Stump featuring Mick Lynch (second left)
Big bottom
Swing big bottom
Swing-a-linga
It’s blubbery Burberry, baby
It’s blubbery Burberry
Big bumpy-bump
Big bumpy
Bop-a-lula
In terylene tartan, lady
In terylene tartan, lady
How much is the fish? How much is the fish? How much is the chips?
Does the fish have chips?
I don’t want a drink but I’ll go to the bar
I’d go for a walk but I ain’t got a car
Exclamation mark, click-click-click…
I like when it’s different but it’s just not the same
The weather is perfect except for the rain
Immaculate molars, baby
Immaculate molars, baby
How much is the fish?
Don’t mention hamburgers, Harry…
How do I get off the bus?
‘Buffalo’ by Stump, lyrics by Mick Lynch
I was planning a piece about the 30th anniversary of Stump’s marvellous mini-album Quirk Out recently when inadvertently came across the sad news that their singer and main lyricist Mick Lynch had passed away on 17th December 2015.
He was one of those fascinating, unique, highly-intelligent music-biz characters that could only have emerged during the ’80s.
Stump’s inclusion on the fabled ‘C86’ NME cassette (alongside Primal Scream, The Soup Dragons, Half Man Half Biscuit and The Wedding Present) was many people’s first exposure to the band, but it was their November 1986 video performance on ‘The Tube’ that will forever be etched on my memory.
Lynch’s Tintin quiff, bulging eyeballs and brilliantly rubbery dance moves couldn’t obscure the fact that ‘Buffalo’ was a warped pop gem.
Lynch’s lyrics were some of the 1980s’ greatest, channelling Flann O’Brien, Beckett and Joyce, with a soupcon of Mike Leigh, to depict the more surreal aspects of Irish immigrant life in London.
There were tales of dodgy landlords, bit-part actors, disastrous booze-ups, gormless American tourists (see above), pirates, part-time strippers, coffin-followers and even a classic song about Charlton Heston filming a Biblical epic (‘Lights! Camel! Action!’). Many lyrics still make me laugh out loud, his melodies were great and he was also a brilliant frontman.
In a very rare interview with The Quietus, Lynch once said, ‘My lyrics are essentially ballads, I write in ballad time and still do to this day. Stump had no love songs. Everything was from a very oblique angle. “Boggy Home” would be closest to a love song. It was about being in London but desperately wishing to be on top of a mountain in Kerry!’
Though Stump’s tenure was short – consisting of only two studio albums and a handful of tours between 1984 and 1988 – but their impact was powerful.
In the early 1990s, Lynch moved from London back to his hometown of Cork where he was a founding member of Dowtcha Puppets, a children’s puppet theatre company. Stump reunited for a one-off Cork gig in May 2015. Would love to have seen that.
Mick will be missed. He is survived by three sisters, Julianne, Noreen and Marie.
Recommended listening: ‘Stump: The Complete Anthology’ CD
movingtheriver.com 
I bought ‘Quirk Out’ when it came out, loved it, I think I had a Peel Sessions as well. Sad to see he has gone. I loved that album and still find myself singing the first four lines of Buffalo every now and again.
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Thanks for that. I haven’t investigated the Peel Sessions but will do. There’s also some really good late-’80s stuff on the Anthology box set – ‘Queen and the Pope’ and ‘Warm In The Knowledge’ are classic Mick!
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I just had s look, I still have it, 4 tracks, 45rpm. 1. down at the kitchen table 2.orgasm way 3.grab hands 4.buffalo
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