“Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba: Everything You Didn't Know

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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of My Heart Radio. Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret histories and little known fascinating facts and figures behind your favorite TV shows, movies, music and more. We are your two tub thumpers of trivia. I'm Alex Hegel and I'm Jordan run Tag and I've put the cart ahead of the horse this time around with that introduction, because it gives away what we're here to do, which has spend way too much time talking about Chumba Womba's tub Thumping, which turned twenty five this year. I can't say it with a straight face. I remember those dog days of the summer of nineteen seven, nineties, seventy seven, ninety Can you imagine this song was years old? I remember the dog days of summer of ninety seven, when our nation turned its hopeful eyes across the pond, hoping once more our forbears in the United Kingdom might help heal a divided nation through the gift of song. Truly a better time. We're the waning days of cool Britannia. Oasis could do no wrong, The Spice Girls taught us to love again, and a bunch of peace punks from northern England gave us a resolutely working class anthem for the ages. I have nothing else to say about this song because I was ten when this came out, and this is a dumb song for people who like dumb things. This is being mean, But I was ten. This is a ten year old song. You know what I mean by that. It's just loud and obnoxious, and by halfway through you have all the parts and you can just start yelling along. I don't think I had the record. I don't think I listened. I haven't listened to this song while doing this, but I have. I will get into why I have a whole level of respect for this band. What about you? Yeah, I was sort of perfectly positioned as an overly serious ten year old to be supremely annoyed by this song. I figured you would go one extremely thing, would be no middle ground with you know. Yeah, the whole soccer stadium chant nous of it all didn't really really play in my world. In your world, immaculate four part Beach Boys harmonies exactly, Yeah, A song that you could just bang like a pie plate too, didn't really. Yeah, that wasn't really my thing, but I just went a level with listeners right now. This was a song that Higel has been pushing to do for I think months, and I've been really skeptical. But after he gamely agreed to do not just Margaritaville but also American Pie, I figured I owed this to him. But you know the song, having listened to it voluntarily for probably the first time of my life in preparation for this episode, it does have a certain amount of charm. I have to admit, not to mention a very nice message. It's all about endurance and resilience, whether it's about overcoming major life obstacles or just getting so drunk that you can't enter your own home. The song it makes me think of the Frankie boyle bit Is, the Scottish comedian, and he said that the most Scottish thing that he'd ever seen was he saw a guy peeing on a front door to house, and then he took out his keys and opened the door and went inside, So that was the most Scottish thing you'd ever seen. It makes me think of this song for some reason. Yeah, Plus this is all courtesy of a bunch of anti corporate rebel rousers who have marched to the beat of their own tub since day one, standing up for animal rights, gay rights, feminism, and taking a stand against classism. The writer Magdalene Taylor, writing for Male Magazine, describes tub thumping as quote a trojan horse designed to covertly deliver a narco communism to the masses. And uh, yeah, I gotta say you were absolutely right. This story is fascinating and I knew exactly none of it, and I'm so excited to kick it off. Were Nanacho syndicalist collective commune. All decisions have to be put to a uh one of these to a committee vote, which then has to be so that has to be ratified by two thirds majority. Yeah. I you know, I've read like Emma Goldman and some of that anarchist theory, and I can tell you that anyone who thinks anarchists are into chaos is extremely wrong. Anarchists are extremely into order and rules anyway. From Chumbawoma's origins as a deeply principled set of anarchists in Northeast England, to the controversy they courted in the press, to the still raging debate as to whether this is a great one hit wonder or one of the most annoying songs of all time. Here is everything you didn't know about tub thumping. I can't even say it with a straight face, still never will be able to uh. To understand part of what makes the success of this song so hilarious, you need to know a little bit about the music scene that the group emerged from when they played their first show in January two. That's right. They had been a band for fifteen years when this song came out. Most people probably have a passing familiarity with sex, pistols and anarchy in the UK and the clash, But I would wag your guest that unless you spent a lot of time in the punk rock trenches, you aren't fully aware of the sub subgenre of anarcho punk. I was not. I gathered as much anargroup punk or peace punk, which is I believe the preferred term. I don't know. It's an umbrella and under which a very loose conglomeration of second Ish wave British punk bands fall. I say second Ish because the Godfather, the Granny, the whale spring, the watershed from which these bands fall is crass um that's the name of the band. He's not making a judgment. Well, I think they took it. I think they actually took that name from Ziggy Stardus. The kids was just cross. I believe that is where they got the name from. Love Ziggy Bauhause covered Ziggy as well, but they were contemporaries of the Sex Pistols, and the Penny Rambo, who is one of the main founders, was like the same age a as all of these guys. So they heard all this music, but rather than signed a record contract, they moved into this big ramshackle commune called the Dial House, which is this enormous farmhouse, and they you know, vegetarian, passive, non resistance, but they were also like they get weird, but some of the music is very abrasive, and they were this is crass, crass, yeah, and then and it's like an a tremendous breath of fresh air and to the punk scene at this point, because when you think of what they call seventy seven punk, like UK seventy seven, you think of these peacock ludicrous safety pends through their nose plaid bondage trousers. Crass were all black all the time and would like very minimal stage shows, and they were all about like peaceful protest and they did a lot of this direct action stuff like anti vivisection protests, anti animal cruelty. Anyway, these are all bands who had been influenced by the sex pistols in the Clash, but in particularly the case of the Clash, felt they'd sold out their ideals, didn't take all this stuff far enough. So they were invested in being very political and in a lot of cases you you get sort of the underpinnings of what becomes crust punk because they were kind of also into like British heavy metal at the time. So all of that is the scene from which Chumbawomba emerges. Um, I can laugh when you say Chumba Womba, I crash it is. I mean, if you grew up listening to punk rock, you saw they have this truly amazing graphic design logo that's like an auura boros snake and an anarchy a and a peace symbol. It's just one of the It's like the black flag and the dead Kennedy is in the Misfits logo. It's one of the great triumphs of punk graphic design and Crash. They could basically do no wrong and so Chumba Womba are of a piece with them. They come out of this sort of decaying steel mill town of Burnley, Lancashire. They were immediately a band of part. There's a tremendous oral history of this scene called the Day the Country Died, which is a sub human song written by a UK j list and punk rocker named Ian Clasper, and chumb Owoma guitarist Alan boff Whalley told Ian that they were they were not interested in being your bog standard punk rockers. He said, quote, we were desperate right from the start, not to just before people in a band playing rock and roll music. We were fans of early Frank Zappa and things like that, who really tried to challenge their audience with what they did on stage, the way they presented their music, the way they chopped and changed all the time, and like Crass, they embodied this collective, communiesque model of being in a band. They were squatters. A lot of these bands were squatting at the time because you had the whole bottom and falling out of the British economies. A lot of these people had like a lot of the landed gentry had like vacated their homes or moved they couldn't keep up their country homes, and all these punks just moved into them. So they were squatting this big old Victorian house. They were like everybody who came through the house. They were like, can you like bang on a pot in time? Or like strong like you're in the band now were rated by the police repeatedly for drugs uh, and once for bomb making equipment. So they were like doing Weatherman type stuff or being or or being persecuted for without actually doing that. And at least once they talked about Um. They drove a bunch of fellow punks to an animal testing laboratory and broke in and made off with a bunch of beagles and mice. Um, and then they were arrested for it at once. The police like subsequently caught up with all of them because they were like the getaway drivers. They piled all the people into their band van with all these dogs and mice, and then the police caught up with them later. Um. One of the band members I think who sings the Pissing the Night away line, Alice Nutter whose name is Anne Holden, but she renamed herself after a woman who had been hanged as a witch in the sixteen hundreds, which is again, I'm painting a picture of these people, she told Rolling Star. Other band members Harry and lew are a couple now, and Lu and Boff had to relate aation ship for a few years. The rest of us shagged each other occasionally, But you get to a point where once you've done it, you've done it, and it's almost out of the way. You don't have to keep doing it. So a cross between a dorm room and Fleetwood mac and A and a rock and roll protest commune, and you've got early Chumbawamba. I mean, you said this a few minutes ago about how people have this misconception of anarchists as being all about chaos, and you're right. It's not that they don't want rules. They don't want government to impose the rules. They themselves feel the arbiter of a very strict set of rules that everybody has the responsibility of enforcing, and relentlessly democratic, and they do. Some of the interviews I've read in this they talked about it actually being a problem because they would like talking about they produced all of this stuff recorded, produced all this stuff themselves, and they would like they were like, yeah, it would become a big problem because there's twelve people on the record. They would all be in the mixing room asking for their visual contributions to be louder. There's a vice profile from I don't know, I think like or something, and they're all these quotes from like eight members of the band basically giving their take on whether or not to sign with E M I a major label, do a major label deal after being an independent for so long, And it was just so funny, like hearing them these eight very different takes and just like, wow, it must have been impossible to get anything done. The wonder it took him fifteen years to get a song on the charts. But yes, Chumbawamba was from the start a lot less sort of doomy than most of their punk peers. Uh. They kind of had a bit of the you know ken Kisi Mary prankster energy by way. But for instance, another subgenre of punk at this time was OI that's how you put electric avenue style right by short for Oi poloi, which was a punt on Hawaii poloi, which is it means thelar for the working classes. Yes, yes, and so exactly yes, yes, Scott's Sucker, whool against et cetera, um so oi, which is, you know, sort of nominally about working class struggles and culture. This whole genre gave rise to bands and fans that were basically skinheads and it was very popular. Actually, before we go any further, how would you define a skinhead, Well, it was different styles. This gets so in the weeds about like punk rock stuff. I mean, the whole thing, the whole fashion of it emerges from the working class, right, because you had short hair, because we get stuck in machinery. You wore big boots because you need steel toe boots for your industry, your shitty industrial job, right, and so basically early OI um like Schamp sixty nine and Angelic upstarts, and a lot of this stuff is very like it's pub rock. I mean it's essentially pub rock with the musical competency dialed down a little bit. And what as hap and has has happened in the United States, you get people who are very like this is England is the like archetypal thing about this, You know, they wore the documentary they were they would wear the flight jackets because, like there are a lot of the lower class people, their only choice was going into the military. Like that's where you get like a lot of this discarded you know, military ephemera um like the parkas and the flight jackets that are such a part of it. And basically what happens is being very pro England and being pro working class metastasizes into being racist. And that's when you start getting actual white power skinheads, and there's a whole schism in the scene of furiously anti racist. There's actually a group called Sharp which is skinheads against racial Prejudice. And it comes down to the point where they started drilling down into the color of the laces that you tied your boots with meant you were either a white power skin head or an anti racist skin And there's a lot of overlap because these guys who were living these council flats or whatever shared a lot of space with people from the Caribbean that there was a lot of overlap in skinhead music, like actual skins who were into ska, and so you would see like these dudes embraces the suspenders and and these um Fred Fred Perry, what's that Papa top be In an early reggae song from the late sixties was a skinhead anthem, And you know it's it's strange. You've got this social movement with two distinct subsects of it. One is extremely fascinated by, not fascinated by passionate about black culture, and the other subsection is extremely racist and the only thing that you can really tell them apart by are their shoelaces. Yeah, and there's a lot of bands that are still very I don't know about this. I'm going on a limb here, but it's like if the country music industry in the fiftiest clan members in it, because there's like very formative OI bands that became like Screwdriver is the biggest one, and they started out as an OI band and became aggressively racist, and it came over to the States about five ten years later. Like you really start seeing it in its in not ten, that's an exaggeration, but it really in the second wave of punk, Like once you start seeing hardcore takeover in the early eighties, like the Black Flag and um Minor Threats wave of punk, you start seeing people being like, oh, we have like skinheads in our scene, and it culminates in there's a famous Dead Kennedy's song called Nazi Punks off Ah, there's your MANI history of skinheads and well. OI was very popular with journalists at the time in the early eighties, and one in particular, writing for an outlet called Sounds Magazine, got the name of Gary Bushell. And so a young chumble Woman decided to prank this writer, like claiming that they were an OI band that they just made up called skin Disease, which is a great name for a bit is and and this journalist bush Will invited them to record a track for a compilation of OI bands that he was putting out, And so they recorded a song in which the only lyrics are I'm thick repeated sixty four times I'm thick, meaning in you know, English slang like basically I'm stupid um, which really, when you think about it, is kind of great practice for tub thumping because it's just just like a chant. Now. So in their pre Chumble Woman band they called themselves Chimp Eats Banana Um. The drummer Dan Burt no Bacon told band Camp earlier this year, we used to do something called a bed gig, where we would lay on the stage and wake up and start playing. One time we had a gig a couple of miles away from where we lived, and we decided to walk to it. We had pajamason and dressing gowns, and the cops stopped us. They thought we estaped from a mental institution or something, and they were apparently somewhat terrifying. On the stage, there would be just ten people in matching T shirts and asymmetrical haircuts and blindfolds sometimes who it must be said, could barely play their own instruments. Yeah, but you know, an unabashed lack of musical prowess. It's about where their similarity to the punk scene ended. As we mentioned earlier, they stood apart from punk in Northern England by attempting to integrate themselves into the community rather than sort of standing on the outskirts of society. They distributed pamphlets and food the workers families, and they even started a theater troupe to perform for miners children. And they made a point of putting themselves into uncomfortable situations with people who had varying points of view and This eventually caused them to distance themselves from the you know, in quotes punk movement, who they viewed more and more as hard line and humorless, and Boff Wiley of Chumbawamba referred to this as quote a process of unlearning some of the insular and anti social ideas we picked up from an insular and the social political movement. And in his memoir Boff talks about Chumba Womba growing frustrated with the punk scenes quote stamp soaping culture, which was a habit that they would do where they would basically peel stamps off of letters and wash the ink off of it so that they could reuse them. They just thought it was pointless to you know, scam the postal service rather than just participate in the economy like everybody else. They're really interesting. They were not like you have to drop out of society. They were like, you know, you can kind of still do your thing and live by certain ideals. And they got tart and feathered for it. Man. I mean, we'll talk about this later, but people really came at them as being sellout. But as we will discuss, they've were very much like, no, we are like we can we would participate in this, but we will not at any point compromise what we actually believe in, which is and they didn't. I mean, it gets back to the old question of do you change the system from the outside from within? Which is the most effective, and you know, it kind of remains to be seen. And this whole sentiment was echoed in an insert that was included in a Crass Records seven inch I think it was a seven inch and it said, you say you're an anarchist, but you're begging the system for help. You're standing in the doll lines, but you want to be independent. And I think that's kind of their point there, is like, well, you can't have it both ways here. If you're going to rely on the system for sustenance, then don't try to cheat it and try to change outside of it. And the whole million of the time in the eighties is it's interesting because all the eighties US punks were obsessed with the concept that we would be in vulgulfed in a nuclear war. So there's this whole world ending thing. But over in the UK, I mean Thatcher, Margaret Thatcher was their Reagan. She was a tremendously conservative person, but she was stamping down all the working class people. I mean they nationalized the mining industry in Wales and I believe also Scotland and Ireland fact check that. But um, yeah, I mean she was hated by all of these people for this, and so jumble one with particular really glamed onto the miners because they were in the north as the people that they were going to support and the communities that they were going to work within. Um. And the Falklands is the other thing that happens. I mean the Falklands uh pointless war, which people speculate launched is either a flag waving power play or an economic jump starter. But there's a famous crass record called yes Sir, I will where um and they have a picture of this in the liner notes is wild. Prince Charles was meeting with a bunch of Falklands War veterans, including a guy who has been horrifically burned, and Charles, in the fantastically constipated way that the British have of dealing with one another, he says, well you be a good boy, you'd be a good lad or something and get better. Like he says something like you better. You know you you you get better. Thank you for your service. Yeah, and the guy goes, yes, sir, I will, which is you know rightly. They were like horrified that this guy who would law his face in a pointless war was saluting the man who ostensibly sent him there. Anyway. By late Crass had released the first Chumba Womba songs on vinyl called three years Later and Volume two. They put out these compilations called Bulls Detector, and they take their name from this Clash song Garage Land, in which Joe Strummer sings back in the garage with my bullet detector carbon monoxide, making sure it's effective. Um, there's a whole thing about being a garage band, because I think someone had dismissively had written in a review of the Clash, this generation of garage bands should stay in the garage or something like that. Um, and yeah, it's funny because these guys later came at the Clash. I mean, this is the by what the mid eighties, when the early eighties you'd say around this has been the Clash, opening for the Who and doing like their stadium tours. So that's why all these punks were like, oh, you guys have sold out, but they still loved the clash. I mean both Whalley covered this song Joe Land on one of these compilations. Yeah, this whole scene has, as we mentioned earlier, a really strict code of conduct. Tchambama got flak for issuing one of their albums on vinyl instead of the much more affordable cassette like even that was seen as you know too Far. Yeah, yeah, their debut full length. I love this. This is actually the record that I listened to the most while I was researching this. It's called Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records. Not only does Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records sound nothing like tub thumping, it barely sounds like anything else. It was contemporaneous with there's trumpets, there's like tape speed experiments like samples that are on there, slowed down and sped up. Both told MTV of the record, we finally got this collection of songs and ideas together, and about two or three weeks before we went to record it, the Live Aid album came out, so we scrapped everything and rewrote the entire album to react against it. They scrapped all of their songs because they were so upset at Live Aid. He said, quote it was such a big watershed and pop culture and pop history. We felt it deserved some little guys standing up and saying, look, we have a different point of view going on here. We would have participated, but we would have gone up there and explained why children are starving, not just hey send money. And they make a very good point because in Live Aid, when uh, Phil Collins took the concorde across the Atlantic to play at both of them, nothing says feed starving children like a millionaire taking up speed of sound jet from one gig to another and ruining the LEDs up of the Union. Yes sure did, uh yeah, skip the concorde and rehearse phil um. In nineteen eighty nine, they released a ten inch that was just acapella renditions of English Protests songs like the oldest one of these songs is from like eighteen twelve. I what a perverse move. I mean talk about just not even every day now everything is so stage managed, like, oh, your your record has to sound like this, and you have to follow up with the produced blah blah blah. They followed one record that was like cracked New wave with a record that was acapella inclined songs, and Bob said that this got them banned from Maximum Rock and Roll, which were very influential, very famous punk magazine based in San Francisco. He said they actually sat around and had a meeting about this record and decided it was going too far to have a punk band playing acapella folks songs. Um Bob told The Guardian in sixteen that we didn't make any money for at least ten years because we played benefit concerts all the time. You know, they released we talked about the mine workers before they released songs about the striking mine workers. They have one called never Mind the Ballots that's a whole record about how the voting system is rigged. Um. They released a parody cover of let it Be that mocked this charity single that was released by the Sun. The Sun is famously like up there with a Daily Mail, It is like being extremely conservative, extremely bottom feeding UK tabloid and um the chumba womba version of this single was released under the name scab Aid All the all the lyrics mock make fun of the Sun. It charted and it was featured in Enemy. The extremely influential British music magazine before anyone realized it was them, just across the board, subversive, tremendous stuff. I mean, some of the most successful trolls in UK music history. Yeah, exactly exactly, as you meditate on that, We'll be right back with more, too much information. After these messages, the band was at least able to quit their day jobs by the early nineties, at which point, they, like everyone else in the UK at the time, began to fall into this way of techno music and rave culture. Uh. If you've ever seen twenty four hour party people, this is Yeah, this is the There's a great part in the Trip where Steve Coogan posits that Northern England is more influential than the entirety of Wales, and Rob Rob Rob gets extremely upset at him for suggesting that. But it is interesting because I'm wearing a New Order T shirt as we talk about this. I mean, I kind of have a Beatles poster behind me. Or also from Northern England. The whole scene that descended from the Factory, you know, jor Division Begat, New Order, New Order Begat. The rest of the Factory bands as best typified by what probably Happy Mondays right. Primal Scream is another big one from this time, So everyone was into techno music and rave culture and Trumble Woman response to this with releases like they had records called Slap from and From two that had a lot of these um sort of repetitive dance beats and samples. The album was originally intended to be released as Jesus H. Christ you can imagine, Yeah, which, as you can imagine, did not work out for them. Yeah. I think this was like a completely different album that never got released. It was just wall of wall uncleared samples and companies of the most expensive music. You can imagine. It was a total anarchist move. They just stole these iconic songs. They had clips from Sergeant Pepper's only arts club band, The Rolling Stones, Abba Casey and the Sunshine Band, Wings t Rex and Buzzcocks. They even covered Stairway to Heaven. So it's just just the cost of licenses and clearances alone would have made this one of the most expensive albums ever, so it was obviously scrapped. I mean, this would have been what like eight years before The Verve were sued into oblivion for the Bitterstreet Symphony sample. Yeah, yeah, less. I mean I think like one of the Maybe I'm wrong, somebody is going to correct me on this, but I feel like one of the last albums that got away with sort of sampling whatever the hell they wanted was Paul's Boutique, right, and then people started clamping down on that. Yeah, tremendous quote from vocalist Dunston Bruce about this era everybody was going to raves. I think what happened what I found with that movement. It was the first time since punk I felt like I was part of this huge movement and maybe we could actually do something about the state of the world. Looking back, I realized it was only because I was high on ecstasy. I love it so much. If you've read um our band could Be Your Life in the mud Honey chapter, it's so funny because they talk about the same thing. Mark arm is like, yeah, you know, like all these Seattle bands. They made this big thing in the press about like all these Seattle bands, Like we were like buddies and we go to these gigs and we loved each other so much. And I think what it really was was there was this wave of really pure m d a that came through Seattle. At the time, we're all just like loved up on each other, extremely rolling face. I mean, it's hey in Ashbury in the sixties with Owsley acid like White Lightning and all the good all good drugs. But at the dawn of the nineties when Chambawama, we're getting into this kind of Manchester dance club type music, hacienda beats and all that. Chumbawomma band member Alis Nutter told Vice that around this time, at the dawn of the nineties, Chumbawomma realized that a new decade required a different political approach. The band was bored with the politics of victimization the big brother is going to get you line, So instead they worked on this premise that optimism breeds optimism, which I feel like it's the least punk ethos I've ever heard. Yeah, yeah, well, you know, we'll see um. So by the time they go to make this album, Dunston Bruce told The Guardian that before we went made this record, I felt we were in a mess. He said, we'd become directionless and disparate. So the purposely made a record that doubled down on their sense of englishness. In particular Northern England. They recorded this record from August to February seven at Woodland's studio in Castleford, West Yorkshire. Um I assumed going into this that they had signed with a producer for this record. They did not. They made this the same way they made all of their other ones, which were just in a studio with one dude who later became their bass player. Was like still in the Fold, still an insular record. Alic Snoder told The A V Club in seventeen we made tub Thumbing at a point when people had written us off. We made a really terrible record before it. We felt like our backs were against a wall and if we were going to continue to exist as a band, we were going to have to pull together and be really tight. We wanted to prove ourselves to ourselves. Both told The Guardian tub Thumbing was written as a collective. Like everything else. We wanted to make a very English album and the song is about the resilience of ordinary people of Bandark because they're gonna hire a producer, you know, I don't know. Talking to The Guardian back in this Guardian interview, he says, at the time we lived near great pub called the Ford gran in Leeds, Irish, Afro Caribbean, Asian white. Everyone went there. Our next door neighbor, who was Irish, would come home drunk every weekend from there and try to get into his house, fall over and shout for his wife. It was a weekly ritual. Yes and chumba wamma drummer danver Nobacan is it no no bacon because they're probably vegetarian, right okay, which, as you mentioned, is sadly not his real name. Shut a little more light on the situation, which includes where the Danny Boy part of tub Thumping Danny Boy. Yeah, he's talking to the a V Club. Boff was in bed at night with his wife and they heard the next door neighbor coming home. He was super drunk, making a lot of noise. He's singing Danny Boy, which became a lyric in the song. He goes up to the door, he puts his key in, he falls over, and he gets back up. It happened two or three times. He was just so drunk he kept falling over. Eventually he went in and he went to bed presumably and fell asleep. It just clicked in Boff's brain when he woke up the next morning. It fit the chorus your cousin, Marvin no Marvin, no Bacon. You know that new sound you're looking forward, Well, here's a guy falling down. In a different interview, Bob said, we wanted to write a song about this very ordinary sort of sequence of events. Don't know how ordinary it is, but okay, which is basically that a lot of people have jobs they don't particularly enjoy doing, and they don't have much money or opportunity, but they find ways to enjoy themselves and they go out and they have a good time, and at the end of it they'll get up off the floor and go on with life. And they used this vision of the drunken neighbor as a metaphor for the struggles of the middle class held down by the elite. Which, sure, I'll go with that. Why why not? Um? The sweet sounding bridge to the song Pissing the Night Away? I remember that being like minor leg controversial in the States. Like I, I don't think I was allowed to own this because my parents heard that. But did you want maybe? I don't know, you know what? The first record I ever bought was around this time, Um was I've told you this before? Eagle eyed cherry. Oh right, yes, yes, um. And the other one that I I think semi sonic was that around from around this time? No semi because a couple of years later. Anyway, piss It's is wordplay. It's a British pun. Piss is slang for alcohol. It's there, are you on the piss taking the piss? Uh so pissing the night away? It means you were both doing a lot of drinking and urinating. Uh. And that Lollipop Magazine interview, Bob said we wanted a lot more of the video to involve toilets, but we were assured that would be a death wish for the video. And the title, which I've always this is just asinine to me. But the title of the song and the title of the album are different. I gun to my head, I don't know which one it is. One's tub thumper, the other one's tub thumping. Whoa, I never put that together. What's the name of the song now, I'm like, what he knows on this episode, I have no idea tub thumping is the song tub thumper, but it doesn't. On the cover of the album, it just says chumba womba and sub thumper at night, sailor's delight, tub thumping at dawn sailor's morn. That's how you remember that it's insane. Anyway, we either what those both mean is um sort of a town crier situation, someone who stands on a soapbox on the street corner and shouts about what's wrong with the world. Yeah. The American equivalent is basically going on the stump or political campaigning. In other words, a protester or one who makes noise for a cause, which really points to the true meaning of the song. And this is probably a good time to get into the origin of the band's name Chumbawamba, which probably should have done earlier. The official explanation is that chumbawamba is a meaningless string of syllables that's sort of rhyme. However, the most common explanation that I've heard is that band member Dan Bert no Bacon outlined a dream talked about a dream that he had where he needed to pee, but he didn't know which door to use in a public toilet because the sign said chumba and wamba instead of men and women, which terrible. I actually had similar dream once, did. Yeah, I have a dream I was, you know, Buckingham Palace. They do tours. I had a dream that I was like on a tour Buckingham Palace and I really had to go to the bathroom. And I was like just wandering through the halls of the palace myself, desperately trying to find the restroom, and it was getting really bad. And then I'm looking for someone to ask where it is. And then I come upon someone and it's the Queen, and I didn't know, and I didn't know how to approach her because there's all this like protocol for how you address the queen and how you don't turn your back on her, and you know, you speak when spoken to and not before. You know all these things. So I didn't know how to like approach her to ask for the bathroom. And then I woke up. You have such we have very different nightmares. That record has a truly awful cover art. You can play a guy named Michael Klea at Industrial Strength Design in New York City, But it was, again, as with most things, an insular joke for the band uh There's sixth studio album, simply titled Anarchy, was released in April. The cover art was a baby being born, which apparently also caused a lot of controversy, but they were like, it's literally they took it from a children's book, like of like the Miracle of Birth. It's gross. Yeah, it's gross. It's like straight out of thee Yeah. Uh, so Boff's at the anarchy baby was just being born on anarchy, so we thought it should be about eight months to a year old with a bit of attitude on tub Thumber horrible album cover, I hate it um. They wrote about twenty songs for this record and cut it down to twelve for the track list, and then they delivered it to their label, One Little Indian Records, which is founded by a guy in another sort of seminal anarcho punk band called Flux of Pink Indians, which I've never investigated further. Uh, and the label rejected it. They shot it down. Yeah, I guess they wanted it to be more punk and they refused. And then fate intervened when they got a facts backstage at one of their gigs from E m I, one of the biggest label conglomerates in the world, saying they were interested in picking up the album and giving them a six figure advance. Yeah. I mean, this is what's so funny to me. I think the prevailing narrative about this that people would think is like, oh, they were this punk band, they sold out, blah blah blah. They had this thing done and in the camp and it was rejected. They didn't approach the labels. All the labels came to them, Boff told glassber In. Glassberg in Data Country died. We'd already recorded the album and without any thought about selling a lot of records and all that. We were wondering what to do with it. And we're getting a bit piste off with it all, to be honest, and some of us had got part time jobs and stuff. Important context in the chums because I'm gonna start calling them old Chumbley had been involved with the covers compilation called E m I, for which their contribution was Heartbreak Hotel, a cover of Heartbreak Hotel. This would not age well when they signed to E m I. A fellow Ankas punk band called Oi Ploy, taking the inspiration for the genre name of OI to its logical conclusion. They toured and worked with the Chumbawo and they released an anti Chumba Womba EP which is one of the strangest string of words I've ever said in my life, which is it's self a reference on the Chumba Bomba album Pictures of Starving Children sell records. The Oibloy record is called bare faced Hypocrisy sells records. Yeah, so this is And I guess one of the big beasts with E M I at this point was that one of their many corporate arms was an arms pun intended was an arms manufacturer. And Bob told Glassber that by this time, when they were taking the money from E m I, the company had ceased had divested themselves from the making of missiles and ballistics and such, so they had a clear conscience about signing with them. Uh, he said. Some bloke in Germany had a copy of the recording and really liked it. And then the German E M I got in touch with us and we had a meeting with them, and we said, you do know who we are, don't you. And we gave them a copy of the EMI album, just to make it clear to them who they were dealing with. But they were still really into us and offered us a hundred thousand pound advance Okay, First of all, a hundred thou pound the dance. That's ludicrous. I don't understand. I mean, I know this was the height of record label blow. It is probably not a huge advance, but still for the kind of stuff that they were making. I don't know if they were just thinking like, oh, this is kind of like Manchester dance music, maybe we could Yeah, maybe they heard a hit. They heard it hit um, he said, the biggest argument for signing was that we were in a rut. We had this audience that expected us to do a certain thing. We played to the same people all the time, and we weren't really going anywhere fast. It almost makes sense that it was in my Germany because it sounds like a German drinking song. I mean October, the band wrote on their websites frequently asked question page we signed to E M I Universal not because we've been co opted into the if you can't beat capitalism, join at school of thought, but because experience had taught us that in a capitalist environment, almost every record company operates on capitalist principles. Our previous record label, One Little Indian, didn't have the evil symbolic significance of M I, which was this huge conglomerate. I mean it was the Beatles label. It was just that you didn't get any bigger than E M I at this time. But they were completely motivated by profit. Our position was that whoever we signed with, we want us not for our ideas but for the potential profit. So we battle for a contract where we still had autonomy. E M I and Universal didn't offer us the most dash which is a British slang for money, but we did get short term contracts where we still maintain control of everything from the production to the artwork. And they later said they hope this compromise would help them amplify their music and therefore their message and help them quote change the world for the better, which is adorable. So I mean anarchists are idealistic, very cute um and a piece written for Mail magazine, legendary producer Steve Albini expressed skepticism about this approach, saying, quote, there's the argument that broadly appealing commercial music can smuggle progressive ideas into mainstream culture. Always been suspicious of this idea, as it's a convenient cover for the more conventional aspirations of making good money and being generally popular. Chumbawamba, on the other hand, had made more pop and dance inflected music within the underground community prior to their big breakthrough hit and they wear the populist mantle a little more cleanly, also evidenced by the fact that they didn't make a serious attempt at following up their mainstream success with you Know Tough Thumping Part two. Uh. We touched on the same argument and that you get what you give episode. Steve Albini's narrative about this whole thing is that Chumbawamba were one of a million idealistic bands who thought they could subvert the mainstream, only to get used by a major label and then toss the side for the next big thing. How do you feel about that? What do you think about, you know, trying to make a catchy radio single that has a mildly subversive message in it that could get heard by the most amount of people, versus something that's a bit more undiluted, shall we say? I mean, I think that the any subversion that was lost in the message of the song they made explicit with their position. And we'll talk exactly. We'll talk about this in a second. But like if you were paying attention to this band, and I've you know, part of the course for this episode. We did every episode we looked at the Rolling Stone things from the time, we looked at the MTV news thing. At the time, as a ten year old, I was not clued into this. But like, at no point did they ever mince words. At no point did they ever be like, oh, you know, it's like they were like they were like, we are anarchists, like they you know, Alice Nutter got her head bashed in at a protest outside of one of their shows. Like they were not at any point. You know, you could hear this song and you could be like, Okay, this is a loud, dumb chant along song, and like sure plenty of people did that obviously, but like if you did any investigation into them after the fact, you would be getting those ideals. You would be getting shot about miners and doc workers, you would be getting all of this. Like I understand how being his position, but like they did walk the walk, you know, like every single time they were given a microphone, they were like, support the doc workers, support the sacked dock workers. You know, it's I gotta I have to hand it to them. Um, the band's relationship with their record all one Little Indian Records deteriorated. Further illustrated by that, you can go on their archived version of their f a Q page. Uh. They have this whole big rant about how their back catalog was being held hostage by the label who after the success of tub Thumping, smelled money and we're charging, what they said, exorbitant amounts of money to reissue those records in the States to capitalize on the on the band's success at the time, which essentially meant that anyone who wanted to find their back records were unable to unless you were getting like pricey imports. Upon it's released in August, tub Thumping was a top ten hit in the US, UK, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, a number one hit in Canada, Italy, Ireland and Australia. The record itself hit number three on the Billboard two hundred and sold more than three point two million copies, landing at number seventeen on the American tally of the top selling albums. I just I don't understand how the song caught on. I mean, I know it's catchy, but I lad culture right, this is the whole like glassto Glasstow lads on holiday right, Oh yeah, I guess Oasis we're starting to take off on the stags and Blur song number two was probably big around this time, right. We loved Loudish. What we perceived is Loudish British men yelling at us. Yeah. This song too is just it's just David Auburn going whoo over and over again. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more too much information in just a moment. Half the reviews for tub Thumping, including one on CNN of all places, recognize the song for what it was, an anthem for the working class, whereas the other half thought it was a dumb yet catchy drinking song, and Boff Whalley later said tub Thumping became known to some purely as a drinking song, which is fair enough because, if nothing else, it didn't belong to an elite group of musicians. It belonged to people. People of football matches, people singing along to the radio as they drove, people at parties, drinking too much whiskey and tripping over kitchen chairs. People like me and Alice Nutter expressed similar sentiments a little more simply in she said, it's not a song for the rich. Really, it's all about surviving the daily grind, but doing it with dignity. Yeah, and again this band did not shy away from starting the month this song came out. Alice Nutter was quoted in Melody Maker probably number two the the ABC to the NBC of enemy in the British music press saying nothing can change the fact that we like it when cops get killed, which is that's a hell of a poll quote hot hot potato in imagine. Naturally, there was an uproar in the press. The band was condemned under the Police Federation of England and Wales, which like, what were they going to do? Come after them with clubs? They don't even have guns over there on horseback. Bobby's just looking like the scene and get back where they can't even get the Beatles to stop playing jackass where they like, they're like, come into that. Then they're like, oh, ohy you stop. The YPD comes and shoots you forty one times for reaching for your wallet to drop a bomb on you from a helicopter. The British cops are like, that's not very nice, now is it? Uh? Disappointed conject to all these Latin verbs on the on the blackboard. I was gonna cut the second, but no, I'm not after I'm not losing that show. Uh. They resisted pressure to issue an apology. She clarified her comments by saying, if you're working class, the police won't protect you. When you hear about them. It's in the context of abusing people, miscarriages of justice. Show me where the lie is. Then appearing on Letterman, they interpolated the phrase free Mumia abou Jamal into the performance of their song. Apparently they also did this on Leno Yeah or Yeah. On the Tonight Show they did that again to the two biggest late night opportunities for bands. They put free move me at Abu Jamal into their song. Uh. For those of you who didn't grow up listening to Rage against the Machine Moving. Abou Jamal had been imprisoned a few years prior for a crime. He says he was unfairly convicted of killing a police officer. He remains in jail. He was a big cause celebrite, particularly with Bridge against the Machine. He's still incarcerated to this day. I think he was the longest serving, one of the longest serving people on death row, and some sentence was commuted in two thousand and one. I think and Dunston Bruce did this incredible interview with Democracy Now in seventeen, very far ranging interview. UM He said the record label got into a big discussion with Letterman's people about whether they could still broadcast it. Uh A Nutter said, I think to a V club that the show actually confronted them. They recorded, you know, as with late night television, they recorded an hour before it went out. Uh And the show came to them and said, you can't do that. You have to do another song, you have to do it again. And they said, no, you either use the song or you don't. I mean, I wonder if they just bleeped that part out or I didn't look. I didn't listen to this song that includes the live performances. A few months after the double Letterman Leno kerfuffle, Alice Nutter appeared on Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher in January and encourage fans who couldn't afford the record to steal it. This resulted in several music retailers refusing to carry the album, even as it was doing huge numbers. Virgin Records, for example, only pulled the album from their literal shelves instead selling it from behind the counter. Another told MTV that same month quote, they wanted to talk about people stealing a record, which is irrelevant in the scheme of things. What I wanted to talk about was why people shoplift and why in some cases it's absolutely valid. Some people have two houses and two cars and luxuries for far more than themselves, and other people struggle to survive day by day. And Dunston Bruce told Democracy Now, all they did was create more interest in the record and in the band, so it's sort of backfired on them in a way. It we could we crucified this band for being a bunch of loudish fools with a annoying one hit song. But all of this that's been in conversation for the past two or three years, police brutality, global economic inequality. They were like literally standing, they were tub thumping, they were standing on every soapbox made available to them, shouting about it, and we were like other songs, annoying, dumb one hit wonder. A few weeks after that, this is in January February. The song has been out for less than six months. Deputy Prime Minister of the UK John Prescott attended the brit Awards British Grammys, essentially at a time when the New Labor Party was attempting to surf some of what we called earlier the cool Britannia's loose term for win in the late nineties. This. You know, Oasis is one of the biggest bands the world. Blur is huge. This whole notion that the you know, British culture is cool again. I guess right, yeah, it's it's kind of like sixties swinging London part two. Right, sure, yeah, that's good. Um. In the A V Club interview, dan Bert nor Bacon tweeting us using the hashburg Chumba WMBA singer I already forgot who was tweeted us using the hashtag Chumba Womba. Drummer Dan Burt no Bacon told the A V Club that the band's presence at the brit Awards was a concession to their label. He said, the record company said you have to go. They'll give you a budget and you can do whatever you want with your performance. And this was crucial because at the time, the local dock workers union was on strike and they had just done a benefit show for them, so he said they changed the lyrics in the performance of tub Thumping, Too New Labor sold out the dockers, just like they'll sell out the rest of us. Their plan had initially been, had they won, to bring some of these sacked doc workers on stage with them for their acceptance speech. Sadly they did not win, but during their performance they also wore jumpsuits emblazoned with phrases like sold out shift units and label wore you know, And Kurt Koman gets all this damn credit for wearing a T shirt that says corporate rock magazines still suck ass or whatever for their Rolling Stone shoot. But this motherfer never like played uh striking lumber Union benefits in Olympia, Washington or wherever the hell Aberdeens from Aberdeen, Yeah, you know, like Pearl Jam is. Honestly, who comes to mind, because like Pearl Jam, at the height of their fame, bankrupted themselves practically trying to fight Ticketmaster. There were not that many other big Rage. It's Rage and Pearl Jam like they were the two big US bands that really took a progressive stance while also becoming millionaires. But at least, you know, at least those guys again walk the walk. They didn't just talk to talk. We didn't get to the best part of the story though, yeah sorry. After Chumbawoman's performance, at some point they noticed that John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, was there and dan Bert no Bacon, in his own words, was always the one most easily convinced to do a dare along with Alice Nutter, ran over to his table and threw a bucket of water on him, shouting this is for the dock workers. It was a bucket of water used to chill the champagne at the tables. If you need a more, a more on the nose, you know, British monarchy image. So yes, they doused the Deputy Prime Minister. No Bacon was arrested, though I guess John Prescott declined to press charges, deriving the incident as a publicity stunt, which yes it was. Dan Bert no Bacon was formally charged with criminal damage to Mr Prescott's suit. That's a quote, but then most promptly quote decharged. Can you imagine if like I don't know, Lizzo threw a bucket of ice water on like Kamala Harris. I mean, actually, at this time, can you imagine if someone threw a bucket of water on in Cheney, they'd be black bagged in Guantanamo. They would wake up with electrodes on their testicles. Gore, okay, so nothing would have happened. Now, Gore would have taken it politely. But it's worth noting that Prime Minister was Tony Blair at this point, one of the other architects, architects of the Iraq War. You know again, like these guys were really ahead of the curve in who they chose to target and the stuff they chose to talk about. Damn it, Chumba, we we we failed. Chumba. Woman didn't fail us. We failed, Chumba Womba. Alice Nutter later told the a V clip of the incident, we didn't win a brit award. We got drunk, and we felt terrible that the dock workers weren't gonna get a voice on national television. Remember that if they want a britt they were going to bring up these fired dock work is to say their piece. So one of the bandmates said, Dan's gonna throw water on John Prescott. Shall we get him from behind phrasing yes. The reason he was significant is that he used to be a doctor, and the doctors had faith that he was going to help them. They felt sold out. I don't know Prescott. Yeah. The Van put out a statement the morning after the incident saying, quote, if John Prescott, Deputy Prime Minister and representative of the government, has the nerve to turn up at such events as the brit Awards in a vain attempt to make labor seem cool and trendy, then he deserves all we can throw at him. This Whatton act of aggriate pop is dedicated to single mothers, sack doc workers, people being forced into quote work fair people who will be denied legal aid, students who will be denied the free education that the whole labor front bench benefited from, the homeless and all the underclass who are now suffering at the hands of the labor government. Damn that is twenty five years later Jeez and drummer dan Bert no Bacon said the label sent Prescott flowers as an apology without their consents, which has smooth things so for Yeah, imagine the Spice girls doing this. Prescott did get the last laugh when Chumba Woma spoiler or announced they were disbanding in Prescott tweeted Chumba who uh, and then joked about buying their greatest hit album. But jokes on you, buddy. You got DAWs with ice water on on the on television. God yeah, Man, imagine the Spice girls throwing ice water on somebody. They wouldn't do it, That's the But at this point they were arguably on top of the world. They could have said something about any did they ever do go on the record about any political other than girls saying girl No? Because we did this whole thing about them being like margat Thatcher was the pioneer of girl power. Yeah, Jesus Christ, can you imagine two more diametrically holy? The band was getting a lot of different offers for ad placements. What have you for? The song on the Rolling Stone profile from the band is one of my favorite anecdotes. They mentioned of being approached by Dustin the Turkey, a puppet who appears on Irish television, who wanted to commission a version of tub Thumping with lyrics about infrastructure repair and fixing the roads. They supposedly turned down one point five million dollars from Nike to use this song at the World Cup commercial, although they did talk to Barbara Walters on the view which I love the hell. Okay, wait a minute, I think she sings it. I think she like gets it on like a chant of I get knocked down. Um. The single best chumba bomba ad money bit comes from a fears down the line. Actually, they were still able to command offers. In two thousand two, General Motors paid them. The actual song has been lost in the shrouds of history, but somewhere between seventy and a hundred grand to use a song called pass It Along for a Pontiac Vibe television commercial in two thousand too, remember the Pontiac Vibe. The band took that money and promptly gave it to the anti corporate activist groups Indie Media and corp Watch, who used the money to launch a disinformation and environmental advocacy campaign against General Motors. Incredible uh. In the Democracy Now interview, Dunston said, what we found really liberating for us was that we suddenly did find that we had a lot more money because of the money we made from the record, and so we were in a position where we could help a lot of organizations and a lot of community action groups, and a lot of people who previously we would have only been able to give a couple of hundred pounds too, we could now give a couple of thousand pounds to instead. The use of this song in video games, mostly sports games. The movie Home Alone three, Home Alone three Everyone Anyone and licensed to a dancing guerrilla toy which I did google on actual toy that does in fact seeing tub thumbing. You can still find it on eBay. Solvio walmart I think right, Yeah, a sort of big mouth, billy bass kind of guy. Um. They spend They put all that money through activist groups. God love them, and as a result they were hit up by basically every insane organization in the world, and we're quickly relieved of basically all their money. Huh. Dunston Bruce, the front man who quit the group in two thousand and four to start a film company, had a Kickstarter for a documentary that he made called I Get Knocked Down. The Untold Story of Chumbawamba. Parenthesis the song You've danced to more than you care to remember or how to survive as a political pop star, keep your friends, self respect, and sense of humor when everyone hates you. Some really great uh slogans for this movie. They knew the slot that they occupied. I have to give them credit for you know, yeah, I mean the description for this movie is a modern day cautionary tale. Chumba Onemba vocalist destined Bruce's account of the roller coaster ride that took them from d I Y Squad gigs to Madison Square Garden and back again at personal exploration of what happens when a political pop band accidentally have a worldwide smash and given their fifteen minutes of fame. I think at long lasts. This film was shown at south By earlier this year. Yeah good one. Yeah, I mentioned earlier in the Rolling Stone profile they talked about Nutter was injured missed a few dates from the European tour because she was in in March protesting the detainment of two political prisoners in Italy. Outside of the venue they were playing. The police showed up and there was a mini riot and she was injured and missed some of their shows. Another funny part remember the protest song record Uh They played h New York's jingle Ball, which is put on every holiday season by the massively influential and I Heart owns Z one station at MSG Madison Square Garden. They were on this bill alongside Celine Dion and Aerosmith. Uh for I guess respectively. My heart will go on and I don't want to miss a thing. What a weird year? Yeah, all right? Probably also Backstreets Back Was the Big was another one from this year. Cherry Pop and Daddy's I Want to say, Yeah, let's just let's just do a quick lightning round. Who were Chumba Womba's peers? Obviously, Jewel You were meant for me? Slash Foolish Games, which I They're the same song to me, I'll be missing you. Puff Daddy and Faith Evans on break my Heart. That's uh, can Nobody hold me down? Puff Daddy featuring Maze I Believe I Can Fly, But he who should not be named Don't Let Go parentheses Love by in Vogue, Return of the Mac. Oh, Yeah, how Do I Live? I was more of a Blue Guy by Leanne Rhymes, but I Love How I Live? That's good. Wanna be Spice Girls, Quipla Games with my Heart Back Street Boys. We should have done Bob. I still have nose bulled for Room Bob. Maybe we'll do Thembob next week. That's too late nineties songs for you. I Will by Monica, Yeah sure, he makes me wanna bitch by Meredith Brooks Man Uh Semi Charmed Life, Third Eye Blind, Barely Breathing, Duncan cheek m hmmm. Anyway, these are their peers main stage. They were on the second stage, which apparently was made up to look like a boxing ring, which I love. But before they played Tom Thumping, they gathered in the center of this stage and saying an acapella anti fascist ballad. Talking to Daily be St Dunston, Bruce said, we were always trying to subvert the mainstream and it was difficult. It was hard, but we had a lot of fun trying. I think that's all you can do, really, I think you just have to let the message be at least we tried. At least we tried to do something. Whether we were successful or not, I'm not the one to judge us, but I think my measure is at least we tried to do something. That's my measure for this podcast. Something literally anything. The band never really broke their stride. I mean, obviously they gave away a lot of this money and never had another hit on the order, but they kept releasing records, documentary. They rebranded as an acoustic act when half their members, basically having as many members as they did, stop being financially viable. Uh Jude Abbott, Boff Whalley, Lou Watts, and the guy who engineered this record, Neil Ferguson. That was this new, stripped down version of the group true to form. They lodged an official complaint and threatened to take legal action with the UK Independence Party. In two thousand eleven, would leader Nigel Ferridge arrived on stage at a conference to the strains of tub thumping. They threatened to sue him for that. Uh. Another became a screenwriter for Jimmygovern's acclaimed drama series The Street. As you mentioned earlier, Dunston Bruce has his own production company, and dan Bert no Bacon, living in Washington State, releases solo work. And as we mentioned earlier, the band broke up in they wrote on their site, which is still live. I believe it's still the landing page on their site. We felt we got to a point where what we did as a band, and specifically the writing, recording, touring cycle, wasn't doing justice to what Chumbawamba set out to do in the first place. We were always as much about ideas as music, and that meant doing more than writing, recording and touring songs. It meant trying to be relevant and active and up to date while trying to avoid the dreaded rut of routine or repetition. Being up to date meant giving plenty of time and energy to the band constantly for those thirty years, a constancy we plainly couldn't keep up. In the end, following their final shows, they posted a message to their website that read, that's it. Then It's the end, with neither a whimper, a bang, or a reunion. I just God love him. What it was the sinc statement, I was not talking that. A V Club interview, she had a great quote. Um, we were a gigging band before tub thumping. We had an underground audience. I found America strange, going from radical politics to finding myself at radio stations at seven in the morning. You've got to be polite. I met a lot of DJs with Pony Tips. I enjoyed the surreal novelty of it, but I thought, I don't want to spend the rest of my life doing this. I'm not talking about being in a band. I'm talking about having a taste of fame. I didn't really like it, uh, And that Guardian interview, Boff Whaley said, I still really like tub thumping. I don't feel embarrassed by it at all. I know some bands who hate their songs being popular, but I just think, get off your high horse. The whole point of art is to have an audience. Meanwhile, two thousand eleven, the readers of Rolling Stone voted dubbed Bumping the fifth worst song of the nineties. But the numbers don't lie. The song has a hundred and forty five million listens on Spotify alone, and it actively garners fervent comments on the official YouTube listing, and during the pandemic, the song became an anthem for the historically working class city of Leaves, which is yes, I love that so much. Um you know, band Camp, God love him. Band Camp Daily, the editorial wing of band Camp do some really tremendous features, um, including by you sometimes sometimes yes, but Um. They had a whole interview with Um the band about their early anarchist stuff, all the pre tub thumping stuff. Uh. And and Chumba Womba drummer denvert nor Bacon no bacon Uh. He said to them, I am very proud of what we did. The whole way through. We tried to push the envelope. We weren't always successful, but we always tried. And that's probably a defining characteristic of Chumba Womba. Whatever era or genre we tried, it always had a working class basis, which is a whole other story. When we signed with the major labels in the mainstream, it didn't destroy us. You could accuse us of selling out, but we weren't bought up. The mainstream usually swallows people up and spits them out. I mean it did spit us out, but we took that as a compliment. Really machines all I know. I know, God love him. Um. I will never listen to this song in my life ever again. But UM, I hope I've been able to impress upon I worked on you. I hope I've been able to impress upon our upon our listeners that this band is more than a one hit wonder this is more than an annoying song? Is a bizarre footnote? Did I say this at the top of the episode? Did I compare them to David Lynch? No, that's a new one. Well, in the Eraserhead episode and I was talking about this a lot, I said, I don't think I have a hard I'd be hard pressed to think of someone who is genuinely on the who went from the avantcarde to the mainstream in quite the same way that David Lynch did twenty five years from eraser Head to getting an Oscar nom for Mholland. I would be hard pressed to think of another band other than maybe Rage Against the Machine who smuggled this much subversive stuff into the American main stream, and Rage against the Machine it was at least in there in their name. Chump Jumbo Bombo is like, how many millions of people listen to this song and had no idea that they were listening to a band of anarchists who were then smuggling anti cop anti corporate messages into their songs and dowsing of vice PM and ice water. It's great stuff. God love him. Once again, Chumba Woma didn't fail us. We feel Chumba womba folks, thank you for listening. Raise a pint to your local anarchists. Well, I've made a Jimmy Buffett fan out of you, and you've made a Chumba Womba fan out of me, So let say that, Universes and balance, thank you for listening. Everyone. This has been too much information. I'm Alex Heagel and I'm Jordan run Tug. We'll catch you next time. Too Much Information was a production of I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan run Talk. The supervising producer is Mike John's. The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan run Talk and Alex Hegel, with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts and I heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Can Act Again, Chat that landon at Black Bass and