Part Two: Chumbawamba: How to Sell Out, But in a Good Way

In part two of this week's episode, Margaret continues her conversation with Max Collins of Eve 6 about the squatting, organizing, and robin hood antics of Chumbawamba, the one hit wonders with a thirty year career.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff with Margaret Piljoy,
a podcast that's about cool people who did cool stuff.
Our guest today is Max Collins. Max, how are you doing?
You wanna about yourself at all? What's going on? I'm
doing great. Thank you, it's good to be here. I
was going to say on this day. That is definitely
a different day. I think everything this podcast knows that

(00:21):
we recorded in two takes one good. Yeah. So so
Max Collins our guests in the nineties, he actually did
an anthropological field study on one hit wonders in the
rock world. That's right. Everything where you're saying right now
is absolutely on, equivocally, verifiably true. Yeah, exactly, Yeah. Yeah.

(00:44):
So today we're talking about one hit wonder Chumbawamba, and
if you haven't listened to part one, what is wrong
with you? Did something go wrong with your life? Why
do you make the choices that you make? So go
listen to that. Okay. So around the early nineties, life
starts chan changing. For Chambawamba. It stays egalitarian, but it
goes from this like loose chaotic thing into something more

(01:05):
like a workers cooperative. They start having tons of meetings
by one account, they spend more times and meetings than
in practice. There's like eight or nine of them at
this point, and most of them move out of the
squad but stay in the band and stay activists, and
they just want to do other things with their lives
and more and more they're alto like having families and
ship right and sometimes maybe obviously some of them having

(01:26):
kids in the squad, but I could imagine not being
like this is where I want to raise my children.
I don't know, whatever. And and one of the cooler
things about them is as they start doing this, they
don't go off the h ones behind the music, like
they keep not exploding. Some of them did drugs, some
of them were sober. They date within the band, they

(01:46):
get one of them dumps one of them to go
date the other bandmate, and everyone stays good with each
other more or less, like I don't know. They feel
like they kind of like did hedonism right, at least
as it's presented in their self mythologizing right parties and
raves and shows and everything. But there they're not doing
the like trash the hotel room, drop penises, sexually assault fans,

(02:08):
thing and so, and they're basically at this point trying
to make it as no longer young musicians. They're trying
to be like this is So they sit down and
they have what the funk are we doing? Meeting, like
a conversation ten years into the band, and they're like,
all right, let's fucking do this thing, like let's double
or nothing, let's um you know. They they quit their

(02:30):
jobs to do it full time, which means that they
needed to pay their employees, which was themselves, and also
other people are helping them out, and so commercial considerations
start having to be balanced alongside musical and political considerations
as they make this music and they release Anarchy is
the name of an album and the cover of which

(02:51):
features the photo of a child being born, which is
from a book for children about where babies came from.
But this is obviously like their whole point is like
you're all going to call this pornographic, aren't you, And
it did. It's called pornographic. Stories refused to sell it.
They keep it in brown bags because you can see
a vagina in it or whatever. It's my favorite of
their albums, um and it's the first time that they

(03:13):
crack the very bottom of the mainstream charts, and it
has the song if you haven't if you've never listened
to Chumba Womba song besides Tumpa Plumping, or even if
you haven't heard that, go listen to Homophobia by Chumbawemba.
So they start getting to play larger and larger shows
right there as they start taking this band really seriously.
Ten years in, they tour more of the world, and

(03:35):
the press fucking hates them. They're like, you're washed up,
bad musicians. You're all too old. You scream about politics,
but you don't even believe any of it. You're or
like they're all like you're two woke, you're ruining the
music whatever. And the fans love them. They sell out
shows left and right. Uh, and the press goes between

(03:56):
ignoring them and hating them, which is like this is
just like literally how to see see that's a cult
band as first, and they're not super famous yet, they're
not tub thumping famous yet, but they're sharing a stage
of smashing pumpkins in Germany at some big televised event,
and smashing pumpkins is apparently being real assholes about it,
at least as related in Boff Whale's book and so they,

(04:19):
like all the other bands have to like hide in
their dressing rooms with the doors closed and they can't
be in the corridors when Billy Corgan comes through or something.
And this is still prey yeah yeah, so they're like
not seeing as Smashing Pumpkins as peer yet, but they're
big enough to be at this televised event. And so
Dan one of the people in Humble one, but he

(04:40):
likes being naked, like constantly, He's stripping on stage for
the funk of it. And the band is like, what
are we gonna do to prank these assholes? That's like
what we gotta do. That's our thing, you know, I know, Dan,
take off all your clothes. So Dan gets naked. They
write they were punk and huge letters across his chest.
He strolls out on stage just a smashing bomb gets

(05:01):
it's their big finale, you know. He walks up to
Billy and he salutes the crowd naked, and then he
walks off and the rest of the band is to
physically rescue him from pouncers and that they fled the
scene as like they're being chased, and the promoters like,
you'll never appear on German television again which probably didn't
turn out to be true incredible and yeah, I know,

(05:24):
I love it, I love it. Um. Also, they turn
in an album called tub Thump into their label, which
is a label called One Little Indian, which was not
a great name for a label, and just to be clear,
the label realized that and in they changed their name
to One Little Independent. Chamba Womba turns in this album

(05:44):
to them and the labels like, no, this sucks, go
home and write better songs. No good onward. And then
E m I Germany, a major label, was like, well,
we'll give you a hundred thousand fake europe money for it,
maybe pound, maybe euros, I don't know, one of the
fake moneys that they have over there. And at first

(06:04):
they laugh it off right there, like no way when
we do that, obviously, and then they kind of sit
on it and they're like, we're so fucking broke, and
that is enough money that even if the album doesn't
sell at all, we can still pay everyone involved a
decent wage, you know. They to be clear, Chumbawemba had
put a song out on an anti em I compilation

(06:25):
about ten years earlier. The compilations called Funck E M
I at at the time e m I was was
deep in the nuclear arms industry. E m I had
since divested from that, but still it wasn't It clearly
wasn't good optics, and they weren't sure, but they I
think what happened is that they they were sure it
wasn't good optics to the punk scene. What they were
trying to figure out was whether or not it was

(06:47):
good ethics, and they wanted to make their decision based
on that. So they talk it over as a collective,
like they do everything. They don't vote about major decisions.
They work for consensus, and they talk it over for weeks.
They are like, look, the symbolism is bad, but change
for change's sake is sometimes good. They were stagnating, and
they were like, fuck stagnating, that's what we don't want
to do. It's more of a chance to reach more people.

(07:09):
Saying fuck you to a scene that was getting way
too essentially conservative from their point of view, seemed fun
to them. Being able to pay themselves enough to not
worry for a while. Like they're all working class folks, right,
and they're proceeding in middle age without much of a
safety net. Because they all were squatter punks and and
they're like fans like Fugazi can get away with being
fiercely independent because they're just big enough and sell enough records. Right,

(07:33):
Chamba Womba wasn't selling that kind of those kinds of numbers,
and but fear of what people would think was a
big part of it. A few years earlier in Poland,
some American punk had taken it upon himself to like
slash their tour van tires because he was mad about
how much the band was charging for the show. Punks
can be sort of yeah, yeah, And one of one

(07:58):
of the things that they thought about a lot they
you know, the most convincing argument to some of them,
and I actually think maybe the most convincing argument to
me is they're like, look are independent labels are also
just all about the money. They are also fucking us over.
They're also greedy, we might as well get paid well.
Alice Nutter puts it in an interview of The Punk

(08:19):
magazine later, my reasoning for doing it isn't how we're
going to get our message across to more people. It's
nothing to do with that. It's because my experiences with
one little Indian in the music industry have me convinced
that they're all the fucking same. They're small businessmen and
big business men, and they've they have a different agenda
to us. There's no good or bad capitalism. It's kind

(08:40):
of what they hit upon. They do it, and which
brings us to probably the only song by them that
most of the people listening to this podcast have actually heard,
stub thumping about falling down and standing up and about drinking.
I literally don't know. I didn't actually ask Sophie what
I'm allowed to do in terms of quoting song lyrics.
So that's why I keep tea speaking about it. Very verge.

(09:00):
Sophie says, yes, I can claim that I wrote the
song and that it is legally my property. That is
what Sophie is nodding and saying, yes right now. So
I wrote the song tub Thumping, and when I did, okay, So,
but I'm gonna quote Boff Walley about this song. Tub
Thumping from its very outset as an idea, was definitely
populist and based on working class experience. That's working class

(09:22):
not just as a mythic Trotskyist vision, but as a
cultural and historic whole which includes family and sport and
community and war and love and entertainment, not just the
cliche clenched fist getting up, but the getting knocked down
as well. Tub Thumping became known to some purely as
a drinking song, which is fair enough because of nothing else.

(09:43):
It didn't belong to an elite group of musicians. It
belonged to people, people at football matches, people singing along
to the radio as they drove, people at parties, drinking
too much whiskey and tripping over the kitchen chairs, people
like me. And because it helped beggar the notion that
Chumba Womba were boring zealots from planet anarchy. And that's
not what I realized when I heard it when I

(10:04):
was in the nineties and like driving around and like,
but but I think it's cool that they don't try
to shoe that interpretation because it is a drinking song,
you know, it's but it works on a couple of
different levels. But um, it is a drinking song insofar
as like, you know you're drinking with your mates, and

(10:27):
that there's community there, and there's solidarity there, and and
there's you know, commiseration for the getting knocked down, you know,
parts of life there, which is punk as fuck. It
is punk as fucked, like put your arms around all
your friends and drunkenly sing songs like whatever. The song

(10:48):
you know, like yeah, like yeah, um, it's collective, it's
it's yeah. It's a kind of a spiritual experience, you know, yeah, totally,
and it's one that we have like increasingly stripped away
from us up by modern life. And apparently one of
the main inspirations of the song was watching a drunk
irish guy stumbling home from a bar singing Danny Boy

(11:08):
and being told to shut up by a neighbor. So
and the song goes fucking huge. And again, if you
were live in the nineties, you probably remember this. It's
number two in the UK, it's number six in the US,
It's in the charts everywhere in the world. It gets
ranked on lists of like the twenty most annoying songs
of all time. Yeah, I mean there's a distinction to

(11:31):
be made there between between like a hit song and
like a global smash like that song was like, you know,
number one on alternative rock radio or whatever, but also
pop radio, and also not just in the US, but
like yeah, you know, everywhere. It was just one of those,

(11:54):
you know, hyper ubiquitous, so that you could not escape
no matter where you were, no matter what you're where
your tastes, what genres your tastes went through or whatever. Yeah,
because it's also kind of a genre list song. Like
on its face, you know, it has like I think
electronic drums and just this catchy sing along chorus and

(12:17):
like it's just and it's like, yeah, it's almost like
like a collective delusion, you know, this thing that just
like absorbed everyone for a moment, you know, and yeah,
I don't know, it's fucking interesting. It's like in a way,
it's like it was it was a troll sort of,

(12:39):
but it also wasn't a cynical one. They were they
weren't looking down on the people enjoying it for whatever
surface reasons. There was no contempt there um, but it
was this thing that functioned on a couple of different levels. Yeah,
it's so fucking like it's just brilliant. It's us So

(13:01):
it's yeah, it's it's a prank, but it's not a prank,
you know. It's this earnest thing they did that got
injected into pop culture and sucking and a lot of
their old fans write them letters calling them sellouts. But
the people who really lad the charge of calling them
hypocrites were the same music journalists who had always hated
them because they're like, ah see, we told you their

(13:23):
politics didn't mean anything, which was their way of basically
excusing themselves for never having had decent politics in the
first which is a really dubious way to sort of yeah,
you know, truffle hunt for what seems like hypocrisy, but
if you scratch the service at all, you realize really isn't.

(13:44):
It's a collective who wants to take be able to
take care of their own and as we'll find soon
enough in the story, um take care of others as well,
and do that by siphoning corporate money. And yeah, like
you know, doing Robin hood ship. Really yeah, totally totally
And and it's funny is to look at like if

(14:06):
I had been I, you know, I was a salty
subcultural but not like a punk yet right at the
time of all of this, if I had been like
if it had happened in two thousands three, I probably
would have been one of the people being like, you
fucking sellouts, right, But I'm glad that I don't um,
you know, like twenty one year old me is not
who I look back to about what decisions were best

(14:27):
to make for my life. You know, I'm stuck with
some of the tattoos, but that's okay. Yeah. So they
spent two years, the next two years in this whirlwind
of fame. It doesn't stop them from being themselves. And
first and foremost, they gave away just a fun ton
of money since since all the money gets split equally,

(14:47):
they didn't like fuss about who did who deserves what
amount and stuff like that. You know, there were the
people who are the lead singers of the songs whatever,
but they're like, we're just split in evenly. We'll work
from there. And they peer pressure each other out of
like running out and buying Jaguars. Boff notes that Dan
went out and bought a really fancy vacuum cleaner, which
I must be what middle age an artists do. And
they suddenly have a lot of money. You know, vacuum

(15:09):
cleaners a very nice thing. And they I get the
impression that they hold onto enough money to not have
to like worry about being poor. But they donate money
to artists, women's groups, prisoner defense campaigns, kids football teams,
radical media projects, venues, solidarity groups, individual organizers, community groups, magazines,

(15:29):
direct action groups, and social centers. At one point in
two thousand two, GM wanted a song for a commercial. Yeah,
Jumba Womba said yes, and they take took a hundred
thousand dollars or different accounts give different amounts, but a
large number of money, high money number hundred thousand will
go with that. And they just turn around and they

(15:51):
give half of it to indie media, which is this
big decentralized you be the media network, and they give
which is unfortunately kind of probably what prefigured to it
earned the rest of the night where we living now,
but it was a good idea at the time. And
they give the other half to a project called corp
Watch that is specifically fucking um tracking GM and like
exposing their crimes. And so they just turn around and

(16:12):
give fifty to people who are like specifically attacking GM. Yeah.
And so if the two main arguments that they have
in favor of selling out are reach a wider audience
and get fun tons of money, they do both. But
but I actually I think Alice Nutter was right in
some ways, the funk tons of money, which seems less
radical goal, is actually in some ways the more radical

(16:33):
thing they did, because the wider audience didn't necessarily like
get it right. Uh. They talk about anarchism on news shows,
they mostly get made fun of. They sell their music
to a ton of places, but they turned down other
places too. They turned down Nike, who offered them a
million and a half bucks. Their rules were really simple
and strict. They wouldn't sell their music to anyone involved
in sweatshop labor or the arms industry. And when I

(16:56):
first started researching this episode, I thought it was gonna
be mostly about their their high jinks during the fame period,
because it's really good hijinks. But in the end, I
you know, the reason the first half is more about
the working class punks in the squad breaking laws is
like what I kind of lingered on. But let's start
without the hijinks. One time, the tob Thumping era, Dan

(17:17):
gets arrested in Italy literally for just walking down the
street wearing a skirt, and he's held in his cell.
He's a show that night. He gets held in a
cell with no one speaking to him in English, and
finally he scrawls I'm in a pop group called Chumbo
Womba on a piece of paper and helds it up
to the glass of the cell and they release him
um and he gets in time to go to the

(17:38):
sound check. Uh. The next day, he appears on Italian
TV in the skirt and says Italy has some problems
with homophobic, macho cop culture. Alice Nutter steps up as
being the kind of unofficial spokesperson for the band, I
think mostly because she enjoyed talking the most and had
the most to say. She was also maybe the most

(18:00):
firebrand of them. She told the UK Press, nothing can
change the fact that we like it when cops get killed.
E m I is like, oh my god, please apologize.
What the fuck? Oh my god. She didn't apologize and
said she clarified her statement. If you're working class, they
won't protect you. When you hear about them, it's in

(18:22):
the context of them abusing people, you know, miscarriages of justice.
We don't have a party when cops die, you know,
we don't. But before we hear about more of Alice
Nutter's anti capitalist hijinks, boy, we have some capitalist hijinks
for you, in the form of products and services. Okay,

(18:49):
and we are back in January. Alice Nutter, she goes
on the talk show Politically Incorrect, and she says, basically, yeah,
if you can't afford our music, just go to the
nearest big, evil, giant chain store like Virgin and steal it.
Um and Virgin I didn't like this Chambawamba at the

(19:10):
time as Universal's number one selling band, and here's the
band saying, just steal it. Who fucking cares as long
as you steal from a large corporation. Virgin threatens to
remove the album from their stores. And it depends on
what account you read. They either stopped carrying it entirely
or hit it behind the counter. I don't know. And
this only makes sales go up, which doesn't fucking surprise me, right,

(19:32):
Like I could have told them that, Like, yeah, more
will get stolen. But if people steal the CDs, people
are gonna listen to it and talk about it, and
more people are going to go out and sucking buy it. Right.
And and if you're taking it off the shelves were
hiding it, you're literally manufacturing scarcity for the thing, and
by making it more valuable. Yeah, yeah, so everyone wants

(19:53):
to go out and find it and get it. Yeah.
So anyway, their their contact at Universal called the band
and was like, well, you all just laugh at me
if I tell you that Universal wants to ask you
to apologize for saying all that, Like they're rep knows
it's a like fool's errand that he's been tasked to
call them and ask them to apologize. He's like, you're
not going to do this, are you, And they're like

(20:14):
ha ha ha Nope. And later Alice Nutters, in a
recollection says, why should I apologize? I wasn't sorry, which
is exactly how you should or shouldn't apologize when you
make decisions about apologies. So, and on The David Letterman Show,
they changed the lyrics of tub thumping to include from

(20:35):
free mu Mia bou Jamal and Mama bou Jamal for
anyone who's not aware. As a a black political prisoner
who was probably framed up on the murder of a
cop in Philly and at the very least definitely had
an unfair trial, he spent a couple of decades on
death row, which was reduced to life without pearl in
two thousand one. So Chumbawamba goes on Letterman and sings
free Muma Bou Jamal and it was prerecorded, so Letterman

(20:57):
let it happen. In the end, basically they sat down
like the Letterman Show. People were like, funk, are we
gonna let this fu happen? And finally the network is
like all right, fuck it. They run it and they
talked about anarchism with Barbara Walters. They basically leave a
trail of chaos that the record labels are running around
trying to clean up for them. But instead of trash

(21:18):
hotel rooms, it was just weird ship, you know. And
the peak of all this was brit Awards, which I
think are the Grammys for people stuck on entirely tiny
island without sunshine. My theory is that they actually named
the country after the award show. Uh it was called
britt Land, but then with the accents on like Britain,

(21:39):
and so that's what stuck. Sounds true to me. Yeah,
So I wonder how long I'm gonna get away with
this bit um so Jumba Womba. They get invited to awards,
they're even up for an award themselves Best Single, and
they're they're going to perform. At first, they weren't going

(22:00):
to perform, but the director he knows their fucking number
and he's like, all right, you don't want to perform,
We'll let you have a video behind you. And they're like, yeah, okay,
we're in. We can show propaganda. We are in. And
the day of the director of the wards he goes
up to chumble One personally with a plea and he's like, hey,
could you, um, could you not physically attack any of

(22:23):
the other artists And that's his big request to them. Chumbawamba.
It's like, alright, fine, whatever, we won't attack any of
the other artists physically, And they even technically stuck with that.
They're not super stoked about it though, and everyone else
is pissing them off with all being off pop Star
and ship and I have a feeling that every like

(22:45):
bands that's played at this level kind of like vaguely
enjoys talking about bands. But you know they they point
out in this in the book that like half a
Fleetwood Mac refuses to use their dressing room because of
inadequate carpeting. Um, and I don't know it about Fleetwood Mac.
And I'm taking Boff Whaley's word for it, maybe inadequate carpeting,
was like maybe like the whole thing was like this,
like sewage swamp. I don't fucking know, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah,

(23:09):
but it's easier to imagine, like, ah, those damn rock stars,
said the one rock star to anyway, whatever, it's more
fun to imagine too, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Uh. So they
go up and play and they're all wearing sweatshirts that
says things like sold out or whatever, and they put
on a film behind them and it's full of people
rioting and protesting, and there's act up banners and there's

(23:30):
the stage is streaming with red and black banners, and
it's like, it's exactly what I would do if I
was up for one of these supports. And it's not
even not necessarily in an original way, but just it's
it's like you kind of have to if you're if
you're that band, you know. And at the time, dockers
in Liverpool had been on strike and it was one
of the longest labor disputes in British history, and the

(23:54):
doctors had mostly lost They've been forced into a settlement
package and they all lost their job and the Labor
Party was currently branding itself as New Labor, and they
were culpable for a lot of that. So Chumba womb
but changed the course of tub thumping to include New Labor.
Sold out the doctors, just like they'll sell out the
rest of us, and they even brought some doctors with

(24:15):
them to the ceremony with the plan that if they win,
the doctors would go up and accept on their behalf
and give a speech about what was going on. But
Chumba Woman didn't win, so they didn't get to do
the doctors accepting. But after they get off stage, they're like, oh, shoot,
that's that's John Prescott and he's the Deputy Prime Minister,

(24:35):
which is the roughly the equivalent of vice president, and
he's he's from the working class. He used to be
a member of the same union as the doctors, but
he basically sold them out. He was blocking tuition bills,
he was sucking over the unemployed. He was just doing
all kinds of ship right. So they're sitting around and
they're like, what the funk are we gonna do. There's

(24:55):
the Vice president of Britain, which definitely as a vice president,
and they they look at the bend that had been
full of all the ice for the Champagne and all
of that, and they're like, Dan, Alice, you got this,
And Dan and Alice were like, yes, we do indeed
have it. So they go up to Prescott. Dan jumps
on the table, says this is for the Liverpool Dockers

(25:17):
and dumps a bucket of ice water on John Prescott's head.
Not to be outdone, Nutter is right there behind him
with I think an extra bucket of water and also
just soaks him with that as well. And this is
like on okay. So so Dan gets arrested and Prescott
has to be a good sport about it because he's
like trying to look cool with the kids he's here
at the brit Awards or whatever. It's really hard to

(25:39):
imagine the US politician being this cool about especially a
vice president. I'm like, I'm struggling to imagine the punk
band that can dump ice water on the vice president
of the United States and survive. You know, yeah, yeah,
I mean we saw the way, was it Juliani? Who
there was that video of a guy who kind of
like lightly like gaveh uh hat on the back and

(26:01):
then talk some ship and he acted like it was
a soul and yeah, yeah, yeah, But however they managed
to dump ice water on the fucking deputy prime minister's
head and and the Deputy Prime Minister of Prescott is like,
all right, I'm not pressing charges. And so they get

(26:22):
let go, and the tabloids eat the whole thing up,
and of course the usual snotty critics get mad. And
oh and then Ginger Spice from the Spice Girls goes
up to Prescott to make sure he's okay. They made
sure to include that part in the in their biography
or that's really funny, And Alice Nutter later, I think

(26:43):
it's talking about the entire like arc of Chumba Womba
and it's like it was all worth it just to
be able to get at John Prescott, to just to
get at these people who think they're untouchable. And that's
the thing that's kind of interesting to me about like
like people used to pie politicians more often, it feels like,
and it seems is like the point of that is
just to say, like, hey, remember you're a person. Yeah

(27:06):
you know, like this could have been worse, is what
you're saying when you dump ice water on someone's head.
You know, Yeah, you're a person who's supposed to be
accountable to us. Yeah, and you clearly aren't, and you
enjoy this sort of like protected celebrity status, you know, Yeah,
totally and so okay. So they spent about two years

(27:30):
on the road doing the celebrity thing, and then they
take a break and they resume other parts of their
lives figuring out their next move. And then they put
out a second album with E m I. UM, which
is a bit confusing because in their mythologizing UM, I've
read some of their accounts that are like E M
I wanted to put out another album, but we said no.
But I think they did put out another album with
E M I. Either way, either either em I dumps

(27:55):
them or they dump E M I and or yeah
E M I cud have done something where if they
were under contract for another record or something but didn't
want to deliver it, where they either I mean, we
had our record label do that with us, where they
put out I don't know if it was like live

(28:15):
stuff for you know, how interesting because you owed them
an album but they didn't like the wing to tune in. Yeah, yeah,
that that that kind of thing for us. I don't
remember exactly what the circumstances were, but I could see
it being something like that where they basically manufactured some
kind of release out of B sides or whatever. You know,

(28:36):
are you still technically owned? I think you're not still
with a major labels? That correct, that's correct. Yeah, we
got dropped from our c A and like two thousand
three and we put records out now with with an
indie label called Velocity, okay, which always seems like kind
of a cool like after this, and I'll get to

(28:56):
it in a moment, like Chamber one by kind of
like goes from major label back to indie. They go
from indie to major to indie, right, and they're like
all right, like and it's kind of interesting to me
to see that as a well, you just do what's
best in the situation, rather than like, oh no, you're
a failure because the major label dropped you, or oh no,
you're a sellout because you know you went to a

(29:19):
major label at all. I don't know, yeah, yeah, I
mean sort of like judging or making the metric of
like what is worthwhile about making rock by what type
of record label you're on or whatever ain't really where

(29:43):
it's at. I can also see how you know, perception
is created by like by that kind of story, Like,
you know, it did feel embarrassing to get dropped from
a major label for all of those reasons, but then
you sort of realize, like why why why do you

(30:04):
feel that way? Right, and that you know this The
reasons for it are are pretty dubious once you examine
them a little bit, like what what are you what
are you making stuff for anyway? Is it too you know,
appeas you know, the bean counters or whatever because you

(30:26):
like like to like to make rock because it makes
you feel free or whatever. Yeah, and like connecting to people,
like you connect with people in different ways depending on
what means by which you access them. And it doesn't
make it better or worse, Like, no, that's interesting, Yeah
it must have been. You have not been in that position,
but it must have been like, oh, we've we've hit

(30:48):
our crest and now we are coming down from it,
as compared to like, well now you got this like
boost of um attention and now you're able to do
things with that, you know. Yeah, total, it's all in
how you sort of frame your your perspective toward it.
Like I mean, in our case, we did need to
like break up for a host of reasons, um, and

(31:12):
we did for a few years, and only recently, in
the last couple of years have we started doing this
new iteration of the band that, like I said, is
sort of in practice a side project. But we just
still call it Eve six um. But yeah, you know,

(31:33):
we're doing it for for the right reasons. And I
think a band like Trumbawamba was always doing it for
the right reasons, you know. Yeah, And you know who
else is doing it for the right reasons. It's it's
a it's the advertisers. We're actually sponsored by this new um,
this new act on our ci com EVE seven one

(31:57):
new band. It's very original. Okay, this isn't interesting. I
hadn't I hadn't heard of this, hadn't heard of this group.
But um, my first reaction is, I don't know if
this town is big enough for the two of us. Well,
they've got this hit, and you know that's the first
advertisers gonna be this hit. It's called what kind of
prepositions are they're working with? You put a blender in

(32:18):
my heart, I believe is that? Okay? Um, it's funny
because five Seconds of Summer apparently just released a song
called Blender or like Emotional Blender or something like that.
I haven't listened to it yet, but yeah, town's only
big enough for one blender song. That's that's right. Yeah,
I'm stay away from our kitchen appliants. That is the

(32:38):
official motto of cool Zone Media. Is that is that correct?
Sophie is nodding. Um, Sometimes I just say so if
he's not in when Sophie's actually holding up a sign
that says stop doing this, You're going to get us
in trouble. But so if he's yeah, yeah, totally. And
here's some other products and services including Eve six I
mean sorry, seven, eight and nine. M h. And we

(33:05):
are back, okay. So, and we were talking about the
the at this point, you know, Chumba Womba is in there.
They they're they've taken a break from the celebrity thing.
Then they then they come back at making music and
they keep at it for another fifteen years. Tump Pumping
is right in the middle of the career of Chumba
Womba as a band. They start their own label. They

(33:26):
work with a bunch of different indies, and they put
out a ton of music, and they continue to accidentally
show up at the craziest riots in history. Wow, what
a weird coincidence. And I actually this part actually caught
me by surprise because I had kind of assumed that,
like they're in their forties, I think at this point,
and like they're doing all right, and they're still just like, well,

(33:47):
there's this riot. I mean, actually it's an accident. There's
just accidentally in all these things. Um. And I really
I really appreciate about the their bad timing where they
keep showing these things and so, and they also fund
a bunch of direct actions, which I think there's still um,
I don't want to conjecture too hard about the things
that they fund. And a bunch of them leave the

(34:07):
band in two thousand four, and I spent a while
trying to be like, what did they leave the band about? Right?
But then I realized that none of them were trying
to talk about it. There was a little bit of
like personal and political differences, and they leave it at that, right,
And and that's cool. It's cool that I don't know
because they're just like their whole thing seems to be
like how do we come close to this environment that

(34:30):
could have made us douchebag rock stars without and so
they're just like they just worked through it, at least
somewhat privately, right, Yeah, it sounds like they have loyalty
to one another and like, yeah, actual friendship. Yeah yeah,
it's almost like they you know, repaired a house together
for ten years before they went on any of this

(34:51):
crazy you know, and um and even the people who
left in two thousand four came back for their two
thousand twelve Fucket were Done Tour. I don't think that
was the actual name of it, but it might as well.
And their funcket were Done tour because they basically were like,
fuck it, we're done, and then they had a tour.
Um and they still contribute to each other's art to
this day. They like a bunch of a make movies
and theater and music and you know, Boff writes books

(35:13):
about running, Alice writes for tv UH. Bruce is working
on a documentary about Chumbawemba that's currently on the the
the circuit where you're not allowed to watch it unless
you have a that's it. When they broke up, they
put out a statement, I'm a quote from it, because

(35:35):
I think they they do a good, pretty good job
of something up what they were doing. Jumbo Wombo was
our vehicle for pointing at the Naked Emperor's we're telling
our version of the truth. It gave us more than
the joy and love of playing live, writing songs, and
singing together. It gave us a chance to be part
of a broad coalition of activists and Hector's optimists and questioners.
But eventually the rest of our lives got in the way,

(35:57):
and we couldn't commit the time and enthusiasm that the
band demanded, couldn't keep up with whatever responsibilities came with
a band like this. If there were ever a chumble
One manifesto, it would read in the inconsistent, contradictory language
of the dataists, parts strident belligerents, and part foolishness. This
ending is no different. It comes almost as much of
a surprise to us as it may do to you.

(36:20):
Always more clown than politician, the band trips over its
outsize feet and performs its final tumble. There have been
squabbles and arguments along the way, a deal of griping, frustration, moaning, exasperation,
but always alongside a huge amount of good will and generosity,
good humor and love. What a riot it's been, frankly,
and now it's time to clear up the mess and

(36:42):
move on. And U and Dan, I'm gonna read one
more quote about from one of them about this Dan
an interview with band Camp this year. I guess I
can just say this year, if I'm just talking about
the year I'm in, I'm very proud of what we
did the whole way through. We tried to push the envelope,
were and always successful, but we always tried. And that's

(37:02):
probably a defining characteristic of Chumbawamba. 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,
and I think that's a testament to the way we
had each other's backs. The mainstream usually swallows people and

(37:24):
spits them out. I mean it did spit us out,
but we took it as a compliment. Really there you go. Yeah,
it's like what you were saying about, like, it's just
how you fucking look at it. You know, yep, there
there like pros or you know, I don't know if
that last quote quotation was what you know, said to

(37:47):
a reporter or something like that, but it's it's so
beautiful and it's like better than their lyrics there their
own sort of like um yeah, assessment of their story
is is really deep and just like so on point
and and includes all of the admittedly seemingly contradictory things

(38:13):
that that made made up Shamba Womba, this thing that
was you know, on one level, just like uh vessel
for entertainment and diversion, and on another you know, straight
up you know, activism. Yeah, And it's interesting cause I

(38:34):
was thinking about this as I was writing this out.
I was like, you know, I'm not really talking about
their music, right, and like their songs, and I'm not
talking about like the their instrumentation and like and all
that stuff really matters, and it clearly mattered to them
because the whole time they're always like, oh yeah, we
don't want to play our instruments. They are like musically
really talented to the point where it's like sort of
almost annoying. Like their acapella album. I'm like, you all

(38:55):
these amazing like multiple harmonies and like all this crazy shit,
you know, and it's it's about all of these things
at once. It is one of the things that the
music is an aspect of this thing that UM as
a whole is like yeah, activist performance art. Yeah, it's

(39:16):
really inspiring, you know. I mean, they they they did
buck the system, as as he put like, maybe they
sold out, but they didn't. What's the language he used,
It spits them out right, But but but they weren't
bought up. Yeah. Yeah, it's really cool. Yeah, yeah that

(39:40):
it is really Like this is funny because it's like,
I know, you're in a band, and I'm in a band,
and I like, doesn't it make you want to start
a band or like makes you want to be in
a band? You know, Like, yeah, I'm writing right now. Um,
I've been in a bunch of bands that have done
various things, and right now, I like signed to my
first indie label with my metal band, and we have
an album Do Soon, right and it's our second full

(40:02):
length of the band. And I'm like, oh, I should
really care about that, you know, in a way where
I'm like I care about it. And I've been working
with this band for years, but I'm like, I don't
know it. No, it's inspiring, yeah, it uh, you know,
trains your your eyes back on like what's important? Yeah,
fun joyful about about a project and you know, exposes

(40:29):
all the things that aren't, all the metrics that are
seemingly important and the matter and all of that ship
which don't ultimately, Yeah, and the way in which they
matter is the vehicle with which to do it. Like
the thing that you know, getting the money to make
the music allows them to make the music. That is

(40:50):
the the part of that that matters, you know. It's
just the ability to continue to allow to continue to happen, Right,
That's the end. It's not it's not you know, to
make yourself obscenely wealthy or you know, fame or whatever
whatever else. It's like how that in their case, how

(41:10):
that served their their project totally, and both as individuals
and as activists and as artists like the music that
they make, how how it matters for its own sake
and like m hm and so they actually they released
one album after they broke up, because the very last
release came in the year after they broke up, and

(41:32):
because in two thousand five, they recorded an EP called
in Memoria Margaret Thatcher, and they were like, this would
be released when Margaret Thatcher dies, and so in Margaret
Thatcher did that did the world that that favor? And
went ahead and died and the EP came out along
with a statement, our deepest sympathies go out to the

(41:54):
families of all Margaret Thatcher's victims. And it's a very
happy little album. Amazing and so okay, so this is
and so thanks for coming along for my episode that
I totally didn't write in order to get myself off
the hook for taking corporate money, giant faceless corporation around
a podcast but radical history. Now you all know my
secret is that we're telling you about. But I I look,

(42:18):
I think the analogy works. Yeah, you know, yeah, I
think I think they might, you know, tip their their bowlers,
I hope. So if you're listening Jumba Womba, yeah all right,
well well uh yeah, what what can people you say?
You're in a band? What what is that band? What
do you? You're the band that ripped off Eve seven?

(42:40):
I think right, yeah, look, um, there's there's a bunch
of you know, vicious like um rumors going out going
around that have no footpold in the truth. Um, Eve
six came before Eve seven, and Eve seven has been like,

(43:02):
you know, biting our vibe, you know, agreed to egregiously
and and and you know, anyone who's got their ear
to the ground, Margaret has heard of Eve six, this
quiet band that yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, okay, and it
it does chronologically six does come before you? Could you

(43:22):
could use that six comes before seven? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I actually here it's afraid of seven because nine that
that that's right, see and that's that too, is true.
So that was despicable. If the lizarders could only see

(43:44):
how happy she was while making that terrible joke, that
they would be, they would be truly dismayed. Yeah, truly
the worst. I lost all of my my goth points
went out the river river. Yeah, my out the window
and down the river. Okay. Well um yeah, so so

(44:06):
what what do you have going on? You play shows
or like, how can people check out? Maybe have a
new album out coming out? Maybe it's even out by
the time people listen, because this will come out about
a month after we record it. Yeah it might be.
I have no idea when our album comes out. I
don't know, it comes out in like a few weeks.
I think I should know this, but it's called hyper relativisation.

(44:27):
If you follow us on Twitter at EVE six, you'll
you'll hear about all of that stuff. That's the only
thing you talked about on Twitter. As I recall, Yeah,
that's that's That's all I talked about on on Twitter.
Is just just you know, we just do band promo
on there. It's a very typical nineties band account where

(44:48):
we just like post photos of ourselves with with wallet chains, um,
you know, doing the devil horns and saying come out
to our show, the rib Fest and you know, and Tulsa.
That's that's what That's the kind of content that you're
going to find that our on our Twitter. Okay, cool?

(45:08):
Do you still have the pants um which the ones
that you cut slits in the side to make wider
say shoes? No, I I wish people changed, I know,
I know, Um yeah, those were so cool. Like when
I see pictures of us from from back in the day,

(45:29):
it's just really funny because none of us have feet. Yeah.
I used to. I used to chain when my when
my pants would ripped on the side I would chain
the whole between the two sides of it, make chain man. Yeah,
that's pretty tough. Yeah, yeah, that's what people saw. They
saw me coming and we're like, well, that girl is tough.

(45:49):
That That was absolutely the vibe I managed to communicate
when I was a goth girl didn't know she was
a girl in the nineties. Yeah, okay, Well, um, Sophie,
do you have anything you'd like to plug just at
cool Zone Media on Twitter and Instagram for all things Margaret.
And you have a book coming out, correct, I do,

(46:10):
but I should pitch my band. I have a band
called Feminale School, where a feminist, atmospheric black metal band. Uh.
And we have a bunch of different releases, mostly on
band camp or through various labels. And then also eventually
we'll have a full length again we already have one, uh,
but it's not up for pre order right now, unlike

(46:30):
my book We Won't Be Here Tomorrow, in which I
name every short story things that sound like they would
be black metal album titles like The Devil Lives Here
and Into the Gray and you know, very dramatic things,
very dramatic person um. And that is okay. So my
book is available for pre order, you can get an
a k press and if you get it you get

(46:52):
a little postcard of art. That is nice part we
love that. And and we'll be back what next week Monday,
I believe so cool every Monday and Wednesday. Great, I'll
see you there, all right, Thank you both so much
for having me on. This has been really fun. Thank
you cool people who did. Cool Stuff is a production

(47:15):
of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
us out on the i Heeart radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.