The long-awaited sequel to the first 7 Chumbawamba albums: the last 7 Chumbawamba albums! From Tubthumper to ABCDEFG, plus special bonus: In Memoriam: Margaret Thatcher. Also a long tangent about record labels.
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[Start of transcript]
Hi there. Welcome back(!) to The Music's Not A Threat, a podcast about history, culture, and an anarchist pop band called Chumbawamba.
This interlude is the second of two, laying out the basic timeline of the band's career over their 14 albums. Last time we made it up through their 7th, Swingin' With Raymond, just before the album Tubthumper, and it's hit single, "Tubthumping".
[♫: "I get knocked--"]
But in order to really talk about that album, we need to back up and talk a little about record labels.
If you look at a vinyl record, you'll see a label in the center with the artist's name, the song name, and most likely, the company manufacturing and selling the record. On older vinyl especially, this company logo will often be the most prominent thing on the label, much larger than the artist name and song. This is probably why record companies are so often called... record labels.
Fundamentally, a label is a company whose goal is to make money by selling music. Now, art and money being a somewhat controversial mix, record labels have a pretty well-deserved reputation for embodying everything that's wrong with both music and business, especially among anti-establishment, anti-corporate-types like punks. Record companies are incentivized to push artists toward safe, mainstream, financially-motivated choices, with very little concern for things like "authenticity" or "treating artists fairly" or "the songs being good".
Bands signing to a major label especially might be accused of "selling out" -- making art for the wrong reasons, taking orders from the corporate overlords, trading their artistic integrity for money and fame. And for ideologically anti-establishment bands, signing to any label could be seen not just as a an aesthetic betrayal, but as moral failure -- supporting or legitimizing an exploitative and corrupt corporate system.
Of course that contradiction never stopped the suits from trying to cash in on anti-establishment music. Mega-label EMI signed seminal punk band the Sex Pistols in 1976, then dropped them a few months later for... you know, acting like punks. They even wrote a song about it:
[♫: "Who? EMI! EMI!"]"EMI" by the Sex Pistols, from their album Never Mind The Bollocks.
A few years after that in 1979, EMI merged with Thorn Electrical Industries to form "Thorn EMI", a company which was, among other things, involved in arms manufacturing making the label an even more obvious target for counter-cultural ire. In Chumbawamba's early days, they appeared on an anti-Thorn EMI compilation called simply Fuck EMI, which tells you basically everything you need to know about the overall punk attitude toward record labels.
So, given that attitude, like many punk bands, Chumbawamba started out acting as their own record label. And even though it was just them doing everything themselves, they did pick a label name to put on their... labels. First it was "Sky and Trees", and then by the time the Revolution record came out, it was "Agit Prop" -- short for "Agitation Propaganda". They knew what they wanted to do.
But as it turns out, what they wanted to do was not to run a record label. By the band's own admission, they weren't particularly good at it, and in the days before the internet, the task of manufacturing and distributing their own recordings was a lot of work, and not what they wanted to be focused on.
Luckily for them, members of fellow punk band Flux of Pink Indians had started their own indie label called "One Little Indian" and Chumbawamba joined up with them. They released a handful of records on OLI; the band made the recordings, they designed the packaging, and OLI released what they made... until 1995, when they were ready to release their newest album...
As usual, the band handled writing and recording themselves, but when they delivered the finished product to OLI, the label didn't want to release it. They didn't think it would sell,Many people have pointed out the irony of how well Tubthumper ended up selling given OLI thought it wouldn't, but in their defence, the main audience OLI was focused on probably was less interested in this era of Chumbawamba than the larger public turned out to be. and they wanted Chumbawamba to do... something else. Details are hazy about what exactly the label didn't like, but the band didn't want to change anything -- they'd made the record they made, and if OLI wasn't interested in that...
Well, this is when Chumbawamba got a very interesting offer from a German record company -- or rather, the German arm of a multinational conglomerate. A little record label called...
[♫: "EMI!"]
And EMI Germany offered to release the album exactly as they'd recorded it. No suggestions, no changes; everything they wanted.
...but this is EMI we're talking about. By this point the company had de-merged from Thorn so at least they weren't still in the arms business, but... Fuck EMI, right? A group like Chumbawamba signing with any major label, let alone with EMI specifically... the optics were strange, at best.
On the other hand, it looked like a genuinely good deal for the band. They got to release the record as they made it, have it reach more people, and get paid more for their trouble. Win-win-win and no artistic compromises. (Whether this counts as "selling out" is a question for a future episode. Probably many future episodes. Chumbawamba had been accused of selling out since at least the Revolution record, so if and when they did, and what that means, is a complicated issue that deserves in-depth analysis... another time.)
Charitably, then, the band probably figured they'd tour around for a few months on the label's dime, reach a few new people, and then get quietly dropped from the roster when they didn't produce a radio hit. 'Cause what were the chances of that happening, right?
[♫: "I get knocked down! But I get up again! You're never gonna keep me down!"]
Musically, Tubthumper is relatively close to the loud side of Swingin', but now with 90's dance beats behind it. Lyrically, the songwriting is more like Slap! or Shhh, in that almost every song, you're not really going to get the meaning just from listening. If you heard them introduce the songs in concert, or went to their website, or looked at the liner notes, or just asked them, you'd find out exactly what they were about. Chumbawamba was always willing to explain themselves, and the liner notes for this album provided explanations and a ton of quotes to give context to the music... so it's really too bad that the US version of the liner notes got shunted off to the band's website rather than, you know, actually being in the liner notes of the CD -- but that's a story for another time.
[♫: "I get knocked--"]
One way or the other, the album's lead single "Tubthumping" became a massive surprise success. The band who had expected to become a no-hit wonder suddenly became a one-hit wonder, with all the accompanying attention and publicity. The question of how well they leveraged this situation to get the message out there and make the world a better place... well, that's kind of the whole subject of this podcast. One of the whole subjects, anyway.
This did leave the band in an interesting position as they went to record their next album -- their ninth overall, but there first as a "major label band," and their first as "the band who did that "I get knocked down!" song."I'm skipping over the compilation Uneasy Listening, which was released in 1998 to give listeners a snapshot of the previous 15 years of Chumbawamba material which might not have heard, and which may not have even been released in their country.
[♫: "I get knocked--"]
The contract that let them release Tubthumper as-recorded also gave them almost total creative control over their future output, which is very unusual for a band in that position. So as much as the label might want another "Tubthumping", the band could once again basically do whatever they wanted.
The resulting album, released in 2000, is called What You See Is What You Get, or by the acronym: WYSIWYG. The cover of the album is the face of a dog, but when you fold the cover open, it turns out to be part of a much larger picture of two dogs humping. On the surface: fun, goofy, maybe even cute. But look even a little bit more closely, there's something more subversive just below the surface. Maybe that's a metaphor, or maybe golden retriever is just a golden retriever. (It's probably actually a collie mix.)With thanks to Morgan, the podcast's resident dog expert, who consulted on this joke.
[♫: "She's got all the friends that money can buy, she's the apple of her daddy's eye..."]"She's Got All The Friends"
Musically, WYSIWYG's a big shift away from Tubthumper, just like Tubthumper was a big shift from what came before it. The dance beats are all but gone. There's a few songs that could have fit on the loud side of Swingin'...
[♫: "Jesus in Vegas! Taking care of business!"]"Jesus In Vegas"
But if there's any single way to describe what is a pretty eclectic album, it would be "pop" -- just not 90's pop. There's bits in there that remind me of doo-wop, old time, cowboy country... different styles and eras of popular music from the 30's to the 70's. The 22 tracks on the album vary in length from 21 seconds to 4.5 minutes, and basically none of them were radio material in the year 2000. They didn't write pop hits, at least not on purpose, and after WYSIWYG failed to produce another "Tubthumping", they were dropped by the label, to the surprise of absolutely no one, least of all the band themselves.
Back out on their own, they decided to try being their own label again, christening this new attempt "Mutt Records" and releasing their next album: Readymades in 2002.
The French artist whose name is spelled Marcel Duchamp but pronounced [maʁsɛl dyʃɑ̃] originally gave the name "Readymades" to a series of art pieces that were literally just everyday objects put up in art galleries: a snow shovel, a coat rack, most famously a urinal laid on its side and titled "Fountain." We'll talk more about Duchamp as time goes on, but riffing on this kind of "found art", the songs on Readymades the album are backed up by samples of various British folk singers...
[♫: "And they sent him to the wars to be slain, to be slain. And they sent him to the wars to be slain."]"Jacob's Ladder", sampling "The Pretty Ploughboy" sung by Harry Cox.
The dance beats are back now, but this time it's all about that chill groove.
[♫: "There'll always be a happy hour for those with money, jobs, and power..."]"Coal Not Dole"
This addition did require a slight tweak to the title of the re-recorded version, now: English Rebel Songs 1381-1984. (They really are much better singers by this time. If you're looking it up, it'd definitely worth listening to the re-recording rather than the original.)
Their next album, released the next year (in 2004) is simply titled Un. The way it's written on the album cover and the CD spine, just before the band name, it looks like the album might be called "Un-Chumbawamba". And it is different. It's not the Chumbawamba you know, but this is their eleventh album, so if you've been listening this far, you know they never stayed the same for long.
There's more acoustic instrumentation going on here than in a lot of their previous work; I've seen people say that it has influences from "world music", which seems to mostly mean "music from places where they don't speak English" (so, most music), but it is true that after Readymades and English Rebel Songs dialed in on English folk traditions, the influences here are more wide-ranging.
[♫: "Mr. Kokoschka, it just happened again. (Sad, so sad...) They struck the museum like a hurricane. (Sad, so sad...)"]"On eBay"
Lyrically, the topics are as wide-ranging as ever, from the then-recent invasion of Iraq, to the revolutionary potential of open source software. But as has become usual at this point, you do kind of need the liner notes to parse out those meanings exactly -- but at this point in their career, with Tubthumper a few years and a few albums behind them, it's safe to say that anyone still listening to Chumbawamba at this point us probably willing to check out the liner notes.
This album was also notable for being the last one recorded by Chumbawamba as an 8-piece band. Membership had always been flexible, and there had been lineup changes before, but this was the biggest single shakeup since their early days. After Un, dummer Harry Hamer, vocalists Alice Nutter, Danbert Nobacon, and Dunstan Bruce all left to go do other things. No fights, no drama -- as far as I can tell everybody was and is still good friends.
This left four members of the band: Lou Watts, Boff Whalley, Neil Fergusson, and Jude Abbot. Now without a drummer, and without their three most energetic vocalists (Alice, Danbert and Dunstan did most of the shouting for the band), their evolution towards a quieter, softer, folksier sound was probably inevitable, even if they weren't already kind of headed that direction anyway.
And with this new four-piece lineup, they recorded their next album: A Singsong And A Scrap ("scrap" being British slang for a fight.)
[♫: "A compass and a cap. A singsong and a scrap."]"You Can (Mass Tresspass, 1932)"
That title is reinforced by two pictures in the liner notes: one is an old photograph of what looks like four American frontierspeople, one holding a fiddle, another holding a shotgun; the other is a picture of the band in the same pose. (Both pictures have been used as the album cover, depending on which version you get.) A fiddle and a shotgun, a singsong and a scrap. The message seems pretty clear: sing sweetly, but don't let anybody push you around. That's the Chumbawamba way.Fun fact: A Singsong And A Scrap is the first album I can remember ordering from a record store. At the time, I mostly discovered new music by finding it in the used CD rack. I'd found Tubthumper, WYSIWYG, Readymades, and Un that way, but this one I had to order new. Who would have guessed what started in the used CD rack would eventually lead us to this podcast?
During this time they also released the live album Get On With It, the title being a reference to Monty Python I'm sure--
[🎥: "Get on with it!"]From Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
--but also a nod to the band's tendency to give long introductions between songs when they played live.
[🎥: "Yes! Get on with it! YES! GET ON WITH IT!"]Ibid.
It was three years before their next album, by which time accordionist Phil Moody had joined the band (he had already played some songs on A Singsong And A Scrap). At this point, they also joined the No Masters Cooperative, a indie record label/co-op which has I think the best possible name."No Masters" like no master recordings (the industry term for the original recording that copies are made from) and "No Masters" like the political situation that anarchists want. The No Masters Cooperative. It's such a good name.
Anyway, The Boy Bands Have Won, released in 2008. I've already talked about this album at the beginning of the "Sing About Love" episode, including its record-setting-ly long full title . You can look it up if you want to refresh your memory, but to summarize the message: culture and cultural artifacts like songs are meant to be shared and modified, not owned, restricted, or frozen.
[♫: "Those were the days, my friend, we took the Stratford End; now it's a Theatre of Dreams™..."]"All Fur Coat And No Knickers". If you're not listening to the audio recording, it's important to note that the trademark symbol is sung (as "T-M", slant-rhyming with "friend" and "end").
It shouldn't be a surprise that the band who made Jesus H. Christ would be anti-copyright, or that a band whose sound changed constantly would be anti-stagnation, or that a bunch of old punks would be anti-boy-band. (Me personally, I'm a One Direction fan, so make of that what you will.)
And if the album's title is an encouragement to not stay in one place, the album's songs -- all 25(!) of them, ranging from 40 seconds to 3.5 minutes -- are about all kinds of things. With that crazy track list and a lot of genre hopping, it's a lot like a much more acoustic version of WYSIWYG. But in many ways, that's very Chumbawamba, and in keeping with the album's theme: looking back, looking forward, doing whatever we want and having a good time along the way.
Their next album, which ended up being their last, came two years later in 2010. ABCDEFG is softer and quieter than their previous albums, I wouldn't describe it as folky per se, not like Singsong is, although I don't know what else you would call this sound:
[♫: "Just our voices, that's all. Everywhere a concert hall. Voices, that's all. Lullaby and call."]"Voices, That's All"
As we noted in the episode for "Introduction", this album is all songs about music: how its preserved, how it spreads, and what's even the point of it.
And maybe all this quiet introspection was a sign that the end was nigh for the band. They were still playing and touring for another two years, but in 2012 they announced they were disbanding. They recorded a DVD of their farewell performance called Going Going, and then... they were gone.
...except for their final release, which came in 2013. Before their breakup, if you stopped by the merch table, or if you went on the website, you could pre-order a CD called In Memoriam: Margaret Thatcher (the former prime minister, who at the time was still alive), with the promise that the CD would be shipped out in commemoration when she died. Morbid? Yes. In bad taste? Possibly. Chumbawamba? 100%.
[♫: "So long, so long. You kept me waiting so long, so long. Let me serenade you with one last song, you're back where you belong. So long, so long, so long..."]"So Long, So Long"
[♫: "It is not merely stunned, it has ceased to be, expired, and gone to meet its maker."]Margaret Thatcher paraphrasing Monty Python's "Dead Parrot Sketch" in a speech from 1990, sampled by Chumbawamba in the song "General Pinochet Bids Farewell From Beyond The Grave". According to The Independent, the reference came from her speechwriter, not from the Iton Lady herself being a Monty Python fan.
And when Baroness Thatcher did expire on April 8, 2013, the final Chumbawamba record dropped in the postbox, and that was that.
The band members are still around, doing various things, including making music: Danbert records as a solo artist, Dunstan and Harry started a band called Interrobang?!, Boff works with a group called Commoners Choir...
Chumbawamba is dead, long live Chumbawamba.
Of course, that's just a general overview, there's still plenty more to talk about, details to fill in, and so on. That's the topic for the rest of the podcast.
So... onward. Next time we'll be back to the songs. Until then, be well, I'll talk to you soon. And whatever you do, please cite your sources.
Thanks for listening.
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