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This article appeared in the November 1997 issue of PULSE! published by Tower Records
SITUATIONIST COMEDY
Then, in late '97, came "Tubthumping," that anthemic pop confection with its irresistably in-your-face chorus. "I get knocked down! But I get up again! You're never gonna keep me down," snarled Chumbawamba's Dunstan Bruce, and a post-Di England respond ed by hoisting the single to the top of their pop charts. And underclass anthem dressed up in pub sing-along clothing, "Tubthumping" is theatening to turn Chumbawamba into a household name on both sides of the Atlantic.
Needless to say, the British press are not f***ing amused. "Now we're being accused of swimming in the mainstream," sighs Alice Nutter, still living in the Leeds homestead where Chumbawamba squatted through much of the '80s. "You can never win, can you?"
Perhaps not, but infiltrating the mainstream does make a lovely consolation prize for an eight-person collective whose recording career began in the mid-'80s with the infamous Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records, released at the height of the Live Aid media spectacle on the Chumbas' own Agit-Prop label. "We'd moved into a house in Leeds, where we were all squatting, so it was like a way of living as well as a band," says Bruce of the group which, at one point, warded off eviction by posing as Mormo ns. "Punk had come and gone for us, but we were all still interested in the agit-prop, left-field stuff that was going on at the time."
Though initially championed by influential DJ John Peel (with whom they share an unhealthy obsession with early Fall singles), Chumbawamba was too wrapped up in its D.I.Y. aesthetic to risk becoming flavor of the month. "We thought all record labels were evil tyrants, and we were determined that this was something we wanted total control over. And for a while, it actually did work."
Meanwhile, anarchy was becoming archaic in the U.K., as a pallid version of the Clash, sans Mick Jones, roamed the streets in search of lost credibility. "They'd done the America, champagne and coke thing, and they came back over here trying to prove that they could still relate to the kids," says ex-punk Bruce, who felt betrayed by his former idols. "To me it just smacked of insincerity; they were doing this tour where they would be busking outside gigs. So [fellow Chumbawamban] Danbert [Nobacon] sprayed them with red paint and then got chased through Leeds City Center by a load of angry people. But he managed to escape."
Even so, the stage was being set for Chumbawamba's slow slouching toward Babylon. Always partial to juxtaposing (if not reconciling) apparent opposites, the group harbored a love/hate relationship with popular culture that became increasingly apparent on record. They sampled bits of pop ephemera and recontextualized them with Situationist abandon. They wedded cheerful melodies with devastating Iyrics, muted trumpets with jungle breakbeats, and Enya-sweet verses with Slade-stomping choruses. Recalls Nutter : "We'd spent years saying we're not going to write songs with choruses or middle eights. And we had crap songs."
By the time of 1994's Anarchy, Chumbawamba were signed to British indie One Little Indian (home of the Sugarcubes) and had mastered the same kind of hip-hop derived collage techniques that would soon yield hits for Beck and, perhaps more disturbingly, the Spice Girls. "I can't stand them, but I think 'Wannabe' is a brilliant single," says Nutter. "My nextdoor neighbor sings the Spice Girls all the time. She's 6. And now she's starting to sing our song. I never thought I'd see that."
Toddler acceptance notwithstanding, "Tubthumping"'s take on pub culture has still been subject to misinterpretation. "Some people assume that if you have politics, you must be criticizing drinking, that somehow you must be going: DRINKING IS VERY BAD FOR THE REVOLUTION!" Nutter says. "But really, we were just talking about what we do, what people we know do, and what people who don't have all that many chances in life do. Which is like, no matter how bad your life is, those are your moments: on Friday and Saturday night, when you can get pissed [drunk] and stand on a chair and put the world right. You feel like life's all right at that point; life's sweet."
While Chumbawamba had already recorded "Tubthumping" and its host album, Tubthumper, before signing to EMI overseas and Republic/Universal here in the States, the fact that this is their first major-label release has hardly gone unnoticed. "I read a joke in a music paper," says Bruce, "that said somebody was going to make some Chumbawamba dollsÑthey don't do anything unless you put loads of money in the back of them."
So, as it turns out, big corporations are really nice? "Yeah, they sort of pat you on the head every now and then," laughs Bruce. "No, I think what we learned from all this is that independent labels are no different than major labels. It's just that, at least in the case of One Little Indian, they were less efficiently run."
At the end of the day, Bruce says it became a question of how to get their message across to the most people: "For us as a band, this is our chance. ["Tubthumping"] isn't only a celebration of going out and drinking, it's also saying we've got opinions th at are just as important as anybody else's opinionsÑbut because we're not rich and powerful, we don't get the opportunity to say them. Now suddenly we're getting all this press and people are listening to what we've got to say."
Hopefully, the audience for "Tubthumping" will make the leap to the full-length Tubthumper's other offerings, from the Working Week-meets-Goldie pleasures of "Small Town" to the industrial-strength assault of "I Want More." The album is also their first A merican release, and one wonders whether songs inspired by incidents like a local cab company with a racist placard that boasts "We'll take you anywhere but Chapleton" (a black area of Leeds) will connect with stateside listeners. "We wrote the whole albu m about Leeds and to me it's a very English album," says Nutter. "That song came from something around the corner, but, in a way, all of these things are universal, because unfortunately bigotry is universal."
How much of Chumbawamba's preachings will reach beyond the converted remains to be seen, but they've already touched more people than the writer for the defunct Sounds magazine who was so enamored with Mick Jagger's hips.
"Obviously, we would like society to change, to become a fairer place where homelessness and racism don't exist," says Bruce. "But on a more basic level, what we're trying to say a lot of the time is that there are lots of people who are outsiders. We are like that, and maybe you feel like that as well. And maybe there's something on the record that will touch you, and you'll realize that you're not like everybody else, but that's okay, because we're like that as well."
Of course, even if you are like everybody else, you're still welcome to buy the record. "I have a problem with lefties who are so pure," says Nutter. "It's like: Well, you can't do this, you can't do that, and only left-wing people should like it. Then wh at is the point? If that's your attitude, then why don't you just produce tapes and run a little fanzine and you and your mates can feel pure."
As good Situationists, the Chumbawamba 8 know that recontextualization is a two-way street, and turnabout is fair play: "Once you produce something and put it out into the wider world, you can't stick your hand up and say, 'Only you can like it,"' says Nu tter. "So, you know, accountants and stockbrokers can sing 'Tubthumping,' I don't care. But they're still never gonna be on the same side as me."
Tubthumping, Charttopping, and Idiotbashing with Chumbawamba
by Bill Forman