I Shot A Man In Tesco ... Just To Watch Him Die

Introduction

This Seven Days In Post has been getting a few reads recently and is a virtual review of the Half Man Half Biscuit album "90 Bisodol(Crimond)".

I included my latest blog posts because who doesn't want to see Rick Astley covering AC/DC at Glastonbury?

I will expand this and add a few more songs for you to listen to, so you can listen to how brilliantly Nigel Balackwell can twist your mind with his words and dark humour wondering if you really should be laughing after the song finishes.

I Shot A Man In Tesco ... Just To Watch Him Die

Over the last couple of days, I've been listening to "90 Bisodol(Crimond)" and have been slightly taken aback by its sheer quality and brilliance. Saying that you can probably apply that to most Half Man Half Biscuit albums.

I once said that whatever Bowie album you are listening to is your favourite Bowie album after listening to "Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)".

In the HMHB canon "90 Bisodol(Crimond)" certainly lives up to that.

There are a couple of songs that are maybe not quite as good as the rest, but still great none the less and or me these are "Excavating Rita" and "Something's Rotten In The Back of Iceland" and they are crammed full of excellent wordsmithery and literary references, and these are the least good bits of the album, which emphasises how good it really is.

"The Coroner's Footnote" (the first song in this article) and "RSVP" are both lovely tunes with a very dark twist where you don't know whether to laugh or grimace. I just enjoy it.

"The Coroner's Footnote" is a song about the effects of a suicide attempt when someone has his love stolen by and dastardly beau. I love the way Nigel brings The Greek Fates into play on this one as well. He really can weave a story and you need to listen to the end of this song to hear the final line.

"RSVP" is a tale of a murderous wedding reception, which starts out as a lament but the story descends into more life-threatening realms, again you need to listen to the whole this to appreciate the brilliance of Nigel's words.

In the middle of the album (running wise) is "Descent Of The Stiperstones" (I think it should be spelt Styperstones for some reason) which is the big song on the album, and excellent off-kilter Crossroads narrative ("The Crazy World of Arthur Brownlow").

For some reason, I thought this was the closer but no matter, there is a lot of great stuff still to come.

The title of this post is taken from a great line in "L’Enfer C’Est Les Autres" and that line playfully plagiarises a line from "Folsom Prison Blues" by Johnny Cash.

The song is about observations and complaints about people in everyday life but is brilliantly stated. You will have encountered these sorts of things in your everyday life, well they have happened to me.

"L’Enfer C’Est Les Autres" or "Hell is other people" is taken Jean=Paul Sartre's play "No Exit".

The album is a wonderful great end-to-end play.

The finale "Rock and Roll Is Full of Bad Wools" (I still don't know what that means) is a right-on swipe and the majority of plastic football fans that have grown up thinking it is the top six of the Premier League, Real Madrid, Barcelona, PSG or any team with money and it does mention Roots Hall.

Have a brilliant Christmas everyone, Yule love it.

Thank you for reading, I hope you have listened to a few of these songs and at least smiled a few times.

The Half Man Half Biscuit Lyric Project is here:

This is their home page