CZM Rewind: Part Two: Chumbawamba: How to Sell Out, But in a Good Way
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Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff. RERUN EDITION! That's right, it's the holidays, and that means that I am gonna run reruns. And I thought, what's better to get us in the holiday spirit than that holiday band? I've decided they're a holiday band. The history of everyone's favorite anarcho-pop band, Trumbawamba, who's probably not a Christmas band. In fact, they might be annoyed if I call them that. Well...

It's too bad, because it's my podcast, and this is a history of Chumbawamba. We'll be back next week with a non-re-run, whatever you call a run, a regular run. Anyway, here it is.

Welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff with Margaret Piljoy, a podcast that's about cool people who did cool stuff. Our guest today is Max Collins. Max, how are you doing? I'm doing well. Do you want to talk about yourself at all? What's going on? I'm doing great, thank you. It's good to be here. I was going to say on this day that is definitely a different day. I think everyone who listens to this podcast knows that we record it in two takes or one take in one day. Good, yeah.

So Max Collins, our guest, in the 90s, he actually did an anthropological field study on one-hit wonders in the rock world. That's right. Everything Margaret is saying right now is absolutely, unequivocally, verifiably true. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So today we're talking about one-hit wonder Chumbawamba. And if you haven't listened to part one, what the fuck is wrong with you? Did something go wrong with your life? Why do you make the choices that you make? So go listen to that. Okay. So...

Around the early 90s, life starts changing for Chumbawamba. It stays egalitarian, but it goes from this loose, chaotic thing into something more like a workers' cooperative. They start having tons of meetings. By one account, they spend more times in meetings than in practice. There's like eight or nine of them at this point. And most of them move out of the squat, but stay in the band and stay activists. And they just want to do other things with their lives. And more and more, they're also having families and shit, right? And sometimes maybe

Obviously, some of them are having kids in the squad, but I could imagine not being like, this is where I want to raise my children. I don't know, whatever. And one of the cooler things about them is as they start doing this, they don't go all VH1s behind the music. Like, they keep not exploding. Some of them did drugs. Some of them were sober. They date within the band. They get... One of them dumps one of them to go date the other bandmate. And everyone stays good with each other, more or less. Like...

I don't know. I feel like they kind of did hedonism right, at least as it's presented in their self-mythologizing, right? Parties and raves and shows and everything, but they're not doing the trash the hotel room, drop penises, the sexually assault fans thing. Right. And so...

And they're basically at this point trying to make it as no longer young musicians. They're trying to be like, this is... So they sit down and they have a what the fuck are we doing meeting, like a conversation 10 years into the band. And they're like, all right, let's fucking do this thing. Like, let's double or nothing. Let's, you know, they...

They quit their jobs to do it full time, which means that they needed to pay their employees, which was themselves and also other people were helping them out. And so commercial considerations start having to be balanced alongside musical and political considerations as they make this music. And in 1994, they release Anarchy as the name of an album and the cover of which features the photo of a child being born, which is from a book for children about where babies came from. But this is obviously like

Their whole point is like, you're all going to call this pornographic, aren't you? And it did. It's called pornographic. Stores refuse to sell it. They keep it in brown bags because you can see a vagina in it or whatever. It's my favorite of their albums. And it's the first time that they crack the very bottom of the mainstream charts. And it has the song, if you haven't, if you've never listened to a Chumbawamba song besides Tump Thumping, or even if you haven't heard that, go listen to Homophobia by Chumbawamba. So,

They start getting to play larger and larger shows, right? As they start taking this band really seriously 10 years in. They tour more of the world. And the press fucking hates them. They're like, you're washed up bad musicians. You're all too old. You scream about politics, but you don't even believe any of it. Or like, they're all like, you're too woke. You're ruining the music. Whatever.

And the fans love them. They sell out shows left and right. And the press goes between ignoring them and hating them, which is like, this is just like literally how to succeed as a cult band. Yeah, it really is. Yeah. And in 1996, they're not super famous yet. They're not tub thumping famous yet, but they're sharing a stage of smashing pumpkins in Germany at some big televised event. And smashing pumpkins is apparently being real assholes about it, at least as related in Boff Whaley's book. And so they like,

All the other bands have to hide in their dressing rooms with the doors closed, and they can't be in the corridors when Billy Corgan comes through or something. And this is still pre-tub thumping? Yeah, yeah. So they're not seen as Smashing Pumpkins as Peter yet, but they're big enough to be at this televised event. And so Dan, one of the people on Trouble One, he likes being naked. Constantly he's stripping on stage for the fuck of it.

And the band is like, fuck, what are we going to do to prank these assholes? That's like what we got to do. That's our thing. You know, I know, Dan, take off all your clothes. So Dan gets naked. They write the word punk in huge letters across his chest. He strolls out on stage just as Smashing Pumpkins. It's their big finale. You know, he walks up to Billy and he salutes the crowd naked and then he walks off. And the rest of the band has to physically rescue him from bouncers.

And then they fled the scene as like they're being chased and the promoter is like, you'll never appear on German television again, which probably didn't turn out to be true. Incredible. And yeah, I know. I love it. I love it. Also in 1996, they turn in an album called Tub Thumping to their label, which is a label called One Little Indian, which was not a great name for a label. And just to be clear, the label realized that. And in 2020, they changed their name to One Little Independent.

In 1996, Chumbawamba turns in this album to them. And the label's like, no, this sucks. Go home and write better songs. No good. Onward. And then EMI Germany, a major label, is like, we'll give you 100,000 fake Europe money for it. Maybe pounds, maybe euros. I don't know. One of the fake monies that they have over there. And at first they laugh it off, right? They're like, no way will we do that, obviously. And then they kind of sit on it. And they're like, we're so fucking broke.

And that is enough money that even if the album doesn't sell at all, we can still pay everyone involved a decent wage. To be clear, Chumbawamba had put a song out on an anti-EMI compilation about 10 years earlier. The compilation's called Fuck EMI. At the time, EMI was deep in the nuclear arms industry. EMI had since divested from that. But still, it clearly wasn't good optics.

And they weren't sure, but they, I think what happened is that they, they were sure it wasn't good optics to the punk scene. What they were trying to figure out was whether or not it was good ethics and they wanted to make their decision based on that. So they talk it over as a collective, like they do everything. They don't vote about major decisions. They work for consensus and they talk it over for weeks.

They are like, look, symbolism is bad, but change for change's sake is sometimes good. They were stagnating and they were like, fuck stagnating. That's what we don't want to do. It's more of a chance to reach more people. Saying fuck you to a scene that was getting way too essentially conservative from their point of view seemed fun to them. Being able to pay themselves enough to not worry for a while. Like they're all working class folks, right? And they're approaching middle age without much of a safety net because they all were squatter punks.

And, and there were like bands like Fugazi can get away with being fiercely independent because they're just big enough and sell enough records. Right. Chumbawamba wasn't selling that kind of those kinds of numbers. And, but fear of what people would think was a big part of it. A few years earlier in Poland, some American punk had taken it upon himself to like slash their tour van tires because he was mad about how much the band was charging for the show. Punks can be sort of,

Myopic. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the things that they thought about a lot, the most convincing argument to some of them, and I actually think maybe the most convincing argument to me, is they're like, look, our independent labels are also just all about the money. They are also fucking us over. They're also greedy. We might as well get paid well. Alice Nutter puts it in an interview with a punk magazine later.

My reasoning for doing it isn't how we're going to get our message across to more people. It's nothing to do with that. It's because my experiences with one little Indian in the music industry have me convinced that they're all the fucking same. They're small businessmen and big businessmen, and they have a different agenda to us. There's no good or bad capitalism is kind of what they hit upon. Yeah. And they do it. And...

Which brings us to probably the only song by them that most of the people listening to this podcast have actually heard, Tub Thumping, about falling down and standing up and about drinking. I literally don't know. I didn't actually ask Sophie what I'm allowed to do in terms of quoting song lyrics. So that's why I keep speaking about it very vaguely. Sophie says, yes, I can claim that I wrote the song and that it is legally my property. That is what Sophie is nodding and saying yes right now. So I wrote the song Tub Thumping. And when I did... Okay, so...

But I'm going to quote Boff Whaley about this song. Top Thumping, from its very outset as an idea, was definitely populist and based on working class experience. That's working class not just as a mythic Trotskyist vision, but as a cultural and historic whole, which includes family and sport and community and war and love and entertainment. Not just the cliched clenched fist getting up, but the getting knocked down as well.

Tub Thumping became known to some purely as a drinking song, which is fair enough because if nothing else, it didn't belong to an elite group of musicians. It belonged to people. People at football matches, people singing along to the radio as they drove, people at parties drinking too much whiskey and tripping over the kitchen chairs, people like me. And because it helped beggar the notion that Chumbawamba were boring zealots from planet anarchy.

And that's not what I realized when I heard it when I was in the 90s and driving around. But I think it's cool that they don't try to eschew that interpretation because it is a drinking song. But it works on a couple different levels. But it is a drinking song insofar as like...

you're drinking with your mates and there's community there and there's solidarity there. Yeah. And, and there's, you know, commiseration for the getting knocked down, you know, parts of life there. Which is punk as fuck. It is punk as fuck to like put your arms around all your friends and drunkenly sing songs, like whatever the song, you know, like, yeah, like,

Yeah. It's collective. It's kind of a spiritual experience, you know? Yeah, totally. And it's one that we have increasingly stripped away from us by modern life. And apparently, one of the main inspirations of the song was watching a drunk Irish guy stumbling home from a bar singing Danny Boy and being told to shut up by a neighbor. So...

And the song goes fucking huge. And again, if you were alive in the 90s, you probably remember this. It's number two in the UK. It's number six in the US. It's in the charts everywhere in the world. It gets ranked on lists of like the 20 most annoying songs of all time. Yeah. I mean, there's a distinction to be made there between like a hit song and like a global smash. Like that song was...

like, you know, number one on alternative rock radio or whatever, but also pop radio and also not just in the U S but like, yeah, you know, everywhere. It was just one, one of those, you know, hyper ubiquitous songs that you could not escape no matter where you were, no matter what your, where your tastes, what genres your tastes went to or whatever. Yeah.

Yeah, because it's also kind of a genre-less song. Like, on its face, you know, it has, like, I think electronic drums and just this catchy sing-along chorus. And, like, it's just... And, like, yeah, it's almost like a collective delusion, you know? Like, this thing that just, like, absorbed everyone for a moment, you know? Mm-hmm. And, yeah, I don't know. It's fucking interesting. It's, like, in a way, it's, like,

it it was it was a troll sort of but it also wasn't a cynical one they were yeah they they weren't looking down on the people enjoying it yeah for whatever surface reasons there was no contempt there yeah um but it was this thing that functioned on a couple different levels yeah yeah it's so fucking like it's just brilliant i it's such a

Yeah, it's a prank, but it's not a prank. It's this earnest thing they did that got injected into pop culture. And I don't know, it's fucking...

And a lot of their old fans write them letters calling them sellouts. But the people who really led the charge of calling them hypocrites were the same music journalists who had always hated them because they're like, ah, see, we told you their politics didn't mean anything, which was their way of basically excusing themselves for never having had decent politics in the first place. Yeah, which is a really dubious way to sort of...

Yeah, you know, truffle hunt for what seems like hypocrisy. But if you scratch the surface at all, you realize really isn't. It's a collective who wants to take be able to take care of their own. And as we'll find soon enough in the story, take care of others as well and do that by siphoning corporate money and.

yeah, like, you know, doing Robin Hood shit, really. Yeah, totally. Totally. And, and it's funny as to look at, like, if I had been, I, you know, I was a salty, uh, subcultural, but not like a punk yet, right? At the time of all of this, if I had been like,

If it had happened in 2003, I probably would have been one of the people being like, ah, you fucking sellouts, right? But I'm glad that I don't... You know, like 21-year-old me is not who I look back to about what decisions were best to make for my life, you know? No, totally. I'm stuck with some of the tattoos, but that's okay too. Yeah. So...

They spend two years, the next two years in this whirlwind of fame. It doesn't stop them from being themselves. And first and foremost, they give away just a fuck ton of money. Since all the money gets split equally, they didn't like fuss about who deserves what amount and stuff like that. You know, there were the people who are the lead singers of the songs, whatever, but they're like...

We're just splitting evenly. We'll work from there. And they peer pressure each other out of like running out and buying Jaguars. Boff notes that Dan went out and bought a really fancy vacuum cleaner, which I must be what middle-aged anarchists do. And they suddenly have a lot of money, you know, nice vacuum cleaner. It's a very nice thing. And they, I get the impression that they hold onto enough money to not have to like worry about being poor and

But they donate money to artists, women's groups, prisoner defense campaigns, kids football teams, radical media projects, venues, solidarity groups, individual organizers, community groups, magazines, direct action groups, and social centers. At one point in 2002, GM wanted a song for a commercial. I love this story. Yeah. Jumbo Wumba said yes, and they take...

It took $100,000 or different accounts give different amounts, but a large number of money, high money number, $100,000. We'll go with that. And they just turn around and they give half of it to Indy Media, which is this big decentralized UB, the media network. And they give, which is unfortunately kind of probably what prefigured Twitter and the rest of the night world we live in now, but it was a good idea at the time.

And they give the other half to a project called CorpWatch that is specifically fucking tracking GM and exposing their crimes. And so they just turn around and give $50,000 to people who are specifically attacking GM. Yeah. And so if the two main arguments that they have in favor of selling out are reach a wider audience and get fuck tons of money, they do both, but...

But I actually, I think Alice Nutter was right. In some ways, the fuck tons of money, which seems less the radical goal, is actually in some ways the more radical thing they did. Because the wider audience didn't necessarily like get it, right? They talk about anarchism on news shows they mostly get made fun of. They sell their music to a ton of places, but they turn down other places too. They turn down Nike, who offered them a million and a half bucks.

their rules were really simple and strict. They wouldn't sell their music to anyone involved in sweatshop labor or the arms industry. And when I first started researching this episode, I thought it was going to be mostly about their hijinks during the fame period because they did really good hijinks. But in the end, the reason the first half is more about the working class punks and the squat breaking laws is like what I kind of lingered on. But let's talk about the hijinks.

One time in 1997, the tub thumping era, Dan gets arrested in Italy, literally for just walking down the street wearing a skirt. And he's held in a cell. He has a show that night. He gets held in a cell with no one speaking to him in English. And finally, he scrawls, I'm in a pop group called Chumbawamba on a piece of paper and held it up to the glass of the cell. And they release him. And he gets in time to go to the soundcheck.

The next day, he appears on Italian TV in the skirt and says, Italy has some problems with homophobic macho cop culture. Alice Nutter steps up as being the kind of unofficial spokesperson for the band. I think mostly because she enjoyed talking the most and had the most to say. She was also maybe the most firebrand of them. In 1997, she told the UK press, nothing can change the fact that we like it when cops get killed. EMI is like,

Oh my God, please apologize. What the fuck? Oh my God. She didn't apologize. And so she clarified her statement. If you're working class, they won't protect you. When you hear about them, it's in the context of them abusing people, you know, miscarriages of justice. We don't have a party when cops die. You know, we don't. But before we hear about more of Alice Nutter's anti-capitalist hijinks...

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Okay, and we are back. In January 1998, Alice Nutter died.

She goes on the talk show Politically Incorrect, and she says basically, yeah, if you can't afford our music, just go to the nearest big evil giant chain store like Virgin and steal it. And Virgin didn't like this. Chumbawamba at the time is Universal's number one selling band, and here's the band saying, just steal it, who fucking cares, as long as you steal it from a large corporation. Virgin threatens to remove the album from their stores, and it depends on what account you read, they either stopped carrying it entirely or hid it behind the counter,

I don't know. And this only makes sales go up, which...

It doesn't fucking surprise me, right? Like I could have told them that like, yeah, more will get stolen. But if people steal the CDs, people are going to listen to it and talk about it. And more people are going to go out and fucking buy it. Right. And, and if you're taking it off the shelves or hiding it, you're literally manufacturing scarcity for the thing and thereby making it more valuable. Yeah. Yeah. So everyone wants to go out and find it and get it. Yeah. So anyway, their, their contact at universal called the band and was like,

"Will you all just laugh at me if I tell you that Universal wants to ask you to apologize for saying all that?" Their rep knows it's a fool's errand that he's been tasked to call them and ask them to apologize. He's like, "You aren't going to do this, are you?" And they're like, "Ha ha ha, nope." And later, Alice Nutter in a recollection says, "Why should I apologize? I wasn't sorry." Which is exactly how you should or shouldn't apologize when you make decisions about apologies. So

And on the David Letterman show, they changed the lyrics of Tub Thumping to include free Mumia Abu-Jamal. And Mumia Abu-Jamal, for anyone who's not aware, is a black political prisoner who was probably framed up on the murder of a cop in Philly and at the very least definitely had an unfair trial.

He spent a couple decades on Death Row, which was reduced to Life Without Pearl in 2001. So Chumbawamba goes on Letterman and sings Free Mumia Abu-Jamal. And it was pre-recorded, so Letterman let it happen in the end. Basically, they sat down, the Letterman show people were like, fuck, are we going to let this fucking happen? And finally, the network is like, all right, fuck it. They run it.

And they talk about anarchism with Barbara Walters. They basically leave a trail of chaos that the record labels are running around trying to clean up for them. But instead of trash hotel rooms, it was just weird shit, you know? And the peak of all this...

was the 1998 Brit Awards, which I think are the Grammys for people stuck on a tiny island without sunshine. My theory is that they actually named the country after the award show. It was called Britland, but then with the accent sound like Britain. So that's what stuck. That's my theory. Sounds true to me. Yeah. So I wonder how long I'm gonna get away with this bit. Um,

So Chumbawamba, they get invited to the 1998 Brit Awards. They're even up for an award themselves, Best Single. And they're going to perform. At first, they weren't going to perform. But the director, he knows their fucking number. And he's like, all right, you don't want to perform? We'll let you have a video behind you. And they're like, yeah, okay, we're in. We can show propaganda. We are in. And the day of, the director of the awards, he goes up to Chumbawamba personally with a plea.

And he's like, hey, could you not physically attack any of the other artists? And that's his big request to them. Tumba Wumba is like, all right, fine, whatever. We won't attack any of the other artists physically. And they even technically stuck with that. They're not super stoked about it, though. And everyone else is pissing them off with being all pop star and shit. And I have a feeling that every...

band that's played at this level kind of like vaguely enjoys talking shit about bands but you know they they point out in this in the book that like half of fleetwood mac refuses to use their dressing room because of inadequate carpeting um and i don't know shit about fleetwood mac and i'm taking boff whaley's word for it maybe inadequate carpeting was like maybe like the whole thing was like this like sewage swamp i don't fucking know you know yeah yeah yeah

But it's easier to imagine like, ah, those damn rock stars said the one rock star to the... Anyway, whatever. It's more fun to imagine too. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So they go up and play and they're all wearing sweatshirts that say things like sold out or whatever. And they put on a film behind them and it's full of people rioting and protesting and there's act up banners and there's the stage is streaming with red and black banners. And it's like...

It's exactly what I would do if I was up for one of these awards. And it's not even, not necessarily in an original way, but just, it's like you kind of have to if you're that band, you know? Yeah. And at the time, Dockers and Liverpool had been on strike and it was one of the longest labor disputes in British history. And the Dockers had mostly lost. They had been forced into a settlement package and they all lost their jobs.

And the Labor Party was currently branding itself as New Labor, and they were culpable for a lot of that. So Chumbawamba changed the course of tub thumping to include New Labor sold out the Dockers just like they'll sell out the rest of us. And they even brought some Dockers with them to the ceremony with the plan that if they win, the Dockers would go up and accept on their behalf and give a speech about what was going on. But Chumbawamba didn't win, so they didn't get to do the Dockers accept thing. But...

After they get off stage, they're like, oh shit, that's John Prescott. And he's the deputy prime minister, which is roughly the equivalent of vice president. And he's from the working class. He used to be a member of the same union as the Dockers, but he basically sold them out. He was blocking tuition bills. He was fucking over the unemployed. He was just doing all kinds of shit, right? And so they're sitting around and they're like, well, what the fuck are we going to do? There's the vice president of Britain, which definitely has a vice president. And they...

They look at the bin that had been full of all the ice for the champagne and all of that. And they're like, Dan, Alice, you got this. And Dan and Alice are like, yes, we do indeed have it. So they go up to Prescott. Dan jumps on the table, says this is for the Liverpool Dockers and dumps a bucket of ice water on John Prescott's head. Not to be outdone. Nutter is right there behind him with, I think, an extra bucket of water and also just soaks him with that as well. And Dan,

This is like on. Okay, so Dan gets arrested and Prescott has to be a good sport about it because he's like trying to look cool with the kids. He's here at the Brit Awards or whatever.

It's really hard to imagine a U.S. politician being this cool about, especially a vice president. I'm struggling to imagine the punk band that can dump ice water on the vice president of the United States and survive. You know? Yeah, yeah. I mean, we saw the way... Was it Giuliani who... There was that video of a guy who kind of lightly... Like...

Oh, yeah. Gave him a hat on the back and then talked some shit. Yeah. And he acted like it was assault. And yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But however, they managed to dump ice water on the fucking deputy prime minister's head. And the deputy prime minister, Prescott, is like, all right, I'm not pressing charges. And so they get let go. And the tabloids eat the whole thing up. And of course, the usual snotty critics get mad. And...

Oh, and then Ginger Spice from the Spice Girls goes up to Prescott to make sure he's okay. They made sure to include that part in their biography. That's really funny. And Alice Nutter later, I think is talking about the entire arc of Chumbawamba. And it's like, it was all worth it just to be able to get at John Prescott, just to get at these people who think they're untouchable. And that's the thing that's kind of interesting to me about people used to pie politicians more often, it feels like.

And it seems like the point of that is just to say like, hey, remember you're a person. Yeah. You know, like this could have been worse is what you're saying when you dump ice water on someone's head, you know? Yeah. You're a person who's supposed to be accountable to us. Yeah. And you clearly aren't. And you enjoy this sort of like protected celebrity status. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Totally.

And so, okay, so they spend about two years on the road doing the celebrity thing. And then they take a break and they resume other parts of their lives, figuring out their next move. And then they put out a second album with EMI, which is a bit confusing because in their mythologizing, I've read some of their accounts that are like, EMI wanted to put out another album, but we said no. I think they did put out another album with EMI. Either way, either EMI dumps them or they dump EMI.

And, or yeah, EMI could have done something where if they were under contract for another record or something, but didn't want to deliver it where they either, I mean, we had our record label do that with us where they put out, I don't know if it was like,

live stuff or you know oh interesting because you owed them an album but they didn't like the one you turned in yeah yeah that that kind of thing for us i i don't remember exactly what the circumstances were but i could see it being something like that where they basically manufactured some kind of release out of b-sides or whatever you know yeah are you still technically owned i are you i think you're not still with a major label is that correct

That's correct. Yeah, we got dropped from RCA in like 2003. And we put records out now with an indie label called Velocity. Okay. Which always seemed like kind of a cool... Like after this, and I'll get to it in a moment, like Chumbawamba kind of like goes from major label back to indie. They go from indie to major to indie, right? And they're like, all right. And it's kind of interesting to me to see that as a... Well, you just do what's best in the situation rather than like...

oh no, you're a failure because the major label dropped you or oh no, you're a sellout because you went to a major label at all. Yeah, yeah. I mean, sort of like judging or making the metric of what is worthwhile about making rock by...

what type of record label you're on or whatever. Yeah. Ain't really where it's at. I can also see how, you know, perception is created by like, by that kind of story. Like, you know, it did feel embarrassing to get dropped from a major label for all of those reasons, but then you sort of realize like, why, why, why do you feel that way? Right. Yeah.

And the reasons for it are pretty dubious once you examine them a little bit. What are you making stuff for anyway? Is it to appease the bean counters or whatever? Or is it because you like to make rock because it makes you feel free or whatever? Yeah, and connecting to people...

you connect with people different ways depending on what means by which you access them and it doesn't make it better or worse. Yeah. No, it's interesting. Yeah, it must have been, I have not been in that position, but it must have been like, oh, we've hit our crest and now we are coming down from it as compared to like, well, no, you got this like

boost of attention and now you're able to do things with that. Yeah, totally. It's all in how you sort of frame your perspective toward it. I mean, in our case, we did need to break up for a host of reasons and we did for a few years and only recently in the last couple years have we

started doing this new iteration of the band that, like I said, is in practice a side project, but we just still call it EVE 6. But yeah, we're doing it for the right reasons. I think a band like Chumbawamba was always doing it for the right reasons. Yeah. You know who else is doing it for the right reasons?

It's the advertisers. We're actually sponsored by this new act on RCA called Eve 7. It's this brand new band. It's very original. Okay, this is interesting. I hadn't heard of this group, but...

My first reaction is, I don't know if this town is big enough for the two of us. Well, they've got this hit. And, you know, it's the first advertiser's going to be this hit. It's called... What kind of prepositions are they working with? You put a blender in my heart, I believe. Oh, okay. Yeah.

it's funny because five seconds of summer apparently just released a song called blender or like emotional blender or something like that i haven't listened to it yet but uh yeah town's only big enough for one blender song yes that's right man yeah stay away from our kitchen appliance that is the official motto of cool zone media is that is that correct uh sophie is nodding

Sometimes I just say Sophie's nodding when Sophie's actually holding up a sign that says, stop doing this, you're going to get us in trouble. But Sophie's definitely nodding. But in this case, she was nodding. Yeah, yeah, totally. And here's some other products and services, including Eve 6, I mean, sorry, 7, 8, and 9. Introducing Signals, the next generation of platforms for investors designed to elevate your trading strategy by giving access to insights used by Wall Street pros to dominate the market.

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Then they come back at making music and they keep at it for another 15 years. Tub Thumping is right in the middle of the career of Chumbawamba as a band. They start their own label. They work with a bunch of different indies and they put out a ton of music and they continue to accidentally show up at the craziest riots in history. Wow, what a weird coincidence. And I actually, this part actually caught me by surprise because I had kind of assumed that like

They're in their 40s, I think, at this point. And they're doing all right. And they're still just like, oh, there's this riot. I mean, actually, it's an accident. They're just accidentally at all these things. And I really appreciate about their bad timing where they keep showing up at these things. And they also fund a bunch of direct actions, which I think they're still... I don't want to conjecture too hard about the things that they fund. And...

A bunch of them leave the band in 2004. And I spent a while trying to be like, what did they leave the band about? Right. But then I realized that none of them were trying to talk about it. There was a little bit of like personal and political differences and they leave it at that. Right. And, and that's cool. It's cool that I don't know because they're just like their whole thing seems to be like, how do we come close to this environment that could have made us douchebag rock stars without being

And so they're just like, they just worked through it at least somewhat privately. Right. Yeah. It sounds like they have loyalty to one another and like, yeah, actual friendship. Yeah. Yeah. And it's almost like they, you know, repaired a house together for 10 years before they went on any of this crazy shit, you know? And, um, and even the people who left in 2004 came back for their 2012 fuck it. We're done tour. I don't think that was the actual name of it, but it might as well been there. Fuck it. We're done tour. Cause they basically were like, fuck it. We're done. And then they had a tour.

And they still contribute to each other's art to this day. They like a bunch of them make movies and theater and music. And, you know, Boff writes books about running. Alice writes for TV. Bruce is working on a documentary about Chumbawamba that's currently on the circuit where you're not allowed to watch it unless you have a festival circuit. That's it. Festival circuit. When they broke up, they put out a statement. I'm going to quote from it.

because i think they they do a good pretty good job of summing up what they were doing

Chumbawamba was our vehicle for pointing at the naked emperors, for telling our version of the truth. It gave us more than the joy and love of playing live, writing songs and singing together. It gave us a chance to be part of a broad coalition of activists and hectors, optimists and questioners. But eventually, the rest of our lives got in the way, and we couldn't commit the time and enthusiasm that the band demanded, couldn't keep up with whatever responsibilities came with a band like this.

If there were ever a Chumbawamba manifesto, it would read in the inconsistent, contradictory language of the Dadaists, part strident belligerence and part foolishness. This ending is no different. It comes almost as much of a surprise to us as it may do to you. Always more clown than politician, the band trips over its outsized feet and performs its final tumble.

There have been squabbles and arguments along the way, a deal of griping, frustration, moaning, exasperation, but always alongside a huge amount of goodwill and generosity, good humor and love. What a riot it's been, frankly. And now it's time to clear up the mess and move on. And Dan, I'm going to read one more quote from one of them about this. Dan, in an interview with Bandcamp in 2022, this year, I guess I can just say this year if I'm talking about the year I'm in.

I'm very proud of what we did the whole way through. We tried to push the envelope. We weren't always successful, but we always tried. And that's probably a defining characteristic of Chumbawamba. Whatever era or genre we tried, it always had a working class basis, which is a whole other story when we signed with the major labels in the mainstream. It didn't destroy us. You could accuse us of selling out, but we weren't bought up.

And I think that's a testament to the way we had each other's backs. The mainstream usually swallows people and spits them out. I mean, it did spit us out, but we took it as a compliment, really. There you go. Yeah, it's like what you were saying about, like, it's just how you fucking look at it, you know? Yep. There... There...

like prose or you know i don't know if that last quote quotation was what you know said to a reporter or something like that but it's it's so beautiful and it's like better than their lyrics i know their uh their own sort of like um yeah assessment of their story is is is really deep and just like

so on point and includes all of the admittedly seemingly contradictory things that made up Chumbawamba. This thing that was, you know, on one level, just like a vessel for entertainment and diversion and on another, you know,

straight up you know activism yeah yeah it's interesting because i was thinking about this as i was writing this out i was like you know i'm not really talking about their music right and like their songs and i'm not talking about like the their instrumentation and like and all that stuff really matters and it clearly matters to them because the whole time they're always like oh yeah we don't have player instruments they are like musically really talented to the point where it's like sort of almost annoying like their acapella album i'm like you all

wrote these amazing, like multiple harmonies and like all of this crazy shit, you know? And it's, it's about all of these things at once is one of the things I find fascinating. The music is an aspect of this thing that, um, as a whole is like, yeah. Activist performance art. Yeah. Yeah. Is really inspiring. Yeah. No, I mean, they, they, they,

They did buck the system, as he put. Maybe they sold out, but they didn't. What's the language he used? It spits them out. Oh, right. But we weren't bought up. But they weren't bought up. Yeah. Yeah, it's really cool. Yeah. Yeah, it is really...

This is funny because I know you're in a band and I'm in a band. And I'm like, doesn't it make you want to start a band? Or it makes you want to be in a band. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm writing right now. I've been in a bunch of bands that have done various things. And right now I signed to my first indie label with my metal band. Cool. And we have an album due soon, right? And it'll be our second full length of the band. And I'm like, oh, I should really care about that. You know, in a way where I'm like, I care about it. And I've been working with this band for years. But I'm like...

I don't know. No, it's inspiring. Yeah. It trains your eyes back on what's important, fun, joyful about a project and exposes all the things that aren't, all the metrics that are seemingly important and that matter and all of that shit, which...

don't ultimately yeah you know yeah and the way in which they matter is the vehicle with which to do it like the thing that you know getting the money to make the music allows them to make the music that is the the part of that that matters you know it's just the ability to continue to allow it to continue to happen right that's the end it's not it's not you know

to make yourself obscenely wealthy or, you know, fame or whatever, whatever else. It's like how that in their case, how that served their, their project. Yeah, totally. And both as individuals and as activists and as artists, like the music that they make, how it matters for its own sake. And like, and so they actually, they released one album after they broke up.

Because the very last release came in 2013, the year after they broke up. And because in 2005, they recorded an EP called In Memoriam Margaret Thatcher. And they were like, this will be released when Margaret Thatcher dies.

And so in 2013, Margaret Thatcher did the world that favor and went ahead and died. And the EP came out along with a statement, our deepest sympathies go out to the families of all Margaret Thatcher's victims. And it's a very happy little album. It's amazing. Yeah.

And so, okay, so this is... And so thanks for coming along for my episode that I totally didn't write in order to get myself off the hook for taking corporate money from a giant faceless corporation to run a podcast about radical history. Now you all know my secret reason for telling you about Chumbawamba. But I... Look, I think the analogy works. Yeah. You know? Yeah. I think they might, you know...

tip their, their bowlers to you. I hope so. If you're listening, Jumbo Womba. Yeah. All right. Well, well, uh, yeah. What, what can people, you say you're in a band. What, what is that band? What are you, um, you're the, the band that ripped off Eve seven, I think. Right. Yeah. Look, um, there's, there's a bunch of, you know, vicious, like, um, rumors going out, going around that, um,

have no foothold in the truth um eve six came before eve seven and eve seven has been like you know biting our vibe um you know egregiously and and and you know anyone who's got their ear to the ground margaret knows this has heard of eve six this quiet band that yeah yeah yeah yeah

Okay. Okay. And it, it does chronologically six does come before you could, you could use that six comes before seven. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I actually hear it's afraid of seven because seven, eight, nine. That's right. See, and that's, that too is true. So that was despicable. Yeah.

If the listeners could only see how happy she was while making that terrible joke. They would be truly dismayed. Yeah, truly. It's the worst. I lost all of my goth points when out the river. Out the window and down the river. Yeah.

Okay, well, yeah. So what do you have going on? You play shows or like how can people check it out? Maybe you have a new album out coming out. Maybe it's even out by the time people listen because this will come out about a month after we record it.

Yeah, it might be. I have no idea when our album comes out, but I know it comes out in like a few weeks, I think. I should know this. But it's called Hyper Relivization. If you follow us on Twitter at Eve6, you'll hear about all of that stuff. That's the only thing you talk about on Twitter, as I recall.

Yeah, that's all I talk about on Twitter is just, you know, we just do band promo on there. It's a very typical 90s band account where we just like post photos of ourselves with wallet chains, you know, doing the devil horns and saying, come out to our show, the Rib Fest in Tulsa. That's the kind of content that you're going to find at our...

on our twitter okay cool yeah do you still have the pants um which pants the ones that you cut slits in the side to make wider so you can hide your shoes no i i wish i wish i changed i know i know um yeah those were so cool like when i see pictures of us from from back in the day it's just really funny because none of us have feet yeah

I used to chain when my pants would rip down the side I would chain the hole between the two sides of it make chain mail yeah that's pretty tough that's what people saw they saw me coming and were like well that girl's tough that was absolutely the vibe I managed to communicate when I was a goth girl didn't know she was a girl in the 90s yeah okay well Sophie do you have anything you'd like to plug

Just at Cool Zone Media on Twitter and Instagram for all things. Margaret, you have a book coming out, correct? I do, but I should pitch my band. I have a band called Feminazgul. We're a feminist atmospheric black metal band. And we have a bunch of different releases, mostly on Bandcamp or through various labels. And then also eventually we'll have a full length again. Well, we already have one.

but it's not up for pre-order right now. Unlike my book, We Won't Be Here Tomorrow, in which I name every short story things that sound like they would be black metal album titles, like The Devil Lives Here and Into the Gray and, you know, very dramatic things. I'm a very dramatic person. And that is, okay, so my book is available for pre-order. You can get it at AK Press. And if you get it, you get a little postcard of art. That is nice art. Yay!

We love that. And we'll be back, what, next week? Monday? I believe so. Cool. Every Monday. And Wednesday. Great. I'll see you there. All right. Bye.

Thank you both so much for having me on. This has been really fun. Yeah, thank you. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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