60 albums
1988 - The Men They Couldn't Hang - Waiting For Bonaparte

Waiting For Bonaparte was The Men They Couldn’t Hang’s third album and was probably at the peak of my TMTCH obsession, so I have multiple copies of the singles that were released from this album (Colours, The Crest). It is also maybe their best album, although How Green Is The Valley would run it a close second.

The Men They Couldn't Hang - Waiting For Bonaparte (1988)

I bought this on CD, and it came with a book containing the music so… for a while I could play the easier tracks from Waiting For Bonaparte on the guitar (obv, for me, easy means “open chords and preferably no Bs). I’ve long since mislaid the book but suspect I can still play Midnight Train… hang on, while I try… yep! But you’ll have to take my word for it, I’m not putting a video on YouTube!

At some point, my sister Helen became a bigger TMTCH hang fan that I was. I guess she must have come to some gigs with us back then, but she’ll still go see them now. I last saw them in 2016 when they played The Hanwell Hootie so I could literally get to the venue (a tent in King George’s Field) in minutes, and was home probably before the band had towelled themselves down.

They were a great live band, although their live shows (in the 80s) were hampered by a bunch of aggressive attendees (or wankers as they were known at the time) who felt they were more important than everyone else in attendance and would invariably build human pyramids during the show.

The band briefly split in 1991 but I had already moved on by then. I bought one album after this, Silver Town.

Cush died tragically young in 2021, but the band still play. Maybe Helen will get me out to another gig some time.

The Men They Couldn't Hang