I Came and Set Fire to Your Shed

And, I return. Not to talk about Christmas, either, because that’s gone now and it’s just about all back to normal. Another holiday in the past then. Arse.

No. Instead, I’ll tell you about a top night out I had the other week, watching Birkenhead's finest Half Man Half Biscuit at the Ritz in Manchester. First of all, however, I’ll point out this was despite the venue, which had a crap sound and crap overpriced beer. The latter point, I’ll concede, is a downer in just about every live band venue in town (Band on the Wall excepted). Paying the best part of a fiver for a pint of Red Stripe strikes me as nothing else but a bit of legalised thievery topped only by being asked for pay four quid for a can of Carlsberg at the Liverpool Student Union back in the summer.

But the band: Nigel, Neil, Ken and Carl put on a top show, as you’d expect from a bunch of hardy pros such as they. The new songs sounded top and they were in good humour. I particularly enjoyed Ken putting his foot up on the monitors during the “woh-ho, Black Sabbath, bam-a-lam” break in Left Lyrics in the Practise Room and Nigel’s assertion that he “used to look like Judd Trump, now I look like Japp Stam”. Bonus entertainment points for him showing off a guitar shaped like a caravan.

Though he speaks a mammoth amount of tosh a lot of the time, Andy Kershaw was bang on when he described HMHB as the best English folk band since the Clash. Their songs, to this lad anyways, sum up a lot of life in a Northern town. I've tried to explain them to people from distant shores, to much confusion I imagine: would a line like “no frills, handy for the hills/that’s the way you spell New Mills” mean much to someone from Russia or Mexico?

It’s pleasing that the band have managed to continue to work their own little niche for the last 25 years or so. Somebody once wrote that the English love a talented mediocrity, and HMHB perhaps fit that bill as well as anyone. Blessed with an exceptional writer in Nigel Blackwell, they've remained on the small Probe Plus label, never engage in ‘proper’ tours (Nigel likes sleeping in his own bed every night) and have probably performed on TV a handful of times. Indeed, in the eighties they once turned down the chance to appear on the Tube as Tranmere Rovers were playing at home that night.

Blackwell, a man capable of referencing Ian Curtis, Leadbelly and Thomas Hardy, may in fact be one of England’s great lyricists. There was a point he might have crossed over to the mainstream. Their debut Back in the DHSS sold a fair amount and the single Dickie Davis Eyes even threatened the pop charts. In reaction, Blackwell split the band for a few years to dedicate more time to watching daytime TV.

Ever since returning in the early 90s, they've put out an album every few years and play a few gigs in decent sized venues to a loyal audience. Half Man Half Biscuit as pop stars? I doubt the charts could take that much wit.