EP. 001 - The Music's Not A Threat

Thus spoke Chumbawamba: "The music's not a threat. Action that music inspires can be a threat."

This first episode serves as a whirlwind introduction to the music of the world's most successful anarchist pop band, setting the stage for a sweeping exploration of pop culture and world history, one song at a time.

For a full list of episodes, and to subscribe to the RSS feed, please visit musicthreat.podbean.com

INTRO

[♫: "I get knocked down! But I get up again! You're never gonna keep me down!"]

I want to tell you about them because everyone remembers that song, "Tubthumping", their big pop hit from the late '90s; but they started as an anarchist punk band in the early '80s—like, honest-to-goodness yelling, screaming, fight-the-power punk band.

[♫: unintelligible punk shouting]Sample of the track "30 Years Of The Same Old Shit" from an unofficial live recording called Chumbawamba 1985, released by the Sheffield Tape Archive, available from Bandcamp.com.

And "Tubthumping" obviously doesn't sound like what you think of as punk rock. To quote Rolling Stone, "[they] have trumpet solos, for God's sake."Chris Mundy. "Interview: Chumbawamba: The world's only million-selling anarchists," Rolling Stone, February 5, 1998. Currently available online from RollingStone.com

And while that may not sound exactly punk, they didn't sound exactly punk when they were punk.

Heck, one of their early punk releases was an acappella folk record. Because why not?

[♫: "I saw him, I saw him! Hanging on the old barbed wire. (I saw him)..."]"Hanging On The Old Barbed Wire", a WWI soldier's song from their 1988 folk album English Rebel Songs 1381-1914.

So, yeah, they have a fascinating journey through pop music and pop culture. There's just so much that happened in the 15 years before their big hit, and so much more in the 15 years afterwards.

But through their whole 30 year(!) career as a band, through all the changes in sound and style, they were always anarchists. And I mean: all unanimous decision-making, pooled communal resources, live in an abandoned building, Monty Python and the Holy Grail-type anarchists

[🎥: "We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune!"]Dennis the Peasant (Michael Palin) sample from the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975).

The band's ideas evolved over the years, and members changed as people moved in and out of their shared house, and in and out of the band. At the time of their big hit, there were eight of them: Lou, Danbert, Paul, Boff, Jude, Alice, Dunstan, Harry, and sound engineer/producer Neil, who would officially join the band soon afterwards.Given that they were a collective, it's hard to pick an equitable order to list the band members in. I went with the one they used for the Tubthumper liner notes.

I know I kinda sped through that, but there'll be time for longer introductions later, and for now I'd rather focus on the songs. Because you can probably guess, a band of anarchists, their lyrics are about more than your average pop song.

In my research notes, I have songs broken out by topic, and the topic list includes:

You know, just regular pop music stuff... if your pop band is also an anarchist collective.

And yeah, we're going to talk about what that means, and maybe even what anarcho-syndicalism is. And what does any of this have to do with that song that's going to be stuck in your head for the rest of the day.

[♫: "I get knocked down! But I get up again! You're never gonna keep me down!"]

To quote Boff Whalley, Chumbawamba's guitarist, "Context is everything."Boff Whalley. Footnote*, (Hebden Bridge, UK: Pomona, 2003), 143.

And In their liner notes and interviews and introductions to the songs when they played live, the band is constantly putting their work into context—explaining themselves, and acknowledging the sources for their ideas, making it really easy to follow up and find out more.

So that's what I want to do. Follow up and find out more. One song at a time, just dig a little deeper, and try to really understand what the songs are about. And who cares?

Well, me, obviously, but, like, actually, why does any of this matter? And what should we do about it?

I guess that's probably obvious. But I just want to say up front that I'm not trying to make anyone like Chumbawamba as a band. Maybe their music just is not your style, there's nothing wrong with that. (Although they played so many styles, they've got to have done something you'd like.) But, real talk: I don't love every Chumbawamba song.

And I'm also not trying to sell anyone on their anarchist philosophy. I'm not an anarchist, and just like I don't love every song musically, I'm going to disagree with them on any number of things, both philosophically and in terms of facts—they got stuff wrong sometimes, and I don't want to gloss over that.

But even when we disagree, I am still interested in the the subjects they choose to focus on, and the ways that they approach them in their music.

And if I stick to just songs from their studio albums—nothing from live albums, EPs or compilations; no B-side, no songs from their DIY cassette days—that's about 193 songs.

One song per episode, two episodes a month, that should take about... 7½ years.

I've spent the last couple of years slowly assembling research and getting a basic sense of what each song is about. But that's only really made me more aware of all the things I still don't know.

[♫: "All I know is that I don't know! (Woah-oh.) All I know is that I don't know nothin'... "]"Knowledge", originally by Operation Ivy, as covered by The Aquabats! I got this song as a free download from The Aquabats!'s website back in the day, but I believe it was recorded for the tribute compilation Take Warning: The Songs Of Operation Ivy (more information on that release at Discogs.com).

I'm easily overwhelmed by things that I don't know. Just like I'm easily overwhelmed by things I do know.

Like, do I need to explain that clip I just played? Do you need to know that it's by The Aquabats!? That the song's called "Knowledge"? That it's a cover of a song by Operation Ivy? Do you need to know who Operation Ivy is? Maybe I shouldn't even use the clip until I've done some more research myself so I know everything about it in case anyone asks.

And that's ridiculous, obviously. You didn't need to know all that stuff, and I don't need to know it all to use the clip, but when I start feeling overwhelmed like that, it makes it hard to even know where to begin—not just with the podcast, but with life. There's just so much to know and understand, where do you even start?

Even when I'm limiting myself to just the subject of Chumbawamba, it still took two years of research (on and off) to get me to this point. That's not all the research I'm gonna need to do for the podcast, that's just preliminary research to feel like I could even begin to write the first episode. That took two years.

It actually took me so long that while I was researching, somebody else started a Chumbawamba podcastThe podcast is called Chumbology, more info at their website..

They're doing a different thing to what I'm doing, more discussion-y and less research-y. Still, it's probably a sign that I should just get started. You gotta start somewhere or you never start at all.

This podcast isn't just about Chumbawamba for me (I think they'd honestly be disappointed if it was). And by the end of this, yeah, hopefully I'll understand the meanings of the songs. But also hopefully through looking through this stuff, I'll understand more about the world, and maybe stop being overwhelmed.

[♫: "(I know there must be more...) THE MUSIC'S NOT A THREAT! (🎥:Is that a threat?!) ♫: ACTION! THAT MUSIC INSPIRES! (🎥:Is that a threat?) ♫: CAN BE A THREAT! (🎥:Are you threatening me?)"]The theme song is a clip of "The Music's Not A Threat" by Chumbawamba, with some added instrumentation by me, and interjected samples from a various movie characters who are unsure whether or not they are being threatened.

So after all that introduction, we're finally getting into what an episode of this podcast is really going to be about: breaking down the context and background of one song.

This first episode's still gonna be a little weird—I mean, weirder than the fact that it's a Chumbawamba podcast—just because I'm having to introduce so many things for the first time.

But from here on it'll be structured more like a "normal" episode is going to be. (By which I mean it will have some amount of structure.)

–not that one. (I'll probably save the episode on "Tubthumping" for last. Everybody knows you don't play the big hit at the beginning of the set.)

No, the song I want to focus on is actually another song you've heard already. And you've heard it already because I used a piece of it as the theme music. The song is called “The Music’s Not A Threat”, which is... also the title of this podcast.

This song's not actually on one of their studio albums, so this episode won't even count towards my 193, but... oh well. I want to talk about it, so we’re gonna talk about it.

This song first appears on some of the band's early cassettes, but the version I'm gonna be using is from their first vinyl release—a little 10-ish minute record just called Revolution.

PART 1 - CASSETTES

Ok, so one of the foundations of the punk scene Chumbawamba started in is the Do-It-Yourself, or “D.I.Y.” ethic. Basically just, as much as possible, trying to do things for yourself rather than relying on the institutions of mainstream society.

So, if you were a punk band in the UK in the 80's who wanted to get your music out there, you recorded it on cassettes.

Blank cassettes were relatively cheap, they could be recorded and duplicated at home on consumer-grade equipment, they're small and hardy and easy to send through the mail.

Punk zines like Maximum Rocknroll, Profane Existence and Flipside provided ways for fans of the underground scene to connect with bands of the underground scene and deal directly with the bands to get their recordings. So bands could write, record, advertise, and distribute their music almost entirely outside of mainstream channels.

PART 2

They made tapes of their own recordings, they made split releases with other bands, they made compilation benefit cassettes for various causes, and contributed their songs to benefit cassettes made by others.

To quote Chumbawamba vocalist Alice Nutter about those early releases, "I have no idea how many demo tapes... We were on everybody and her auntie’s benefit tape; we agreed to almost everything.”Alice Nutter, "Come On Baby, Let's Do The Revolution: The Story of Chumbawamba," interview by Lance Hahn, Maximum Rocknroll 268 (September 2005): 96. Available online from Archive.org.

She has no idea how many tapes they made, and even after all my research, neither do I. So, I'm not going to talk about this early stuff very much, because:

Maybe that’s a little harsh, but this style of music in general was never really my thing. Apologies to any real punks out there, I was always more of a pop punk.

Anyway, I said "The Music's Not A Threat" was a track on the Revolution record, but that's actually kind of misleading—Revolution doesn't have a track listing. It's over 10 minutes long, but the band call it a "single", and kind of treat it as just one long song made up of different little parts. But many of those parts pop up on other releases as separate tracks with their own names.

This is the other thing about early Chumbawamba, there are no definitive versions of anything.

Their songs were being reworked and redone constantly to keep them topical. Parts of one song will pop up in another song, or two songs will fuse together into one, or one tune will get re-used with different words.

So when I say that there's a 'song' 'called' "The Music’s Not A Threat" on Revolution, what I mean is that this one part of the Revolution mega-song does appear by itself under that name on some other releases.See for example their cassette History Luddite, currently available via this bootleg uploaded to YouTube)

They actually named one of their cassettes The Music's Not A Threat,More info on The Music's Not A Threat cassette from Discogs.com but this song isn't on the track listing, so I don't know if it's on there as part of a different song, or if it's just not on the cassette that's named after it.

So you can see, the details on this early stuff get kind of murky, which is why I’m going to mostly avoid it. But we’re going to talk about "The Music's Not A Threat" because I think this one's important.

And to understand why, now that we've talked about cassette tapes, we need to talk about vinyl.

PART 3 - PERMANENT RECORDS

Releasing Revolution was a turning point for Chumbawamba, it was their first release not on cassette.

Vinyl records cost more, take longer to make, and, importantly, they're permanent.

If you screw up something on a cassette tape, or any magnetized tape like VHS or reel-to-reel, you can go back and re-record it. If you have a cassette of music or something you no longer want, you can wipe it clean and use it for something else.

But that's not true with vinyl, this stuff is set in stone (or set in vinyl). Which is kind of a big deal for a band who were constantly rewriting their material and keeping it current.

And it may seem a little over-dramatic for me to be ascribing so much importance to the switch from one recording format to another. But it's funny, I found a zine interview from 1985 where the interviewer kind of implies that just making a vinyl record (as opposed to cassettes) could be the first step on a slippery slope for Chumbawamba towards shallow, corporate rockstardom.

Ten years after that, in '96, Chumbawamba got some serious backlash from the punk community for signing to the major label EMI—and yeah, we are definitely going to talk about the idea of 'selling out' and what that even means—but it is interesting to see how early those sort of accusations started, and over what.

Like, yeah, maybe records are less DIY than tapes, but not by much. Sure, records have to be pressed in a factory instead of recorded at home, but those blank tapes were made in factories, too.

So maybe the interviewer's overstating his case—or maybe he called it on Chumbawamba selling out ten years before it happened. Either way, I'm not the only person who thinks this format shift was a big deal. Revolution was their first record on vinyl, and they thought long and hard about what to put on it.

PART 4 - VIVA LA REVOLUTION

Alice described the Revolution record as a statement of intent” for the band.Nutter, "Come On Baby," 96. And this song, "The Music's Not A Threat", was so important to that statement that the full lyrics are front and center of the Revolution record sleeve. (Granted, the song's only a few second long, so the ‘full lyrics’ are less than ten lines)

But if Revolution is a statement of intent, "The Music's Not A Threat" is the statement of intent for that statement of intent.

[♫: "if our music makes you happy,
but content–
it has failed.
If our music entertains,
but doesn't inspire–
it has failed.
THE MUSIC'S NOT A THREAT.
ACTION THAT MUSIC INSPIRES
CAN BE A THREAT."]The full Revolution liner notes are available at Discogs.com

And that's it, that's the whole thing: "If our music makes you happy, but content–it has failed. If our music entertains, but doesn't inspire–it has failed. The music's not a threat. Action that music inspires can be a threat."

And that's not the only place this idea shows up. If you look at old pictures, the band had those last two sentences on huge banners at their live shows:

So it's on the front cover of their record, it's constantly behind them when they played, obviously this idea, "The Music's Not A Threat," was important to them. So let's talk about what it means.

PART 5 - IS THIS A THREAT?

Because honestly, one of the reasons I didn’t get into punk when I first came into contact with it was a genuine fear of physical harm going to punk shows. People get hurt in mosh pits—depending on the mosh pit, that’s almost the point.

But, luckily for me, Chumbawamba were never a slam-dancing kind of band. So that isn't the threat we're talking about.

But anarchists do have kind of a bad reputation for inciting violence. It’s the first thing the average person thinks of when they think of anarchy. Just violence and chaos.

[🎥: “I’m an agent of chaos.”]Joker (Heath Ledger) sample from the film The Dark Knight (2008).

Anarchist writer Alexander Berkman, in his book The ABC of Anarchism, puts the section "Is Anarchism Violence?" before the section "What Is Anarchism?" Even a hundred years ago, he knew what would be on people's minds when they heard [🎥: "anarchy"].

We'll come back to Berkman's answer to the question "Is Anarchism Violence?", just like we'll come back to the question of whether Joker is an anarchist. Maybe we'll do like a film night or something: Dark Knight, double feature with V for Vendetta, anarchist book club discussion to follow.This sounds like a joke, but I'll probably do it.

For now, let's just say: anarchism as a philosophy is more complex than that. And the relationship between anarchism and violence—and between Chumbawamba and violence—is more nuanced. Most things are, when you get down to it.

Anyway, at least in this case, violence is not the threat we’re talking about.

Well, for context, it’s important to remember the target audience for punk records: Punks.

I guess that’s obvious, punks are punks are punks are punks. And the band wouldn’t stay satisfied just preaching to the choir for long—even back then, they wanted to reach beyond the punk converted, but for now, they knew their audience.

It’s important to keep that in mind because the album—the lyrics and the liner notes— kind of takes it as a given that you share some basic background and assumptions with the band, either as punks or anarchists.

Now, punk and anarchy are not synonymous. Not all anarchists are punks, not all punks are anarchists. But in their own ways and for their own reasons, both groups' visions of an ideal world are very different from the one we live in.

To quote another interview with Alice, "'There has to be some kind of an alternative to this, because this' — she gestures dismissively at [...] the whole of the status quo — 'this is crap.'"Chuck Crisafulli. "Chumbawamba: Wanna buy a revolution?," We Rock So You Don't Have To: The Option Reader #1, ed. Scott Becker (San Diego, CA: Incommunicado, 1998), 31. Interview conducted January 1998, originally published in Option magazine.

[🎥: “It’s about destroying the status quo.
Because the status… is not… quo.]Dr. Horrible (Neil Patrick Harris) sample from the video series Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (2008).

Now by itself, that's not a super radical position. Every politician who has ever run for office has fundamentally run on the idea that "things should be done differently."

If you really get down to it, very few people believe that everything is so perfect that nothing about it could benefit from any kind of improvement. We may disagree about what, and to what extent, but we could all use a little change.Smash Mouth reference very much intentional.

But whether you would agree with their specific stances or not, chances are that in your own way, you would also like to be a threat to the status quo.

Actually, though, if the status quo is the way things are, then technically speaking, any change is a threat to it. And by that definition, “the music’s not a threat” could be rephrased as “the music won't cause change,” or at least "music by itself won't change the world."

Action—which music can inspire—but the action, not the music, is what matters.

“[THE] MUSIC'S NOT A THREAT... And never has been, unless it gets us off our arses.”From the History Luddite liner notes (see link above).

In other words, you can have the highest ideals in the world, but if you never act on them, what good are they?

What good is socially-conscious music if it doesn't cause socially-conscious action?

...remember when I made that joke about David Bowie being the real threat to the status quo?

There is some music that really does seem like a threat. Or at least the powers-that-be seem to take it that way.

That's why music gets censored, because at least somebody feels threatened by it.

The punk zine Profane Existence for a long time had the motto "Making Punk A Threat Again,"I'm not sure of the exact origin of "Making Punk A Threat Again", but for examples of its use by Profane Existence, see the second page of issue #24 or the front cover of issue #56. harking back to the effect that early punk bands had on mainstream culture when they first came out. The shock of those loud, angry sounds, and the extreme, out-there clothing, and art aesthetic... it really did feel like a threat to something.

It's kind of hard to remember that now when there's stores selling "punk" fashion in every major mall. It's hard to see what people were so threatened by.

Just like it's kind of hard to picture what was so threatening about Elvis. Wiggling your hips like that won't even raise an eyebrow now, but at the time, it was really controversial.

It's hard to imagine because we live in the world that those hips built. Elvis shook it at the culture 'til the culture shook right back.

So maybe music—or at least musicians—really can be a threat all by themselves... although, even in those examples, it's still the *impact* of the music that's the threat. It's what the music will make people do:

Hidden, backwards, Satanic messages will make people [hidden, backwards, Satanic message].

N.W.A.'s "Fuck Tha Police" will make people fuck the police... That kind of thing.

PART 6 - CREATIVE DESTRUCTION

Again, based on pop cultural depictions like The Joker, people have lots of ideas about what anarchists want.

[🎥: "Some men just want to watch the world burn."]Alfred (Michael Caine) sample from the film The Dark Knight (still 2008).

Now, I can't speak for every anarchist—I can't even speak for every member of Chumbawamba, they had their own individual opinions, and those changed and evolved over time.

But there's this little snippet of melody you can hear in the background of "The Music's Not A Threat". It's one of those little building blocks that pops up repeatedly in their early work, and I think it really succinctly summarizes why Chumbawamba is doing what they do.

In the interview quoted earlier, Alice puts it another way: "I just think it's worth talking about some better ways of doing things. It is possible that there are better ways."Crisafulli. "Wanna buy a revolution?," 25.

It isn't that they want to "watch the world burn." This isn't about destruction—or at least not destruction for destruction’s sake.

And what that something better is for them will be the subject of many future episodes, but the key point here applies regardless of the change you want to build. Because the point is: building takes action. Action that this music is meant to inspire. Action to change the world.

That’s pretty ambitious. Most pop music—or most music in general—doesn’t really try to do anything other than be good music.

(And there’s nothing wrong with that, per se. I'd like to think that there’s a place for bubblegum pop, even in the revolution.)

But the point of this music, the point of Chumbawamba’s music, according to this song, is to inspire change—preferably, you know, positive change.

And it's kind of the central question for this podcast. That’s why I chose it for the title.

As someone who’s proposing to spend the next... however many... episodes talking about the historical, political, and philosophical content and implications of music, it seems like an important question to keep front and center.

When the band finally disbanded in 2012, their final message included these words:

“If others have been inspired to switch off the telly and do something useful because of all this, then that will be our measure of success.”The band's final message, simply titled "THE END" has been the main page of their website since it was posted in 2012. It's still there.

Well... I was inspired to start this podcast. Does that count? Is that something useful?

OUTRO

This podcast wouldn't have been possible without the Seattle Public Library. (The podcast is not sponsored by Seattle Public Library.)

The internet is a wonderful place, full of information, but for really in-depth resources, you just can't beat the library.

Having said that, I also want to give a huge shoutout to the Wikimedia Foundation. (This podcast is not sponsored by the Wikimedia Foundation.)

Is the information about Chumbawamba on Wikipedia sometimes completely inaccurate? Yes.

But Wikipedia was never meant to be a perfect resource. At it's best it's a jumping-off point, a collection of basic information, with well-cited sources to look into yourself if you want to find out more.

I've benefited immensely from Wikipedia, Wikiquote, and Wiktionary (although I obviously do my own research to back them up). But also, they developed the free, open-source MediaWiki software, which is the basis for websites like This Might Be A Wiki—an obsessively thorough fan-made resource on the music They Might Be Giants, that partially inspired this project.Specifically, This Might Be A Wiki (tmbw.org) had a page each song to explain lyrical references and debate possible interpretations. It was an early source of fuel for the kind of obsession that spawned this podcast. Explain XKCD (which started as a blog, but switched to being a wiki a few years ago) serves a similar purpose for the webcomic xkcd.

Not only that, but the whole open-source/Wiki concept is a great example of anarchist principles in action. (We'll get back to that. Probably in the episode for the song "Rebel Code," if not sooner.)

But most of all, because I use the MediaWiki software myself to keep all my research organized. It may have taken me two years to get this all together, but it would have taken even longer without them.

So finally, in the spirit of taking action, when this episode goes live, I’ll be making a small donation to the Wikimedia Foundation. Just paying it forward for all the free resources that've been so helpful for me up 'til now.

And as a reminder to myself that the podcast's not a threat unless it inspires action.

If you also feel inspired to support the WikiMedia foundation, I'll put a donation link up on MusicThreat.net on the page for this episode, which is MusicThreat.net/ep/001 (that's "Music-Threat-dot-net-slash-E-P-slash-double-0-one"), where you can also find transcripts, footnotes, and citations for my sources.

And if that's not enough, then you can also get in touch with questions, comments, or any related nonsense. Contact information on the website.

With any feedback or criticism, I'd just ask that you offer it as you would to a well-intentioned friend, and I’ll try to accept it the same way. (Thanks in advance)

THE MUSIC'S NOT A THREAT