60 Songs That Explain the '90s - "Tubthumping"—Chumbawamba

Episode Date: June 21, 2023

Don't call them one-hit wonders. And don't you dare try to knock them down. This week, Rob's covering the career of the British anaracho-punks Chumbawamba, including their massive hit "Tubthumping," which took over the world for a spell in 1997. Later, Rob's joined by journalist and critic Dorian Lynskey to try to contextualize the hard-to-contextualize band. Preorder Rob's new book, 'Songs That Explain the '90s,' here: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/rob-harvilla/songs-that-explain-the-90s/9781538759462/?lens=twelve Guest: Dorian Lynskey Producers: Kevin Pooler and Justin Sayles Additional Production Support: Chloe Clark Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Bill Simmons from The Ringer, and this is a podcast called The Rewatchables. We have been doing it. Really since 2017, it started with how much we love the movie Heat. We decided to structure a whole podcast with categories, most rewatchable scene. Who on the movie, Apex Mountain, what age the best? But here's the thing. If you want the full archive, you can hear them only on Spotify for free, by the way. So make sure to follow the rewatchables on Spotify.

Can I tell you about the single rudest thing I have ever done in my 20-year career as a professional rock critic? I have written, tweeted, posted, postulated all sorts of uncouth shit in my undignified capacity as an arts writer, an arts editor, a music editor, a culture editor, a staff writer, a senior staff writer. Ooh. My hot takes and strained witticisms and fucking adverbs have befouled several blameless metropolis. I don't regard myself as a bad boy shit talking, negative stars, 0.0. Greo Marcus opening a Bob Dylan album review with what is this shit sort of dude. I'm quite sensitive and conflict diverse. I'm too timid to be mean. but yeah one time i did call up a local goth band and personally offer them twenty dollars if they agreed to never cover the talking heads again and then i wrote about it in the paper rude this was fucking rude of me i have to say this was unnecessary

this was 2005 i was the music editor ooh of the east bay express a bay area all weekly covering Oakland, Berkeley, San Francisco, etc. The Express still exists. A great many publications I have worked for do not exist anymore. And despite my strained witticisms and fucking adverbs, I do want to clarify that those places I've worked that don't

exist anymore, they don't exist for other reasons. It's not my fault. It's not me. So 2005, I'm what, 27? Let's not get into it. But I'm going through a tough time and everyone around me is going through a much tougher time. You know, nobody likes you.

when you're 27. As the song goes, that's not how the song goes, but you get it. I'm a pain in the ass. So I go to a teenager heavy venue in Berkeley called I Music Cast, where all the teenagers

make me feel even more awkward. And because this is 2005, they got AOL instant messenger terminals set up all over the place so you can IAM with other people at the show or people watching online. I try to chat with people. No one ever responds to me.

It's fine. I'm over it. Kudos to everyone who ignored me. excellent judges of character. My chemical romance apparently played this place once. I missed it. It's shit. So I go to this joint for a three band bill,

local bands, a pop punk band, a ska band, and right in the middle a goth pop sort of band that will remain nameless. Because this sure is hell ain't their fault either. The lead singer's got a giant jet black asymmetrical haircut, reminiscent of the cure, if you're being nice. Or a flock of seagulls, if you're being rude. They got a bass player who turns her back to the crowd, doesn't move or smile or make eye contact the whole time. She was great.

They got a fog machine. They got songs called Young People in Love and Frisbee in the Rain. And they closed their set with a cover of Road to Nowhere by Talking Heads. And apparently I get big mad. Road to Nowhere by Talking Heads from their 1985 album, Little Creatures. This is the original Talking Heads version. obviously, but the goth band valiantly attempts to cover this song. They bring up an accordion player and everything. The goth band is playing this 20-year-old song for an audience of primarily

teenagers, indifferent teenagers, and also 27-year-old grumpy ass, not indifferent me, talking heads, one of my favorite bands all time. David Byrne, one of the great frontmen, vocalists, visionaries, bicyclists, and suit wearers of all time. I am H-O. It is quite hard to sing like David Byrne, as our goth friend with the asymmetrical haircut is now discovering in my presence. Big mad I am. Apparently, I don't think the asymmetrical haircut dude even tries to yelp like David Byrne at the very end of Road to Nowhere,

but the damage to my fragile psyche is apparently already done. That's very funny out of context. This random, innocent local goth band's cover of Road to Nowhere is bad. All right? It happens. It's a good idea. This man's got great taste. It's a great song.

It's a hard song to sing. A bad cover song is not a crime. It's not a big deal. Let's not make a big deal out of it. So I call the guy up. The front man. Dr. Asymmetrical haircut. I'm like, yes.

Hello. I'm Rob. I'm a music editor. Ooh. can I interview you for this paper that still exists? And he's like, yeah. And I regale him with such hard-hitting questions as, what's with all the fog? And tell me about your hair. 27. And he handles these asininities graciously. And we're having an awkward but reasonably polite conversation. And then I hit him with it. I'm like, I have a business proposition for you. And he's like,

okay. And I say, I don't want you to take this the wrong way. And he says, no. Oh, that's cool. And I go, I will personally pay you out of my own pocket, $20 if you promise to never publicly attempt to cover the talking heads again. Let me ask you something. What is the wrong way to take that? That is fucking rude, Rob. Saying that to someone is just tremendously rude.

Originally, I had an even ruder plan that was mercifully rejected. I went to my editor. I was like, can I get one of those giant cardboard novelty checks they give you when you win a golf tournament? Because I was going to do a photo shoot, right, where I had no talking heads printed in giant letters on the memo line of the giant novelty $20 check. And then I hand it to the goth guy while we smile for the camera, right? And my editor's just like, no. that's a stupid idea and I agree I agree now and if you want the truth I agreed right then the only thing worse than a stupid idea is a stupid idea with a prop budget and so I just call the guy

up and tell him I'm 27 years old and I'll give you $20 if you never cover talking heads again and he's just like no that'll never happen again you don't have to pay me for that it's one of those deals where he's so nice and patient and gracious about it that immediately it makes me feel worse as it throws my rudeness into harsher relief, right? Because I go, are you sure you don't want the $20? And he's like, did it turn out that bad? And I'm like, yeah. That's pretty much exactly what happened, except he didn't hang up on me. And I was for sure the bitch in this situation. And also I was 27. I was reminded recently of my flagrant. Mr. Bad Boy Rock Critic

Rudeness. While I was watching a nice and patient and gracious gentleman named Dunstan Bruce sitting on a rooftop and sunglasses being filmed by a documentary crew as he graciously reads

super mean reviews of his own band. For the past 13 years, this band have inflicted oral torture on the you can't write that. This is from a documentary released in the year 2000 called Well Done Now Sod Off,

which is a direct quote from another super mean review of Dunstan's band. He reads that one too. Now, if you're like me, and I certainly hope for the sake of your loved ones that you're not like me, if you're like me, and you hear Dunstan say, you can't write that. Immediately you think of it.

Right? Immediately. Your mind goes here immediately. The review you had on Shark Sandwich, which was merely a two-word review, just said shit sandwich. Immediately your mind goes to This is Spinal Tap. From 1984, the greatest movie ever made. 1984 is the year. This is Spinal Tap.

Purple Rain. Stop making sense by talking heads. The Hunt for Red October, the book, An Air Wolf came out. Greatest year in the history of human. civilization. And indeed, human civilization peaks with the scene in this is Spinal Tap, where the rock band spinal tap are confronted with excerpts from mean reviews of their own band. The gospel according to Spinal Tap, this pretentious ponderous collection of religious rock psalms is enough to prompt the question, what day did the Lord create spinal tap?

And couldn't he have rested on that day too? One way to summarize my 20-year career as a professional rock critic is that my career is an ongoing and so far wildly unsuccessful attempt to write anything half as funny as on what day did the Lord create spinal tap and couldn't he have rested on that day too? So eventually our friend Dunstan does pull himself together. For the past 13 years, this band have inflicted oral torture on the innocent listening public absolutely relentlessly. Forget Revolution. A decent tune would be nice. Dunstan is English, if that wasn't readily apparent to you. There's no good reason for me to withhold the name of Dunstan's quite famous band right now.

It's in the episode description. I don't know. Everyone should buy this album, just to remind themselves that there is music this bad out there. That's fantastic. Yeah, I guess this is my most likely wildly unsuccessful attempt to create a curiosity. gap to use a very sophisticated professional journalism term? 20 years I've been doing this. Rock criticism. A minute to learn a lifetime to master. I'll drink a lager drink. I'll drink a cider drink. Several probably. And this will still sound like naive political posturing from a bunch of soft middle class student twats. Ah shit. I think Dunstan just gave it away. I am fascinated. I am impressed

truly about how angry 85% of rock critics gets when they talk about Dunstan's band. Even the rock critics who are interviewed on camera about Dunstan's band in this largely sympathetic documentary about Dunstan's band, these critics

are still talking all sorts of rude shit about Dunstan's band. Here are Andrew Mueller and Caitlin Moran respectively weighing in on Dunstan's band. Chumbabre in particular, I just think so unutterably ridiculous.

I'm amazed anybody takes them at all seriously. You know, it's just awful, half-sample, jumpy, shoutsy tragedy. And what did Chumbawamba singer Dunstan Bruce do? You ask, when 85 to 95% of all rock critics talked wild, rude shit about his band for the entirety of his band's 30-year career as anarchist pop provocateurs? Aren't you curious as to what Dunstan did?

No, you're not. You're not curious. Come on. You know full well what Dunstan did and what Dunstan does. 20 years I've been doing this, an unsubtle segue for a proudly unsubtle band. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 96th episode of 60 songs that explain the 90s. And this week we are discussing tub thumping by Chumbawamba.

from their 1997 album, Tub Thumper. Tubthumping is the song. Tubthumper is the album. Chumbo Wamba's eighth studio album, by the way, tub thumper eighth. The lineup situation here is going to get super chaotic, super fast, so I'm doing this once, and I'm doing it now.

In 1997, when Tub Thumping turns into this super bonkers hit and Chambalwamba get a full feature in Rolling Stone in early 1998, At their peak, Chumbawamba consists of. Here we go. Duncan Bruce on vocals and percussion. He's the whiskey drink, vodka drink guy.

Lou Watts on vocals and keyboards. She's the pissing the night away, lady. Alex Nutter on vocals and percussion. Danbert, no bacon on vocals. That's what I said. Bough Whaley on guitars and vocals. Harry Hamer on drums. Jude Abbott on trumpet and vocals.

She's important. And finally, Paul Greco on bass. That's circa 1997, but this band formed in 1982. This band formed two years before Air Wolf premiered. Is formed the right word? Do anarchist pop provocateurs collectives form? I've been going back and forth on whether to share with you the second rudest thing I've ever done in my 20-year career as a professional rock critic. I probably shouldn't.

How quickly can I do this? now 2006. I am now 28. There are no excuses now for my rudeness and immaturity. I am the music editor, ooh, of the Village Voice in New York City, and my dear friend Nate writes a mean review of the new record from the Black Keys. He quite popular and enduring and rad blues rock duo of the Black Keys. They're from Ohio. I'm from Ohio. We Ohioans got to stick together. And in truth, I like the Black Keys quite a bit, even though I once described their music, in print, as consistent. of, quote, drums and surly guitar and burning oatmeal-mouthed yops of not terribly articulate romantic frustration, all-powering cartoonishly virile garage blues jams of prison phone call

fidelity and sentiment, end quote, couldn't Rob have rested on that day too? That's the Black Keys 2003 cover of Have Love Will Travel by the Sonics, that shit rules. my dear friend Nate writes a mean review of a black keys record and I quote unquote edit it. And that quote unquote edit is the second rudest moment of my career. Nate's mean review of this black keys record is styled as a scene from King Lear from the famous Shakespeare play King Lear. And specifically it's an argument between King Lear and the fool as to the merits of the black keys with the fool in favor of the Black Keys and King Lear opposed. That's the premise of this 600 word alt-weekly album review. So far, this is fine. The Fool is much more perceptive than King Lear in the play,

and I doubt the subtext of that, right, that the fool likes the Black Keys. That was cool and subtle, I thought. So this entire Black Keys review is written in a selectively anachronistic Shakespearean dialect, and I'm going to read you one paragraph from it. And I'm going to ask Kevin, my producer, to provide, quote, Shakespearean music in the background for this. I am quoting myself there. And I thank Kevin in advance if he does provide Shakespearean music. And I also thank Kevin in advance if he doesn't do that because that's fucking stupid. Either way, thank you in advance.

Here we go. King Lear weighs in on the black keys. Here we go. Oh, raging tempest. drown the clamor of these milk-livered black keys. No longer suffer me the cruelty of their unremitting taunt. Deliver me from the rump-fed scut of these bootless Ohioan fuck jobs. Or should I not be worthy of eternity's quiet and brace, pray singe mine ears so that I should no longer bear the acrid nostalgia of their gut-gripping rot?

Okay, that's enough. It goes on. You get it. Thank you. How quickly can I do this? Okay. Later, King Lear refers to the band's beef-witted verse. Okay, that's rude. The good news is I didn't write that. The bad news is I wish I did. Bootless Ohio and fuck jobs. Okay. Chumbawamba. Let's dispense with two major Chumbabwamba talking points immediately. We have discussed on this program, many times my personal distaste for the term one-hit wonder on account of that terms of rudeness but tub thumping by chumbo Wamba in a deliberate proud defiant way is the apex of the one-hit wonder form to my mind this is as random as unlikely as discordant as provocative as wondrous as the whole one-hit wonder racket gets tub-thumping peaked at number six on the billboard high 100. The number one song in America, the weak tub thumping, peaked at number six, was Elton John's new version of candle in the wind, released as a tribute to Princess Diana, following Princess Diana's death in a car accident on August 31, 1997. The full spectrum of English political sentiment from royalist to anarchist, provided by two of the six biggest songs in America in late 1997. Remarkable. However weird, 1997 felt to you at the time it was so much weirder.

Goodbye England's Rose. May you ever grow in our hearts. You were the grace that plays to self where lives were torn apart. The second major Chumbabwamba point is this whole bitchy do anarchist collectives form business. Yes, Chambalwamba identified as, and very, much operated as anarchists. Quote unquote anarchists if you're nasty, but like, yeah, chaos agents, subversives, tricksters.

Yes, indeed, pop provocateurs raging against the machine and eventually raging against the machine from within the machine. Yes, Jumbalwamba also put out their eighth album, Tub Thumper, on a major label. And indeed, Tub Thubber the album peaks at number three on the Billboard album chart. is some wild shit. Tubthumper the album charting higher than tub thumping, the song is fucking wild to me. That is some pre-Napster shit right there. This album sold 3.2 million copies in America, primarily, and this is rude, but come on, primarily because people wanted to hear one song. At one point in January of 1998, the three biggest albums in America were by Celine Dion, Garth Brooks, and Chumbawwamba.

Mace was fourth. What the fuck? So yes. Anarchists with a hit song on a major label. That's noteworthy. That's ironic. That's hypocritical. Calling it hypocritical is a little rude, but yeah, rude but fair.

The 85% of rock critics, particularly UK rock critics, who've said such rude things about Chumbawumbabwamba, the political aspect. The irony slash hypocrisy is a big part of the critical beef here, though not all of the critical beef necessarily. Chumbo Wamba's music can also be quite polarizing. Okay, definitely no one will get mad at me for trying to do this. So let's briefly at least try to put this band in some sort of historical context. In 1978, the English anarchist pop collective Kras from the town of Epping in Essex. Kras put out their debut album, The Feeding of the 5000, a splendid biblical title for a defiantly unbiblical band.

This album does not peak at number three in the Billboard album chart. Here's a crabby little tune called Do they owe us a living? Asked and answered. Well, that settles that. Also in 1978, we get the debut single from the Mekons,

from Leeds, England. The Mekons, don't get mad at me. The Mekons do not self-identify as anarchists, per se, but they are indeed a beloved punk rock collective. They put out like 10,000 rad albums. They've mutated like 200 times. In 1985, the Mekons put out a super rad album called Fear and Whiskey that arguably theoretically invented alt country, maybe, if that's of interest. People who love the Mekons fucking love the Mekins, dude. That editor at the Bay Area

paper, who wouldn't let me buy a giant golf tournament novelty check. One time I just mentioned the Mekons to my editor. I mentioned being curious. about the M-Conns. And the next day, my editor hands me a mixed CD. He made himself of like 30 M-Conn songs spanning their whole career as of 2005. It was so dope. I listen to it all the time.

The first M-Con single from 1978 is called Never Been in a Riot. It kind of makes fun of The Clash. It's great. But there are three songs on this single, and the first song on the B-side is my favorite M-Con song ever, and it's called 32 weeks.

If we're talking about punk three days, four hours Get your got a car If we're talking about punk songs, protest songs anti-capitalist songs, provocation, whatever, 32 weeks is way up there for me.

Man, I wish this song were six hours long. I could spend all day listening to the Mekons tell me how many hours I have to work to acquire various desirable household items. It takes you a break of your life to buy a whiskey. Three day, four hours.

Get a jump. Get calm. This song is less than two minutes long, and I think there's a rule about what percentage of a song I'm allowed to play you. But, FYI, it takes two hours and 45 minutes of your life to buy whiskey. In 1980, in the Netherlands,

the Dutch anarcho punk band, the X, not X from L.A. Or the XX from London, just the X, spelled out, EX. In 1980, the X put out their debut album, Disturbing Domestic Peace, which is like 22 minutes long total, and ends with a song called New Wars

that ends like this. The X proceed to put out like 5,000 albums and mutate 100 times, and they evolve way beyond the anarcho-punk thing. This is too broad. Now I'm mad at myself. Forget it. That's enough historical context.

Chumbull Wamba Form in 1982, once again in Leeds England. in a squat in Leeds where they will live collectively for years for a decade or two. In that documentary, well done, now sod off. An early Chumbalwamba collaborator says, quote, Underpants were commonly owned, end quote. An early Chumba Wamba lineup performs in support of the UK minor strike that starts in 1984. In that 2000 documentary, the drummer, Harry Hamer, says,

you know, on stage, I don't think it looked like we were having. fun early on. It was our duty to be on stage. End quote. At first they didn't know how to play their instruments. At first they didn't know how to tune their instruments and they were unaware that they're supposed to. They scrounge. They gig around. They learn to tune. They pass around their underwear. And they put out their debut album in 1986 and call it pictures of starving children sell records. That's what it's called. Holy shit, dude. Ethiopia and fertile paradise

Where everyone sings Beagle Song Holy shit dude This is the first song On the first Chumbawamba record Which I will remind you It's called Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records I made the mistake of playing this in the minivan And then I had to explain that album title to my kids

This song is called How to Get Your Band on TV I am inferring From this song And from this album title The Chumbawamba are not fans of live aid, the 1985 global pop

superstar charity phenomenon. This song is also known as Slag Aid. This song, man, this song is the dictionary definition of they didn't have to go that hard. Mercury, this is your life. Thank the Lord that you were born

whites and thank apartheid for this wonderful opportunity to battle your hypocrisy in Sun City. You know how 50 cents career starts blowing up when he puts out that song How to Rob, which is just 50 Cent rapping about robbing various ultra-famous rappers

with a charisma that makes clear that soon he, 50 Cent, will himself be an ultra-famous rapper? That's not quite what's happening here. But that's like 5% of what's happening here. And 5% of that energy applied to these precise circumstances is plenty.

He's right. We're a soup full of compassion and a god full of shite. still the voices of those who would dance Coca-Cola for the penance to end this dream Gob full of shite is a phrase and an image that will reoccur

in the Chumbawamba catalog and that image illustrates the level of subtlety and maturity with which Chumbabwamba will be operating from this moment forward. This is quote-unquote punk rock in spirit but not in sound necessarily. Chumbabwamba are pretty much

never trying to sound like crass or the X or whoever the bright, broad, whimsical, circusy, loony-toons ass, pop-adjacent sound here is also the mode in which Chambulwumble will be operating from this moment forward. I told you this shit was polarizing. One more verse, everybody. Hit the deck. Jagger and Richards game for a laugh. Dancing is down the garden path to a place where money grows on trees where cocaine habits are financed by hunger.

Chumba Wamba are out on live aid then. Noted. Holy shit. Now, I'm going to look you in the eye right now and tell you that Chumbu Wamba are not my favorite band of the 80s or 90s. This band is a lot to deal with tonally. The broadness, the bluntness,

the unsubtlete, the idiosyncrasy, the jumpy-shouty tragedy. It's a lot. It's too much by design. It's like a Saturday morning cartoon went to college, out super political. This is me giving you my opinion. This is me speaking with 20 years of dignified rock critic experience. And because I'm giving you an opinion and because I feel like we need a counterbalance, if I'm going to be harassing local goth bands and editing discurteous

Shakespeare fan fiction about the Black Keys, we need a dissenting voice. And so I'm going to pause briefly here and inform you that in 2010, a local musician in New York City wrote a song called kill Harvilla. This guy sent me the lyrics to the song Kill Harvilla. And of course, I immediately blogged about them because I needed content. But I don't believe I ever actually listened to this

song because it's seven and a half minutes long. And also the vocals are mixed. Way too low. But I'm going to give you exactly four seconds of Kill Harvilla right now just for balance. You ready? Here we go. That is also very funny.

out of context. Actually, that's pretty good. Rob Harvilla gives a bad name to vanilla. You win this round, sir. Chumbawamba are a whole lot, man. You got to recalibrate your brain. You got to maybe turn off some parts of your brain. This first record, there's a song called Coca-Colaization, right?

Right? Also, the song called Coca-Colaization sounds like this. It's quite jaunty. No? Hmm. Jamba Wamba's second album released in 1987. It's called Never Mind the Ballets. It's about lying politicians. The title's a pun, you know, the sex pistols. The last song is a skronking post-punk manifesto situation called, Here's the Rest of Your Life, All Caps, and it's delivered in all caps as well. The part of my brain that needs constant recalibrating here is the part of my brain that navigates the irony, sincerity, divide. This band can be tremendously juvenile and silly and prurient, but they are also unrelentingly, absolutely serious. Chumbawamba's third album from 1988 is called English Rebel Songs 1381 to 1914,

because that's what it is. It's mostly a cappella covers of rebel songs, leftist anthems, etc. They re-recorded it later with some more instrumentation, and that version is called English Rebel Songs 1381 to 1984. And something about that title. Maybe it's me, maybe an internet-saturated 2023. I'm so irony-pilled that I can't help but read that album title in the span of centuries in that album title as a joke.

Right? And it's just so obviously not a joke at all. Your houses they pull down to fright your men in town. But the gentry must come down and the poor shall wear. The crowns stand up now, diggers all. That song is called The Diggers Song. It was written by, and it's also about mid-17th century agrarian socialists. So there's that.

All right. Help me with this. Help me fully wrap my head around this. The next Chumbabwamba album is called Slap. Comes out in 1990. Slap, exclamation points. So this is a song called Rappaport's Testament I never gave up. It is inspired by the 1986 book

Moments of Reprieve written by Primo Levy, the revered Italian chemist and author and concentration camp survivor who wrote extensively about his time in Auschwitz. Moments of Reprieve is an autobiographical account of various characters Primo Levy met in Auschwitz, including a Polish man named Rapapur. So here we've got Chumbabamba and specifically Lou Watts.

Lou, I think she's the best, the warmest, the most sincere and sincerely joyous singer in Chambulwamba. Here is Lou managing to turn all of that source material into a soaring, anthemic, anarchist pop song. And you hold this song in your hands

and you turn it slightly side to side to see how it catches the light. And it catches the light differently. It strikes you differently from moment to moment. You've got to constantly recalibrate your brain. you got to get on this band's wavelength. And I find getting on Chumbawamba's wavelength to be challenging. Or I can do it, but requires constant song-to-song vigilance. Reconciling the jauntiness of the music and the graveness of the source material is quite difficult for me. I get critics who can't deal with this at all and dismiss this as, forgive me, but naive political posturing from a bunch of soft middle-class student twats. But maybe that's what snagging at me all. ultimately is this word posturing. Does posturing mean you don't really believe it? That it's a pose, masquerading as a stance? Or does posturing mean maybe you do believe it, but you're trying way

too hard to convince people you believe it? What I know is that this one Chumbalwamba song about a prisoner in a concentration camp is just a comically massive risk. It's ill-advised. It's a potential tonal catastrophe, but it works. This song gets to you. If you, if you give in to it. You are rewarded eventually for getting on this band's wavelength. The question is how long you can plausibly stay on it. Ted

Leo of Ted Leo and the pharmacists, the rad punk band, rock band, power pop band, whatever. Ted Leo's the best, and he does a great live cover of this song, Rapapur's testament, I never gave up. He ain't posturing. He'll get you to buy in even if Chumbawumba can't.

But I'm guessing Chumba Wama can get you to buy in themselves. If you give them enough time and enough grace. Okay, this is working for me. I am wrapping my head around what makes that song great. The next phase of our journey is to reconcile that soaring, reverential Chumbawamba with the Chumbawamba that in 1992 puts out an album called Sh, which includes a song called Happiness is Just a Chant Away, which satirizes the bejeezes out of Harry Krishna's

and concludes with our dear friend Lou leading us in prayer. Harry Roberts is an English gangster cult figure criminal type who killed three police officers in 1966 and went to jail, and sometimes his name shows up in rude chance at especially combative football matches. He's a cult figure among anarchists and football hooligans, which is a fun little Venn diagram to construct in your head. I don't know why I'm putting all the onus on me, actually.

Chumba Wumba. often struggle to wrap their heads around themselves. They struggle to reconcile the earnestness of their politics with their pop inclinations with a certain base level of sophistication. In 1994, they put out an album called Anarchy. And oh, goodness gracious, we're back to this. Okay, I don't think I need to tell you what that one's called. We've established a motif here, I suppose.

Those are just the fellows, though. Lou's going to sing now. Okay, great. Lou will balance this out a little bit. Lou will provide a little more restraint, right, Lou? Okay, in that 1998 Rolling Stone article, at a Chumba Wamba show, Dunstan Bruce dedicates this song to Tony Blair and Noel Gallagher, who are great friends and drink champagne together.

By the mid-90s, Brit pop is raging, right? Oasis, blur, pulp, etc. Radiohead is skulking around, and Tony Blair is your hot, young, cool, revolutionary-type political leader, right, representing new labor. And Noel Gallagher and Damon Allbarn from Blur are cozying up to Tony Blair a bit, or vice versa, because it makes the rock stars look powerful and it makes the cool young politicians look even more like rock stars. And Chumbawamba ain't having it. Chumbouma's getting live aid vibes, which is to say slag aid vibes from new labor. And so, I bet that song, it's called Mouthful of Shit, kills live. Actually, in 1995.

Chumbabwamba puts out a live album called Show Business that more or less confirms that Mouthful of Shit kills live. So that's great. Maybe another baseline litmus test here is whether you think that Mouthful of shit is supposed to be funny or if it's supposed to be extremely deadly serious. I don't find Chumbabamba to be especially funny, but I also have a very poorly developed sense of when they're even trying to be funny. The a cappella song, The Day the Nazi Died, is for sure not trying. trying to be funny. I'll tell you that much. So if you meet with these historians, I'll tell you what to say. Tell them that the Nazis never really went away. This song

also kills live, by all indications, and it's about killing Nazis. The jauntiness is always present. This is the word I've settled on, jaunty. Rock critic overtones to this word jaunty for me. There's a biting cheerfulness to

everything with this band, a childlike tone to terribly serious and adult material. Is that what's so odd about this? They're out there burning houses down and peddling racist lies and we'll never rest again. Big finish coming. Great harmonies. Am I kidding? I don't think I'm kidding. See if you can guess what has to happen before this band rests. Chumbawamba announced their breakup in 2012, but see if you can guess if they're resting right now. Until every Nazi dog.

I doubt it. We're almost there. We're not quite there yet. Maybe that's the problem. Shear volume. Shear quantity of material. Shear exhaustion. It is hard to wrap your head around how much Chumbawamba there is to listen to before you get to the one song everyone associates with Chumbabwamba.

Sheesh. Last album before the album. from 1995. It's called Swinging with Raymond. This song's called Ugg Your Ug Your Ugly Houses. That's Ugg exclamation point. Your Ugly Houses, exclamation point. I'm getting a real warp tour vibe here if you want the truth.

Check out that video sometime for Ugg, your Ugly Houses. That is an extra 90s video. The super saturated colors, the quick zooms onto startled faces, the rock star graffiti, the super strong opinions about interior decoraries, decorating. That just about sums up the whole era. All right. All right. That was easy.

You may have observed that Chambawamba have grown steadily bigger and brighter and poppier and wackier and improbably more strident as this decade and change has worn on. Whatever legit anarcho punk DNA this band might have shared with crass back in the mid-80s, that vibe is long gone.

Might as well jump to a major label at this point, eh? So they signed to EMI. They bought shares, an EMI, you might say. Hmm. The sellout conversation, right? The hypocrisy of anarchists taking major label money. With Chumbawamba, it's one of those deals that's so

blatant and obvious, it's almost uninteresting, right? There's no spinning this, really. If you're a real deal, diehard anarchist and you love this band and they make the jump to a major label and it breaks your heart, I get that. That's valid. If you're a grumpy, rock

critic and you hate this band, and they make the jump to a major label, and you think that's hilarious and hypocritical and disqualifying and further proof of how fundamentally unsurious these people are? I get that also. That's also valid. Take it or leave it, I guess. Take it or leave it that Chumbawamba took it.

They want the widest possible audience. They take great delight in bending corporate money to anti-corporate ends. They're going to take down capitalism from the inside. You've heard it all before. You've heard all the excuses and deflections and rationalizations before. But they never sounded quite like this. Now, did they? And here then is the split second where the football hooligan anarchist Venn diagram realigns itself into the shape of a middle finger.

Right? Whose middle finger pointed at whom? Well, opinions vary on that. I don't think that image totally works actually, but the fucking chorus works. Now, doesn't it? What the major label doesn't change is Chumbawumbha's sound, right? This isn't an austere punk band transformed overnight into a technicolor pop band by a hotshot ultra mainstream producer. Chumbawamba as a collective wrote and produced tub thumping.

And they basically sounded like tub thumping for years. Maybe they sounded like tub thumping the whole time. The difference is money. How disillusioning. for an anarchist to confront the possibility that the only difference between we have no hit songs and we have a hit song is money. A higher studio budget, yes, maybe.

A higher marketing budget? Yes, yes, absolutely that. Yes. The most disconcerting element of the tub thumping video is that the YouTube thumbnail photo for the tub thumping video is Dunstan Bruce's face. He's got the pierced ears. He's got the bleach blonde hair.

He's gripping the hell out of that microphone. He is giving a hot topic. You know? In 2016, talking to the Guardian, Dunstan says, The song changed everything. Before tub thumping, I felt we were in a mess. We had become directionless and disparate. It's not our most political or best song,

but it brought us back together. The song is about us as a class and as a band. The beauty of it was, we had no idea how big it would be. End quote. Hit it, Lou. So Chumbo Huma guitarist Baf Whaley and his wife live near this Irish pub, and their next door neighbor would go get drunk there and stagger home

and struggle to open his front door while singing Danny Boy and shouting for his wife to come help him. That's the song. That's tub thumping. It's a drinking song. It's a staggering song. It's a working class drinking or staggering song. The Monsters of Brit Pop. tried to write a whole bunch of these kinds of songs, right?

Oasis wrote battle hymns for football hooligans. Blurr wrote sardonic character studies about football hooligans and stuffy middle class snobs. Pulp wrote fucking common people, right? I do really like the way tub thumping harmonizes with Brit Pop or doesn't. A cool thing about Chumbabamba is that Lou Watts is the band's ideal voice on record. But Alice Nutter, who sings too and bounces around the stage in boxing gloves and so forth, Alice is the band's ideal voice in interviews. Maybe not ideal.

She's the most quotable, let's say. She's the Noel and Liam Gallagher of Chumbawamba once the music stops. On Bill Maher's talk show politically incorrect, Alice will raise a ruckus by encouraging her fans to steal Chumbabwamba's albums from chain stores. In Rolling Stone, Alice says, what I hated about blur was the way the music press said it was social commentary about England in the 90s. I just thought they were looking down on people. I hate the idea that Blur talk in really condescending tones about people who play bingo and watch telly. Well, we play bingo and watch telly and it doesn't mean we're stupid. End quote.

It's Alice's job as Chambalwamba's unofficial spokesperson to get in front of her skis a lot to the extent that anarchists ski. But I get what she means about condescension. And one thing this band doesn't do is condescend. I got to hear Lou singing the other thing. Give me a second. Okay, thank you. Chumbawumba in the top 10. Chumbo Wamba on Rosie O'Donnell's daytime talk show.

Chumbull Wamba at the 1997 jingle ball. The big pop star summit in New York City at Madison Square Garden, alongside Celine Dion, Lisa Loeb, Hanson, Arrowsmith, Allure, Savage Garden, Fiona Apple, Sarah McLaughlin, the Wallflowers, and the Backstreet Boys. Did Chumbawamba have another hit? No. Did they destroy capitalism from the inside? No.

Did Tub Thumping become a dreaded jock jam? Indeed. Did tub thumping change the world? Not the way Chumbab Wamba intended. In 2021, Dunstan Bruce made his own Chumbabwamba documentary called I Get Knockdown, of course. And he funded it on Kickstarter. And it hasn't exactly gotten wide distribution yet, but it's clearly about the proud futility

of being in a rock band that tries to change the world. Those 3.2 million people who bought Tub Thumper, the album for presumably, and I don't want to be rude, but come on, tub thumping the song. What do you think the consensus second best song on this album is? My second favorite song is called The Big Issue. Hello, Under Bridges.

Kind of a talking heads road to nowhere vibe to this one. Hey? I'm into it. I'm disinclined to be rude about it. Over by the river down in the park through the winter. But it's the chorus that gets me here. The hugeness of it, the overblown earnestness, the sweetly conveyed kill your landlord's sentiment running through it.

It doesn't sound like posturing to me. It doesn't sound naive. It sounds like a pop song from newly minted pop stars who know full well. They're only going to be pop stars for another 10 minutes. But for those 10 minutes, anyway, they're hell-bent on making sure our bosses fear the factory floor. And on the seventh day, Chumbawamba Rusted. We're so happy to be joined once again by the author and podcaster Dorian Linsky. his books include Ministry of Truth, a biography of George Orwell's 1984, and 33 revolutions per minute, a history of protest songs. It's so great to see you again, Dorian.

Oh, thanks, Rob. Same here. I think in America, overwhelmingly, Chumbalamma's history starts with tub thumping, right? Like, they showed up out of nowhere. They were a classic overnight success play. This is a band, of course, that had been around for 10, 12 years already, put out 7, 8 albums. Like in the United Kingdom, what was their standing prior to tub thumping? How popular or unpopular were they? They were still pretty niche. They've been around since 82, put out a few albums on their own adjiprop label, very much in the sort of anarcho-punk tradition culturally as a very sort of independent, very politically militant collective, although they sounded very pop. They never sound like punk.

Yeah. But their first album was like a satire on live A called Pictures of Starving Children's Soul Records. So they weren't going for the charts. They had contempt for that. They certainly did. They did that thing that some political bands do. You know, where crass, you know,

their music is very, very difficult and deliberately difficult because they wanted it to suit the subject matter. Whereas Chumbabwamba thought, well, if they wanted to reach people, they needed to get more pop. And so they got some very, very minor, like, low end of the top 100 hits in the early 90s example, Anarchy. Yeah. Where they're throwing sort of everything into the pot, and it sounds a bit like the Pet Shop Boys, and then there's these big power cord hooks, and then there's bits of dance music and break beats and sampling.

But they weren't, like, they seemed bigger to me at the time than they objectively were. because I was, you know, I was very political, and they seemed like the, a bridge from 80s, you know, doing something about the minor strike of Margaret Thatcher, right, to the 90s and actually seemed to be getting bigger, although not actually big.

Sure. There's a documentary on them from 2000, and the band itself makes a big deal out of the fact that, like, critics in the UK hate them. Like, there's this long sequence of critics on camera talking shit, and then one of the guys is reading, mean reviews out loud. What was this band standing critically?

Were they reviled or are they sort of playing that up for effect? No, they were pretty disliked. I mean, there was a bit of a resistance to sort of avertly political bands where that was their whole reason for being. You know, this was a long time after the clash and so on. And it just seemed that they seemed a bit too explicit, a bit nuff. to use of Britishism. And they're not subtle.

I went back and listened to some of these songs. You know, they're not subtle lyrically. They're not subtle musically. I appreciated the fact that they were doing all kinds of things and, you know, anti-fascism and gay rights and animal rights and class politics. And if you were that way inclined, you know, they seemed like the good guys. But they weren't, they weren't writing protest songs like Elvis Costello or the specials. Right.

You know, it was very easy for me listening back to be like, well, why would critics like this? Because it's kind of, it's kind of gauche. There's not a lot of nuance in there. It's not at all. You can't write essays bound. Right. A huge part of the deal with Chumbawamba is what it means that they're anarchists, right? Like what an anarchist pop group sounds like?

Is that an oxymoron, whatever? Like, just to orient ourselves. How prevalent were self-identifying anarchists in the use? UK in the mid-80s and on into the 90s. Like, was this a fairly common way to self-identify? Like, I'm trying to get a sense of how abnormal they were or weren't in the country at the time. I mean, among groups that very few people listen to, not so abnormal, you know, in that crass tradition. Sure, sure.

You know, in the sense that they were, I mean, I don't know how strictly they were anarchists, but they definitely worked as a collective and they lived in squats and they played every benefit gig going. And actually they wrote songs as a collective, which might explain why the songs were this weird mishmash of rock and synth pop and folk madrigals. And it's almost like everybody had to have, have their say. 20 seconds. Yeah, yeah. Even like Tubson, it's got lots of bits to it. So they did, they did walk it like they talked to it. And most fans don't want to. to do that. Most bands that gain any level of success, they're not really interested in living like that. Yeah. What do you make of the notion of an anarchist pop band signing to a major

label? Like, is that a hilarious, hypocritical, irreconcilable decision? Or is this just another way that the idea of selling out meant the world to people in the mid-90s? But like, it doesn't really matter now. I'm pretty sympathetic because I think if you are a band with a message, And they also, that, you know, Regius Machine would say the same thing. Sure. You want to get out there. You want a bigger platform. Clearly, the independent stuff wasn't making much of a dent.

And they signed to Wanderlindian, which is a decent-sized indie. And they start getting somewhere in the charts. And then EMI was particularly contentious because, I don't know if you know, but he used to bet thorn EMI. So there was a wing of the company that manufactured weapons. Hmm. I don't think I knew that. In the 80s, it was totally taboo.

So you model army who were very political, very left wing. They signed to EMI, and they had a slogan, Only Stupid Bastards Use Heroin. And somebody actually released a record called Only Stupid Bastards Help BMI. It was that big a deal. And then I think Chambawamba appeared in a compilation called Fuck EMI. It was like a huge thing. But then, you know, corporate restructuring or whatever, they were no longer connected to weapons manufacturer. So I think Chambu Wamba were going, well, it's no longer a taboo.

major label. It's just another major label. And we never said that, you know, we wouldn't do that. And I think that the purists were bothered. But I do sympathize with artists that basically just think, well, what if we could get our kind of message, you know, out on the radio to America and so on. Because there's only so far you can go on an indie. Right. What is your sense of why tub thumping specifically blew up the way it did? Like, why this song in this, specific moment, did it turn into like a chart-topping, you know, global sensation? I don't really know. I think I know a little bit in Britain, you know, support from key radio DJs, an album with a bit more marketing push behind it. Why I was speaking in America

really confuses me because it's a very British song. And on the album, there's like songs based on football chant sampling a Ken Loach film, quoting the shipping forecast. It's like, ultra-British. It's all the things that you're not meant to do if you want to be successful in America. So I don't actually know the kind of radio marketing path that made

it so big, because it's obviously got a massive cookie chorus. A lot of the songs on Anarchy have absolutely enormous chorus. They're basically very good at writing these huge anthemic choruses that they would then repeat many, many times. And this one, I don't know why.

because it's pretty eccentric. The lyrics are not, the chorus is easy to understand, but the connection between that and the lyrics elsewhere, not necessarily. So I remember just being absolutely bewildered

because it's not, it's not a focusing of their sound or anything. You know, it's got this kind of very angelic sounding folk bit where they're quoting Danny Boy and it's got this

ooi football lad chorus and a list of drinks and then a trumpet solo and a kind of bit of like 90s dance music pulse. Yeah. And it's kind of like a lot of their songs. You know, it's a real medley of bits. Right. I mean, I don't know if you need,

did you understand why it was big in America? I don't. First of all, it's very clarifying. I really like your thing that like you divide a song up into eight parts and every member of the band like gets a part. heart, right? Like, that makes a lot of sense to me, that these are songs written collectively, and they are just jamming eight personalities into one pop song. Like, that makes an absolute a lot of sense to me. I'm in 1997. I'm on college radio, right? And like, this makes sense to me

as like, I don't mean this in a mean way, but like a novelty hit, right? Like, it's so random and it's so joyous. And you've never heard anything like it, probably, if you're living, if you're in a college radio station in Ohio. It just, it just strikes you as a completely new thing, but it also has like a jock jam type energy, right? Like, it's a football chance, but it also works for every sport, every sporting event I've ever been to in America for the last 20 years has played this song. Like, I get it on that level. Well, maybe it's like, you know, Blur's song too. It's like, if you write, if you accidentally write your sports rock anthem, you know, then that will work in America. And I think they work.

were, I think they were trying to be maybe more about people, less explicitly political. So it's sort of about working class dignity and resilience. Exactly. And it's sort of rooted in as pubs and I suppose football culture. But with a political subtext to it and the album version has a sample from Brastoff, which I'm not sure if you remember for the night's Pete Posseil Thwait. It's a film about maybe during the minor

strike. It's about a brass band. And he's talking about people. It's a real humanist film. And I suppose this was like their most broadly humanist song, that the political spirit was something that was not

nailed to a particular issue. They did a song that I really liked by them called homophobia. You can guess what that's about. And this was this was broader. So if you knew the context, it was very Chumbabamba, but if you didn't know the context, it just works as in a kind of, you know, you get knocked down and you get up again. This is a very human experience.

Yeah. I wonder, I'm thinking about how America received it and I wonder if Brit Pop has something to do with it. You know, like it's the biggest days of blur oasis, et cetera, kind of over by 1997, but I think we were primed in America to be a little more receptive. You know, like we listened to a lot of blur songs with a lot of references that we didn't really understand if we'd never actually been to the UK, right? So maybe that helped as well. America received this song, even if we didn't get all the references buried in the song. I mean, it's the fact that it's, like, it's the boisterousness of it, which seems to translate.

I mean, it's not Brit, but I can't really think of a Brit pop song or band that sort of sounds like that chorus. I was trying to say, trying to inspire to myself what some of these songs like, Petro Boys Meets Oasis, but it doesn't really sound like Oasis,

even these other big rock choruses. Right. But yeah, maybe we were ready for that. I do remember around the late 90s, there were loads of, just loads of one-hit wonders. and songs like, I mean, probably, you know, most of which you've probably already done on the podcast,

but, you know, I know Len's steal my sunshine. It's just a song people like. It wasn't like people had a big investment in Len. I don't know any other Len songs, but people like that. And they were quite a few in Britain as well. Your Woman by White Town, which is this guy working in the shed, basically, goes to number one.

So, yeah, it was like a weird appetite for stuff that just sounded, very direct and very different. And the whole, and people didn't need a narrative. They didn't need to know the story of this band, which is funny because Britpop was so much about narrative. Where you're from, which part of the country, class, which bands you're arguing with, which bands you're going out with.

And for most people, even in Britain, Chamboyama had literally no backstory. Sure. Right. In the mid-90s, when Brit Pop is huge, and Tony Blair is ascendant, right? Like, there's a synergy there. Like, Noel Gallagher, Damon Al-Barner, like, dropping by 10 Downing Street. There's photo-ops.

Like, in retrospect, did that mean anything? Brit Pop's flirtations with politics? Like, did any of that feel momentous and transformative in real time? Or was it all pretty much bullshit even at the time? Like, it felt more significant than I think it probably was. Because actually, Damon Allen refused to have a lot of. anything to do with Blair. He was asked, but he didn't. Oh, okay. It was Noel Gallagher

and Alan McGee from Creation Records that went to the... Right, okay. The number 10 party, Noel Gallagher was the one that made a big statement at the Brit Awards about the importance of Tony Blair. So there was some... Blair's actually talked about it quite a lot in various, like oral histories of the 90s and so on.

And it was just one thing they were doing that they noticed there was all this stuff happening. Brit Pop was part of it, but there's also Brit art and cinema. movies like train spotting, fashion, and it just seemed like those people in interviews, those creatives would say they were looking forward to a Labour government. And so there was some outreach and some sense of like there were, you know,

new Labour loving actors and musicians and so on. But music was pretty skeptical overall, the idea that you would be courted by a politician and because he seemed, you know, he did seem very, like, suspiciously slick. And so, yeah, not many people went for it. I mean, Noel Gallagher is very much a kind of centrist. Maybe center-left, but he's not in any sense, really like a lefty. So it seemed like there was this big connection because this photo was so famous of Noel and Blair.

And yet when you sort of dug into it, it's like, well, how much do people actually do? How much connection was there between music and politics? It was more like a mood, this incredible, I'm going to have to rap slides about the 90s, but, you know, this incredible sense, if I can do this here, in Britain that you had all of this stuff happening in multiple cultural fields, optimism and the football team as well and everything happening. And at that very same time, you're approaching the end of a dying tournament. government. And an election was on the way.

And so I remember that there was a sense for a good two, maybe three years, that they were already there. Part of my memory says that laborer in power during the height of Britpop. And they just weren't. But there was a sense that sort of spiritually they were. And so it's this sort of great optimism about change and youth. which had maybe not that much to do with, you know, Labor's policy platform or actual firm connections between these individuals. Yeah, I get it.

In that era, like the most famous Chumbawumba, like prank or statement or whatever, they're at the Brit Awards at the height of tub thumping. And one of them throws water on the deputy prime minister, John Prescott. And there's these famous photos of John, like, looking soaked and, like, super pissed. First of all, why did they do that? Did they do that to John Prescott specifically? Or did he just happen to be there? And that was like the representative of like the government as a whole. Oh yeah.

I think it was the representative of the government that there was a dock strike in Liverpool. And the government was very unsympathetic to it. And there was this general sense among musicians much less left wing than Chumbabawamba. that New Labour had been terrible disappointment. There was an enemy cover in early 98, which has ever had the feeling you'd been cheated, the sex pistols line. Sex pistols, right.

And they're complaining about student tuition fees and various sort of authoritarian law and order innovations. And there was very much a sense of like, oh, we got very excited about getting the Tories out. Actually, we don't like these people that much. And General Wamba would never have been enthusiasts for New Labor. and I think that they saw that as an opportunity to make a political statement

because they had the big hit that they were playing. And they mentioned the Dockstrike in the... They did, that's right. So it was just, it was opportunism. And also, I think because of which we discussed last time, when I did the Common People episode, the Jarvis Copp and Michael Jackson incident, it was a period where it felt like you could do really interesting things

at the Brit Awards, which is no longer the... case. And obviously, some people thought this was incredibly, you know, childish and trivial. Yeah, right. Which, I mean, kind of was. You pour in the bucket water over someone's head. Yeah, you're just dumping water on somebody. Yeah, that's the extent of the statement. Yeah. But I wonder whether that's the payback. Like, if you sign to a major label in order to get out there and not compromise your politics, then once you have the big hit, you have to signal that you haven't sold out your values. So I guess it kind of worked as a statement for them as well. Sure. I keep thinking, like asking were Chumbo Wamba successful is the wrong question. But I do wonder,

to your mind, what effect hub thumping had ultimately, like culturally or politically. Did they get their message out? Did it resonate? Did they educate people? Did they radicalize some people? I mean, it seems unlikely that most people would have gone back into the catalogue. And I was looking at the sales. I didn't realize that Tub Thumper, the album had sold over like three million in the States, but then I remembered it in the 90s. If you wanted the single, you bought the album. Exactly.

This is pre-Napster, which is very important, yes. But having got the album, you think, okay, there's some interesting songs on there about different political issues and maybe people investigated them. But, I mean, you can't really say it had this sort of massive influence in the way that, you know, the clash or raised against the machine where they did have the narrative. They had a whole, they had old career, they had album after album. What they did, I think, which I find quite impressive, is the way that they used the money. It's like they made a lot of money and they gave it to good causes and they had, I think, a song on a General Motors ad, which they then gave to General Motors ad.

ad, which they then gave to General Motors, workers, and people against the... Which is like, well, that is the best thing to do. If you're going to take the money and then give it to people who hate the company that gave you the money, I think that's legit.

And they didn't chase another song like that. They went very... They sort of went back to folk, influenced stuff after that. and then they put out you know they put out very specific songs targeting various politicians so I felt that they were

they used it in the best way they basically had a good time which is very important because crass broke up because they never had a good time they never had any money they all lived together in the same house they were constantly arguing about politics like it wasn't fun being in crass

right right and I think with Chumber 1, but they were like, well, let's sort of enjoy this. Let's go and play in different places around the world, but use the money for useful causes that they basically couldn't have afford it. It's one thing to go and play a benefit, and it's another to give a, you know, to give a charity or an activist organization a big lump of cash of tub-thumping money. So I think it worked for them because they didn't want, to be long-term successful, it seems.

They'd been together for 15 years without having a massive hit, and this was probably such a freakish, unrepeatable thing, that they approached it in quite a sane manner and went, well, let's just enjoy it while it lasts, because then it will be over, which indeed it was. I mean, bands don't sound like Chumblewap. Nobody sounds like this. It's true.

It's absolutely true. There's no musical footprint. There's such a weird entity, which is why I think I love the fact that they had this one enduring mega hit, because otherwise they'd just be a kind of side note in the history of like British, essentially British protest songs.

Right. And thanks to this, like, they're known by loads of, and those people, if only for that one song. And they were always very gracious about it. They didn't go, oh, we hate our hit. They were like, this is wonderful. Yeah.

This has been great, Dorian. You've really helped me understand this. It's a very, very, yeah, it's a very odd, very British story, this one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's great, too. And it's very funny to me that crass broke up. It's like, this isn't fun.

Like, this is, you know, this sucks, you know? Like, it's Chumba Wamba sound like they're having fun all the time. Even if they're not, like, there's a joy. radiating from them, which is itself very abnormal from rock bands, right? Yeah, and they just did what they said they were going to do. I mean, there are a few songs that I'm still really fond of, you know, where they would respond to something. They'd respond to like a homophobic legislation,

or they'd respond to the rise of the far right in the early 90s. Yeah. It was now to think of a very minor rise of the far right, but it felt big at the time. And they would be the guys who would be there, and they would have a big, you know, big catchy song about it, and they turn up at the demos and all of that.

And there was something that, obviously critics don't like that much. It's not very cool. But looking back, it's like if you look at the list of course as they championed, they would totally pass the 2023 test. Of course, of course. You know, they were doing all of the stuff that, you know, sort of bands now talk about.

No, I was listening to their song. You mentioned homophobia, which is from 94, I think, and I was listening to that, like, yesterday. And I was like, wow. Like, that's, it's very impressive, you know, that they're writing songs about this and, like, addressing that issue so head on, you know, 20, 25 years ago. And there's one called Enough is Enough, which was the anti-Far-right one where they had a rapper called MC Fusion on it. And one of his hooks is give the fascist man a gunshot, which is, you know, it's quite, that's fairly outspoken and blunt for a, you know, a kind of hit single. Yeah, but they did it. So they were doing, they were doing, they were doing the thing that they had set out to do, I guess. Yeah, yeah. And thank you so much, Dorian, this has been wonderful. It's great to have you back.

Thanks a lot, my pleasure. Thanks very much to our guest this week, Dorian Linsky. thanks to our producers Kevin Pooler and Justin Sales thanks to Chloe Clark for additional production help I have a book coming out on November 6th called Songs That Explain the 90s it is available for pre-order now you should check that out

and thank you very much for listening and now without further ado please go listen to tub thumping by Chumba Wamba we'll see you next week