The text below concerning Chumbawumba is courtesy of\u00a0 kipuka.net\/chumba\/history\/show.html and the photographs of Chumbawumba performing at Wood Green Arts Centre squat in 1985 courtesy of Graham Burnett.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/i192.photobucket.com\/albums\/z149\/pengy1966\/KYPP849.jpg\")
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\u201cNow if only pop (I mean POP) and politics DID mix\u2026\u201d \u2013 Robin Gibson reviewing Chumbawamba\u2019s \u201cNever Mind The Ballots\u201d LP, Sounds July 1987.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuspended above the courtyard of the Pompidou Centre in Paris is the Genitron, an electric sign-clock flashing the number of seconds left in the twentieth century. Inaugurated in January 1987 by Francois Mitterand, the Genitron is a time machine that conducts its relentless countdown over the heads of the international fauna of Les Halles, the hustlers, punks, dealers, con men, mystics, musicians, strong-men, fire-eaters, rappers, breakers, addicts, sidewalk artists and sidewalk dwellers who seem already to represent the spectres of the apocalypse.\u201d \u2013 Elaine Showalter, from \u201cSexual Anarchy \u2013 Gender and Culture At The Fin de Siecle\u201d (1990)<\/p>\n
FIVE OR SIX YEARS before the countdown began and Chumbawamba is being born out of that beautiful mess of street performers. Chumbawamba is the trio in the corner busking Clash and Gene Vincent songs on acoustic guitars \u2013 fired by punk logic, punk as change, hanging about in Paris during that knife-edge decision-time when rebellion turns into either part of your growing up or part of your life. Politics or \u201cattitude\u201d to come into it sooner or later.<\/p>\n
Back a bit further. Legal Aid and Optical Illusion are the drummer and singer in a Barnsley punk band. Legal\u2019s granddad is taking a Polaroid. They\u2019re called `The Threat\u2019 and their music starts and ends this record; the photograph becomes it\u2019s cover. Later they\u2019ll change their names to Harry & Mave and meet up with the others in Leeds, and end up living in a huge squatted Victorian house making pop (I mean POP) records.<\/p>\n
Alice Nutter, art school drop-out, is playing drums badly in a group called `Ow My Hair\u2019s On Fire\u2019. Lou Watts operating computers for Burnley Building Society, Dunstan singing Velvet Underground cover versions in a Billingham group `Men In A Suitcase\u2019. Teams that meet in cafes\u2026 and in the background, a woman Prime Minister running her own War in the South Atlantic, kills, maims, parades and gloats for half of 1982. England is dreaming alright: and somebody has to shout about the nightmare even if they are to be damned into obscurity for their pains. Usher in the Never-Has-Beens!<\/p>\n
LONG BEFORE Chumbawamba release any records of their own, they pull off a successful guerilla attack which results in their first appearance on vinyl. In response to Garry Bushell\u2019s inane patronage of Oi Punk (before Gary wrote for The Sun, he practiced his homophobic brand of tabloid sensationalism in music weekly `Sounds\u2019), Chumbawamba fabricate a completely bogus Oi band called `Skin Disease\u2019, complete with press pack and four-track demo cassette. Some few weeks later and Bushell lists Skin Disease as \u201cBurnley\u2019s premier Oi band\u201d, and letters appear in Sounds lumping Skin Disease in with \u201cother Northern Oi bands\u201d, as proof of that \u201cgood Oi music is not exclusively a London phenomenon.\u201d All this despite the fact that the \u201cband\u201d never actually exist. Eventually Bushell invites the band to appear on an Oi compilation single. Playing the role of Northern oiks, Skin Disease travel to London to record a special-written song called \u201cI\u2019m Think\u201d, a bog-standard punky thrash with the words \u201cI\u2019m Thick\u201d repeated sixty-four times. It appears on the single \u201cBack On The Streets\u201d.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, back to the twentieth century countdown. The first Chumbawamba demo tape is recorded in Hulme, Manchester, a few days after the band\u2019s first gig in January 1982. A snippet of it ends up on a Crass compilation album \u201cBullshit Detector 2\u201d, alongside a song about nuclear war by Barnsley band Passion Killers. Passion Killers are what became of The Threat. (As in, \u201c1, 2, 3, 4, Let\u2019s Go!\u201d). The two bands meet. Small-town punks in Leeds, with a desire to rise above the mundane, to avoid a lifetime career at the Building Society or down the pit at Barnsley Main, sidestepping the alternative of college education. But instead of just escaping those roots, it becomes more and more important as the eighties progress to take them along, to re-write the endings of the Hollywood teenage rites-of-passage movies, to balance the fine line between everyday boredom and rock n roll\u2019s petulant ignorance of real life; and to have fun doing it. Growing up to a soundtrack of punky, alienated noise \u2013 religiously watching The Fall, Wire, ATV, Clash \u2013 turns everything after it into a choice between safety \u2013 with all it\u2019s inbuilt insecurities and emotional cancers \u2013 and challenge. Change or go under. The bad ship Chumbawamba sets sail.<\/p>\n
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\u201cChumbawamba: the message is more important than the music.\u201d \u2013 Full extent of first ever live review, New Musical Express.<\/p>\n
AT THIS POINT CHUMBAWAMBA are fast becoming unmovable flag-burning pacifists, a reaction against Thatcher\u2019s election campaign involving nuclear stockpiling and stepping over dead bodies in the Falklands. This is the decadent 60\u2019s and 70\u2019s hangover, the Pistols\u2019 \u201cNo Future\u201d etched across a Boy George mirror. In the early eighties the choice seems straightforward \u2013 Brit-pop as complete escapism (Lady Margaret\u2019s \u201cMe, me, me\u201d culture) or the sub-culture of resistance that is burrowing it\u2019s way from underground. Chumbawamba play gigs at peace camps, turning up at demonstrations and rallies like they\u2019re going out of fashion. (Which they are). The band\u2019s home is raided twice in under a year by ten burly drugs squad officers who ask, \u201cYou lot them Socialist Worker types, right?\u201d. No wonder the likes of the Guildford Four got banged up for fifteen years with authorities like this on the case.<\/p>\n
The entries on the Special Branch files get longer. Raids, obstruction, breaches of the peace, even \u201ctheft by housebreaking\u201d \u2013 twenty-six hours in the custody of the Strathclyde police in December 1983 charged with \u201cremoval of dogs, mice and files\u201d from a research bucket load; for single parents, local hospital closure campaigns, hunt saboteurs, the ALF, anti-Sizewell campaign, nurseries. Nine people, three cats and a dog living under one roof, fledging anarchist politics mixed with too-hefty doses of idealism and organic vegetables. The dog, Derek, appears on a couple of the early records and includes in his CV the greatest accolade bestowed upon a canine: that of biting members of the police force (forcing one to have hospital treatment).<\/p>\n
TWO EVENTS WHICH RE-ROUTE the agit-pop politics of Chumbawamba, both from 1984. Firstly, the Brighton Bomb. Half the Cabinet covered in rubble, and suddenly political violence \u2013 of the type which defeated Hitler, freed Mandela, ended slavery, and overthrew the state communist dictatorships \u2013 blows a hole in the pacifist edge to the band\u2019s polemic. Secondly, and more importantly, the beginning of the great Miners\u2019 Strike. From early on, the Armley (Leeds) Miners Support group is twinned with Frickley put in South Elmsall \u2013 Armley Socialist Workers make the connections and Chumbawamba supply the van and the street collections on Saturday mornings. The band mix playing benefit gigs for the miners with traveling down to the picket lines at five and six o\u2019clock in the morning. And during this bitter winter some of Chumbawamba join a theatre group who travel from village to village putting on a Christmas pantomime for miner\u2019s kids, down to South Wales and around Yorkshire. Coming from places like Barnsley and Burnley in times when the coal mines were part of the very fabric of these towns, it doesn\u2019t take much effort to know which side of the fence you ought to be standing on; the band makes and sells a fast-selling three-track cassette for the Miners\u2019 Hardship Fund, and Sounds writes:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Chumbas, as they are affectionately known, are refreshing and genuine pop anarchists. And no, they won\u2019t go away\u2026\u201d (December 1994)<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019re given is any old rubbish that won\u2019t upset the apple cart. The only choice we seem to be left with it to play the part of the bad apple.\u201d \u2013 from Chumbawamba\u2019s first single sleeve notes<\/p>\n
ON JUNE 1ST, 1985, Chumbawamba are recording their first single \u201cRevolution\u201d, whilst at the same time the Travellers Convoy is being attacked and wrecked in a beanfield adjacent to Stonehenge. Cracked heads, massive publicity, and the start of an era of political change: when the marginal\u2019s begin to come out from the underground.<\/p>\n
The Clash, hastily re-formed in new street-cred guide with Joe Strummer passing round the music business hat to pay for his cocaine habit, play rebel chic outside Leeds University. Danbert Nobacon arms himself with a hydraulic-action paint-gun and splatters band and audience before legging it. This is Chumbawamba discovering their real talent: refuting the idea that rock n roll is some huge back-slapping family business where everyone \u201cpulls together\u201d. Putting spanners in their own works, pigheadedly refusing to lie down and become another servile record business lap-dog.<\/p>\n
THE HOUSE IS RAIDED AGAIN, this time with sledgehammers. They\u2019re looking for \u201cexplosives and bomb-making equipment\u201d. Everyone is hauled down to the station, questioned relentlessly, kept separately, diaries and books confiscated \u2013 huge plastic bagfuls of pamphlets, posters, even song lyrics\u2026 twenty-three hours in a Leeds cop shop. Meanwhile, the first single sells out.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe haven\u2019t got a master plan \u2013 we react to things as they come along. As Anarchists we live with the contradictions that socialism doesn\u2019t allow.\u201d \u2013 From an interview with Melody Maker, Dec 1986<\/p>\n
Chumbawamba mocks up as an April Fool\u2019s SDP\/Liberal Alliance pop group, calls itself The Middle, and records three tracks for a spoof demo. The Libs love it. Mike Harskin at the Liberal Whips Office in the House of Commons writes to invite the band to play at MP David Owen\u2019s birthday party at Stringfellow\u2019s in London; Chumbawamba are busy playing their own gigs. The single \u201cSmash Clause 28\u201d attacks the government homophobia pushing through a law which, amongst other things, demands the teaching of hetro-only family values in schools. This single is received as \u201cunwashed ghetto grumbling\u2026 rock n roll won\u2019t even notice\u201d by Sounds magazine. (Shortly after, few people notice the demise of Sounds.) \u201cSmash Clause 28\u201d is the first of several recorded attacks on homophobia by the band, and significantly it isn\u2019t until 1994\u2019s \u201cHomophobia\u201d that the issue becomes \u201cacceptable\u201d enough to make it into the pop industry\u2019s frame of vision, along with active anti-fascism (as opposed to a general nod in the direction of anti-racism) and anti-sexism. This year\u2019s thing, last year\u2019s thing, next year\u2019s thing.<\/p>\n
IN THE SUMMER OF 1985 Live Aid gives Sir Bob Geldof an excuse to get pissed and shout \u201cfucking give, you bastards!\u201d on live TV. Everyone waits to see if they\u2019ll exhume John Lennon\u2019s body and sit it in front of a white piano. Showbiz razzamatazz and displays of public generosity before McCartney sings \u201cLet It Be\u201d. Let what be? Have a party, celebrate decadence, and send a few bob to Africa? The \u00a380 million raised amounts to a little more than half Michael Jackson\u2019s personal fortune, or about what the world spends on arms every two hours forty minutes. And not one of those has-beens up there on the global pulpit ever mentions why there\u2019s a famine in the first place \u2013 no-one asks who rips off the African crops and gives only MacCoke culture in return. Band Aid: a sticking plaster on a gaping wound. Revive those flagging careers! And U2 get their first taste of stadium rock\u2026<\/p>\n
Chumbawamba\u2019s response is an LP catchily titled \u201cPictures of Starving Children Sell Records; Starvation, Charity and Rock n Roll \u2013 Lies and Traditions\u201d. Which says it all, really. On the home front, Chumbawamba get involved in mass pickets both locally, at the Silentnight factory in Barnoldswick, and nationally, outside Fortress Wapping in London, where Rupert Murdoch mixes upgrading production of The Sun and The Times with all-out attacks on unions. Bundles of newspapers sitting outside newspaper shops across Britain are repeatedly stolen and burn, and several nights in Wapping end in a celebratory and almost ritual battle between cops protecting newspaper lorries and thousands of pickets and supporters. The band plays benefits for both sets of strikers in addition to gigs for Gay Switchboard, Prisoner\u2019s Support group, Leeds Bust Fund and even an Anti-Freemasons concert in Keswick which has to switch venues twice due to local Masonic council threats. Chumbawamba are described in the Keswick press as \u201cthe worst of the american satanic backwards message bands\u201d. And a gig with arch-punks Conflict at Leeds University ends in a mini-riot, missiles and riot cops and running battles\u2026 and Chumbawamba earn a lifetime ban from the University.<\/p>\n
Late 1986 and Chumbawamba link up with Dutch band The Ex for a gig-to-gig relationship which is to last several years. Anarchists, squatters, and die-hard musical experimentalists, The Ex introduce Chumbawamba to demonstrations, Amsterdam-style; in a protest against NATO warships being stationed in the harbour, thousand of people create a huge party on the shores with bands playing on warehouse roof-tops and people already in crash helmets and with scarves across their faces. The Dutch riot police repeatedly charge the crowd, there\u2019s a scream, and it\u2019s an English accent. Alice Nutter is caught in the panic and has a broken leg. She completes the tour sitting on stage on a stool with her leg in plaster.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll good clean fun, and ultimately harmless\u201d \u2013 Chumbawamba live review, Birmingham Mermaid 1987<\/p>\n
THE \u201cSCAB AID\u201d SINGLE, released under the name \u201cThe Scum\u201d in 1987, attacks The Sun newspaper\u2019s hypocrisy and jingoism by parodying that paper\u2019s charity single \u201cLet It Be\u201d \u2013 where a host of pop\u2019s graying publicity-fetishists (McCartney, Boy George, etc) sing to raise money for people involved in a ferry disaster. The single, a spoken-word n\u2019 piano piece narrated by long-standing Chumbawamba sidekick Simon Lanzon (later of Credit To The Nation) makes NME\u2019s single of the week and sells out before anyone realizes it\u2019s Chumbawamba. The Sun describes the record as \u201csick!\u201d. And what more accolades could it get from a paper which described the drowning of hundreds of Argentine soldiers aboard ship in 1982 with the headline \u201cGotcha!\u201d?<\/p>\n
\u201cNEVER MIND THE BALLOTS\u2026 Here\u2019s The Rest of Your Life\u201d. Another Thatcher election victory and another round of red-faced Labour politicians shifting further to the right. The Labour Party, sitting on the fence so long it can\u2019t work out which side it\u2019s supposed to be on. Scared to challenge the status quo, wooing big business, turning a blind eye to sexual politicsm to the dismantling of the Unions, to Ireland. For some of Chumbawamba, a few days in Belfast to see a little of what\u2019s going on there. Saturday night chucking-out time, blacked-up squaddies creeping through peoples\u2019 front gardens, in armored cars in daylight asking questions, taking detail at sub-machine gunpoint. And the British media\u2019s propaganda warfare, relentless in it\u2019s blanket-censoring thoroughness\u2026 you can sing \u201cFree Nelson Mandela\u201d until the cows come home, but sing a song about Bobby Sands and see what reaction you get.<\/p>\n
1988 and trying to cross the border between Switzerland and France. Seven hours in the no-man\u2019s-land between the two, the entire band strip-searched and questioned after being found to have some copies of \u201cClass War\u201d. Extra plain-clothes officers \u201clooking for guns\u201d, the band only managing to cross intro France when the Swiss refuse to have them back; and after signing papers agreeing to the destruction of the confiscated magazines.<\/p>\n
BACK IN ENGLAND, and the Centre for Policy Studies has unveiled their brand new baby for the 1990\u2019s \u2013 the Poll Tax. Contrary to previous form, this is an attack on the whole of the British working class in one fell swoop; having excelled at picking off sections of it, this time the state proposes to reinvent a sweeping poverty tax which last failed in 1381, the time of the infamous People\u2019s Revolt. Chumbawamba reacts by releasing a collection of acapella songs dating from that revolt up to the present day: \u201cEnglish Rebel Songs\u201d breaks the chain of guitar\/drums pop and tells it\u2019s history of trouble-makers, revolutionaries and rebels whilst around the land anti-Poll Tax groups begin to organise and educate.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I can\u2019t dance to it\u2026 it\u2019s not my revolution\u201d \u2013 Emma Goldman<\/p>\n
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This post is dedicated with the greatest of respect to Iain Aitch who is enjoying his birthday today<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Introduction To History And Where We Stand \/ Which Side Of The Fence\u00a0* Application To Everyday Life \/ Rock And Roll Factory Strike Chumbawumba \u2013 Invasion \/ A.S.O.M. \u2013 Shits Pride A.S.O.M. \u2013 A Bite Of The Apple Is Not Enough \/ Chumbawumba \u2013 Isolation Meat Market \/ Grass So Green Imagine \/ Take Action […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links-downloads"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3336"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6316,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3336\/revisions\/6316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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