Inspired by Luxen: What's your vote for best debut al***

In the What are you listening to and WHY might anyone be interested? (VOL V) thread, Luxen posted the question as to was the first Led Zeppelin the best debut album ever.

Another thread suggested that most groups first is their best.

The thing about debut albums is that an artist or group you have never heard suddenly hits you with music that were not expecting.

Quite a few groups I like only made one album so I'm not really thinking about those bands, but rather bands that made a few records, but came out of the blue with something that made you want to put your shoes and socks on (as the great late FZ once said) - the kind of album that makes you want to go out and pedestrianise the high street (as the great Nigel Blackwell still says).

So I'll not nominate Basia Bulat as she only has one album to her name, albeit the best debut I've heard for years and years and years.

My obvious choice is



Back in the D.H.S.S was of course a title inspired by a track from the Beatles, but this album was nothing like anything the fab-four had ever done. This was the album from the four lads who shook the Wirral. It was a breath of fresh air in those dreadful dreary 1980s.

The mid-1980s in Britain was not a great time. We had the wicked witch of the east as PM. The Tractor Boys were relegated. New romantics were about. Disco music permeated the streets offending the sensitive man and woman too. And to top it all unemployment was rising in the Chigley end of town.

Then out of the dross rose a phoenix. A group that wrote songs that not only expressed what life was like, but also had a sense of humour (in age dominated by the alternative comedians - stand-up comics who were just not funny). This album was genuinely funny and yet had an inherent quality that afforded repeat plays.

The session HMHB did for John Peel became the most requested repeat in his show's history.

Back in the D.H.S.S was inspired by daytime TV and it is all the better for it. It is not well recorded by any means, but the songs transcend the technical limitations. Was there ever a better opening couplet than I was walking round my local store; I was searching for the ten pence off Lenor. Songs about real people, doing real things: although I've never had the good fortune to meet the legendary Mr Frederick John Titmus.

The 1980s was the era when people went clubbing and Nigel summarised the way we felt about such events in his epic Seal Clubbing:

I was just sitting there eating a salmonella sandwich
When a man walked up to me
“Would you mind, dear sir, if I asked you a question –
If music be the food of love, are you the indigestion”

Not that Nigel was completely adverse to dance. Indeed he suggested one when sung Everybody's doing the Len Ganley Stance; Len was the man in charge at the Crucible.

And then there is the introduction to Venus in Flares - A million housewives every day, pick up a can of beans and say “What an amazing example of synchronisation”

The album that made the 80s bearable and for me is as good as any debut elpee I've ever heard was Back in the D.H.S.S by Half Man Half Biscuit.

ATB Rotf