Saturday afternoon, after a fine lunch at Cavells, saw an appearance at Shakespeare’s by the excellent Half Mandolin Half Biscuit, in the persons of Ian, Katie, Ed (wearing a Burberry fez), Teg, Trevor and Will. At various points I had chats with Katie, Ed and Trevor, agreeing that the songs showed their strength by being able to stand up to a “folkie” treatment. There was a raffle where they ran out of tickets, so you had to make up your own HMHB-related year as your ticket number. All to a good cause. The Declaration Of Arbroath got us second place, meaning we came home with some Nightjar brewery product, Half Can Half Biscuit. Good to see Steve, Phil and Tim there, and we also met Nick who is/was one half of Half Man Half Bikekit. Tony (Birmingham City v Luton Town) and Andrew (Lincoln City v Wycombe Wanderers) were otherwise detained. We left for our train home, not realising that the band still had one more set to go. So thanks to Phil for completing the list by text. It would be good to see this lot more often, but we’ll make do with every time in Sheffield for now. After Ed’s opening line, “You’re all in the right place, aren’t you?”, it went like this…
Twenty-Seven Yards Of Dental Floss
Irk The Purists
1966 And All That
Bad Losers On Yahoo Chess
The Light At The End Of The Tunnel Is The Light Of An Oncoming Train
Even Men With Steel Hearts
Running Order Squabble Fest
Lord Hereford’s Knob
Uffington Wassail
Fix It So She Dreams Of Me
The second set was
Gubba Lookalikes
Knobheads On Quiz Shows
L’Enfer C’Est Les Autres
For What Is Chatteris
Mod Diff V Diff Hard Severe
Bad Review
A Shropshire Lad (terrific performance from Ed here)
Depressed Beyond Tablets
Third Track Main Camera Four Minutes
When I Look At My Baby (with a bit of 4AD3DCD added on)
Look Dad No Tunes
When The Evening Sun Goes Down
Joy Division Oven Gloves
And the third set
Restless Legs
Lock Up Your Mountain Bikes
Vatican Broadside
Keeping Two Chevrons Apart
All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit
With Goth On Our Side
Bottleneck At Capel Curig
RSVP
Everything’s AOR
What Made Colombia Famous
Nice to see them sticking a new one in there. Looking forward to seeing HMHB again soon. Ta again to Phil, our man on the spot, for filling in the gaps. Also to Andrew and Tony, for technical advice at The Leadmill. And, of course to Karen, for not smashing my laptop over my head at various points over the weekend while I was typing up these notes.
13 February 2022