The Trumpton Riots EP

The Trumpton Riots E.P. is a 1986 12" 45½rpm [sic] vinyl EP by the English indie band Half Man Half Biscuit. The original release (TRUMP1) comprised the first four tracks listed below.[1][2] A re-release later that year (TRUMX1) included the fifth one also.[3]

  1. "The Trumpton Riots" (3:11) [4][5]
  2. "Architecture, Morality, Ted and Alice" (3:43) [6]
  3. "1966 and All That" (3:18)
  4. "Albert Hammond Bootleg" (3:02) [7]
  5. "All I Want for Christmas Is a Dukla Prague Away Kit" (3:10) [8]

The Trumpton Riots E.P.
EP by
Half Man Half Biscuit
Released1986
GenrePost-punk
Length13:14 / 16:24
LabelProbe Plus TRUMP1 / TRUMX1
ProducerSam Davis and Geoff Davies
Half Man Half Biscuit chronology
Back in the DHSS
(1985)		 The Trumpton Riots E.P.
(1986)		 Back Again in the DHSS
(1987)

"The Trumpton Riots (Top 20 Mix)" and "All I Want For Christmas Is a Dukla Prague Away Kit" were released in 1986 on a 7" vinyl single (Probe Plus TRUM1-7"), before the release of the five-track EP.[9]

The EP was incorporated into the 2003 re-release on CD of the album Back in the DHSS. There, the title of the second song is given as "Architecture and Morality Ted and Alice".

In a 2001 appreciation of the band, music writer and novelist Kevin Sampson described the EP as "utterly marvellous".[10]

In May 2016, The Guardian newspaper reported that Gordon Murray's family were contemplating suing the band Radiohead for infringing the copyright of the idea of Trumptonshire in the video for their single "Burn the Witch". The same report noted that Half Man Half Biscuit's 1980s song "The Trumpton Riots" had "portrayed Trumptonshire as a place of striking firemen, militant socialism, and military coups".[11]

The following tracks have been said to have been recorded for this, their first, EP; but as of 2015 no trustworthy evidence, or even recordings, have been found:

  1. "More Brawn"
  2. "I’m Out on Bail"
  3. "She Looks Like Alan Gilzean"
  4. "No Spare”

Cultural references

As is usual with Half Man Half Biscuit, the songs contain multiple cultural references, often obscure. Those identified include:

  • "The Trumpton Riots" imagines a violent civil insurrection in Trumpton, a fictional town inhabited by stop-motion characters which featured in BBC TV children's programmes of 1966–69; the song also mentions several of the best-known characters in those programmes.[12]
    • The instrumental and hummed introduction is to the tune of "To Be a Pilgrim" ("He Who Would Valiant Be") by John Bunyan (1628–88) as arranged by the English classical composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958), a popular hymn sung at the 2013 funeral of Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013)
    • "Cant conformism" puns on:
      • cant, a jargon or argot of a group, often employed to exclude or mislead people outside that group
      • Brian Cant (born 1933), narrator of the Trumpton programmes
      • Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), German philosopher who argued that reason is the source of morality
A tea towel commemorating the 1981 wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer, of the kind referred to in "Architecture and Morality Ted and Alice"
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References
  1. Half Man Half Biscuit – The Trumpton Riots E.P. at Discogs (list of releases)
  2. "Half Man Half Biscuit: The Trumpton Riots [ep]". www.allmusic.com. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  3. Half Man Half Biscuit – The Trumpton Riots E.P. at Discogs
  4. Half Man Half Biscuit: The Trumpton Riots at AllMusic. Retrieved 3 June 2015.
  5. Half Man Half Biscuit / John Peel - The Trumpton Riots - Composed by Half Man Half Biscuit at AllMusic. Retrieved 3 June 2015.
  6. Half Man Half Biscuit: Architecture, Morality, Ted and Alice at AllMusic. Retrieved 3 June 2015.
  7. Half Man Half Biscuit: Albert Hammond Bootleg at AllMusic. Retrieved 3 June 2015.
  8. Half Man Half Biscuit: All I Want for Christmas Is a Dukla Prague Away Kit at AllMusic. Retrieved 3 June 2015.
  9. "Half Man Half Biscuit – The Trumpton Riots" at Discogs
  10. Sampson, Kevin (21 July 2001). "Taking the biscuit". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 June 2015.
  11. Guardian Music (16 May 2016). "Radiohead video breaching copyright, say Trumpton creator's family". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 May 2016.
  12. "The Trumpton Riots". Retrieved 5 June 2015.
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