WEBVTT - Part Two: Chumbawamba: How to Sell Out, But in a Good Way 0:00:00.360 --> 0:00:03.239 Welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff with Margaret Piljoy, 0:00:03.279 --> 0:00:07.000 a podcast that's about cool people who did cool stuff. 0:00:07.280 --> 0:00:09.360 Our guest today is Max Collins. Max, how are you doing? 0:00:09.560 --> 0:00:13.360 You wanna about yourself at all? What's going on? I'm 0:00:13.400 --> 0:00:16.200 doing great. Thank you, it's good to be here. I 0:00:16.280 --> 0:00:18.040 was going to say on this day. That is definitely 0:00:18.120 --> 0:00:21.200 a different day. I think everything this podcast knows that 0:00:21.280 --> 0:00:26.960 we recorded in two takes one good. Yeah. So so 0:00:27.040 --> 0:00:29.560 Max Collins our guests in the nineties, he actually did 0:00:29.600 --> 0:00:32.360 an anthropological field study on one hit wonders in the 0:00:32.720 --> 0:00:35.800 rock world. That's right. Everything where you're saying right now 0:00:36.040 --> 0:00:43.920 is absolutely on, equivocally, verifiably true. Yeah, exactly, Yeah. Yeah. 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:46.800 So today we're talking about one hit wonder Chumbawamba, and 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:49.200 if you haven't listened to part one, what is wrong 0:00:49.240 --> 0:00:51.720 with you? Did something go wrong with your life? Why 0:00:51.760 --> 0:00:54.160 do you make the choices that you make? So go 0:00:54.280 --> 0:00:59.480 listen to that. Okay. So around the early nineties, life 0:00:59.480 --> 0:01:03.320 starts chan changing. For Chambawamba. It stays egalitarian, but it 0:01:03.360 --> 0:01:05.840 goes from this like loose chaotic thing into something more 0:01:05.880 --> 0:01:08.839 like a workers cooperative. They start having tons of meetings 0:01:08.920 --> 0:01:10.880 by one account, they spend more times and meetings than 0:01:10.920 --> 0:01:12.640 in practice. There's like eight or nine of them at 0:01:12.640 --> 0:01:15.800 this point, and most of them move out of the 0:01:15.800 --> 0:01:19.000 squad but stay in the band and stay activists, and 0:01:19.080 --> 0:01:20.640 they just want to do other things with their lives 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:22.720 and more and more they're alto like having families and 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:26.200 ship right and sometimes maybe obviously some of them having 0:01:26.280 --> 0:01:28.680 kids in the squad, but I could imagine not being 0:01:28.680 --> 0:01:30.839 like this is where I want to raise my children. 0:01:30.880 --> 0:01:35.160 I don't know, whatever. And and one of the cooler 0:01:35.200 --> 0:01:36.960 things about them is as they start doing this, they 0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:39.360 don't go off the h ones behind the music, like 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:43.120 they keep not exploding. Some of them did drugs, some 0:01:43.240 --> 0:01:46.520 of them were sober. They date within the band, they 0:01:46.520 --> 0:01:48.720 get one of them dumps one of them to go 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:52.800 date the other bandmate, and everyone stays good with each 0:01:52.840 --> 0:01:56.080 other more or less, like I don't know. They feel 0:01:56.080 --> 0:01:58.160 like they kind of like did hedonism right, at least 0:01:58.160 --> 0:02:01.440 as it's presented in their self mythologizing right parties and 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:04.480 raves and shows and everything. But there they're not doing 0:02:04.480 --> 0:02:08.359 the like trash the hotel room, drop penises, sexually assault fans, 0:02:08.400 --> 0:02:14.000 thing and so, and they're basically at this point trying 0:02:14.000 --> 0:02:17.360 to make it as no longer young musicians. They're trying 0:02:17.360 --> 0:02:19.519 to be like this is So they sit down and 0:02:19.560 --> 0:02:21.440 they have what the funk are we doing? Meeting, like 0:02:21.480 --> 0:02:24.000 a conversation ten years into the band, and they're like, 0:02:24.000 --> 0:02:26.880 all right, let's fucking do this thing, like let's double 0:02:26.960 --> 0:02:30.360 or nothing, let's um you know. They they quit their 0:02:30.440 --> 0:02:33.000 jobs to do it full time, which means that they 0:02:33.000 --> 0:02:35.560 needed to pay their employees, which was themselves, and also 0:02:35.600 --> 0:02:38.639 other people are helping them out, and so commercial considerations 0:02:39.240 --> 0:02:43.239 start having to be balanced alongside musical and political considerations 0:02:43.280 --> 0:02:48.880 as they make this music and they release Anarchy is 0:02:48.880 --> 0:02:51.239 the name of an album and the cover of which 0:02:51.280 --> 0:02:53.480 features the photo of a child being born, which is 0:02:53.520 --> 0:02:56.160 from a book for children about where babies came from. 0:02:56.200 --> 0:02:58.720 But this is obviously like their whole point is like 0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:00.800 you're all going to call this pornographic, aren't you, And 0:03:00.960 --> 0:03:04.360 it did. It's called pornographic. Stories refused to sell it. 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:06.359 They keep it in brown bags because you can see 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:10.280 a vagina in it or whatever. It's my favorite of 0:03:10.320 --> 0:03:13.639 their albums, um and it's the first time that they 0:03:13.680 --> 0:03:17.360 crack the very bottom of the mainstream charts, and it 0:03:17.360 --> 0:03:19.360 has the song if you haven't if you've never listened 0:03:19.360 --> 0:03:22.960 to Chumba Womba song besides Tumpa Plumping, or even if 0:03:22.960 --> 0:03:26.679 you haven't heard that, go listen to Homophobia by Chumbawemba. 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:29.919 So they start getting to play larger and larger shows 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:32.400 right there as they start taking this band really seriously. 0:03:32.440 --> 0:03:35.280 Ten years in, they tour more of the world, and 0:03:35.320 --> 0:03:39.840 the press fucking hates them. They're like, you're washed up, 0:03:39.880 --> 0:03:44.040 bad musicians. You're all too old. You scream about politics, 0:03:44.080 --> 0:03:46.160 but you don't even believe any of it. You're or 0:03:46.200 --> 0:03:48.720 like they're all like you're two woke, you're ruining the 0:03:48.840 --> 0:03:53.440 music whatever. And the fans love them. They sell out 0:03:53.480 --> 0:03:56.680 shows left and right. Uh, and the press goes between 0:03:56.680 --> 0:03:58.800 ignoring them and hating them, which is like this is 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:00.720 just like literally how to see see that's a cult 0:04:00.720 --> 0:04:06.440 band as first, and they're not super famous yet, they're 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:09.320 not tub thumping famous yet, but they're sharing a stage 0:04:09.320 --> 0:04:12.360 of smashing pumpkins in Germany at some big televised event, 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:15.760 and smashing pumpkins is apparently being real assholes about it, 0:04:15.760 --> 0:04:19.880 at least as related in Boff Whale's book and so they, 0:04:19.960 --> 0:04:22.359 like all the other bands have to like hide in 0:04:22.360 --> 0:04:24.760 their dressing rooms with the doors closed and they can't 0:04:24.760 --> 0:04:27.839 be in the corridors when Billy Corgan comes through or something. 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:32.039 And this is still prey yeah yeah, so they're like 0:04:32.600 --> 0:04:35.200 not seeing as Smashing Pumpkins as peer yet, but they're 0:04:35.240 --> 0:04:37.760 big enough to be at this televised event. And so 0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:39.960 Dan one of the people in Humble one, but he 0:04:40.000 --> 0:04:43.640 likes being naked, like constantly, He's stripping on stage for 0:04:43.680 --> 0:04:46.680 the funk of it. And the band is like, what 0:04:46.720 --> 0:04:48.560 are we gonna do to prank these assholes? That's like 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:51.360 what we gotta do. That's our thing, you know, I know, Dan, 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:55.200 take off all your clothes. So Dan gets naked. They 0:04:55.200 --> 0:04:57.760 write they were punk and huge letters across his chest. 0:04:58.520 --> 0:05:01.080 He strolls out on stage just a smashing bomb gets 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:03.599 it's their big finale, you know. He walks up to 0:05:03.680 --> 0:05:06.120 Billy and he salutes the crowd naked, and then he 0:05:06.160 --> 0:05:08.760 walks off and the rest of the band is to 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:12.760 physically rescue him from pouncers and that they fled the 0:05:12.800 --> 0:05:16.080 scene as like they're being chased, and the promoters like, 0:05:16.080 --> 0:05:19.640 you'll never appear on German television again which probably didn't 0:05:19.680 --> 0:05:24.200 turn out to be true incredible and yeah, I know, 0:05:24.279 --> 0:05:28.360 I love it, I love it. Um. Also, they turn 0:05:28.400 --> 0:05:31.000 in an album called tub Thump into their label, which 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:33.919 is a label called One Little Indian, which was not 0:05:34.040 --> 0:05:36.000 a great name for a label, and just to be clear, 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:38.920 the label realized that and in they changed their name 0:05:39.839 --> 0:05:44.400 to One Little Independent. Chamba Womba turns in this album 0:05:44.440 --> 0:05:47.440 to them and the labels like, no, this sucks, go 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:51.800 home and write better songs. No good onward. And then 0:05:51.800 --> 0:05:54.840 E m I Germany, a major label, was like, well, 0:05:55.320 --> 0:05:59.440 we'll give you a hundred thousand fake europe money for it, 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:02.200 maybe pound, maybe euros, I don't know, one of the 0:06:02.240 --> 0:06:04.600 fake moneys that they have over there. And at first 0:06:04.640 --> 0:06:06.480 they laugh it off right there, like no way when 0:06:06.520 --> 0:06:09.400 we do that, obviously, and then they kind of sit 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:12.839 on it and they're like, we're so fucking broke, and 0:06:12.880 --> 0:06:15.679 that is enough money that even if the album doesn't 0:06:15.720 --> 0:06:18.520 sell at all, we can still pay everyone involved a 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:23.400 decent wage, you know. They to be clear, Chumbawemba had 0:06:23.440 --> 0:06:25.839 put a song out on an anti em I compilation 0:06:25.880 --> 0:06:28.480 about ten years earlier. The compilations called Funck E M 0:06:28.560 --> 0:06:31.360 I at at the time e m I was was 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:33.560 deep in the nuclear arms industry. E m I had 0:06:33.560 --> 0:06:37.000 since divested from that, but still it wasn't It clearly 0:06:37.080 --> 0:06:40.600 wasn't good optics, and they weren't sure, but they I 0:06:40.640 --> 0:06:43.080 think what happened is that they they were sure it 0:06:43.120 --> 0:06:45.640 wasn't good optics to the punk scene. What they were 0:06:45.680 --> 0:06:47.040 trying to figure out was whether or not it was 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:49.440 good ethics, and they wanted to make their decision based 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:51.680 on that. So they talk it over as a collective, 0:06:51.720 --> 0:06:54.440 like they do everything. They don't vote about major decisions. 0:06:54.440 --> 0:06:57.239 They work for consensus, and they talk it over for weeks. 0:06:57.839 --> 0:07:01.039 They are like, look, the symbolism is bad, but change 0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:04.159 for change's sake is sometimes good. They were stagnating, and 0:07:04.200 --> 0:07:06.680 they were like, fuck stagnating, that's what we don't want 0:07:06.680 --> 0:07:09.440 to do. It's more of a chance to reach more people. 0:07:09.920 --> 0:07:11.920 Saying fuck you to a scene that was getting way 0:07:11.920 --> 0:07:14.560 too essentially conservative from their point of view, seemed fun 0:07:14.600 --> 0:07:17.440 to them. Being able to pay themselves enough to not 0:07:17.640 --> 0:07:20.360 worry for a while. Like they're all working class folks, right, 0:07:20.360 --> 0:07:22.000 and they're proceeding in middle age without much of a 0:07:22.000 --> 0:07:26.320 safety net. Because they all were squatter punks and and 0:07:26.360 --> 0:07:29.160 they're like fans like Fugazi can get away with being 0:07:29.200 --> 0:07:32.800 fiercely independent because they're just big enough and sell enough records. Right, 0:07:33.560 --> 0:07:36.280 Chamba Womba wasn't selling that kind of those kinds of numbers, 0:07:37.320 --> 0:07:39.760 and but fear of what people would think was a 0:07:39.760 --> 0:07:42.000 big part of it. A few years earlier in Poland, 0:07:42.320 --> 0:07:44.840 some American punk had taken it upon himself to like 0:07:44.880 --> 0:07:47.280 slash their tour van tires because he was mad about 0:07:47.280 --> 0:07:50.600 how much the band was charging for the show. Punks 0:07:50.600 --> 0:07:58.240 can be sort of yeah, yeah, And one of one 0:07:58.280 --> 0:07:59.760 of the things that they thought about a lot they 0:08:00.160 --> 0:08:02.720 you know, the most convincing argument to some of them, 0:08:02.760 --> 0:08:04.560 and I actually think maybe the most convincing argument to 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:08.360 me is they're like, look are independent labels are also 0:08:09.040 --> 0:08:12.360 just all about the money. They are also fucking us over. 0:08:12.640 --> 0:08:16.000 They're also greedy, we might as well get paid well. 0:08:16.640 --> 0:08:19.560 Alice Nutter puts it in an interview of The Punk 0:08:19.600 --> 0:08:23.360 magazine later, my reasoning for doing it isn't how we're 0:08:23.360 --> 0:08:25.160 going to get our message across to more people. It's 0:08:25.240 --> 0:08:28.040 nothing to do with that. It's because my experiences with 0:08:28.080 --> 0:08:30.800 one little Indian in the music industry have me convinced 0:08:30.800 --> 0:08:33.520 that they're all the fucking same. They're small businessmen and 0:08:33.600 --> 0:08:36.480 big business men, and they've they have a different agenda 0:08:36.520 --> 0:08:40.600 to us. There's no good or bad capitalism. It's kind 0:08:40.600 --> 0:08:44.960 of what they hit upon. They do it, and which 0:08:45.000 --> 0:08:47.440 brings us to probably the only song by them that 0:08:47.480 --> 0:08:49.640 most of the people listening to this podcast have actually heard, 0:08:49.920 --> 0:08:53.400 stub thumping about falling down and standing up and about drinking. 0:08:53.440 --> 0:08:55.800 I literally don't know. I didn't actually ask Sophie what 0:08:55.840 --> 0:08:57.880 I'm allowed to do in terms of quoting song lyrics. 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:00.280 So that's why I keep tea speaking about it. Very verge. 0:09:00.920 --> 0:09:03.600 Sophie says, yes, I can claim that I wrote the 0:09:03.640 --> 0:09:07.040 song and that it is legally my property. That is 0:09:07.040 --> 0:09:09.120 what Sophie is nodding and saying, yes right now. So 0:09:09.160 --> 0:09:11.880 I wrote the song tub Thumping, and when I did, okay, So, 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:15.560 but I'm gonna quote Boff Walley about this song. Tub 0:09:15.600 --> 0:09:18.280 Thumping from its very outset as an idea, was definitely 0:09:18.280 --> 0:09:22.120 populist and based on working class experience. That's working class 0:09:22.160 --> 0:09:24.680 not just as a mythic Trotskyist vision, but as a 0:09:24.720 --> 0:09:28.200 cultural and historic whole which includes family and sport and 0:09:28.280 --> 0:09:31.680 community and war and love and entertainment, not just the 0:09:31.679 --> 0:09:35.520 cliche clenched fist getting up, but the getting knocked down 0:09:35.600 --> 0:09:39.480 as well. Tub Thumping became known to some purely as 0:09:39.480 --> 0:09:42.520 a drinking song, which is fair enough because of nothing else. 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:45.160 It didn't belong to an elite group of musicians. It 0:09:45.240 --> 0:09:49.440 belonged to people, people at football matches, people singing along 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:52.160 to the radio as they drove, people at parties, drinking 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:55.040 too much whiskey and tripping over the kitchen chairs, people 0:09:55.120 --> 0:09:57.960 like me. And because it helped beggar the notion that 0:09:58.040 --> 0:10:02.000 Chumba Womba were boring zealots from planet anarchy. And that's 0:10:02.000 --> 0:10:04.400 not what I realized when I heard it when I 0:10:04.440 --> 0:10:06.120 was in the nineties and like driving around and like, 0:10:06.679 --> 0:10:08.880 but but I think it's cool that they don't try 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:14.480 to shoe that interpretation because it is a drinking song, 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:17.200 you know, it's but it works on a couple of 0:10:17.200 --> 0:10:21.640 different levels. But um, it is a drinking song insofar 0:10:21.880 --> 0:10:27.080 as like, you know you're drinking with your mates, and 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:31.880 that there's community there, and there's solidarity there, and and 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:37.040 there's you know, commiseration for the getting knocked down, you know, 0:10:37.520 --> 0:10:41.679 parts of life there, which is punk as fuck. It 0:10:41.800 --> 0:10:44.319 is punk as fucked, like put your arms around all 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:47.800 your friends and drunkenly sing songs like whatever. The song 0:10:48.080 --> 0:10:53.080 you know, like yeah, like yeah, um, it's collective, it's 0:10:53.160 --> 0:10:57.120 it's yeah. It's a kind of a spiritual experience, you know, yeah, totally, 0:10:57.160 --> 0:10:59.080 and it's one that we have like increasingly stripped away 0:10:59.120 --> 0:11:02.920 from us up by modern life. And apparently one of 0:11:02.920 --> 0:11:05.679 the main inspirations of the song was watching a drunk 0:11:05.720 --> 0:11:08.600 irish guy stumbling home from a bar singing Danny Boy 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:11.520 and being told to shut up by a neighbor. So 0:11:12.600 --> 0:11:15.720 and the song goes fucking huge. And again, if you 0:11:15.760 --> 0:11:19.000 were live in the nineties, you probably remember this. It's 0:11:19.080 --> 0:11:21.480 number two in the UK, it's number six in the US, 0:11:22.080 --> 0:11:24.400 It's in the charts everywhere in the world. It gets 0:11:24.480 --> 0:11:27.079 ranked on lists of like the twenty most annoying songs 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:31.240 of all time. Yeah, I mean there's a distinction to 0:11:31.320 --> 0:11:35.559 be made there between between like a hit song and 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:41.480 like a global smash like that song was like, you know, 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:45.800 number one on alternative rock radio or whatever, but also 0:11:46.120 --> 0:11:48.720 pop radio, and also not just in the US, but 0:11:48.840 --> 0:11:53.559 like yeah, you know, everywhere. It was just one of those, 0:11:54.400 --> 0:11:59.000 you know, hyper ubiquitous, so that you could not escape 0:11:59.040 --> 0:12:03.040 no matter where you were, no matter what you're where 0:12:03.040 --> 0:12:07.760 your tastes, what genres your tastes went through or whatever. Yeah, 0:12:07.800 --> 0:12:10.080 because it's also kind of a genre list song. Like 0:12:10.120 --> 0:12:13.240 on its face, you know, it has like I think 0:12:13.240 --> 0:12:17.120 electronic drums and just this catchy sing along chorus and 0:12:17.240 --> 0:12:22.240 like it's just and it's like, yeah, it's almost like 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:25.520 like a collective delusion, you know, this thing that just 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:31.120 like absorbed everyone for a moment, you know, and yeah, 0:12:31.480 --> 0:12:34.400 I don't know, it's fucking interesting. It's like in a way, 0:12:34.800 --> 0:12:39.280 it's like it was it was a troll sort of, 0:12:39.360 --> 0:12:42.760 but it also wasn't a cynical one. They were they 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:47.440 weren't looking down on the people enjoying it for whatever 0:12:47.520 --> 0:12:52.160 surface reasons. There was no contempt there um, but it 0:12:52.280 --> 0:12:56.679 was this thing that functioned on a couple of different levels. Yeah, 0:12:56.720 --> 0:13:00.199 it's so fucking like it's just brilliant. It's us So 0:13:01.559 --> 0:13:03.560 it's yeah, it's it's a prank, but it's not a prank, 0:13:03.720 --> 0:13:06.160 you know. It's this earnest thing they did that got 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:11.599 injected into pop culture and sucking and a lot of 0:13:11.640 --> 0:13:15.960 their old fans write them letters calling them sellouts. But 0:13:16.040 --> 0:13:18.160 the people who really lad the charge of calling them 0:13:18.200 --> 0:13:20.640 hypocrites were the same music journalists who had always hated 0:13:20.679 --> 0:13:23.199 them because they're like, ah see, we told you their 0:13:23.200 --> 0:13:25.960 politics didn't mean anything, which was their way of basically 0:13:26.559 --> 0:13:29.120 excusing themselves for never having had decent politics in the 0:13:29.120 --> 0:13:35.000 first which is a really dubious way to sort of yeah, 0:13:35.200 --> 0:13:39.559 you know, truffle hunt for what seems like hypocrisy, but 0:13:39.600 --> 0:13:43.920 if you scratch the service at all, you realize really isn't. 0:13:44.280 --> 0:13:46.480 It's a collective who wants to take be able to 0:13:46.520 --> 0:13:50.160 take care of their own and as we'll find soon 0:13:50.320 --> 0:13:53.800 enough in the story, um take care of others as well, 0:13:53.840 --> 0:13:58.600 and do that by siphoning corporate money. And yeah, like 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:03.400 you know, doing Robin hood ship. Really yeah, totally totally 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:06.440 And and it's funny is to look at like if 0:14:06.480 --> 0:14:08.760 I had been I, you know, I was a salty 0:14:09.520 --> 0:14:12.080 subcultural but not like a punk yet right at the 0:14:12.080 --> 0:14:14.040 time of all of this, if I had been like 0:14:14.679 --> 0:14:17.040 if it had happened in two thousands three, I probably 0:14:17.040 --> 0:14:18.679 would have been one of the people being like, you 0:14:18.760 --> 0:14:23.320 fucking sellouts, right, But I'm glad that I don't um, 0:14:23.320 --> 0:14:25.240 you know, like twenty one year old me is not 0:14:25.280 --> 0:14:27.360 who I look back to about what decisions were best 0:14:27.360 --> 0:14:30.200 to make for my life. You know, I'm stuck with 0:14:30.240 --> 0:14:35.160 some of the tattoos, but that's okay. Yeah. So they 0:14:35.240 --> 0:14:37.440 spent two years, the next two years in this whirlwind 0:14:37.480 --> 0:14:40.800 of fame. It doesn't stop them from being themselves. And 0:14:41.200 --> 0:14:44.000 first and foremost, they gave away just a fun ton 0:14:44.040 --> 0:14:47.320 of money since since all the money gets split equally, 0:14:47.400 --> 0:14:50.080 they didn't like fuss about who did who deserves what 0:14:50.160 --> 0:14:51.880 amount and stuff like that. You know, there were the 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:53.680 people who are the lead singers of the songs whatever, 0:14:53.720 --> 0:14:56.280 but they're like, we're just split in evenly. We'll work 0:14:56.280 --> 0:14:58.480 from there. And they peer pressure each other out of 0:14:58.520 --> 0:15:01.680 like running out and buying Jaguars. Boff notes that Dan 0:15:01.760 --> 0:15:04.760 went out and bought a really fancy vacuum cleaner, which 0:15:04.760 --> 0:15:07.040 I must be what middle age an artists do. And 0:15:07.040 --> 0:15:09.560 they suddenly have a lot of money. You know, vacuum 0:15:09.560 --> 0:15:14.000 cleaners a very nice thing. And they I get the 0:15:14.040 --> 0:15:16.240 impression that they hold onto enough money to not have 0:15:16.280 --> 0:15:20.520 to like worry about being poor. But they donate money 0:15:20.560 --> 0:15:24.640 to artists, women's groups, prisoner defense campaigns, kids football teams, 0:15:24.720 --> 0:15:29.760 radical media projects, venues, solidarity groups, individual organizers, community groups, magazines, 0:15:29.800 --> 0:15:32.880 direct action groups, and social centers. At one point in 0:15:32.880 --> 0:15:37.720 two thousand two, GM wanted a song for a commercial. Yeah, 0:15:38.240 --> 0:15:41.320 Jumba Womba said yes, and they take took a hundred 0:15:41.360 --> 0:15:44.000 thousand dollars or different accounts give different amounts, but a 0:15:44.080 --> 0:15:48.440 large number of money, high money number hundred thousand will 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:51.640 go with that. And they just turn around and they 0:15:51.640 --> 0:15:53.800 give half of it to indie media, which is this 0:15:53.880 --> 0:15:57.440 big decentralized you be the media network, and they give 0:15:57.520 --> 0:16:00.080 which is unfortunately kind of probably what prefigured to it 0:16:00.080 --> 0:16:01.560 earned the rest of the night where we living now, 0:16:01.560 --> 0:16:03.600 but it was a good idea at the time. And 0:16:03.640 --> 0:16:05.800 they give the other half to a project called corp 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:10.160 Watch that is specifically fucking um tracking GM and like 0:16:10.240 --> 0:16:12.000 exposing their crimes. And so they just turn around and 0:16:12.000 --> 0:16:16.520 give fifty to people who are like specifically attacking GM. Yeah. 0:16:16.840 --> 0:16:18.680 And so if the two main arguments that they have 0:16:18.760 --> 0:16:21.240 in favor of selling out are reach a wider audience 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:24.320 and get fun tons of money, they do both. But 0:16:25.480 --> 0:16:27.680 but I actually I think Alice Nutter was right in 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:30.280 some ways, the funk tons of money, which seems less 0:16:30.640 --> 0:16:32.960 radical goal, is actually in some ways the more radical 0:16:33.000 --> 0:16:36.360 thing they did, because the wider audience didn't necessarily like 0:16:37.040 --> 0:16:40.480 get it right. Uh. They talk about anarchism on news shows, 0:16:40.480 --> 0:16:43.320 they mostly get made fun of. They sell their music 0:16:43.360 --> 0:16:45.040 to a ton of places, but they turned down other 0:16:45.080 --> 0:16:47.640 places too. They turned down Nike, who offered them a 0:16:47.640 --> 0:16:50.080 million and a half bucks. Their rules were really simple 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:52.560 and strict. They wouldn't sell their music to anyone involved 0:16:52.560 --> 0:16:56.760 in sweatshop labor or the arms industry. And when I 0:16:56.800 --> 0:16:59.280 first started researching this episode, I thought it was gonna 0:16:59.280 --> 0:17:01.720 be mostly about their their high jinks during the fame period, 0:17:01.720 --> 0:17:05.080 because it's really good hijinks. But in the end, I 0:17:05.640 --> 0:17:07.240 you know, the reason the first half is more about 0:17:07.240 --> 0:17:10.080 the working class punks in the squad breaking laws is 0:17:10.119 --> 0:17:12.000 like what I kind of lingered on. But let's start 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:16.680 without the hijinks. One time, the tob Thumping era, Dan 0:17:17.080 --> 0:17:19.639 gets arrested in Italy literally for just walking down the 0:17:19.640 --> 0:17:22.359 street wearing a skirt, and he's held in his cell. 0:17:22.480 --> 0:17:24.720 He's a show that night. He gets held in a 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:26.679 cell with no one speaking to him in English, and 0:17:26.680 --> 0:17:30.119 finally he scrawls I'm in a pop group called Chumbo 0:17:30.160 --> 0:17:32.879 Womba on a piece of paper and helds it up 0:17:32.920 --> 0:17:36.159 to the glass of the cell and they release him 0:17:36.359 --> 0:17:38.679 um and he gets in time to go to the 0:17:38.720 --> 0:17:42.680 sound check. Uh. The next day, he appears on Italian 0:17:42.680 --> 0:17:45.840 TV in the skirt and says Italy has some problems 0:17:45.840 --> 0:17:51.320 with homophobic, macho cop culture. Alice Nutter steps up as 0:17:51.359 --> 0:17:54.520 being the kind of unofficial spokesperson for the band, I 0:17:54.600 --> 0:17:57.280 think mostly because she enjoyed talking the most and had 0:17:57.320 --> 0:17:59.960 the most to say. She was also maybe the most 0:18:00.160 --> 0:18:04.800 firebrand of them. She told the UK Press, nothing can 0:18:04.880 --> 0:18:07.879 change the fact that we like it when cops get killed. 0:18:09.160 --> 0:18:12.600 E m I is like, oh my god, please apologize. 0:18:12.640 --> 0:18:16.159 What the fuck? Oh my god. She didn't apologize and 0:18:16.160 --> 0:18:19.600 said she clarified her statement. If you're working class, they 0:18:19.640 --> 0:18:22.439 won't protect you. When you hear about them, it's in 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:25.640 the context of them abusing people, you know, miscarriages of justice. 0:18:26.119 --> 0:18:28.240 We don't have a party when cops die, you know, 0:18:28.359 --> 0:18:32.840 we don't. But before we hear about more of Alice 0:18:32.920 --> 0:18:37.919 Nutter's anti capitalist hijinks, boy, we have some capitalist hijinks 0:18:37.960 --> 0:18:49.520 for you, in the form of products and services. Okay, 0:18:49.520 --> 0:18:54.960 and we are back in January. Alice Nutter, she goes 0:18:55.000 --> 0:18:59.360 on the talk show Politically Incorrect, and she says, basically, yeah, 0:18:59.359 --> 0:19:01.200 if you can't afford our music, just go to the 0:19:01.240 --> 0:19:04.639 nearest big, evil, giant chain store like Virgin and steal it. 0:19:05.880 --> 0:19:10.080 Um and Virgin I didn't like this Chambawamba at the 0:19:10.080 --> 0:19:12.600 time as Universal's number one selling band, and here's the 0:19:12.640 --> 0:19:15.199 band saying, just steal it. Who fucking cares as long 0:19:15.240 --> 0:19:19.439 as you steal from a large corporation. Virgin threatens to 0:19:19.480 --> 0:19:22.119 remove the album from their stores. And it depends on 0:19:22.119 --> 0:19:24.919 what account you read. They either stopped carrying it entirely 0:19:25.000 --> 0:19:27.880 or hit it behind the counter. I don't know. And 0:19:28.000 --> 0:19:32.600 this only makes sales go up, which doesn't fucking surprise me, right, 0:19:32.600 --> 0:19:34.600 Like I could have told them that, Like, yeah, more 0:19:34.640 --> 0:19:37.800 will get stolen. But if people steal the CDs, people 0:19:37.840 --> 0:19:39.480 are gonna listen to it and talk about it, and 0:19:39.520 --> 0:19:41.480 more people are going to go out and sucking buy it. Right. 0:19:41.680 --> 0:19:44.120 And and if you're taking it off the shelves were 0:19:44.200 --> 0:19:49.520 hiding it, you're literally manufacturing scarcity for the thing, and 0:19:50.240 --> 0:19:53.160 by making it more valuable. Yeah, yeah, so everyone wants 0:19:53.200 --> 0:19:55.040 to go out and find it and get it. Yeah. 0:19:55.640 --> 0:19:58.720 So anyway, their their contact at Universal called the band 0:19:58.760 --> 0:20:01.119 and was like, well, you all just laugh at me 0:20:01.160 --> 0:20:03.360 if I tell you that Universal wants to ask you 0:20:03.440 --> 0:20:06.160 to apologize for saying all that, Like they're rep knows 0:20:06.480 --> 0:20:09.119 it's a like fool's errand that he's been tasked to 0:20:09.200 --> 0:20:11.960 call them and ask them to apologize. He's like, you're 0:20:12.000 --> 0:20:13.639 not going to do this, are you, And they're like 0:20:14.000 --> 0:20:19.879 ha ha ha Nope. And later Alice Nutters, in a 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:24.080 recollection says, why should I apologize? I wasn't sorry, which 0:20:24.119 --> 0:20:26.879 is exactly how you should or shouldn't apologize when you 0:20:26.920 --> 0:20:32.000 make decisions about apologies. So, and on The David Letterman Show, 0:20:32.600 --> 0:20:35.160 they changed the lyrics of tub thumping to include from 0:20:35.320 --> 0:20:38.840 free mu Mia bou Jamal and Mama bou Jamal for 0:20:38.920 --> 0:20:41.439 anyone who's not aware. As a a black political prisoner 0:20:41.480 --> 0:20:43.320 who was probably framed up on the murder of a 0:20:43.359 --> 0:20:45.919 cop in Philly and at the very least definitely had 0:20:45.920 --> 0:20:48.720 an unfair trial, he spent a couple of decades on 0:20:48.760 --> 0:20:50.760 death row, which was reduced to life without pearl in 0:20:50.760 --> 0:20:53.800 two thousand one. So Chumbawamba goes on Letterman and sings 0:20:53.840 --> 0:20:57.600 free Muma Bou Jamal and it was prerecorded, so Letterman 0:20:57.880 --> 0:21:00.720 let it happen. In the end, basically they sat down 0:21:01.000 --> 0:21:03.359 like the Letterman Show. People were like, funk, are we 0:21:03.400 --> 0:21:06.080 gonna let this fu happen? And finally the network is 0:21:06.119 --> 0:21:10.280 like all right, fuck it. They run it and they 0:21:10.320 --> 0:21:13.359 talked about anarchism with Barbara Walters. They basically leave a 0:21:13.400 --> 0:21:16.399 trail of chaos that the record labels are running around 0:21:16.400 --> 0:21:18.679 trying to clean up for them. But instead of trash 0:21:18.720 --> 0:21:22.879 hotel rooms, it was just weird ship, you know. And 0:21:22.920 --> 0:21:27.600 the peak of all this was brit Awards, which I 0:21:27.600 --> 0:21:30.439 think are the Grammys for people stuck on entirely tiny 0:21:30.480 --> 0:21:33.320 island without sunshine. My theory is that they actually named 0:21:33.359 --> 0:21:36.440 the country after the award show. Uh it was called 0:21:37.160 --> 0:21:39.600 britt Land, but then with the accents on like Britain, 0:21:39.680 --> 0:21:44.399 and so that's what stuck. Sounds true to me. Yeah, 0:21:44.560 --> 0:21:48.119