Record Collection Random Choice (RCRC) - M: Macc Lads - From Beer To Eternity

The Macc Lads hail from Macclesfield and have produced a number of albums containing their own brand of locally referencing, irreverent, base humour.
The band are playing characters straight out of the pages of Viz, and listening to them is much like a Working Mans Club set against a sub-Motorhead backing.

Styling themselves as "the rudest, crudest, lewdest, drunkest band in Christendom", the title of their debut album ('Beer & Sex & Chips & Gravy') sums up the subject matter for the entirety of their career.  The album was recorded with Governmental assistance via the Enterprise Allowance Scheme.  However once the Government cottoned on to this, questions were asked in the House, the grant was withdrawn and a hefty fine issued.
Undeterred, they ploughed on with their audience baiting live shows (third album 'Live At Leeds' shows their is no love lost between Lancashire and Yorkshire), and another album chock full of tales of Booze, Birds & Fags (it was obviously a winning formula, so why change).

Not always an easy listen, with the limited subject matter, and - but despite that, one cannot get away from the fact that it is pretty funny (more foul-mouthed Paul Calf / Alan Partridge-esque than Chubby Brown).Listening is sometimes hard work, all a bit one dimensional, sometimes even distasteful, some of the humour being beyond schoolboy and very in your face.  But, honestly, not for one second do you believe them to be actually serious.
(Sadly, some of the tabloid newspapers did  - at one point declaring them to be the saviours of Working Class culture and sending their records to Army personnel overseas.  And then in virtually no time at all, declaring them filth and calling for a blanket ban on them performing - which probably goes to show just how good their invented parody personas were)

An indicator that there might be more than smut, smut and more smut going on is how there is a passing reference to Wilfred Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est in the song "Ben Nevis" (not enough to warrant a writing credit, but it's there)

By the time of this, their fourth album, they were cult favourites gracing the pages of Kerrang, and even getting the odd (very scarce) late night mainstream radio or TV mention or (even rarer) appearance.
The 'Pie Taster' EP even made the lower reaches of the charts
(OK, Number 95 for 1 week, but it is success of a sort)

'From Beer To Eternity' was their fourth album and stuck rigidly to the format, opening with "Alton Towers" about a Bank Holiday visit to the titular theme park, and finding no pub, no women to ogle, and bemoaning having to stand in a queue'.
And the quest for beer and women continues through the 17 tracks, stopping off for a visit to the Peak District and a Chinese Takeaway.
"All Day Drinking", "Tab After Tab" and "My Pub" leave little to the imagination regarding subject matter.  Similarly "Lucy Lastic", "Lady Muck" and "Ugly Women" are pretty clear too.
Musically limited, lyrically limited, commercially limited, limited chance of being heard on the radio or TV.  The whole escapade is somewhat limiting.
And whilst it may not be big or clever to swear like a docker, and invent a whole load of new swear-y terms - it is pretty funny (in the same way that Derek and Clive, Bad News, or other sweary spoken word and music albums are amusing - I guess you just have to have a sort of skewed vision on the world)


Not from the album, but it can probably be termed as The Macc Lads manifesto:

Eh Up (Monkees)

Alton Towers

No Sheep 'Til Buxton (the "hit" single, that actually got a showing on MTV)