pop with a lively throbbing bassline and feathery vocals.

1963 is from the B-side to 1987's New Order single True Faith, a giant in their back catalogue. 1963 could have been a single in its own right. Bernard's lyrics are peculiar/ awful (delete according to taste). 'It was January/ 1963/ When Johnny came home with a gift for me'. Bernard once spun a line that the song was about JFK and Marilyn Monroe arranging for Lee Harvey Oswald to shoot Jackie Kennedy so they could get together but Oswald shooting the wrong person. Bernard may not have been entirely serious- Marilyn died in 1962 so at the very least his chronology's off. Producer Stephen Hague thought it was about domestic abuse. Whatever the lyrics deal with, the music is New Order 1987 magnificence.

Half Man Half Biscuit recorded Epiphany for a Peel Session. It starts out with Nigel Blackwell narrating a chance occurrence on a Friday in July that then unfolds in surreal Blackwell style taking in Dictionary Corner, black apes gibbering on dark lawns, a lime Dyson, a date in Parbold (near Wigan), a crossed telephone line, a sickly foal, a straggle haired girl called Karen Henderson, songs recorded for a a hospice, bus outings, Billing Aquadrome and busking at Embankment Tube before concluding 'January the 6th. Epiphany'. 

Friday Three Times

Today we're at one of those bloggers standby types of post, songs named after the day of the week that we've arrived at- Friday. The weeks seem long at the moment and Friday is always welcome. Two of the three Friday songs today have connections to recent Bagging Area posts and the third has a connection to an album that came out this year and has been largely unnoticed. 

Friday number one- The Replacements...

Love You Till Friday (Live at Cabaret Metro 1986)

The Replacements were Minneapolis contemporaries of Wednesday's postees Husker Du and were considered to be the ones most likely to make the jump to a major label- a more palatable, classic rock 'n' roll sound- The Replacements were quite capable of scuppering those kind of expectations by their own willful self- sabotage. In 2023 a remixed and re- issued box set version of their 1985 album Tim was released, a remix that actually made the songs entirely new, the really poorly mixed mid- 80s album totally redone and better for it. There was a live disc, The Replacements kicking the arse out of their own songs at the Cabaret Metro in Chicago in 1986, of which Love You Till Friday was their second song, rattled off in between the ridiculous and the sublime, between set opener Gary's Got A Boner and third song Bastards Of Young. And that's The Replacements all over. 

Friday number two- Jack Kerouac...

Friday Afternoon In The Universe

Jack Kerouac's On The Road was the subject of a Saturday Soundtrack post a few weeks ago. Friday Afternoon In The Universe is from a very long narrative poem Kerouac wrote called Old Angel Midnight, a 'monologue of the world' Kerouac dreamed up in Tangiers in 1956 and then began in a notebook while staying in a cabin with Gary Snyder later the same year. Kerouac called it Spontaneous prose, naked word babble and automatic doodle writing. A judge in a censorship case called it a prose picnic. Whatever it's called, Friday afternoon in the universe is a good time and place to be in. 

Friday number three, Half Man Half Biscuit...

Friday Night And The Gates Are Low

In 1995 Wirral's finest released their second album Some Call It Godcore. Friday Night And The Gates Are Low is a lamentation for Friday night football, Tranmere Rovers playing in the rain in front of a small crowd and the 'bastard slip of a sub's ruined my weekend'. Nigel signs off with 'Friday night and I just love complaining/ And no I haven't got anything better to do'.

In the summer of this year HMHB released their sixteenth album, All Asimov And No Fresh Air. I will return to it- its very much business as usual, in other words thirteen slices of customary laugh out loud lyrics coupled obscure references to modern life and some genuinely moving moments. If you haven't heard it, you really should. 

Soundtrack Saturday

Soundtrack Saturday took a two week detour into TV cop show theme tunes with a pair of 80s classics- the Balearic beauty of Mike Post's Hill Street Blues theme and Jan Hammer's day- glo pastel shoot out for Miami Vice. This week's post goes a decade further back and finds Mike Post in the songwriting seat again with the theme to The Rockford Files...

The Rockford Files Theme

The theme tune was released in 1975, co- written by Pete Carpenter and featuring that distinctive guitar solo from session guitarist Dan Ferguson on dobro guitar and electric guitar plus a solo on MiniMoog by Mike Post. As with Hill Street Blues and Miami Vice you're going to want to see the visuals of the title sequence as well as the audio, not to mention Jim Rockford (James Garner) and the famous answer machine message...

The Rockford Files ran from 1974 to 1980 (and then in a permanent loop of repeats on early evening TV in the UK). Rockford was a down at heel private detective, lived in a trailer near Malibu Beach, was always broke and often ended up getting a beating in fist fights. In one of those odd trans- Atlantic cultural exchanges, the theme tune to The Rockford Files became the music Tranmere Rovers run on the pitch to at home games at Prenton Park, Birkenhead. Tranmere are the team of Nigel Blackwell of Half Man Half Biscuit, the man who should the next poet laureate. 

Picking a song from my extensive HMHB folders I found this one, Tommy Walsh's Eco House, which includes a reference in the opening line to another TV detective, this time Medieval sleuth Cadfael...

Tommy Walsh's Eco House

Nigel's taken '90 Bisodol/ He's had enough of Tommy Walsh's eco house... the only bloke from Harpurhey/ Who wasn't at the Free Trade Hall'. 

'While you're capturing the zeitgeist/ They're widening the motorway'. 

Twenty Four

Today would have been Isaac's twenty fourth birthday. I can't find the words to adequately express myself about this at the moment. The weeks leading up to today have been awful at times and the thought that he's dead still has the power to stop me in my tracks and leave me trying to catch my breath. Isaac loved birthdays- cards, cake, presents, going out for tea, all the routines and traditions. I hope in years to come we can celebrate him and the twenty three birthdays that he had with us but right now it just feels like a date filled with massive loss. 

Often on his birthday I'd post songs relevant to the age he was turning, so today should have been songs with twenty four in the title or in the lyrics. I thought I may as well go ahead with this. Neither Joy Division's 24 Hours nor Happy Mondays' 24 Hour Party People seemed to strike the right note. I'm not really a fan of Gene Pitney's 24 Hours From Tulsa. Half Man Half Biscuit's Twenty Four Hour Garage People plays on Happy Mondays in the title and lyrically takes in the Rollright Stones, Talk Radio, Pringles, Marmite, scotch eggs, Kit Kats, motoring atlases, Leadbelly, various sandwich fillings and the worker at the all night garage. It is a song which can still, twenty two years after it was released, make me laugh out loud and today of all days that's a big deal. 

Twenty Four Hour Garage People

Neil Young's Old Man contains the line 'Old man, look at my life/ Twenty four and there's so much more'. Neil wrote the song after he bought the Broken Arrow ranch with the proceeds of his songwriting success. He was shown round the ranch by Broken Arrow's caretaker Louis Avila. The line is about Louis' incredulity that a young man could buy a $350, 000 ranch in 1971. When asked how he afforded it Neil told Louis, 'just lucky, Louis, just real lucky'. It goes elsewhere, as Neil Young songs often do, musing on the similarities between the old man and the younger man, that their basic needs and desires are the same- 'Old man, take a look at my life/ I'm a lot like you/ I need someone to love me the whole night through'. This version is from the legendary Massey Hall gig in 1971, a solo acoustic show in Toronto in January 1971. 

Old Man (Live at Massey Hall 1971)

Happy birthday Isaac. Love you. 

Saturday Theme Twenty Three

Without wanting to delve too deeply into the box marked 'British children's TV of the 1960s and 70s nostalgia' today's theme will be well known to those of us who grew up in that period. Trumpton began in 1967 and each episode opened with this...

Clock And Chime Theme

A lovely little piece of music regardless of the Proustian rush currently hitting home hard, released on the 1971 album Songs From Chigley And Trumpton, music by Freddie Phillips and narration by Brian Cant. 

It would be remiss of me to mention Trumpton without posting this 1986 classic, Brian Cant getting named checked as part of the establishment that Nigel Blackwell is hoping the people of Chigley and Trumpton will overthrow- 'We've had Cant conformism since 1966/ And now subversion's in the air in the shape of flying bricks'. 

The Trumpton Riots

Switch On The Sky

One of the general truths of travel is that it doesn't really matter where or how far you go, you take yourself with you. Writer Neil Gaiman said as such ('wherever you go, you take yourself with you') and fellow writer Haruki Murakami said something similar ('no matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself'). All three of us had moments while we were on holiday where Isaac's death hit us in some way. Going to a very hot island four hours away by plane and spending the time on beaches and by the pool wouldn't have floated Isaac's boat at all- he didn't like beaches, would have found it much too hot, wasn't great on planes and getting him up an down all the steps from the hotel to the street below would have been difficult. In some ways that's why we chose to go somewhere like Gran Canaria- it being so different from the car and ferry, French campsite holidays we'd done with him was all part of our thinking. We're still getting used to being a family of three- being somewhere a long way from home where you don't know anyone compounds this in some ways. No one we met or spoke to knew what had happened to us or what we brought to Gran Canaria with us. Lou says there are times when she wants to tell people, 'we're not a family of three, we're a family of four', but dropping it into conversations is really difficult- there's no easy way to do it and it goes off like an explosion, leaving people wrong footed, shocked and apologetic.

Last Saturday, 30th July, was eight months to the day since he died and we all felt it at different time during the day. It never leaves you does it? Grief and loss always find ways to come out of nowhere and punch you again. It still sometimes feels like being winded, a physical pain in the chest. I felt it sitting on the balcony one evening, music playing through the crappy speaker I'd brought with me, sun shining on me, cold beer in hand, and then, suddenly and unexpectedly, a wallop of pain.

Lying on a sun lounger on the beach and thinking back to the room in Wythenshawe hospital in late November, it all seemed a bit unreal again, that we'd ended up where we were/ are, and being away without him briefly felt wrong. We went to one of the beachside cafes for a beer and some chips and some shade. As we sat down we all noticed the TV screen hanging over the ice cream counter, showing one of Isaac's favourite programmes- Mr Bean (and bizarrely one of his favourite episodes too, the barber shop one). Sitting drinking a pint of very cold beer (price 1€ 50) and watching Mr Bean made us all smile, pulling us out of the loss and the tears we'd all felt a few minutes before. In some way, via Mr Bean, he'd come with us. 

This song, Switch On The Sky, came out the day we flew. Mark Peters is a guitarist from Wigan. His Innerland album came out in December 2017, an instrumental/ ambient record with eight tracks all named after north- west landmarks. The following year a beatless ambient version was released and a remix album too called New Routes Out Of Innerland. All three were big favourites round here (you can listen buy at Mark's Bandcamp page). Switch On The Sky is the first single from the follow up, Red Sunset Dreams (out in September), and has Dot Allison (formerly of One Dove) on vocals. It's a gorgeous, slightly forlorn, gently psychedelic song with guitar, bass, pedal steel, synths, banjo and ukulele and masses of swirling reverb. If you buy the single at Bandcamp there's also a lovely hazy shoegaze/ dub reworking called Switched On. 

It's our 27th wedding anniversary today, another first to go through. We were young when we got married (Lou 23, me 25) and we had no idea what lay ahead of us or the circumstances we'd find ourselves in all these years later but that's the way life goes I suppose. Here are a pair of 27 songs to celebrate, both from favourite bands of mine. First, an A Certain Ratio song from 1991, the early 80s Factory post- punk funk being updated with something much more early 90s (but still laced with a tinge of Mancunian melancholy).

Twenty Seven Forever (Jon da Silva's Bubble Bath Mix)

Second, Half Man Half Biscuit and a song from their 2002 opus Cammell Laird Social Club, wherein Nigel's efforts at romance are repeatedly rebutted- 'I said '' would you like to go the zoo?''/ She said 'yeah bit not with you'/ 27 yards of dental floss and she still won't give me a smile/ I'm King Euphoria, she's Queen Victoria/ 27 yards of dental floss and she still won't give me a smile'

27 Yards Of Dental Floss

Happy anniversary Lou. 

Ground Control To Monty Don

 

Half Man Half Biscuit played The Ritz on Friday night, a welcome return to Manchester for the group and a welcome, slightly cautious return to gigging post- Covid for me. Taking the stage at 8pm prompt to some rousing intro music they powered through a set of twenty seven songs, spanning their entire history from Fuckin' 'Ell It's Fred Titmus from their 1985 debut Back In The DHSS to at least one song from their imminent thirteenth album The Voltarol Years. The addition of a new guitarist Karl Benson, replacing the long standing Ken Hancock has beefed up the band's sound, twin guitars cranked up loud, Karl riffing and firing off snarly guitar parts. Opening song She's In Broadstairs is taken at pace, Nigel's vocals urgent and upfront. Running Order Squabble Fest follows and from their it's one classic after another- Asparagus Next Left, 27 Yards Of Dental Floss, Restless Legs, a singalong Vatican Broadside, National Shite Day (surely this country's true national anthem) dispensed mid- set such is their confidence, Fix It So She Dreams Of Me (with its refrain about the Gok Wan acolytes), Knobheads On Quiz Shows, a full pelt We Built This Village On A Trad. Arr. Tune, The Light At The End Of The Tunnel with the crowd roaring the breakdown 'No frills/ Handy for the hills// That's the way you spell New Mills', Every Time A Bell Rings, a song with the instruction 'get your hedge cut/ Get your fucking hedge cut', long term fan favourite All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit, the Kendo Nagasaki tribute that is Everything's A.O.R.

On and on they go, finishing the set with The Trumpton Riots. Nigel Blackwell entertains us between songs with customary deadpan asides ('there's an interesting story behind this one...' [no story, they just plough into the song instantly]), audience interaction ('Is there anyone here from Offerton?'), gnomic remarks ('Eddie Howe has never sneezed') and responses to requests ('yeah, that's one of ours'). There's a Half Man Half Biscuit tradition of playing a cover in the encore- they don't disappoint tonight, with a blistering run through Holiday In Cambodia (last time I saw them they did Total Eclipse Of The Heart which was funny and contained the amended line, 'once upon a time I was falling in love/ Now I'm only shifting a fridge', but The Dead Kennedys was better all things being equal). They see us off with a crowd pleasing romp through Joy Division Oven Gloves and everyone, from the middle aged men in Dukla Prague away kits to the teenage daughters they've brought with them, is happy. 

Half Man Half Biscuit are the true survivors of the indie punk scene and should be heralded as the heirs to the throne of leftfield guitar music in the UK. Like The Clash they have a three man frontline shouting and spitting their lines into the their microphones at the front of the stage, an inspirational front man and a guitar hero stage left and a thumping drummer banging away at the back (though admittedly they wear less leather and fewer hats). Like The Fall they have laugh out loud lyrics, head spinning non-sequiturs, lyrics that skewer and dissect the absurdities of life in modern Britain, obscure cultural references, rousing choruses and idiosyncratic song titles. Like Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds they tackle the big topics, not afraid of putting existential questions at the heart of what they do (plus other, smaller questions such as whose bright idea it was to make Bob Wilson an anchorman. Actually, maybe that is an existential question). Like The Smiths they have a huge back catalogue where every album has multiple jewels and hidden gems, and classic songs hidden away on EPs and B-sides (and they don't have a racist lead singer either). Really, there's no one else who does what they do. They really are among the best we have- catch them before they're gone. 

Every Time A Bell Rings

This is the handwritten setlist from the gig (Nigel warns us in Mate Of The Bloke about bands who type out their setlists), not mine I'm afraid, I found the photo in an HMHB online group. 

Indicate Then

All being well, tonight I will attend an indoor gig for the first time since seeing Julian Cope at Gorilla in February 2020. One of my Christmas presents was tickets for Half Man Half Biscuit at the Ritz, bought as a surprise by my daughter. I'm a little uneasy about being at an indoor venue crammed with so many people but I'm sure HMHB fans are a considerate bunch. 

There's a new album out in February- The Voltarol Years- with the usual range of promising song titles including Tess Of The Dormobiles, Oblong Of Dreams and Token Covid Song. 

A pair of songs to celebrate. The first is from a Peel Session back in 2000, a song about traffic jams and caravan holidays in North Wales taking in Sleater- Kinney and Neil Morrissey. 

Bottleneck At Capel Curig

This one's about losing your temper with the driver in front for not alerting you to their intention to turn left before dissecting the postman's life and habits, and then closing with the desire to see the Gouranga graffiti artist/s imminent arrest. 

Twydale's Lament

National treasures is a phrase sometimes overused but it definitely applies to Nigel Blackwell and co. 

Behind A Shed In A Garden In Norbury

Hawkwind's vocalist Robert Calvert suffered from some terrible episodes of poor mental health and was eventually diagnosed with bipolar. As a child he dreamed of being a fighter pilot and when this didn't happen began to dip into bohemian London of the 1960s. His combined interests in psychedelia, poetry and science fiction led him to Hawkwind. He left in 1973 after being hospitalised under the Mental Health Act, rejoined in 1975 and then left again in 1979. Along the way he recorded several solo albums including in 1981 an album called Hype. Hype was tied in to a novel of the same name, telling the fictional story of the rise and fall of a rock 'n' roll star. 

Lord Of The Hornets is the last song on Hype and was also released as a 7" single. It is a buzzing, pounding, overloaded song full of striking lines and memorable imagery, about the man who is the Lord of the Hornets. Norbury is in south London, sandwiched between Streatham and Croydon. It would not surprise me at all if the living God of stinging insects lived in a suburb of south London. 

'Asleep in a hive in the base of a hollow tree
Behind a shed in a garden in Norbury
And when he whispers commands in his megaphone
They swarm to his call and he knows that he's not alone

He's lord of the hornets

As a tiger wing drones in a hive of industry
Each has a place and will be what it must be
Queen's a machine on a larva production line
Laying antenna-ed troops on the stings in a paper mine'

Lord Of The Hornets

Michael Moorcock, science fiction and fantasy author and a key figure in the New Wave of British sci fi plays guitar on Hype. Moorcock also played with Hawkwind and Blue Oyster Cult and had his own band, The Deep Fix. Additionally he is one of the stars of Half Man Half Biscuit's legendary 1989 single Dickie Davies Eyes. A bit of a one off in the HMHB back catalogue musically, it fades in slowly led by organ rather than the Wirral group's usual three chord indie guitar rumble. Nigel Blackwell pulls together more great lines and British cultural references than any other contemporary songwriter could manage- funnier than Mark E Smith, more relevant than Nick Cave, not racist like Morrissey, Nigel Blackwell is the true voice of British post- punk lyricists (I am aware obviously that Nick Cave is not British). 

Dickie Davies Eyes

As the organ comes in, ascending and descending chords and a rattling drum picks up the beat Nigel kicks us off with Tolkein and Moorcock

'Mention The Lord Of The Rings just once more
And I’ll more than likely kill you
Moorcock, Moorcock, Michael Moorcock you fervently moan'

He then brings us Brian Moore (1) and the London Planetarium, Roger Dean (2), Cadbury's Flake adverts (3), oral sex (3), romanticised dreams about the living and the dead and 'a Romany bint in a field with her paints/ suggesting we faint at her beauty... But she's got Dickie Davies Eyes'. (4)

(1) Brian Moore- a football commentator and TV presenter. Covered nine world cups. 

(2) Roger Dean- artist and designer. Famous of his album covers for 1970s prog bands

(3) Cadbury's Flake- the crumbliest, flakiest chocolate... tastes like chocolate never tasted before'

(4) Dickie Davies- TV presenter most famous for being the anchorman of World Of Sport from 1968 to 1985. Darts, rugby, snooker, horse racing, wrestling- he covered it all with a streak of white in his quiff and a twinkle in his eye. 

18th May 1980

Ian Curtis died forty years ago today. The details are public knowledge- found by his wife in his kitchen in Macclesfield, a cord around his neck tied to the clothes drying rack,  Iggy's The Idiot on the turntable, a Werner Herzog film the last thing he watched.

The Ian Curtis death cult is a bizarre thing. You can find it easily on the internet, people from all over the world who have taken on the view first expressed by Paul Morley at the time, that 'he died for you', that he was too pure a soul for this world. Anton Corbijn's 2007 film Control, made with the full co- operation of family and bandmates, has fed into this myth- beautiful, romantic, poetic, doomed Ian. It's a stunning bit of filmmaking and the performances are sincere and sympathetic. I'm not sure though that it's healthy to portray suicide this way. It's pretty clear that Ian's suicide has had a huge impact on those he left behind. His widow Deborah couldn't stand to listen to New Order between Ceremony and True Faith. His daughter Natalie grew up without knowing her father. Bernard has said the suicide has affected him ever since. Hooky has often referred to the shadow Ian's death has cast. This isn't the 'romantic' side of suicide. It's people left behind not knowing why he did it and the guilt that they could have done more to prevent it. The Joy Division industry and the endless Unknown Pleasures merchandising is a spin off that I don't think anyone on the evening of 18th May 1980 would have seen coming.

Joy Division Oven Gloves (Peel Session)

The Joy Division publishing industry has given us the autobiographies of the main players- Bernard Sumner, Deborah Curtis, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris. So many other people around the band have also now passed away- Rob Gretton, Martin Hannett, Tony Wilson- who would surely have written their versions had they lived. Wilson wrote the book version of Twenty Four Hour Party People which also covered the events.

All of which sometimes overshadows the sheer dark brilliance of Joy Division and their music, a band who were more than just Ian Curtis and three mates despite what Hannett said about them being 'a genius and three Man United fans'. Ian's untutored voice, Bernard's rhythm guitar, Hooky's melodic bass and Steve's lead drumming, perfectly balanced, each contributing 25% to the whole and Hannett's production giving them that extra quality, the dark stardust. The fact that Ian's death is now forty years old underlines just how young everyone involved was and maybe how difficult it was in 1980 for anyone around to have been able to do anything to stop him as his marriage collapsed, his illness got worse and his medication exacerbated his problems, and the US tour loomed. Recent gigs had been chaotic as he had seizures on stage. Mental health services in 1980 were not like they are today. Young men didn't talk about these things. They didn't even take his lyrics at face value despite Closer reading like a forty minute suicide note.

R.I.P. Ian. Remember him, listen to the music, dance to the radio but let's not fall into the trap of the romantic suicide. It's a dead end with no way out for those left behind.

This is a dub cover version of their most famous song by a New York group called Jah Divison. This isn't a novelty cover by any means.

Dub Will Tear Us Apart

This is She's Lost Control, live on Something Else in 1979, the real thing, northern post- punk, a reflection of the post- industrial city they were formed in and formed by, what Wilson called 'the last true story in rock 'n' roll'.

National Shite Day

In this bold new world we are now living in, the bright sunlit uplands of Brexit Britain, it seems appropriate that we find a new national anthem, a song with a stirring tune that we can all sing together, a song with words that celebrate our newfound independence, a song where the people, all 52% of them, can all join in, put their arms around each other and raise their voices to the heavens... Nigel Farage, David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees- Mogg, Anne Widdicombe, Ian Duncan Smith, Dominic Cummings, Michael Gove, Mark Francois, Dominic Raab and all the rest, this one is very much for you...

'Pulling the ice axe from my leg
I staggered on
Spindrift stinging my remaining eye
I finally managed to reach the station
Only to find the bus replacement service had broken down

After wondering to myself whether it should actually be called a train replacement service
I walked out onto the concourse and noticed the giant screen seemed to have been tampered with
Probably by a junior employee
Disgruntled commuters were being regaled with some dismal TVM
Involving a tug-of-love-custody-battle
Stockard Channing held sway

Down in the High Street somebody careered out of Boots without due care or attention
I suggest that they learn some pedestrian etiquette
I.e. sidle out of the store gingerly
Embrace the margin

Fat kids with sausage rolls
Poor sods conducting polls

There's a man with a mullet going mad with a mallet in Millets

I try to put everything into perspective

Set it against the scale of human suffering
And I thought of the Mugabe government
And the children of the Calcutta railways
This works for a while
But then I encounter Primark FM
Overhead a rainbow appears
In black and white

Shite Day

I guess this must be National Shite Day

This surely must be National Shite Day
Don't tell me, it's National Shite Day

Float... float on
Float... float on
Barry... Herpes

I got a letter from Stringy Bob
Still on suicide watch
Screws not happy
Spotted a Marsh Fritillary during association
Was roundly ignored
''What news you?''
I felt sorry for him
He'd only been locked up for public nuisance offences
One of which saw him beachcombing the Dee Estuary
Found a dead wading bird
Took it home, parcelled it up, and sent it off to the rubber-faced irritant Phil Cool
With a note inside which read: "Is this your Sanderling?"

                                

Another time saw him answering an advert in the music press
"Keyboard player required: Doors, Floyd, etc.
Must be committed, no time wasters"
You can guess the rest

I always imagined he would simply wander off some day into the hills
To be found months later
His carcass stripped by homeless dogs
His exposed skull a perch for the quartering crow

I folded away the letter and put it in my inside pocket
All of a sudden I felt brushed by the wings of something dark
May the Lord have mercy on Stringy Bob

Shite Day
I do believe it's National Shite Day
It all points to National Shite Day
Someone's declared it National Shite Day

Shite Day
My birthday! On National Shite Day

No bogroll, it's National Shite Day
Cue drumroll, it's National Shite Day'

National Shite Day

Still, blue passports eh?

Authentic Celtic Band

It's December tomorrow and, unavoidably, the start of advent. Half Man Half Biscuit have a line for most occasions and today's is from 2009's Shit Arm, Bad Tattoo' (the owner of the limb in question is pictured above, either Pete Doherty or Carl Barat, or both). Nigel Blackwell takes them to task for many things, not least this-

'Advent on the high street
I point and sing
Busk when it's Christmas
You only busk when it's Christmas'

Shit Arm, Bad Tattoo

Achtung Bono, the album this song is from, is peak HMHB. Every song, all fourteen of them, is a laugh out loud funny, damning indictment of modern life. In Shit Arm, Bad Tattoo Nigel Blackwell deals with The Libertines-

'I could have put my head in a bucket full of porridge
And moaned about the hospital parking scheme
I would have saved fourteen pounds
That I just splashed out on your second album
For that’s what it’s akin to
And furthermore
You’ve got a shit arm, and that’s a bad tattoo'

The word 'furthermore' isn't used enough in popular music. 

Then he takes to task people who put the letter S onto the end of the Book Of Revelation (and those who do the same to Mary Hopkin). Unfortunately Pete and Carl do this in What A Waster-

'When she wakes up in the morning

She writes down all her dreams

Reads like the Book of Revelations

Or the Beano or the unabridged Ulysses.'

Just before the guitar solo he sings 'authentic Celtic band'. I've always assumed this is also a tattoo reference but it could be a musical group I suppose. 

No Christmas songs here, not yet anyway. 

You Been Running Round The Race Track

I'll stop wittering on about Italy now (although I can't promise I won't post more photographs in the future). I found this picture on the internet a few weeks ago and it seemed to good not to use- everything about it is wonderful, from the psychedelic font to the photo and the lad's expression to the strapline and the other story above the masthead.

This is one of the most Madchester songs, a celebration of complete hedonism through the lyrical lens of Shaun William Ryder and the twisted guitar funk of Happy Mondays. As Shaun puts it 'Why don't you join in with the 24 hour party people, plastic face can't smile, white out?'

24 Hour Party People

The bard of Birkenhead, Nigel Blackwell, used it as starting point for his lament for those poor souls working in the all night garage. Opening with the unforgettable lines 'I fancy I'll open a stationers, stock quaint notepads for weekend pagans, while you were out at the Rollright Stones I came and set fire to your shed' Nigel goes on to describe the tormenting of the all night garage employee, sending him round the shop looking for ever more obscure articles to buy- 2 Scotch eggs and a jar of Marmite, 10 Kit Kats and a motoring atlas, a blues cd on the Hallmark label- before finishing with a diversion into the pines.

Twenty Four Hour Garage People

Alehouse Futsal

There's a new Half Man Half Biscuit album out today, always a cause of celebration. The lead track Alehouse Futsal appeared online a few weeks ago. It's business as usual lyrically, that is, moments of laugh out loud genius punctuated with insight and references to popular culture and history...

'Your softly spoken friends
Their fortnight in the Fens
Your time slip stories I avow
Are boring the arse off me now
I’m gonna put up a wall in your through lounge
My animosity knows no bounds
I’m gonna give you alehouse futsal'

And this part from the middle eight...

'Picnics with craft beer
Elbow in Delamere
Your brand new 10K PB
Haile Gebrselassie'



No One Cares About Your Creative Hub So Get Your Fucking Hedge Cut is out today, available from Probe Plus. I am especially looking forward to the songs Man Of Constant Sorrow (With A Garage In Constant Use) and Knobheads On Quiz Shows.

Run Run

A friend posted this tune on social media yesterday. I could place the title but not how it went. A lot of Bandulu's mid 90s techno worked very well at the time but does sound, two decades later, very thump-thump-thump techno. Bandulu were also capable of moments of ambient magic and Run Run is one of them, a righteous piece of ambient dub from their 1994 ep Presence (and 1994 album Antimatters) with a vocal from John O'Connell. The dub swirls and storm clouds gather. A piano fades in and out. Smoke bubbles. Half time, off beat rhythm. Seven minutes where all is good.

Run Run

The picture was taken on a visit the other weekend to Mellor, in the hills above Stockport. I read a reference to an iron age hill fort and burial mound up there, out beyond Marple Bridge but before you get to New Mills (Half Man Half Biscuit once told us 'No frills, handy for the hills, that's the way you spell New Mills' and this caused some excitement when we detoured through it, as you can imagine). The photo was taken within the boundary of the hill fort, partially excavated, looking back towards Manchester. You can see for miles, way beyond the city and out to Cheshire and Merseyside. A 5 minute drive away, down the dip and up again, is the field where the barrow is (sadly on private land so not accessible but visible). We stood on the hillside looking at the same landscape, give or take a large city, that local people 10, 000 years ago would have been looking at.

There's No Sense In Trying

Factory Friday, in response to Dirk, The Swede and others and because it could be fun. Crispy Ambulance signed to Factory in 1980. I was going to post Deaf but I've done it before (years ago admittedly and it is a great song). Dirk mentioned The Presence so I've gone for that, all thirteen minutes of it. At first listen you should be able to spot Martin Hannett's unmistakeable production. Singer Alan Hempsall intones over a proper post-punk sound- gloomy maybe, grey raincoats possibly but with a brightness too.

The Presence

The Presence was the A-side of Live On A Hot August Night, released on Factory Benelux in June 1981. You can fit all of Crispy Ambulance's back catalogue onto one compact disc and I think you probably should. After signing Crispy Ambulance and failing to sell them in any decent quantities Tony Wilson declared 'no more bands with stupid names'. Then he signed Stockholm Monsters. Factory's failure to sell records in the first half of the 80s by anyone except New Order may have had more to do with their refusal to use pluggers. Or buy advertising. But we wouldn't have it any other way would we? Crispy Ambulance are also immortalised in Half Man Half Biscuit's epic account of shit gigs and band rivalries.

Running Order Squabble Fest

Dickie Davies Eyes

I read welcome news at the weekend- Half Man Half Biscuit have a new album out in October. Rejoice.

In 1986 they released the single Dickie Davies Eyes, an absolute HMHB masterclass. Led by organ and building slowly  from the opening line you know you're in for a good ride- 'mention the Lord of the Rings just once more and I'll more than likely kill you'. Nigel Blackwell goes on to marry together Roger Dean posters, snot disposal, Brian Moore's head and London Planetarium, a wok, Cadbury's Flake and oral sex, Michael Moorcock ('Moorcock, Moorcock, Michael Moorcock you fervently moan') and 'a Romany bint in a field with her paints suggesting we faint at her beauty'.

But she's got Dickie Davies Eyes.

Dickie Davies Eyes

You Call Glastonbury Glasto...

...You'd like to go there someday
When they've put up the gun towers
To keep the hippies away.

So said Half Man Half Biscuit's Nigel Blackwell and judging by the bits I've seen on the telly this weekend it looks like it's happened. Most of the footage made Glastonbury look like a gap year training camp.

I saw a couple of highlights along with some shockers (Metallica- how much could you stand? I managed 93 seconds). I think the girls won.

M.I.A. resplendent in gold and with a whole forward line of rappers and singers blowing it up on Friday night. That sample from Straight To Hell and those gunshots and cash registers clanging out over rural Somerset are hard to beat.



Edit: This video, uploaded by the BBC onto their own Youtube channel, has now been removed by themselves. Apparently someone was wearing a t-shirt with a political slogan they don't like. No to censorship, yeah? Last night there was still 20 minutes worth of her set at their own website- confusing huh? Paper Planes starts around  13 minutes in.

The day after Warpaint brought their dreamy, bass led groove to the fields. Their album is sounding good again after a month or two away from it. You have to stop looking for the songs and let their sound wash over you.



Goldfrapp, strobe-lit and black clad, a sexy electro-glam stomp.




I also watched Blondie doing Atomic at some point while reading the paper on Saturday morning. I am sorry to report it was dreadful.

Direct from the beeb...

Upon Westminster Bridge

Upon Westminster Bridge is a poem by William Wordsworth. In said poem he did not ponder a difficult decision to be made regarding Motley Crue. Nigel Blackwell did, in the Half Man Half Biscuit song of the same name. In the HMHB song we also get a new version of The Twelve Days Of Christmas sandwiched in...

'Spoiling Good Friday my ex-love sent to me
Twelve drummers singing
Eleven chairmen dancing
Ten mascots whinging
Nine stewards flapping
Eight christening invites
Seven cows a-barking
Six vicars strumming
Nick fucking Knowles
Four boring words
Carphone Warehouse and Matalan
And a pulled up at Bangor-on-Dee'

Nick fucking Knowles. Merry Christmas.

The song has many, many other delights- dry stone wallcharts, Ken Hom wok sets, iron age hill forts, low cost school trips, Ladbrokes and the return to earth of Jesus Christ and the resulting use of No Need For Nails. It is almost the quintessential Half Man Half Biscuit Song.

Upon Westminster Bridge

The other alternative version of The Twelve Days Of Christmas familiar in this household is The Twelve Days Of Cantona (the only modern footballer that really mattered).

Are you a farmer?

At this time of year, during duller passages of play, a romp through the whole song is always entertaining at the match. 'On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me an Eric Cantona' and so on...

'Five Cantonaaaaaaas
Four Cantonas
Three Cantonas
Two Cantonas
And an Eric Cantona'

Dull is the game that goes all the way up to twelve.

I finish work for the Christmas holidays today. Halle-fucking-lujah.

At Leek Town Hall Tonight

A while back I wrote a post about a Half Man Half Biscuit song which referenced the Staffordshire town of Leek. I said Leek was well known to me as the birthplace of my Dad but that other than the HMHB tune the only other time it had popped up in song was in Joe Strummer's wonderful reggae tinged At The Border, Guy. Recently a reader Sam Sherratt has left a couple of comments on the post adding further detail and deepening Leek's rock 'n' roll connections. This was too important to be left dwindling as comments below a post and I feel deserved a posting in their own right. Sam wrote...

Can help with the Leek reference in the Strummer song. Joe’s pre-Clash band the 101ers had a couple of members originally from Leek (incidentally Joe at the time was known as Woody). This included drummer Richard Dudanski (aka Nother), who later went on to drum with PiL. The 101ers played in Leek at a club called Samantha’s (not Leek Town Hall) and on another occasion came to a party. I was in touch with Richard a few years’ back and he said he asked Joe about this reference and said that he must have been confused.

Nice to tidy up a little corner of rock trivia!

and added afterwards...

Leek was also responsible for poisoning the Rolling Stones on Christmas Eve 1963, which is mentioned in Bill Wyman’s diaries – I know the man who bought the pies!

At The Border, Guy