Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff
Speaker 2: rerun edition. That's right, it's the holidays, and that means
Speaker 2: that I am going to run reruns. And I thought,
Speaker 2: what's better to get us in the holiday spirit than
Speaker 2: that holiday band. I've decided their holiday band the history
Speaker 2: of everyone's favorite an arcopop band, Chumbawamba. It's probably not
Speaker 2: a Christmas band. In fact, they might be annoyed if
Speaker 2: I call them that. Well, it's too bad because it's
Speaker 2: my podcast and this is a history of Chumbawamba. We'll
Speaker 2: be back next week with a non rerun whatever you
Speaker 2: call it a run, a regular run. Anyway, Here it
Speaker 2: is Hello and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff,
Speaker 2: the podcast about all the cool people in history who
Speaker 2: did cool stuff. I'm your host, Killjoy and with me
Speaker 2: today is the one and only Max Collins, who might
Speaker 2: not be the only Max Collins. There's probably a bunch
Speaker 2: of Max Collins's.
Speaker 3: There's probably a few.
Speaker 2: Okay, are you are you aware of any other Max Collins?
Speaker 2: Is it like a Highlander thing?
Speaker 3: I'm not, but my my dad's name is Michael Collins
Speaker 3: and sellouts. Yeah, yeah, he was for a while there
Speaker 3: he was like getting stopped and flagged on flights because
Speaker 3: like people thought that, you know, I don't know that name.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, uh, that.
Speaker 2: He was the IRA musicians.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly, so he would have to be pulled aside
Speaker 3: and made sure he wasn't you know an IRA guy?
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, who just is a lich and still alive?
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, for anyone who's listening, you might know Max
Speaker 2: Collins as the son of the revolutionary IRA leader Michael. No,
Speaker 2: you can't know Max Collins as the from the band
Speaker 2: Eve six, or you might know him from a ship
Speaker 2: post on Twitter. Max. How are you doing today?
Speaker 3: I'm doing well. Thank you, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2: Yeah. We also have Sophie on the call. Who's our producer, Sophie.
Speaker 2: How are you doing?
Speaker 1: I'm doing a well, Margaret, Thank you for asking.
Speaker 2: Holl Right, No one ever asks me how I'm doing.
Speaker 3: So how are you, Margaret?
Speaker 2: I'm good. I'm really excited to top I had a
Speaker 2: whole twenty minute conversation with you off Mike. I know
Speaker 2: how you are, that's true, Margaret's well. Okay, listeners, I'm
Speaker 2: doing so good today that I get to talk about
Speaker 2: I'm literally wearing the shirt of today's topic.
Speaker 3: So today wearing you're wearing the merch to the show,
Speaker 3: so to speak.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, So today we're going to talk about
Speaker 2: a one hit wonder from the nineties. This is not
Speaker 2: normally a music podcast, but I hope you all will
Speaker 2: indulge me. It's gonna be worth it. Max. Have you
Speaker 2: ever heard of a band called Jumbo Lumba?
Speaker 3: Sure have yep?
Speaker 2: So okay, completely have you have you ever like played
Speaker 2: with them or anything like that? Am I talking about
Speaker 2: like your friends? I have no idea what you know about?
Speaker 3: No, I've never I've never met them. I know the
Speaker 3: singer whose name I'm blanking on now, a.
Speaker 2: Lot of singers Boff Whaley, Bruce. Well nope. Now I'm
Speaker 2: going to be really embarrassed that I don't remember the
Speaker 2: name of the people that I'm going to be talking
Speaker 2: about because I can't remember names.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, yeah, I can't either, but yeah, the
Speaker 3: main dude. After I did, I was interviewed for Mel
Speaker 3: piece written by Magdalen forgetting her last name now l
Speaker 3: I P. Mel. I think that's no longer a magazine,
Speaker 3: but yeah, and spoke about you know, Chumble Womba for
Speaker 3: for the piece, and apparently he liked it, was asked
Speaker 3: for my email and stuff, was going to reach out,
Speaker 3: but I never got an email from the man who
Speaker 3: I'm disrespecting by not being able to remember him. Right.
Speaker 2: It's more embarrassing for me because this is literally a
Speaker 2: script about him, and I just am capable. For anyone
Speaker 2: who's like, wow, Margaret sure knows all these dates and
Speaker 2: all this history, it's because I write it down when
Speaker 2: I researched things, and then it escapes me. But for
Speaker 2: anyone who success to Dunstan Bruce, yes, yes, that name
Speaker 2: that I also remembered, Dunstan Bruce. For anyone who was
Speaker 2: either too young or successfully lived under a rock. During
Speaker 2: the late nineties, there was this song called tub Thumping
Speaker 2: and it's about drinking and falling over and then not
Speaker 2: being falling over anymore. And it was fucking everywhere and
Speaker 2: I fucking hated it. I was in high school and
Speaker 2: I was busy setting myself up as someone who hated
Speaker 2: everything that was popular, and that was my original introduction
Speaker 2: to Chumba Womba.
Speaker 4: Then okay, can I ask you a quick question, Huh
Speaker 4: did you did you legitimately hate the song like did
Speaker 4: it make you bristle with antagonism when you heard it,
Speaker 4: if you were like alone in your car.
Speaker 3: Or something like that, or did the version of yourself
Speaker 3: that you wanted to enjoy and present to the world
Speaker 3: did that you know, did that person not like Chumble Womba?
Speaker 3: Because I know with radio rock of the nineties, you know,
Speaker 3: like if tub Thumping or like Hey Jealousy or even
Speaker 3: some of those live hits came on when I was
Speaker 3: in my car alone, I would enjoy the shit out
Speaker 3: of them. I would be totally moved by them and stuff. Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 3: I definitely wasn't telling my friends, you know. Yeah, that's interesting,
Speaker 3: sort of embarrassing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I I genuinely don't know the answer to
Speaker 2: that question because I've like rewritten my own script in
Speaker 2: my head.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: I think I tended not to like anything that was
Speaker 2: happy in the late nineties, and so I think the
Speaker 2: tub Thumping. But on the other hand, it is just
Speaker 2: so like now I love this song, right, Yeah, And
Speaker 2: actually Hey Jealousy, I actually always liked Hey Jealousy, But
Speaker 2: I think it's because it was like just before I
Speaker 2: got too cool for everything, right. I don't know if
Speaker 2: I could go back. I whatever, I'm not mad at
Speaker 2: my younger self, even though it was affectatious that I
Speaker 2: refused everything that was like on I listened to the radio.
Speaker 2: What am I doing listening to radio if I'm claiming
Speaker 2: to hate everything on it? I don't know.
Speaker 3: I know what you mean, though. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I started learning more about the band, and they'd
Speaker 2: been around for almost twenty years before that song came out.
Speaker 2: They were in an arcopunk collective. Selling out was this
Speaker 2: calculated move to reach more people, sustain themselves, and just
Speaker 2: give a fuck ton of money away to political projects
Speaker 2: working to destroy capitalism. I found out that they started
Speaker 2: out as working class kids who wanted to be in
Speaker 2: a band but couldn't play any instruments and to know
Speaker 2: how to sing. They lasted for thirty years. They toured
Speaker 2: the world, They pranked everyone, They got arrested again and again.
Speaker 2: They squatted a house. They work collectively. They took in runaways,
Speaker 2: they raised kids, and along the way they learned how
Speaker 2: to make really fucking good music. And so I will
Speaker 2: present to you my hypothesis that Chumbawamba is the single
Speaker 2: punkst thing to have ever happened, and no offense to
Speaker 2: me and no offense to you, Max, But that is
Speaker 2: my hypothesis that I'm working off of.
Speaker 3: I'm with it cool.
Speaker 2: I wonder if Crass is going to come and yell
Speaker 2: at me, But you know, whatever't.
Speaker 3: Isn't there a crossover there? I feel like maybe there's
Speaker 3: an ex member of Crass who was in Tumbawamba or
Speaker 3: something like that.
Speaker 2: I know that they heavily influenced, well, Crass heavily influenced Chumbawamba.
Speaker 2: I don't know about vice versa, because they like came
Speaker 2: out just a few years after Crass kind of came
Speaker 2: on the scene. But I don't know whether or not.
Speaker 2: I'm sure that they all know each other now. And
Speaker 2: so today the story I want to present is the
Speaker 2: story of a band that's sold out, but in a
Speaker 2: good way, the Chumbowamba story. Yeah, and I'm how I'm
Speaker 2: glad I got over myself. That's the subtext, Margaret herself.
Speaker 2: We start our story in Burnley, somewhere, some nowhere town
Speaker 2: in northern England, population ninety one thousand people, and it's
Speaker 2: in the northern England. I didn't know this growing up,
Speaker 2: so maybe other Americans didn't know this. It's the poorer
Speaker 2: part of England, the place you're supposed to make fun
Speaker 2: of everyone who's from for being like backwards and provincial.
Speaker 2: The Northern accent gets compared to the Southern accent, or
Speaker 2: maybe the Appalachian accent in terms of its social impact
Speaker 2: is the best I've ever heard it described. And Burnley,
Speaker 2: where they start, is this sort of town where all
Speaker 2: the factory jobs had gone overseas and the town is
Speaker 2: quietly dying, just familiar to you know, many people who
Speaker 2: might be listening to this. Most of the band is
Speaker 2: from there. Born in the sixties. Off Whaley, the guitarist.
Speaker 2: He's the one who he got tasked with writing the
Speaker 2: book about Chumbo Wamba at some point. So I know
Speaker 2: more about his childhood than anyone else's because he wrote
Speaker 2: a book about it and I read the book. But
Speaker 2: he's not the protagonist or the lead singer or in
Speaker 2: charge of Chumbawamba. They were all very aggressively a collective
Speaker 2: at all times. But he's one of the founders, and
Speaker 2: so he wrote the book, so we're going to talk
Speaker 2: about him. He was a Mormon as a teenager, his
Speaker 2: mom had converted. He was a believer. He was raised poor,
Speaker 2: thankfully estranged from a shitty birth dad, and he had
Speaker 2: a pretty cool stepdad. Well probably I didn't know.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that there were British Mormons.
Speaker 2: Well, so he's the only one who started off Mormon
Speaker 2: that I'm aware of. Maybe the other ones did. I
Speaker 2: think that.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying in general, I thought Mormonism was a
Speaker 3: distinctly American.
Speaker 2: Oh, I see what you're saying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know religious phenomenon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was yeah. They I don't know exactly how
Speaker 2: it hit the sixties in England, but I was reading
Speaker 2: about that and I had kind of a similar reaction,
Speaker 2: being like, this thing has gotten out of Salt Lake City. Yea,
Speaker 2: someone should do something about that. I mean, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: And so so Boff. He's raised in this family, seems
Speaker 2: like a reasonably happy family childhood or he's not the
Speaker 2: type to talk shit about his family in an autobiography.
Speaker 2: And he's really into football, British football, soccer, whatever, and
Speaker 2: he's really shit at it. And in nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 2: I think he's about fifteen years old, maybe fourteen, he
Speaker 2: sees the sex pistols on TV and singing anarchy in
Speaker 2: the UK. He sees Johnny Rotten, and he's like, this
Speaker 2: is it. I'm in I'm going to be a punk,
Speaker 2: which is way more original than me deciding I'm going
Speaker 2: to be a punk in like you know, the early ots,
Speaker 2: early nineties or whatever. His best friend Midge is into
Speaker 2: punk too, and Midge's dad is upset with saving electricity
Speaker 2: to save money. So it's this house, like imagine a
Speaker 2: house where like all of the light bulbs are forty
Speaker 2: watt light bulbs and everything's dark all the time. And
Speaker 2: his dad would yell at you if you rang the
Speaker 2: doorbell too many times because you're wasting his electricity. And
Speaker 2: Midge wore pants so tight, and this is the opposite
Speaker 2: of my experience of being a teenager in the nineties.
Speaker 2: He wore pants so tight that he had to cut
Speaker 2: slits in the bottom for his feet to go through.
Speaker 2: And again direct opposition also to the style of the time,
Speaker 2: which was flared jeans.
Speaker 3: Yeah no, that's amazing because we would cut slits in
Speaker 3: our pants too, But I mean we were buying like
Speaker 3: size forty waist, yeah, pants from like Ross Dress for
Speaker 3: less and then cutting triangles in the bottom and adding
Speaker 3: a piece of fabric under it to make them even
Speaker 3: bigger because the goal was you wanted your adida's shelters
Speaker 3: to be completely covered, completely shrouded by pant Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I love my elephant leg pants. In the nineties,
Speaker 2: I used to walk around barefoot underneath them because because
Speaker 2: no one knew I was, No one knew yeah, and
Speaker 2: I felt very you know, I would. I would end
Speaker 2: up in like cities. I would take public transit to
Speaker 2: like other cities and just feel very like edgy that
Speaker 2: I had successfully gone without. Okay, anyway, so we have
Speaker 2: the opposite of the So Boff and Midge. They're going
Speaker 2: to shows whenever they can. It's the late seventies, and
Speaker 2: one day in nineteen seventy seven they're at a bus
Speaker 2: stop and they see a kid across the street who's
Speaker 2: wearing a straight jacket, a homemade straight jacket that he
Speaker 2: made for himself out of a parkap and that he
Speaker 2: needed his mom's help to get into. And they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: we got to be friends with that guy. So they
Speaker 2: go and meet that guy. His name is Dan. He's
Speaker 2: going to be in Chumble one but two. Boff says
Speaker 2: in his autobiography that he hated school. He never did
Speaker 2: his homework and shit, and this might have been true,
Speaker 2: but he also like got into Oxford and Cambridge, So
Speaker 2: I wonder how much this is, how accurate this is.
Speaker 2: I don't know enough about British but he says that
Speaker 2: the main reason he went to school is that him
Speaker 2: and his friend were selling bootleg records. They would take
Speaker 2: a bus to another town and they meet this like sketchy,
Speaker 2: grown ass adult with food in his beard who would
Speaker 2: sell these kids illegally copied classic rock on vinyl. And
Speaker 2: then they would go back and be like, hey, do
Speaker 2: you want to buy a record? You know, hey, do
Speaker 2: you want to buy pink Floyd or whatever? To the
Speaker 2: other kids in school, And the same bootlegger later pays
Speaker 2: for a bunch of the local punks to record their albums,
Speaker 2: which I think is fucking cool. I like this weird, random,
Speaker 2: sketchy bootlegger guy. He loses religion soon enough. He starts
Speaker 2: looking at his options, you know, he's like looking around.
Speaker 2: He's like, I don't know if I want to be religious.
Speaker 2: A punk girl takes him home after a UK sub
Speaker 2: show and fox him, and he's like, nah no, this
Speaker 2: is it the sex rock and roll punk rock fuck Mormonism,
Speaker 2: and so they start a band and they have a problem.
Speaker 2: None of them know how to play any instruments. So
Speaker 2: they add more friends, presumably to get more of a
Speaker 2: chance to learn how to play instruments. But they're other
Speaker 2: friends they had also don't know how to play any instruments.
Speaker 2: One of them who did not end up in Chumba
Speaker 2: one because he moved away. His name was high Jumping
Speaker 2: the Deem. He's a South Asian immigrant who I sent
Speaker 2: up for the high jump and then jumped into the
Speaker 2: pole because it was funny. And then they had Bootleg Phil.
Speaker 2: Everyone has cool names when they're teenagers, you know, Bootleg
Speaker 2: Phil was the bootlegging partner.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: This is this is how your band started to write
Speaker 2: none of you all could do anything. I actually, I
Speaker 2: actually don't know much about the orgin of your band,
Speaker 2: and so I'm curious.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I think a lot of bands start
Speaker 3: that way. You know, our story was just a lot
Speaker 3: less illustrious, interesting and cool.
Speaker 2: Well, if you wrote the book on it, you could
Speaker 2: probably figure out a way to do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, figure out a way to sort of dress it up.
Speaker 3: But uh, but yeah, I think I think that's a
Speaker 3: fairly common tale, but it's sounds like, I mean, with us,
Speaker 3: we could sort of make our way, you know, uh,
Speaker 3: through some chords and stuff like that. It sounds like
Speaker 3: maybe tumble Lumba was like, you know, really quite literally
Speaker 3: coming at this with you know, absolutely zero Yeah, musical
Speaker 3: education or proficiency.
Speaker 2: Yeah, although it's interesting because I do wonder a little bit.
Speaker 2: I've watched some of their older videos. They had this
Speaker 2: band I'm about to get to you called Chimpet's Banana
Speaker 2: and there, and the book is like, oh, we didn't
Speaker 2: know anything, we didn't know how to tune our instruments.
Speaker 2: But it's actually like passable punk rock. Like I've seen
Speaker 2: videos of them playing and I'm like, no, I would
Speaker 2: have a good time at this show, you know, and so.
Speaker 3: And it see it seems like they're you know, there's
Speaker 3: maybe a little bit of a theme developing here where
Speaker 3: you know, in some sense they're writing their own lore
Speaker 3: a little bit. Yeah, yeah, which is fine, you know,
Speaker 3: which is great, But it sounds like, yeah, maybe one
Speaker 3: dude was like a little bit more academically inclined than
Speaker 3: he yets on. Yeah, yeah, maybe they were a little
Speaker 3: bit more talented than they're letting on. But yeah, it's
Speaker 3: all good. I'm here for the story.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, And I actually I really appreciate that they're
Speaker 2: participate in mythologizing, you know, yeah, I think that's great.
Speaker 3: I do too.
Speaker 2: And so they formed this band called Chimpeats Banana and
Speaker 2: basically they're like at this thing where this promoter is like, oh,
Speaker 2: if you're in a band, write down the name of
Speaker 2: your band on this slip of paper. And so they
Speaker 2: write down Chimpeats Banana, even though they're not a band,
Speaker 2: and he calls them up and he's like, hey, you
Speaker 2: got a gig, And so they go and play shows,
Speaker 2: and they play a couple dozen shows. I believe it's
Speaker 2: Chimpeats Banana. And they theme each one differently, and they're
Speaker 2: already art weirdos from the very beginning. Like one of
Speaker 2: them is like, Okay, this one we dress in pajamas,
Speaker 2: this one we lie around in lounge chairs. They do
Speaker 2: whatever they want, and they you know, again, they claim
Speaker 2: they're terrible. I've seen footage and yeah, I would go yeah,
Speaker 2: and they're still in high school or whatever the fuck
Speaker 2: British people call high school. You think I would know
Speaker 2: because British people make better high school TV than Americans do,
Speaker 2: but I don't know what they call it. So they're
Speaker 2: punk's in high school and they spend their time like
Speaker 2: getting in trouble and they enjoyed. They get you know,
Speaker 2: they adorn their jackets with safety pins and get called
Speaker 2: into the administrator's office for that, and they like spit
Speaker 2: on adults. And they also are really into football and
Speaker 2: being football fans, which is not in the normal punk narrative.
Speaker 2: And I find it really interesting. I don't know, are
Speaker 2: you I know Sophie is a big sports player.
Speaker 3: Well, I do, remember, I do remember. How should I
Speaker 3: introduce him? You know, punk pravocateur, you know, infamous lead
Speaker 3: singer of Screeching Weasel Ben Weasel Penning. I think he
Speaker 3: maybe even had a column in maximum rocking role where
Speaker 3: he would talk about baseball all the time. He was
Speaker 3: like a massive, massive baseball fan. Yeah, and yeah, I
Speaker 3: always like it when punk rockers like play against type
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Sophie, I went and found you punks who liked sports.
Speaker 2: That was my sole purpose. That was not my sole purpose.
Speaker 2: But so so Boff graduates and goes off and he
Speaker 2: gets offered to go to Cambridge or Oxford, and he's like, no,
Speaker 2: fuck all that. He goes to a local school, like
Speaker 2: a local trade school for a minute, and then he
Speaker 2: goes off to art school near London, and at one
Speaker 2: point he gets arrested for being a punk, like it's
Speaker 2: the first time he's arrested, and they accused him of
Speaker 2: having stolen his own camera, and he's wearing a shirt
Speaker 2: that says, I don't want to go to art school,
Speaker 2: so I don't know whatever. He arresticated, goes to art
Speaker 2: school for wearing a shirt sause I don't go to
Speaker 2: art I don't want to go to art school. Fair enough.
Speaker 3: Fair enough.
Speaker 2: He drops out because he was true to his shirt.
Speaker 2: He drops out, and he buys a twenty pound guitar,
Speaker 2: which is not a weight but instead of a unit
Speaker 2: of ye measurement of price, So it's a once stone
Speaker 2: six pounds guitar.
Speaker 3: Right, it wasn't a less Paul.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so he goes back home and all the
Speaker 2: punks are hanging out in this new spot railway workers
Speaker 2: club that some guy named Spider was renting out once
Speaker 2: a week, And it was Spider who introduced bof to
Speaker 2: the works of dead nineteenth century anarchists like Melatesta and Bakunin.
Speaker 2: It was Spider and Bob's new girlfriend Lou who ends
Speaker 2: up in Chumbawampa. Literally, she gets dragged into the band
Speaker 2: because she's the only person who knows how to sing,
Speaker 2: and they're like, we have shows, will you come sing
Speaker 2: for us if we don't know how to sing. Boff
Speaker 2: gets a job as a postal carrier. He is a
Speaker 2: dead end job. He doesn't like it. He doesn't want
Speaker 2: an office life. They all spend half their time skipping
Speaker 2: work and hitchhiking around the country to go to punk shows,
Speaker 2: and they sleep and bus shelters and they just are
Speaker 2: punks in the late seventies, which actually sounds really nice.
Speaker 2: It sounds like a really it's time to be allowed
Speaker 2: to be real.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Around this time high Jumping, the Deem moves with this
Speaker 2: family to Tampa, Florida, and a few months later, the
Speaker 2: rest of the heroes. They give up on sleepy Burnley
Speaker 2: and they move to the big city of Leeds, which
Speaker 2: is an hour east of Burnley. And so Chimp Eats
Speaker 2: Banana is done and now Chumbawamba is the new thing.
Speaker 2: They're both terrible names. They don't improve upon their name
Speaker 2: as far as I'm concerned, The four of them they
Speaker 2: rent a place there like and they go to college,
Speaker 2: and then they drop out of college, and then they
Speaker 2: try and figure out how to actually have a band,
Speaker 2: and they start just swapping instruments constantly and just spending
Speaker 2: all of their time. They build a practice space with
Speaker 2: like egg cartons on the wall and just like, try
Speaker 2: to have a fucking band. Summer of nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 2: they say fuck it. Four of them with one acoustic
Speaker 2: guitar and one snare drum. They hitchhike to Paris. They
Speaker 2: start squatting a stadium like they just it wasn't an
Speaker 2: abandoned stadium. They just sneak in at night and sleep
Speaker 2: in the stands and then try to slink off unnoticed
Speaker 2: in the morning, off to go busk all day in
Speaker 2: the big fancy city, making enough money for food and beer,
Speaker 2: basically being twenty eighth year old punks. And that's how
Speaker 2: they start Chumbawamba. And their name was picked to mean nothing.
Speaker 2: Every time they tell the story of how they got
Speaker 2: the name, they tell a different lie. The most prevalent story,
Speaker 2: which reporters now report is fact, but bof Whaley says
Speaker 2: this is a lie when he recounts it in his book.
Speaker 2: So who fucking knows? Is that while they were busking
Speaker 2: in Paris they got hellic outclassed by a bunch of
Speaker 2: drummers from Africa who were chanting something that to them
Speaker 2: sounded like chum chumba whalen. And if so, this is
Speaker 2: the biggest thing that they did that doesn't look very
Speaker 2: good in retrospect, you know, being like, oh, that sounds
Speaker 2: like nonsense. Let's take it, you know, but who knows?
Speaker 2: Who fucking knows? They also claim that they got it
Speaker 2: from some pub where there were two genders on the
Speaker 2: bathroom and one was Chumba and one was Wumba. However
Speaker 2: got the name. They played their first show on January eighth,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty two, which before I'd done so much as
Speaker 2: be born. They're way ahead of me, Chumba Womba. I'm
Speaker 2: pretty bitter about this. I have a lot of catching
Speaker 2: up to do. Like the rest of their shows, at
Speaker 2: this time, everyone ignores them, and they just did weird
Speaker 2: shit and called it punk. They film projected behind them
Speaker 2: of everyone wearing dresses and hanging out in a graveyard.
Speaker 2: They oh, they're weird fucking punk kids. I like them,
Speaker 2: I clearly like them. I am recording a podcast that
Speaker 2: was about it. Thank you everyone listen to me talking
Speaker 2: about his band as I think is cool. Their second
Speaker 2: show was in Tampa, Florida. They flew to Tampa to
Speaker 2: visit their friend Na Deem, and they played a show
Speaker 2: where everyone ignored them and they got kicked out of
Speaker 2: Nadem's house by his mom forgetting the carpets.
Speaker 3: Gross. Can you imagine this iteration of this anarcho communist
Speaker 3: band playing in Tampa, Florida in the early nineteen eighties
Speaker 3: like that that you could not, you know, dream up
Speaker 3: a more hostile environment for them. Totally, totally.
Speaker 2: So. So back in England they pick up Dunstan Bruce,
Speaker 2: whose name I obviously remember this whole time. I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: Dunstan if you ever listened to this, I just don't
Speaker 2: remember names. Who put up a bandmate's wanted sign in
Speaker 2: a shop. And he's the guy who ends up the
Speaker 2: male lead singing the male lead on top thumping. We'll
Speaker 2: get to top pumping. He after he meets the punks,
Speaker 2: he drops out of architecture school and moves into their
Speaker 2: shitty apartment. He gets disowned by his high society dad
Speaker 2: for doing all of this, which I think makes him
Speaker 2: like the rich kid of the band compared to everyone else's,
Speaker 2: like these small town punks. But obviously this gets really
Speaker 2: messy when you throw in disowned, right, Like, I don't
Speaker 2: know what that looked like. You know, I have a
Speaker 2: friend of mine who like grew up southern society rich, right,
Speaker 2: but he got kicked out of the house when he
Speaker 2: was sixteen for being trans Like does he have class privilege?
Speaker 2: I don't know. It's a fucking me. He's fucking homeless
Speaker 2: kid when he was sixteen, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, these are class traders, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: And speaking of class traders, in the opposite direction, this
Speaker 2: show is supported by advertisers. This is pointing out that, well,
Speaker 2: actually here we'll have good advertisers this time. So so
Speaker 2: this show, whenever possible, we try to be sponsored by
Speaker 2: very positive things. Like my favorite perennial is well it's
Speaker 2: actually it's a season, it's a it's an annual crop.
Speaker 2: But potatoes, the concept of potatoes is what I like
Speaker 2: to be sponsored by because I think potatoes are very good.
Speaker 2: We've also had other sponsors such as Sleeping Dogs, Sophie,
Speaker 2: what are some of the what are our what are
Speaker 2: some of our repeating are.
Speaker 1: Really good calm drinkable tap water, a pillow that always
Speaker 1: stays cool.
Speaker 2: Oh I like that one.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's good.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So is there anyone that you would like to
Speaker 2: be sponsored by in this and for this show, like
Speaker 2: something that's just you feel good about?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd like to be sponsored word by Conceptual Kindness
Speaker 3: and Aspirational Love.
Speaker 2: All right, So this show is sponsored only by Conceptual Kindness,
Speaker 2: Aspirational Love and Sleeping Dogs. And if there's any other
Speaker 2: advertisers that you hear, that is a problem, and you
Speaker 2: should write to Sophie on Twitter at I write, okay
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Speaker 2: So so as important to the music that they're around
Speaker 2: at this time, the things that are inspiring them is
Speaker 2: also the radical politics at the time. They're involved in
Speaker 2: the anti nuclear movement, this like peace movement against the
Speaker 2: Falkland Wars, which I literally only know about because of
Speaker 2: eighties punk. You know, the American education system wasn't like
Speaker 2: really big on the wars of the twentieth century of England.
Speaker 2: And Margaret Thatcher is coming to power, who again I
Speaker 2: only know about through punk, but it was a safe yeah,
Speaker 2: not a popular person in the punk scene in Yeah. Basically,
Speaker 2: Margaret Thatcher is this right wing asshle who gives Margaret's
Speaker 2: a bad name everywhere and was prime Minister the whole
Speaker 2: of the eighties. And then there's Crass And if I
Speaker 2: ever become a music podcast then Crass will end up
Speaker 2: on it. But unlike some other like kind of would
Speaker 2: be radicals at the time who would like quote the
Speaker 2: situationist but not really mean it, Crass like was the opposite.
Speaker 2: They like, they meant it about politics, specifically like anarchist pacifism,
Speaker 2: and they there are this collective of ex hippies and
Speaker 2: punks who redefined punk music for better and worse Musically, politically,
Speaker 2: I think they're fucking great, although I'm not pacifist, but whatever,
Speaker 2: But like you know, they change punk punk's direction in
Speaker 2: a lot of ways, and they tied it into direct
Speaker 2: action in the peace movement. And the point of me
Speaker 2: bringing up Crass is so I can tell you, and
Speaker 2: I guess accidentally the audience the most embarrassing punk thing
Speaker 2: I've ever done, oh good, which was that one time
Speaker 2: me and two of my friends started an acoustic crass
Speaker 2: cover band with cello, accordion and guitar, and we were
Speaker 2: so we were so let's say good. We were so
Speaker 2: good at this that not only did we get kicked
Speaker 2: out of the bar that we were playing that we
Speaker 2: had been booked to play, the entire convention that booked
Speaker 2: us to play this bar got kicked out of the bar.
Speaker 2: They were like, you know what, we don't want you
Speaker 2: here anymore, even though you paid to be here.
Speaker 3: And that's fantastic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And actually the cellist of that is the person
Speaker 2: who did our theme music on Woman. She's actually very
Speaker 2: good cellist in his my fault that the band was
Speaker 2: terrible anyway, very proud of this. Have you, uh you
Speaker 2: have any worst terrible things that you've managed to do
Speaker 2: in this vein curious.
Speaker 3: Let me think for a second year, I mean in
Speaker 3: terms of like mortifying moments on stage. Sure, yeah, one
Speaker 3: leaps to mind, which is going to be really funny
Speaker 3: contextually here, because but we did My band EVE six
Speaker 3: did a co headlining tour with the band gold Finger
Speaker 3: in the year two thousand or two thousand and one.
Speaker 3: And you know, Goldfinger by comparison to EP six, which
Speaker 3: is you know, a radio run the bands too public perception.
Speaker 3: You know, Goldfinger was a punk and so we would
Speaker 3: go on every night usually like a handful of middle
Speaker 3: fingers or like you know, like gold Finger, who's a
Speaker 3: real punk band and you're six and you know your
Speaker 3: radio rock you suck. And you know, this was in
Speaker 3: my drinking days, so you know, I was I was
Speaker 3: hitting the stage you know, with anywhere between like sort
Speaker 3: of a buzz to being like pretty substantially loaded. And
Speaker 3: so this one night, I think we were actually in
Speaker 3: Salt Lake City, and this one dude just wasn't putting
Speaker 3: his middle finger down and it was really and it
Speaker 3: was really grinding my gears. So I was like I
Speaker 3: kind of beckoned him up to the front of the stage.
Speaker 3: I like, come here, and so he did. He came
Speaker 3: up to the front of the stage and I had
Speaker 3: like three quarters of behind agn that was like next
Speaker 3: to my microphone, and I dumped it on his head.
Speaker 3: I just emptied the entire thing. And this guy said,
Speaker 3: and and that want some people over, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because now you're real punks, right, Because now I'm
Speaker 2: real punk, I like.
Speaker 3: You know, and and then so like I sauntered back
Speaker 3: to center stage. We had a bass player out with
Speaker 3: us at the time, so I was just being like
Speaker 3: douchebag singer guy. And you know, we start a song
Speaker 3: and I put my foot on the wedge like a
Speaker 3: rock god and promptly slipped because like I got some
Speaker 3: of the beer on either the wedge or the bottom
Speaker 3: of my foot, so super slippery, and I slipped and
Speaker 3: ate shit, like I fell all the way down to
Speaker 3: the ground. It was the most like instantaneous karmic retribution
Speaker 3: I've ever experienced.
Speaker 2: That is perfect.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it sucked, but you know it also felt
Speaker 3: kind of deserved, so it was like, you know, I'll
Speaker 3: take this one on the chin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean like both things are perfectly good, you know,
Speaker 2: like both things just make a better story.
Speaker 3: Like both things are fine.
Speaker 2: Everyone who went was like two crazy things happened tonight,
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, so fuck yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So in nineteen eighty two, some some of Tumbawamba by
Speaker 2: a school bus with a few older punks, like mid
Speaker 2: twenties punks, and they make the decision to buy the
Speaker 2: bus pretty much because the guy selling it had six
Speaker 2: six six in his phone number, and they fix up
Speaker 2: the bus they head off to Europe to bum around
Speaker 2: in a bus, and they busk enough money for food
Speaker 2: and fuel. They park every night at the outskirts of town.
Speaker 2: They had bonfires and argued about politics. They played impromptu
Speaker 2: shows to people who did not give a shit at all,
Speaker 2: Like they would just like show up at a cafe
Speaker 2: and like pull instruments out of the bus and play
Speaker 2: and everyone's like, what the fuck is happening?
Speaker 3: This sucks.
Speaker 2: Sometimes they would just put on a cassette recording of
Speaker 2: music and pretend to play along on tennis rackets like
Speaker 2: as guitars, and all the people on the bus took
Speaker 2: on ridiculous punk names like Don Quixote and Matt Hatter
Speaker 2: and Legal Aid.
Speaker 3: It's awesome. I love the conversience here of like hippie
Speaker 3: aesthetics with punk ones. You know, yeah exactly, you got
Speaker 3: the reappropriated bus. Yeah, you know, bonfires and stuff it,
Speaker 3: you know, almost distinctions without difference when you compare them
Speaker 3: to yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no totally, and like the whole thing just sounds
Speaker 2: like everything I dreamed of doing when I was a teenager,
Speaker 2: you know, totally. But the ten people crammed into the bus,
Speaker 2: they start to lose their minds. One of them decides
Speaker 2: he's Jesus. Fun arguments turn into not fun arguments. The
Speaker 2: bus keeps breaking down and they have to hustle like
Speaker 2: hell for spare parts and gas. One one guy gets
Speaker 2: off the bus in France and literally no one has
Speaker 2: ever seen him again. One by one everyone was.
Speaker 3: It the guy. I wonder if it was the guy
Speaker 3: who decided he was Jeesus.
Speaker 2: That seems the most likely. Yeah, although don Quixote and
Speaker 2: Mad Hatter are fully up there as.
Speaker 3: Born also born travelers.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, And you know, one by one everyone leaves,
Speaker 2: and to be honest, this sounds like most of the
Speaker 2: times I've done. Basically this like travel around in a
Speaker 2: bus where people are like, Wow, we're gonna have this
Speaker 2: great communal experience. Then one by one everyone's like, I
Speaker 2: want my own life. Thigh yeah, yeah, yeah. So the
Speaker 2: three lads of Chumbawamba, who are on the bus at
Speaker 2: this point, they go and they pick and I they
Speaker 2: go pick grapes in the south of France, and they
Speaker 2: decide they're not getting paid enough and they're young anarchists,
Speaker 2: so they go on strike. So they get fired, and
Speaker 2: then they go home to England and four of them
Speaker 2: move into a squat in Leeds and it's called the
Speaker 2: South View House. And it's this huge Victorian red brick
Speaker 2: almost mansion in a state of near collapse. It was
Speaker 2: falling apart when they moved in. It had been squatted
Speaker 2: on and off for a long time. There's an overturned
Speaker 2: black Volkswagen Beetle in the middle of the garden. Scavengers
Speaker 2: have been all over it. They've stolen everything worth stealing,
Speaker 2: down to the doorknobs. And the floorboards have been stolen
Speaker 2: out of this house. It has never occurred to me
Speaker 2: that floorboards have value value. Yeah, and the banisters they
Speaker 2: steal the banisters and the furniture. Not Chumbawamba whoever had
Speaker 2: been there before.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The guy actually who had been the most immediately previous
Speaker 2: squatter had just moved out and so they decided it
Speaker 2: was free to move in. Was a guy who only
Speaker 2: ate avocados and wore a loincloth and followed a religion
Speaker 2: called Life Wave, which I tried to learn more. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I try to learn more about Life Wave, but unfortunately
Speaker 2: not available through Google. So usually when I say that,
Speaker 2: Sophie looks something up in about thirty seconds and then
Speaker 2: schools me on it. So they move in and they
Speaker 2: start fixing everything up. They dump all their money and
Speaker 2: time into the house. They learn electrical and plumbing and
Speaker 2: all of that shit in the process. They although by
Speaker 2: the end they're in this house for like ten or
Speaker 2: ten years or more by the end there.
Speaker 3: And it's it's no small feat at that time to
Speaker 3: learn electrical and plumbing. It's not like you're going to
Speaker 3: YouTube videos. No, that's a good pot checking out books
Speaker 3: from a library.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and finding some old guy who kind of hates
Speaker 2: you because you're a hippie and being like, hey, can
Speaker 2: you teach me how to fix this thing?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Totally. Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, that's a good point because I'm like, oh, I
Speaker 2: can do a lot of that stuff. And I'm like
Speaker 2: I watch YouTube every night. I like, this is what
Speaker 2: I do to decompress, is I watch people rewire things
Speaker 2: and say I rewire things now. Yeah, so far, so good.
Speaker 2: By the end, they claim that the house is held
Speaker 2: together by the yellow paint on the walls, like the
Speaker 2: cracks they just paint over with yellow paint, over and over.
Speaker 2: Within a year, there's nine of them living there, including
Speaker 2: a bunch of their old punk friends, from Burnley, Alice
Speaker 2: Nutter and Lou who end up in Chumbawamba pretty much
Speaker 2: its whole thirty year run as an actual band, and
Speaker 2: Alice Nutter she's named after a woman who'd been murdered
Speaker 2: for witchcraft in I believe Northern England hundreds of years earlier.
Speaker 2: They live communally, They pull their money, they shoplift what
Speaker 2: they need. They pay off Alice's crime debt because when
Speaker 2: she first moved in, she had committed a bunch of
Speaker 2: felony level fraud and they had to pay it all
Speaker 2: off collectively, which is very nice of everyone.
Speaker 3: I think it's awesome.
Speaker 2: Alice later refers to this house as the first place
Speaker 2: that she ever felt secure, the first home that she had,
Speaker 2: you know, and I doubt she was the only one
Speaker 2: who felt that way. I just found her quote about it.
Speaker 2: Not everyone in the house joins the house band Shumbawamba,
Speaker 2: but most of them did. And it's kind of interesting,
Speaker 2: right because this is now I'm totally off script, but
Speaker 2: it's it's kind of interesting right because, like on the bus,
Speaker 2: it's this classic hippie dream and it kind of just
Speaker 2: seems like it goes terribly but this house, they pull
Speaker 2: it off. You know, it doesn't last forever. Nothing lasts forever,
Speaker 2: but they they do pull this off. Everyone cooks, everyone cleans.
Speaker 2: Everyone sort of collectively gave gardening a shot, but then
Speaker 2: failed to grow potatoes. That's not even me making a
Speaker 2: potato joke like it usually is. They tried to grow
Speaker 2: potatoes and they got blight, and everyone was like, you know,
Speaker 2: it's actually easier to buy bulk food. Let's just buy bulk.
Speaker 2: They run a printing press, I believe in their basement,
Speaker 2: start publishing anarchist pamphlets. They rescue a dog and make
Speaker 2: him their mascot. They went vegan to various levels of strictness. Again,
Speaker 2: this is the early eighties for a brief and terrible moment.
Speaker 2: This is me making a potato reference for no good reason.
Speaker 2: For a brief and terrible moment. One of them, Dan
Speaker 2: goes on a strict diet that precludes potatoes because he
Speaker 2: got mashed And now I'm he got mashed potatoes in
Speaker 2: his ear from a food fight and he had to
Speaker 2: go to the doctor and I got really sick from this,
Speaker 2: like infected.
Speaker 3: I love these people so much. I am sane. My
Speaker 3: heart is swelling there, I know.
Speaker 2: And so he gets he goes on this like super
Speaker 2: strict all natural diet, and then eventually he gives up
Speaker 2: and goes back to whatever else he was eating, And
Speaker 2: they start watching their neighbors kids after school, and years later,
Speaker 2: still in the squatted house, two of them have kids
Speaker 2: of their own. Two fifteen year old runaway punks move
Speaker 2: in and Lou and bof have to go down and
Speaker 2: meet their parents and basically be like, hey, uh, your
Speaker 2: kids run away from home and they're in our house
Speaker 2: and you should let them stay. We're not a cult,
Speaker 2: totally not a cult. We promise you we're not a cult.
Speaker 2: And it works, the kids stay, They join Shambawamba. At
Speaker 2: least one of them wrote that shit all the way
Speaker 2: up to fucking world tour, you know, number two in
Speaker 2: the pop charts, fucking which which fucking's so awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like that is that is the fifteen I mean, it's
Speaker 2: unfortunately fifteen year old runaways dream, you know. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: so they're they're all already I mean, they're punks and
Speaker 2: they're punk band, but they're already going art and pop
Speaker 2: and theater directions with their music. And Alice is opening
Speaker 2: the shows by reading feminist poetry. And one of the
Speaker 2: first pranks that they run is they start a skinhead
Speaker 2: band to make fun of the right wing skinhead scene,
Speaker 2: and they call themselves skin Disease, and.
Speaker 3: I remember reading. Yeah, it's one of the most incredible trolls. Yeah,
Speaker 3: of all the time. They they fight a brave and
Speaker 3: a brave one too, because you're talking about like a
Speaker 3: pretty violent, you know opposition here.
Speaker 2: No, that's a really good point. Yeah, like walking in
Speaker 2: especially as a bunch of like at this point, they're
Speaker 2: still pacifists walking into this scene that really likes fighting
Speaker 2: people and making fun of them.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so they tell this OI compilation to record their song,
Speaker 2: and their song is called I'm Thick and the lyrics
Speaker 2: is they just say I'm thick sixty.
Speaker 3: And over and over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and it appears on the compilation along with
Speaker 2: all these like right wing patriotic songs. It's not like
Speaker 2: a Nazi compilation. It's a like go England, we beat
Speaker 2: the Falkland War whatever, like yeah, yeah, you know back
Speaker 2: when you used to have right wingers who were't Nazis
Speaker 2: in the Western world. Yeah, yeah, no, okay, and so
Speaker 2: and so at this point there's still pacifists because the
Speaker 2: anarchist scene in the early eighties in England and probably
Speaker 2: because of Krass. And then in nineteen eighty four they
Speaker 2: play a benefit for the minor strike that was going
Speaker 2: on alongside the York's Old Punk band, and Nazis show
Speaker 2: up and attack and they end the show by stabbing
Speaker 2: people right Jesus and basically apparently make fun of everyone
Speaker 2: for being too pacifist to fight back, and then sort
Speaker 2: of home in leads someone a right wing person like
Speaker 2: smashes up their van while it's in the driveway to
Speaker 2: like get the Commis or whatever, and so Chumba one
Speaker 2: was like, all right, you know what, we're not pacifists anymore,
Speaker 2: this which makes sense to me. I mean, it's like
Speaker 2: part of why I'm not pacifists. I'm like, well, Nazis, Nazis.
Speaker 2: That's that's the end of the argument. It's Nazis.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So they get a baseball bat and when the van
Speaker 2: smasher came back, they swarmed him. They held him down
Speaker 2: and basically were like, hey, if you fucking come near
Speaker 2: us again, you're leaving an ambulance. And he didn't come
Speaker 2: around to fuck with them anymore, but you know what
Speaker 2: will fuck with you? Are products and services that support
Speaker 2: this podcast, Sophie. Are they pacifists or are they violence us?
Speaker 2: I can't remember. Are we supported by both sides of
Speaker 2: that argument?
Speaker 1: We are supported by both sides of that argument for sure.
Speaker 2: Capitalism very good at playing both sides of that particular argument.
Speaker 2: Violence for them, peace for their opposition. I think that's
Speaker 2: the yeah post, here's some ads. Okay, we're back. And
Speaker 2: so they've now changed their attitude, and they did more
Speaker 2: than play benefit shows for the minor strike. They print
Speaker 2: up posters, they organized, they joined pickets. And one of
Speaker 2: the things that I like about this part of the
Speaker 2: story is that, like they were punks, and so they
Speaker 2: weren't necessarily culturally the same as the miners that they
Speaker 2: were working in solidarity with. But they're from the same towns, right,
Speaker 2: Like they are not this like totally distinct like rich,
Speaker 2: not everyone who clearly not everyone who lives in cities
Speaker 2: is rich, but like they're not like coming in from
Speaker 2: outside and being like, oh, you poor miners, let us
Speaker 2: like look down upon you. These are people from these areas,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're from the same class. They're just people who
Speaker 3: gravitated to make an art.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, and it's not bad when other people show
Speaker 2: up to help, but like working class solidarity fucking rules.
Speaker 2: So one time, one of while they're on a picket
Speaker 2: because they say on instead of in whatever it's in
Speaker 2: the snow And Tumbawamba does not take credit for this action.
Speaker 2: They describe it in detail in their book. But there
Speaker 2: are several things that happened that are illegal that Tumbawamba
Speaker 2: simply describes as things that happened that they were around.
Speaker 2: And one of them is that there's a one of
Speaker 2: those you know, those concrete posts to keep cars from
Speaker 2: running off the road, and they build a snowman over
Speaker 2: it and they put a picket hat on it, and
Speaker 2: the cops get really mad about this snowman, so they
Speaker 2: drive it over, they try to drive it over and
Speaker 2: smash up their own cop car. And I feel like
Speaker 2: that's a good way to have a weird picket, is
Speaker 2: to watch cops smash up their own cars. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 2: and they have all of these What a weird coincidence?
Speaker 2: We are randomly at dozens of made riots and numerous
Speaker 2: countries that just happen to coincide with our tour, and
Speaker 2: I don't know what the statute of limitations is for
Speaker 2: rioting across Europe in the eighties, nineties, and two thousands,
Speaker 2: So I'm going to go with coincidence. It was just
Speaker 2: a weird coincidence.
Speaker 3: It was just a coincidence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the miner's loss despite the pluckiness of the pickets
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty five, And it's this whole big deal
Speaker 2: that I haven't fully wrapped my head around, right. I'm
Speaker 2: not a huge nineteen eighties labor history England person yet,
Speaker 2: although through this podcast I will eventually get to all
Speaker 2: of it. It really changes things in England. Industry closes,
Speaker 2: scabs and cops pretty much need to move out of
Speaker 2: the towns they're living in because everyone fucking hates them,
Speaker 2: and so just think it divides these communities. But for Shumbawamba,
Speaker 2: this was a big political awakening. They've been politically involved
Speaker 2: this whole time. But what they realize is that by
Speaker 2: being in solidarity with people who weren't like, culturally aligned
Speaker 2: with them, they realized how basically naval gazing, an insular
Speaker 2: and obsessively diy punk was not all the punk but
Speaker 2: aspects of it, and had all these weird and specific rules.
Speaker 2: From their point of view, all these like cultural rules.
Speaker 2: This is going to be totally unfamiliar to anyone who's
Speaker 2: involved with leptism today. There's no way that we would
Speaker 2: ever police our own over increasingly complicated systems of rules.
Speaker 3: Yeah unthinkable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it wouldn't make any sense. It actually would. And
Speaker 2: so Bof at least is reminded of his Mormon upbringing,
Speaker 2: or points out that he's reminded of this. And so
Speaker 2: they released their first DP called Revolution, and it basically
Speaker 2: is making fun of that kind of elitism. They're not
Speaker 2: mocking the idea of revolution, they're mocking the weird rules
Speaker 2: that everyone has. Basically, they're like, we gotta be fucking
Speaker 2: better because we're not trying to have a scene, we're
Speaker 2: trying to fucking different society. And and they're really politically savvy, right,
Speaker 2: Like I had kind of when I found out that
Speaker 2: Chumbawamba was like into radical politics, I'd kind of been like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's cool, but I hadn't realized quite that the they
Speaker 2: were like in it, like it was there as much
Speaker 2: a part of what they did. Alice Nutter in the
Speaker 2: late nineties, I think in the tub thumping era told
Speaker 2: a fanzine about single issue politics. Single issues half the time,
Speaker 2: This is me quoting Alice Nutter. Single issues half the
Speaker 2: time end up being welfare groups for social misfits, all
Speaker 2: the sad bastards that don't have a life to join
Speaker 2: single issues. I refuse to be guilt tripped saying that
Speaker 2: any one thing is the most important. The problem is
Speaker 2: we don't have an overview of what's happened to us politically.
Speaker 2: It's really hard to step back and look over the
Speaker 2: last fifteen years. Capitalism has come on in leaps and bounds.
Speaker 2: Why ain't we Instead people go, well, I've done this,
Speaker 2: and I've done that. We've been really stupid. We've not
Speaker 2: responded to what capitalism's done. Instead, we've been too busy
Speaker 2: policing each other. I've changed the way OH about things.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, I've changed the way I go about things
Speaker 2: because I've had to, because I want to live in
Speaker 2: the real world. That's the quote.
Speaker 3: Brilliant, yeah, and and incredibly relevant.
Speaker 2: I know, twenty five years later from even then, and
Speaker 2: it's like, I think about it because I got into
Speaker 2: politics twenty years later than them, and I had to
Speaker 2: have all these epiphanies all over again, you know totally.
Speaker 2: Their EP Revolution is a hit, at least by their
Speaker 2: standards at the time, it gets radio play. I think
Speaker 2: it's their first radio play. It charts on the indie charts,
Speaker 2: and so they put out next to a full length
Speaker 2: called Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records, which is basically
Speaker 2: a whole album making fun of live aid a charity
Speaker 2: concert happening at the time that costs millions of dollars
Speaker 2: to stage. And because they're weird, annoying art punks, they
Speaker 2: pressure one of their own bandmates, I think Dan, to
Speaker 2: make himself puke so that they could record the sound
Speaker 2: for the end of the record. And I watched at
Speaker 2: one point an interview with the sound producer and it
Speaker 2: was like the first time he met them, and he's like,
Speaker 2: I met this band and the first thing they made
Speaker 2: me do is like record one of them throwing up.
Speaker 3: This is great, I'm doing amazing.
Speaker 2: I've made good decisions in my life, thought the sound producer.
Speaker 2: And to fuck with the sort of standards that they
Speaker 2: feel like they're being held to, they would do shit
Speaker 2: like release an album of like punk pop and then
Speaker 2: followed up with an a cappella album. They would they
Speaker 2: opened for Motorhead by singing a cappella. They started in
Speaker 2: speaking of opening for someone and getting their middle fingers
Speaker 2: thrown at you.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. Yeah, just go.
Speaker 2: And sing seventeenth century workers songs to people who are
Speaker 2: at a festival in Europe to see Motorhead. Uh. And
Speaker 2: they start incorporating dance music and house music into their music,
Speaker 2: and it's not a cynical thing. They just like going
Speaker 2: to raves and doing ecstasy, so they're like, fuck it,
Speaker 2: let's do rave music. And they also wrote an album
Speaker 2: about how much they love sports because they're working class
Speaker 2: British kids at the end of the day.
Speaker 3: Uh. And that reminds me of you. Are you familiar
Speaker 3: with Viagra Boys?
Speaker 2: I am not. Please tell me about Viagra Boys? Actually no, yeah,
Speaker 2: go ahead, okay, yeah.
Speaker 3: Fantastic, fantastic punk that I discovered via Sleaford Mods, who
Speaker 3: definitely have some crass influence in their sound. But they
Speaker 3: have a song Biagera Boys has a song called Sports
Speaker 3: and you just gotta look up the video and watch
Speaker 3: it for yourselves. It's it's fantastic. Okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I love the tension around things like sports in
Speaker 2: the subculture because you have all these people being like, no,
Speaker 2: we're too cool for everything that's cool, and then other
Speaker 2: people are like, yeah, but it's really fun. Have you
Speaker 2: all tried playing sports? It's really fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so they tour constantly and this is the only
Speaker 2: way they can make any money because they're not selling
Speaker 2: enough records to sustain themselves. And they also have this
Speaker 2: permanent shoplifting competition because of course they do, which is
Speaker 2: who can steal the most expensive and ridiculous ship before
Speaker 2: their shows. One time they get banned from a venue
Speaker 2: in Dublin because they throw packages of co into the audience,
Speaker 2: which is condoms were barely legal in Ireland at the time.
Speaker 2: You had to be eighteen. You could only buy them
Speaker 2: at certain places. It didn't help that Alice Nutter was
Speaker 2: dressed up like a nun drinking out of a bottle
Speaker 2: of whiskey while she's breaking this law. And then Boff
Speaker 2: Wayley gets into fell running, which I believe is best
Speaker 2: I can tell his British for trail running, and how
Speaker 2: it happens is well, first he goes and sees some
Speaker 2: fell runners with his dad, and he sees one of
Speaker 2: them with a pink mohawk and He's like, huh, and
Speaker 2: I think the guy wins, but I'm not sure he
Speaker 2: and Chumbawamba opens for Conflict, and Conflict is this punk
Speaker 2: band that at the time they always carry baseball bats
Speaker 2: to their shows because their show's always turned into riots.
Speaker 2: So the show turns into a riot and the cops
Speaker 2: come to arrest everybody, and the punks start fighting back,
Speaker 2: and Boff meets this punk in the crowd who was
Speaker 2: the champion fell runner he had seen, and he watches
Speaker 2: this fell runner out run six cops. Six cops take
Speaker 2: off chut chasing him, and the runner takes off, and
Speaker 2: basically Boff is like, I think I'm going to get
Speaker 2: into fell running. That sounds cool. And most of the
Speaker 2: books he writes now are about how awesome a fell
Speaker 2: running is. And they keep being activists as they start
Speaker 2: touring constantly and stuff. Their house gets raided by cops
Speaker 2: three times. The first two times cops are basically like,
Speaker 2: we've seen those people, there's probably drugs there, and so
Speaker 2: the cops raid and there weren't any drugs at the
Speaker 2: times of the raid, or maybe they didn't keep drugs
Speaker 2: at home because they were responsible people who had children
Speaker 2: in the house that actually act. I don't know the answer,
Speaker 2: but that's my actual guest based on everything I've heard
Speaker 2: about these people. And then the third time, the cops
Speaker 2: battering rammed down the door to search the place for
Speaker 2: explosives because someone presumably tied to the anti apartheid movement
Speaker 2: which all the punks were part of, had set off
Speaker 2: a bomb somewhere that didn't hurt anybody. And they're like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: we know where some you know punks are, so let's
Speaker 2: go kick down their door. They get arrested, they get
Speaker 2: kept in cells for twenty four hours, they get strip searched,
Speaker 2: the whole houses trashed, all their literatures taken. And so
Speaker 2: what they did once they got out is they took
Speaker 2: the name of the cop who had interrogated them, and
Speaker 2: they put it on their electric bill until they figured
Speaker 2: out how to make their electric bill run backwards, and
Speaker 2: then they just stopped paying for electricity. They get pulled
Speaker 2: over and strip searched by cops who were looking for
Speaker 2: drugs all the time at borders. One time they get
Speaker 2: pulled over on tour and strip searched, and they don't
Speaker 2: like that. There's hundreds of copies of anarchist magazines in
Speaker 2: their van, so they get turned away from countries fairly
Speaker 2: often and they have to change their tours around as
Speaker 2: a result of all this. And one thing that they
Speaker 2: tried to do one punk classic they tried and fail.
Speaker 2: That actually is they tried to siphon gas for their tour,
Speaker 2: but they got caught really quickly and they were like,
Speaker 2: this is not worth it. It is not worth it
Speaker 2: for us to safeon gas. We should just pay for
Speaker 2: our gas. They get arrested a lot. To quote Boff again,
Speaker 2: for a few years in the eighties, Dan and Alice
Speaker 2: were king and Queen of getting arrested. It didn't matter
Speaker 2: if they'd been somewhere else at the time. If there
Speaker 2: was trouble, they'd get arrested. It became a liability to
Speaker 2: stand near them on demonstrations. One minute, you're watching Jill
Speaker 2: Scott Heron in a sun soaked hide park with two
Speaker 2: hundred thousand other nuclear disarmament campaigners. The next thing, you're
Speaker 2: trying to pull Alice out of the back of a
Speaker 2: police van surrounded by baton wielding cops. And if one
Speaker 2: got arrested, the other would get jealous and fling themselves
Speaker 2: into the arms of eager policemen, and later Alice was like,
Speaker 2: you know, eventually we figured out that the point of
Speaker 2: protest wasn't to get arrested, and that not getting caught
Speaker 2: has its own merits. Which if I were to add
Speaker 2: an additional sponsor to this show, Sophie, could you reach
Speaker 2: out to not getting caught and an advocation, I mean,
Speaker 2: I would give up potatoes for that. I think, Okay, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: not getting caught has its own merits. So and in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty six, Alice has her leg broken by Dutch
Speaker 2: cops at an anti NATO rally and still managed to
Speaker 2: stay on for the rest of the tour. But that's
Speaker 2: where we're going to leave it for today. They're in
Speaker 2: their pre celebrity heyday. They're running around getting into trouble
Speaker 2: every chance they get, including getting into trouble with the
Speaker 2: punk scene. And when we come back, they're going to
Speaker 2: get into way more trouble with the mainstream world and
Speaker 2: the punk scene both. But Max, first, let's hear about
Speaker 2: the trouble that you're getting in or the stuff that
Speaker 2: you're up to that people can check out.
Speaker 3: Oh excellent. Well, Eve six has a new album coming out,
Speaker 3: our first full length record in like ten years. I
Speaker 3: forget the date of that, but I think it's sometime
Speaker 3: next month. We just put out the first single from it.
Speaker 3: It's called Mister Darkseide, and you know it's in all
Speaker 3: the likely places. You can find us on Twitter at
Speaker 3: eve six and I post a lot, probably too much
Speaker 3: on there.
Speaker 2: It works.
Speaker 3: And I also recently started doing an advice column for
Speaker 3: Input magazine and I'm really enjoying doing that, and yeah,
Speaker 3: that comes out twice a month, so yeah, if you
Speaker 3: follow me on Twitter you'll see that too. But that's
Speaker 3: sort of what we got going on.
Speaker 2: Okay, and Sophie with trouble, have you been what legally
Speaker 2: actionable trouble? Have you been getting it?
Speaker 1: Oh? Just go to cool zonemdi dot com all the things.
Speaker 1: And Margaret, you have a book coming out, don't you.
Speaker 2: I do. It's available for pre order now. It's called
Speaker 2: We Won't Be Here Tomorrow. It's available from Akpress, and
Speaker 2: if you pre order it you get an art print
Speaker 2: of like teens riding around on bikes past graffiti that
Speaker 2: says the Devil Lives here, and all the fun little
Speaker 2: short science fiction and fantasy stories that your heart could
Speaker 2: possibly desire awesome, We'll see you on Wednesday.
Speaker 3: Cool People Who What Did?
Speaker 1: Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media. For
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