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 1: Is Welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff with
Speaker 1: Margarete Kiljoy, a podcast that's about cool people who did
Speaker 1: cool stuff. Our guest today is Max Collins. Max, how
Speaker 1: are you doing? You want to well about yourself at all?
Speaker 1: What's going on?
Speaker 3: I'm doing great.
Speaker 4: Thank you, it's good to be here.
Speaker 2: I was going to say on this day. That is
Speaker 2: definitely a different day. I think everything this podcast knows
Speaker 2: that we record it and two takes or.
Speaker 3: Good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so so Max Collins our guest in the nineties,
Speaker 2: he actually did an anthropological field study on one hit
Speaker 2: wonders in the rock world.
Speaker 3: That's right, everything Margaret, you're saying right now is absolutely, unequivocally,
Speaker 3: verifiably true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, Yeah. Yeah. So today we're talking about one
Speaker 2: hit wonder Chumbawamba, And if you haven't listened to part one,
Speaker 2: what the fuck is wrong with you? Did something go
Speaker 2: wrong with your life? Why do you make the choices
Speaker 2: that you make? So go listen to that. Okay, So
Speaker 2: around the early nineties, life starts changing for Chumbawamba. It
Speaker 2: stays a galitarian, but it goes from this like loose
Speaker 2: chaotic thing into something more like a worker's cooperative. They
Speaker 2: start having tons of meetings. By one account, they spend
Speaker 2: more times in meetings than in practice. There's like eight
Speaker 2: or nine of them at this point, and most of
Speaker 2: them move out of the squat but stay in the
Speaker 2: band and stay activists, and they just want to do
Speaker 2: other things with their lives and more and more. They're
Speaker 2: also like having families and shit, right, and sometimes maybe
Speaker 2: obviously some of them are having kids in the squad,
Speaker 2: but I could imagine not being like this is where
Speaker 2: I want to raise my children. I don't know, whatever,
Speaker 2: and One of the cooler things about them is as
Speaker 2: they start doing this, they don't go off vh ones
Speaker 2: behind the music, like they keep not exploding. Some of
Speaker 2: them did drugs, some of them were sober. They date
Speaker 2: within the band, They get one of them dumps one
Speaker 2: of them to go date the other bandmate, and everyone
Speaker 2: stays good with each other more or less. Like I
Speaker 2: don't know, they I feel like they kind of like
Speaker 2: did hedonism right at least as its presented. And they're
Speaker 2: self mythologizing, right, yeah, parties and raves and shows and everything,
Speaker 2: but they're they're not doing the like trash the hotel room,
Speaker 2: draw penises, a sexually assault fans thing.
Speaker 4: Right and so.
Speaker 2: And they're basically at this point trying to make it
Speaker 2: as no longer young musicians. They're trying to be like
Speaker 2: this is. So they sit down and they have a
Speaker 2: what the fuck are we doing meeting, like a conversation
Speaker 2: ten years into the band, and they're like, all right,
Speaker 2: let's fucking do this thing, like let's double or nothing,
Speaker 2: let's you know. They they quit their jobs to do
Speaker 2: it full time, which means that they needed to pay
Speaker 2: their employees, which was themselves and also other people were
Speaker 2: helping them out, and so commercial considerations start having to
Speaker 2: be balanced alongside musical and political considerations as they make
Speaker 2: this music. And in nineteen ninety four they release Anarchy
Speaker 2: as the name of an album and the cover of
Speaker 2: which features the photo of a child being born, which
Speaker 2: is from a book for children about where babies came from.
Speaker 2: But this is obviously like their whole point is like,
Speaker 2: you're all going to call this pornographic, aren't you, And
Speaker 2: it did. It's called pornographic. Stores refuse to sell it.
Speaker 2: They keep it in brown bags because you can see
Speaker 2: a vagina in it or whatever. It's my favorite of
Speaker 2: their albums, and it's the first time that they crack
Speaker 2: the very bottom of the mainstream charts, and it has
Speaker 2: the song if you haven't if you've never listened to
Speaker 2: a Chumbawamba song besides tumb pumping, or even if you
Speaker 2: haven't heard that, go listen to Homophobia by Chumbawombam. So
Speaker 2: they start getting to play larger and larger shows right
Speaker 2: as they start taking this band really seriously. Ten years in,
Speaker 2: they tour more of the world, and the press fucking
Speaker 2: hates them. They're like, you're washed up, bad musicians. You're
Speaker 2: all too old. You scream about politics, but you don't
Speaker 2: even believe any of it. You're or like they're all
Speaker 2: like you're too woke, you're ruining the music whatever. And
Speaker 2: the fans love them. They sell out shows left and right,
Speaker 2: and the press goes between ignoring them and hating them,
Speaker 2: which is like, this is just like literally how to
Speaker 2: succeed as a cult band, that really is. And in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety six, they're not super famous yet, they're not
Speaker 2: tub thumping famous yet, but they're sharing a stage of
Speaker 2: Smashing Pumpkins in Germany at some big televised event, and
Speaker 2: Smashing Pumpkins is apparently being real assholes about it, at
Speaker 2: least as related in bof Whaley's book. And so they,
Speaker 2: like all the other bands, have to like hide in
Speaker 2: their dressing rooms with the doors closed and they can't
Speaker 2: be in the corridors when Billy Corgan comes through or something.
Speaker 3: And this is still pretty tough something. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So they're like not seeing as Smashing Pumpkins as
Speaker 2: peer yet, but they're big enough to be at this
Speaker 2: televised event. And so Dan one of the people in
Speaker 2: Tumble one, but he likes being naked, like constantly. He's
Speaker 2: stripping on stage for the fuck of it, and the
Speaker 2: band is like, Ock, what are we going to do
Speaker 2: to prank these assholes? That's like what we got to do.
Speaker 2: That's our thing, you know, I know, Dan, take off
Speaker 2: all your clothes. So Dan gets naked. They write that
Speaker 2: word punk and huge letters across his chest. He strolls
Speaker 2: out on stage just as Smashing Pumpkins's their big finale.
Speaker 2: You know, he walks up to Billy and he salutes
Speaker 2: the crowd naked, and then he walks off and yes,
Speaker 2: the band has to physically rescue him from bouncers and
Speaker 2: that they fled the scene as like they're being chased,
Speaker 2: and the promoter is like, you'll never appear on German
Speaker 2: television again, which probably didn't turn out to be true.
Speaker 4: Incredible, and yeah, I know, I love it.
Speaker 2: I love it. Also, in nineteen ninety six, they turn
Speaker 2: in an album called tub Thumping into their label, which
Speaker 2: is a label called One Little Indian, which was not
Speaker 2: a great name for a label, and just to be clear,
Speaker 2: the label realized that and in twenty twenty they changed
Speaker 2: their name to One Little Independent. In nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 2: Chumbawamba turns in this album to them, and the label's like, no,
Speaker 2: this sucks, go home and write better songs. No good onward.
Speaker 2: And then EMI Germany, a major label, was like, well,
Speaker 2: we'll give you one hundred thousand fake europe money for it,
Speaker 2: maybe pounds, maybe euros, I don't know, one of the
Speaker 2: fake moneys that they have over there. And at first
Speaker 2: they laugh it off, right, They're like, no way, well
Speaker 2: we do that obviously, and then they kind of sit
Speaker 2: on it and they're like, we're so fucking broke, and
Speaker 2: that is enough money that even if the album doesn't
Speaker 2: sell at all, we can still pay everyone involved a
Speaker 2: decent wage, you know. They To be clear, Chumbawamba had
Speaker 2: put a song out on an anti EMI compilation about
Speaker 2: ten years earlier. The compilations called fuck EMI. At the time,
Speaker 2: I was deep in the nuclear arms industry. EMI had
Speaker 2: since divested from that. But still it wasn't It clearly
Speaker 2: wasn't good optics, and they weren't sure, but they I
Speaker 2: think what happened is that they they were sure it
Speaker 2: wasn't good optics to the punk scene. What they were
Speaker 2: trying to figure out was whether or not it was
Speaker 2: good ethics, and they wanted to make their decision based
Speaker 2: on that. So they talk it over as a collective
Speaker 2: like they do everything. They don't vote about major decisions.
Speaker 2: They work for consensus, and they talk it over for weeks.
Speaker 2: They are like, look, symbolism is bad, but change for
Speaker 2: change's sake is sometimes good. They were stagnating, and they
Speaker 2: were like, fuck stagnating, that's what we don't want to do.
Speaker 2: It's more of a chance to reach more people. Saying
Speaker 2: fuck you to a scene that was getting way too
Speaker 2: essentially conservative from their point of view, seemed fun to them.
Speaker 2: Being able to pay themselves enough to not worry for
Speaker 2: a while. Like they're all working class folks, right, and
Speaker 2: they're prosing middle aged without much of a safety net
Speaker 2: because they all were squad or punks, and and they're
Speaker 2: like bands like Fugazi can get away with being fiercely
Speaker 2: independent because they're just big enough and sell enough records, right,
Speaker 2: Chumbawamba wasn't selling that kind of those kinds of numbers.
Speaker 2: And but fear of what people would think was a
Speaker 2: big part of it. A few years earlier, in Poland,
Speaker 2: some American punk had taken it upon himself to like
Speaker 2: slash their tour van tires because he was mad about
Speaker 2: how much the band was charging for the show. Punks
Speaker 2: can be sort of myopic, Yeah, yeah, and one of
Speaker 2: the one of the things that they thought about a lot,
Speaker 2: you know. The most convincing argument to some of them,
Speaker 2: and I actually think maybe the most convincing argument to
Speaker 2: me is they're like, look, our independent labels are also
Speaker 2: just all about the money. They are also fucking us over.
Speaker 2: They're also greedy, we might as well get paid well.
Speaker 2: Alice Nutter puts it in an interview with a punk
Speaker 2: magazine later. My reasoning for doing it isn't how we're
Speaker 2: going to get our message across to more people. It's
Speaker 2: nothing to do with that. It's because my experiences with
Speaker 2: one little Indian in the music industry have me convinced
Speaker 2: that they're all the fucking same. They're small businessmen and
Speaker 2: big businessmen, and they have a different agenda to us.
Speaker 2: There's no good or bad capitalism is kind of what
Speaker 2: they hit upon. Yeah, they do it, and which brings
Speaker 2: us to probably the only song by them that most
Speaker 2: of the people listening to this podcast have actually heard.
Speaker 2: It'sub thumping about falling down and standing up and about drinking.
Speaker 2: I literally don't know. I didn't actually ask Sophie what
Speaker 2: I'm allowed to do in terms of quoting song lyrics,
Speaker 2: so that's why keep tee speaking about it very vaguely.
Speaker 2: Sophie says, yes, I can claim that I wrote the
Speaker 2: song and that it is legally my property. That is
Speaker 2: what Sophie is nod in and saying yes right now.
Speaker 2: So I wrote the song tub Thumping, and when I did? Okay, so,
Speaker 2: but I'm going to quote both whiley about this song.
Speaker 2: Tub Thumping, from his very outset as an idea, was
Speaker 2: definitely populist and based on working class experience. That's working class,
Speaker 2: not just as a mythic Trotskyist vision, but as a
Speaker 2: cultural and historic whole, which includes family and sport and
Speaker 2: community and war and love and entertainment, not just the cliched,
Speaker 2: clenched fist getting up, but the getting knocked down as well.
Speaker 2: Tub Thumping became known to some purely as a drinking song,
Speaker 2: which is fair enough because of nothing else. It didn't
Speaker 2: belong to an elite group of musicians. It belonged to people.
Speaker 2: People at football matches, people singing along to the radio
Speaker 2: as they drove, people at parties, drinking too much whiskey
Speaker 2: and tripping over the kitchen chairs people like me, and
Speaker 2: because it helped beggar the notion that Chumbo Wamba were
Speaker 2: boring zealots from planet Anarchy, And that's not what I
Speaker 2: realized when I heard it when I was in the
Speaker 2: nineties and like driving around and like, but.
Speaker 5: I think it's cool to They don't try to shew
Speaker 5: that interpretation, because yeah, it is a drinking song, you know,
Speaker 5: it's but it works on a couple different levels. But
Speaker 5: it is a drinking song insofar as like you know,
Speaker 5: you're drinking with your mates, and there's community there, and
Speaker 5: there's solidarity there, and and there's you know, commiseration for
Speaker 5: the getting knocked down, you know, parts of life.
Speaker 2: There, which is punk as fuck. It is punk as fucked,
Speaker 2: like put your arms around all your friends and drunkenly
Speaker 2: sing songs like whatever. The song you know, like yeah,
Speaker 2: like yeah.
Speaker 3: It's collective, it's it's yeah, it's kind of a spiritual experience, you.
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, totally, and it's one that we have like
Speaker 2: increasingly stripped away from us by by modern life. And
Speaker 2: apparently one of the main inspirations of the song was
Speaker 2: watching a drunk Irish guy stumbling home from a bar
Speaker 2: singing Danny Boy and being told to shut up by
Speaker 2: a neighbor. So and the song goes fucking huge. And again,
Speaker 2: if you were live in the nineties, you probably remember this.
Speaker 2: It's number two in the UK, it's number six in
Speaker 2: the US, It's in the charts everywhere in the world.
Speaker 2: It gets ranked on lists of like the twenty most
Speaker 2: annoying songs of all time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean there's a distinction to be made there
Speaker 5: between between like a hit song and like a global smash.
Speaker 4: Like that song was.
Speaker 5: Like, you know, number one on alternative rock radio or whatever,
Speaker 5: but also pop radio and also not just in the US,
Speaker 5: but like, yeah, you know everywhere. It was just one
Speaker 5: of those, you know, hyper ubiquitous songs that you could
Speaker 5: not escape no matter where you were, no matter what
Speaker 5: your where, your tastes, what genres your tastes went to,
Speaker 5: or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it's also kind of a genre list song,
Speaker 2: Like on its face, you know, it has like I
Speaker 2: think electronic drums and just this catchy singalong chorus and
Speaker 2: like it's just and it's like, yeah, it's almost like
Speaker 2: like a collective delusion, you know, this thing that just
Speaker 2: like absorbed everyone for a moment, you know, and yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's fucking interesting.
Speaker 6: It's like, in a way, it's like it it was.
Speaker 6: It was a troll sort of, but it also wasn't
Speaker 6: a cynical one. They were Yeah, they weren't looking down
Speaker 6: on the people enjoying it. Yeah, for whatever surface reasons.
Speaker 6: There was no contempt there. Yeah, but it was this
Speaker 6: thing that functioned on a couple different levels.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's so fucking like, it's just brilliant. It's
Speaker 2: such a it's yeah, it's a prank, but it's not
Speaker 2: a prank, you know. It's this earnest thing they did
Speaker 2: that got injected into pop culture and don't it's fucking
Speaker 2: and a lot of their old fans write them letters
Speaker 2: calling them sellouts. But the people who really led the
Speaker 2: charge of calling them hypocrites were the same music journalists
Speaker 2: who had always hated them because they're like, ah see,
Speaker 2: we told you their politics didn't mean anything, which was
Speaker 2: their way of basically excusing themselves for never having had
Speaker 2: decent politics in the first Yeah.
Speaker 5: Which is a really dubious way to sort of yeah,
Speaker 5: you know, truffle Hunt for what seems like hypocrisy, but
Speaker 5: if you scratch the surface at all, you realize really isn't.
Speaker 5: It's a collective who wants to be able to take
Speaker 5: care of their own and, as we'll find soon enough
Speaker 5: in the story, take care of others as well, and
Speaker 5: do that by siphoning corporate bunny and yeah, like you know,
Speaker 5: doing Robin hood shit.
Speaker 2: Really yeah, totally totally. And it's funny is to look
Speaker 2: at like if I had been I, you know, I
Speaker 2: was a a salty subcultural but not like a punk
Speaker 2: yet right at the time of all of this, if
Speaker 2: I had been, like if it had happened in two
Speaker 2: thousand and three, I probably would have been one of
Speaker 2: the people being like, h you fucking sellouts, right, But
Speaker 2: I'm glad that I don't, you know, like twenty one
Speaker 2: year old me is not who I look back to
Speaker 2: about what decisions were best to make for my life.
Speaker 2: You know. No, I'm stuck with some of the tattoos.
Speaker 2: But that's okay too.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So they spend two years, the next two years in
Speaker 2: this whirlwind of fame. It doesn't stop them from being themselves.
Speaker 2: And first and foremost, they give away just a fuck
Speaker 2: ton of money, since since all the money gets split equally.
Speaker 2: They didn't like fuss about who deserves what amount and
Speaker 2: stuff like that. You know, there were the people who
Speaker 2: are the lead singers of the songs whatever, but they're like,
Speaker 2: we're just split it in and evenly. We'll work from there.
Speaker 2: And they peer pressure each other out of like running
Speaker 2: out and buying Jaguars. Boff notes that Dan went out
Speaker 2: and bought a really fancy vacuum cleaner, which I must
Speaker 2: be what middle age anarchists do. And they suddenly have
Speaker 2: a lot of money. You know, nice vacuum cleaner. It's
Speaker 2: a very nice thing. And they I get the impression
Speaker 2: that they hold onto enough money to not have to
Speaker 2: worry about being poor. But they donate money to artists,
Speaker 2: women's groups, prisoner defense campaigns, kids football teams, radical media projects, venues,
Speaker 2: solidarity groups, individual organizers, community groups, magazines, direct action groups,
Speaker 2: and social centers. At one point in two thousand and two,
Speaker 2: GM wanted a song for a commercial. Yeah, Jumble Womba
Speaker 2: said yes, and they take it. Took one hundred thousand
Speaker 2: dollars or different accounts give different amounts, but a large
Speaker 2: number of money, high money number one hundred thousand will
Speaker 2: go with that, and they just turn around and they
Speaker 2: give half of it to indie Media, which is this
Speaker 2: big decentralized ub the media network, and they give which
Speaker 2: is unfortunately kind of probably what prefigured Twitter and to
Speaker 2: rest of the nightmare we live now, but it was
Speaker 2: a good idea at the time. And they give the
Speaker 2: other half to a project called corp Watch that is
Speaker 2: specifically tracking GM, like exposing their crimes. And so they
Speaker 2: just turn around and give fifty thousand dollars to people
Speaker 2: who are like specifically attacking GM. Yeah, and so if
Speaker 2: the two main arguments that they have in favor of
Speaker 2: selling out are reach a wider audience and get fuck
Speaker 2: tons of money, they do both. But I actually I
Speaker 2: think Alice Nutter was right in some ways. The fuck
Speaker 2: tons of money, which seems less the radical goal, is
Speaker 2: actually in some ways the more radical thing they did
Speaker 2: because the wider audience didn't necessarily like get it right.
Speaker 2: They talk about anarchism on news shows, they mostly get
Speaker 2: made fun of. They sell their music to a ton
Speaker 2: of places, but they turned down other places too. They
Speaker 2: turned down Nike, who offered them a million and a
Speaker 2: half bucks. Their rules were really simple and strict. They
Speaker 2: wouldn't sell their music to anyone involved in sweatshop labor
Speaker 2: or the arms industry. And when I first started researching
Speaker 2: this episode, I thought it was going to be mostly
Speaker 2: about their high jinks during the fame period, because they
Speaker 2: did really good hijinks. But in the end, I you
Speaker 2: know the reason. The first half is more about the
Speaker 2: working clas punks in a squat breaking laws is like
Speaker 2: what I kind of lingered on. But let's talk about
Speaker 2: the hijinks one time. In nineteen ninety seven, in the
Speaker 2: Top Thumping era, Dan gets arrested in Italy literally for
Speaker 2: just walking down the street wearing a skirt, and he's
Speaker 2: held in his cell. He has a show that night.
Speaker 2: He gets held in a cell with no one speaking
Speaker 2: to him in English, and finally he scrawls I'm in
Speaker 2: a pop group called Chumbo Wumba on a piece of
Speaker 2: paper and helds it up to the glass of the
Speaker 2: cell and they release him and he gets in time
Speaker 2: to go to the sound check. The next day, he
Speaker 2: appears on Italian TV in the Skirt and says Italy
Speaker 2: has some problems with homophobic, macho cop culture. Alice Nutter
Speaker 2: steps up as being the kind of unofficial spokesperson for
Speaker 2: the band. I think mostly because she enjoyed talking the
Speaker 2: most and had the most to say. She was also
Speaker 2: maybe the most firebrand of them. In nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 2: she told the UK Press, nothing can change the fact
Speaker 2: that we like it when cops get killed. Emi is like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, please apologize. What the fuck? Oh my god?
Speaker 2: She didn't apologize and such. She clarified her statement. If
Speaker 2: you're working class, they won't protect you. When you hear
Speaker 2: about them, it's in the context of them abusing people,
Speaker 2: you know, miscarriages of justice. We don't have a party
Speaker 2: when cops die, you know, we don't. But before we
Speaker 2: hear about more of Alice Nutter's anti capitalist hijinks. Ooh,
Speaker 2: we have some capitalist hijinks for you in the form
Speaker 2: of products and services. Okay, and we are back in
Speaker 2: January nineteen ninety eight, Alice Nutter, she goes on the
Speaker 2: talk show Politically Incorrect, and she says, basically, yeah, if
Speaker 2: you can't afford our music, just go to the nearest big, evil,
Speaker 2: giant chain store like Virgin and steal it. And Virgin
Speaker 2: didn't like this. Chumbawamba at the time is Universal's number
Speaker 2: one selling band, and here's the band saying, just steal it.
Speaker 2: Who fucking cares? As long as you steal it from
Speaker 2: a large corporation. Virgin threatens to remove the album from
Speaker 2: their stores, and it depends on what account you read.
Speaker 2: They either stopped carrying it entirely or hit it behind
Speaker 2: the counter.
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 2: And this only makes sales go up, which doesn't fucking
Speaker 2: surprise me, right, Like I could have told them that, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: more will get stolen. But if people steal the CDs,
Speaker 2: people are going to listen to it and talk about it,
Speaker 2: and more people are going to go out and fucking
Speaker 2: buy it, right.
Speaker 5: And and if you're taking it off the shelves or
Speaker 5: hiding it, you're literally manufacturing scarcity for the thing, and
Speaker 5: by making it more valuable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so everyone wants to go out and find
Speaker 2: it and get it. Yeah. So anyway, they're contact at
Speaker 2: Universal called the band and was like, well, you all
Speaker 2: just laugh at me if I tell you that Universal
Speaker 2: wants to ask you to apologize for saying all that,
Speaker 2: Like they're rep knows it's a like fool's errand that
Speaker 2: he's been tasked to call them and ask them to apologize.
Speaker 2: He's like, y'all aren't going to do this, are you?
Speaker 2: And they're like ha ha Nope. And later Alice Nutters
Speaker 2: in a recollection says, why should I apologize? I wasn't sorry,
Speaker 2: which is exactly how you should or shouldn't apologize when
Speaker 2: you make decisions about apologies. So and on the The
Speaker 2: David Letterman Show, they changed the lyrics of tub thumping
Speaker 2: to include from free Mumiya bou Jamal and Mamiya bu
Speaker 2: Jamal for anyone who's not aware. As a black political
Speaker 2: prisoner who was probably framed up on the murder of
Speaker 2: a cop in Philly and at the very least definitely
Speaker 2: had an unfair trial, he spent a couple decades on
Speaker 2: death row, which was reduced to Life without Pearl in
Speaker 2: two thousand and one. So Chumbawamba goes on Letterman and
Speaker 2: sings free Mumiya bou Jamal, and it was pre recorded,
Speaker 2: so Letterman let it happen. In the end, basically they
Speaker 2: like sat down, Like The Letterman Show, people were like, fuck,
Speaker 2: are we gonna let this fucking happen? And finally the
Speaker 2: network is like, all right, fuck it. They run it
Speaker 2: and they talk about anarchism with Barbara Walters. They basically
Speaker 2: leave a trail of chaos that the record labels are
Speaker 2: running around trying to clean up for them. But instead
Speaker 2: of trash hotel rooms, it was just weird shit, you know.
Speaker 2: And the peak of all this was the nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: eight brit Awards, which I think are the Grammys for
Speaker 2: people stuck on a tiny island without sunshine. My theory
Speaker 2: is that they actually named the country after the award show.
Speaker 2: It was called brit Land, but then with the accent,
Speaker 2: sound like Britain, and so that's what's stuck.
Speaker 4: That's my thavorite sounds true to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I wonder how long I'm gonna get away
Speaker 2: with this bit so Jumbawamba. They get invited to the
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety eight brit Awards. They're even up for an
Speaker 2: award themselves Best Single, and they're going to perform. At first,
Speaker 2: they weren't going to perform, but the director he knows
Speaker 2: their fucking number, and he's like, all right, you don't
Speaker 2: want to perform, We'll let you have a video behind you.
Speaker 2: And they're like, yeah, okay, we're in. We can show propaganda.
Speaker 2: We are in. And the day of the director of
Speaker 2: the wards. He goes up to chumble One personally with
Speaker 2: a plea and he's like, hey, could you could you
Speaker 2: not physically attack any of the other artists, And that's
Speaker 2: his big request to them. Tumbawamba is like, all right, fine, whatever,
Speaker 2: we won't attack any of the other artists physically, and
Speaker 2: they even technically stuck with that. They they're not super
Speaker 2: stoked about it, though, and everyone else is pissing them
Speaker 2: off with all being off pop star and shit. And
Speaker 2: I have a feeling that every like band that's played
Speaker 2: at this level kind of like vaguely enjoys talking about bands.
Speaker 2: But you know, they point out this in the book
Speaker 2: that like half of Fleetwood Mac refuses to use their
Speaker 2: dressing room because of inadequate carpeting. And I don't know
Speaker 2: shit about Fleetwood Mac, and I'm taking both Whaley's word
Speaker 2: for it. Maybe inadequate carpeting was like maybe like the
Speaker 2: whole thing was like this like sewage swamp. I don't
Speaker 2: fucking know, you.
Speaker 4: Know, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: But it's easier to imagine, like, ah, those damn rock stars,
Speaker 2: said the one rock star to that. Anyway, whatever, it's
Speaker 2: more fun to imagine too, Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So they
Speaker 2: go up and play and they're all wearing sweatshirts that
Speaker 2: say things like sold out or whatever, and they put
Speaker 2: on a film behind them and it's full of people
Speaker 2: rioting and protesting, and there's act up banners and there's
Speaker 2: the stages streaming with red and black banners, and it's like,
Speaker 2: it's exactly what I would do if I was up
Speaker 2: for one of these aworts. And it's not even not
Speaker 2: necessarily in an original way, but just it's it's like
Speaker 2: you kind of have to if you're that band, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And at the time, dockers in Liverpool had been on
Speaker 2: strike and it was one of the longest labor disputes
Speaker 2: in British history, and the dockers had mostly lost. They
Speaker 2: had been forced into a settlement package and they all
Speaker 2: lost their jobs. And the Labor Party was currently branding
Speaker 2: itself as New Labor and they were culpable for a
Speaker 2: lot of that. So Chumbawamba changed the course of tub
Speaker 2: Thump to include new Labors sold out the dockers, just
Speaker 2: like they'll sell out the rest of us. And they
Speaker 2: even brought some dockers with them to the ceremony. With
Speaker 2: the plan that if they win, the doctors would go
Speaker 2: up and accept on their behalf and give a speech
Speaker 2: about what was going on. But Chaumbowama didn't win, so
Speaker 2: they didn't get to do the Doctors accept thing. But
Speaker 2: after they get off stage, they're like, oh shit, that's
Speaker 2: John Prescott and he's the Deputy Prime Minister, which is
Speaker 2: roughly the equivalent of vice president, and he's from the
Speaker 2: working class. He used to be a member of the
Speaker 2: same union as the Dockers, but he basically sold them out.
Speaker 2: He was blocking tuition bills, he was fucking over the unemployed.
Speaker 2: He was just doing all kinds of shit, right, And
Speaker 2: so they're sitting around and they're like, what the fuck
Speaker 2: are we going to do. There's the vice president of Britain,
Speaker 2: which definitely has a vice president, and they they look
Speaker 2: at the bin that had been full of all the
Speaker 2: ice for the champagne and all of that, and they're like, Dan, Alice,
Speaker 2: you got this and Dan and Alice are like, yes,
Speaker 2: we do indeed have it. So they go up to Prescott.
Speaker 2: Dan jumps on the table says this is for the
Speaker 2: Liverpool Dockers and dumps a bucket of ice water on
Speaker 2: John Prescott's head. Not to be outdone, Nutter is right
Speaker 2: there behind him with I think an extra bucket of
Speaker 2: water and also just soaks him with that as well,
Speaker 2: and this is like on okay, So so Dan gets
Speaker 2: arrested and Prescott has to be a good sport about
Speaker 2: it because he's like trying to look cool with the
Speaker 2: kids he's here at the brit Awards or whatever. It's
Speaker 2: really hard to imagine a US politician being this cool
Speaker 2: about especially a vice president. I'm like, I'm struggling to
Speaker 2: imagine the punk band that can dump ice water on
Speaker 2: the vice president of the United States and survive, you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I mean we saw the way was it Giuliani?
Speaker 5: Who there was that video of a guy who kind
Speaker 5: of like lightly like oh yeah, pat on the back
Speaker 5: and then talks some shit yeah, and he acted like
Speaker 5: it was a saul and.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah yeah. But however, they managed to dump ice
Speaker 2: water on the fucking deputy prime minister's head, and the
Speaker 2: deputy Prime Minister of Prescott is like, all right, I'm
Speaker 2: not pressing charges, and so they get let go and
Speaker 2: the tabloids eat the whole thing up, and of course
Speaker 2: the usual snotty critics get mad and oh and then
Speaker 2: Ginger Spice from The Spice Girls goes up to Prescott
Speaker 2: to make sure he's okay. They made sure to include
Speaker 2: that part in the in their biography or that's really funny,
Speaker 2: and Alice Nutter later, I think it's talking about the
Speaker 2: entire like arc of Chumbawamba, and it's like it was
Speaker 2: all worth it just to be able to get at
Speaker 2: John Prescott, just to get at these people who think
Speaker 2: they're untouchable. And that's the thing that's kind of interesting
Speaker 2: to me about like like people used to pie politicians
Speaker 2: more often, it feels like, and it seems like the
Speaker 2: point of that is just to say, like, hey, remember
Speaker 2: you're a person. Yeah, you know, like this have been worse,
Speaker 2: is what you're saying when you dump ice water on
Speaker 2: someone's head. You know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're a person who's supposed to be accountable to us.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you clearly aren't. And you enjoy this sort
Speaker 5: of like protected celebrity status, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah totally And so okay. So they spent about two
Speaker 2: years on the road doing the celebrity thing, and then
Speaker 2: they take a break and they resume other parts of
Speaker 2: their lives, figuring out their next move, and then they
Speaker 2: put out a second album with EMI, which is a
Speaker 2: bit confusing because then they're mythologizing. I've read some of
Speaker 2: their accounts that are like, em I wanted to put
Speaker 2: out another album, but we said no. But I think
Speaker 2: they did put out another album with EMI. Either way,
Speaker 2: either em I dumps them or they dump EMI and or.
Speaker 5: Yeah, EMI could have done something where if they were
Speaker 5: under contract for another record or something but didn't want
Speaker 5: to deliver it where they either. I mean, we had
Speaker 5: our record label do that with us, where they put
Speaker 5: out I don't know if it was like live stuff
Speaker 5: for you know.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting because you owed them an album but they
Speaker 2: didn't like the way they turned in.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, that kind of thing for us. I don't
Speaker 5: remember exactly what the circumstances were, but I could see
Speaker 5: it being something like that where they basically manufactured some
Speaker 5: kind of release out of B sides or whatever.
Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, are you still they technically owned? I
Speaker 2: think you're not still with a major label. Is that correct?
Speaker 4: That's correct?
Speaker 5: Yeah, we got dropped from RCA and like two thousand
Speaker 5: and three, and we put records out now with an
Speaker 5: indie label.
Speaker 2: Called Velocity okay, which always seemed like kind of a
Speaker 2: cool like after this, and I'll get to it in
Speaker 2: a moment, like Chumbawamba kind of like goes from major
Speaker 2: label back to indie. They go from indy to major
Speaker 2: to indie, right, and they're like all right, And it's
Speaker 2: kind of interesting to me to see that as a well,
Speaker 2: you just do what's best in the situation, rather than like,
Speaker 2: oh no, you're a failure because the major label dropped you,
Speaker 2: or oh no, you're a sellout because you know you
Speaker 2: went to a major label at all.
Speaker 4: I don't know, yeah, yeah, I mean sort of like.
Speaker 5: Judging or making the metric of like what is worthwhile
Speaker 5: about making rock by what type of record label you're
Speaker 5: on or whatever, ain't really.
Speaker 4: Where it's at.
Speaker 5: I can also see how, you know, perception is created
Speaker 5: by like by that kind of story, Like you know,
Speaker 5: it did feel embarrassing to get dropped from a major
Speaker 5: label for all of those reasons, but then you sort
Speaker 5: of realize.
Speaker 4: Like why why do you feel that way?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 5: And you know this, the reasons for it are pretty
Speaker 5: dubious once you examine them a little bit, like what
Speaker 5: what do you what are you making stuff for? Anyway,
Speaker 5: is it too, you know, appease, you know, the bean
Speaker 5: counters or whatever because you like like to like to
Speaker 5: make rock because it makes you feel free or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like connecting to people like you connect with
Speaker 2: people different ways depending on what means by which you
Speaker 2: access them, and doesn't make it better or worse, like yep, no,
Speaker 2: it's interesting. Yeah, it must have been. You have not
Speaker 2: been in that position, but it must have been like, oh,
Speaker 2: we've we've hit our crest and now we are coming
Speaker 2: down from it, as compared to like, well, no, you
Speaker 2: got this like boost of attention and now you're able
Speaker 2: to do things with that, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 5: It's all in how you sort of frame your perspective
Speaker 5: toward it. Yeah, Like I mean, in our case, we
Speaker 5: did need to like break up for a host of reasons,
Speaker 5: and we did for a few years, and only recently,
Speaker 5: in the last couple of years have we started doing
Speaker 5: this new iteration of the band that, like I said,
Speaker 5: is sort of in practice a side project, but we
Speaker 5: just still call it Eve six. But yeah, you know,
Speaker 5: we're doing it for for the right reasons. And I
Speaker 5: think a band like Trumbawamba was always doing it for
Speaker 5: the right reasons.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, yeah, And you know who else is
Speaker 2: doing it for the right reasons. It's it's it's the Advertiser.
Speaker 2: We're actually sponsored by this new this new act on
Speaker 2: our ca clup Eve seven new band. It's very original.
Speaker 4: Okay, this is interesting. I hadn't I hadn't heard of this,
Speaker 4: hadn't heard of this group.
Speaker 5: But my first reaction is, I don't know if this
Speaker 5: town is big enough for two of us.
Speaker 2: Well, they've got this hit, and you know it's the
Speaker 2: first Advertisers is going to be this hit. It's called what.
Speaker 4: Kind of prepositions are they working with?
Speaker 2: You? Put a blender in my heart? I believe?
Speaker 7: Is that?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 5: Okay, it's funny because five Seconds of Summer apparently just
Speaker 5: released a song called Blender or like emotional Blender or
Speaker 5: something like that.
Speaker 4: I haven't listened to it yet, but.
Speaker 2: Yeah, town's only big enough for one blender song.
Speaker 4: That's right? Yeah, stay away from our kitchen appliance.
Speaker 2: That is the official motto of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: Is that?
Speaker 2: Is that correct? Sophie is nodding?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 2: Sometimes I just say Sophie's nodding when Sophie's actually holding
Speaker 2: up a sign that says stop doing this, you're going
Speaker 2: to get us in trouble. But Sophie's not in this case.
Speaker 2: She was nodding, yeah, yeah, totally. And here's some other
Speaker 2: products and services including Eve six, I mean sorry, seven, eight,
Speaker 2: and nine, and we are back. Okay, so up, and
Speaker 2: we were talking about the the at this point, you know,
Speaker 2: Chumbawamba is in there. Uh, they've taken a break from
Speaker 2: the celebrity thing. Then they then they come back at
Speaker 2: making music and they keep at it for another fifteen years.
Speaker 2: Tom Pumping is right in the middle of the career
Speaker 2: of Chumbawamba as a band. They start their own label,
Speaker 2: they work with a bunch of different indies, and they
Speaker 2: put out a ton of music and they continue to
Speaker 2: accidentally show up at the craziest riots in history. Wow,
Speaker 2: what a weird coincidence. And I actually this part actually
Speaker 2: caught me by surprise because I had kind of assumed that,
Speaker 2: like they're in their forties, I think at this point,
Speaker 2: and like they're doing all right, and they're still just like, oh,
Speaker 2: there's this riot. I mean, actually it's an accident. There's
Speaker 2: just accidentally in all these things. And I really I
Speaker 2: really appreciate about that they're bad timing where they keep
Speaker 2: showing it for these things and so, and they also
Speaker 2: fund a bunch of direct actions, which I think there's
Speaker 2: still I don't want to conjecture too hard about the
Speaker 2: things that they fund. And a bunch of them leave
Speaker 2: the band and in two thousand and four, And I
Speaker 2: spent a while trying to be like, what did they
Speaker 2: leave the band about? Right? But then I realized that
Speaker 2: none of them were trying to talk about it. There
Speaker 2: was a little bit of like personal and political differences,
Speaker 2: and they leave it at that, right, And.
Speaker 4: And that's cool.
Speaker 2: It's cool that I don't know because they're just like,
Speaker 2: their whole thing seems to be like, how do we
Speaker 2: come close to this environment that could have made us
Speaker 2: douchebag rock stars without And so they're just like they
Speaker 2: just worked through it, at least somewhat privately, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: It sounds like they have loyalty to one another and like, yeah,
Speaker 5: actual friendship.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. And it's almost like they, you know, repaired
Speaker 2: a house together for ten years before they went on
Speaker 2: any of this crazy shit, you know. And and even
Speaker 2: the people who left in two thousand and four came
Speaker 2: back for their twenty twelve Fuck It Were Done Tour.
Speaker 2: I don't think that was the actual name of it,
Speaker 2: but it might as well have been their fuck it, We're
Speaker 2: Done tour, because they basically were like, fuck it, We're done,
Speaker 2: and then they had a tour. And they still contribute
Speaker 2: to each other's art to this day. They like a
Speaker 2: bunch of them make movies and theater and music, and
Speaker 2: you know, Baff writes books about running, Alice writes for TV.
Speaker 2: Bruce is working on a documentary about Chumbawamba that's currently
Speaker 2: on the the circuit where you're not allowed to watch
Speaker 2: it unless you have a.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2: Right when they broke up, they put out a statement.
Speaker 2: I'm a quote from it because I think they do
Speaker 2: a good, pretty good job of summing up what they
Speaker 2: were doing. Chumbowomba was our vehicle for pointing at the
Speaker 2: naked emperors, for telling our version of the truth. It
Speaker 2: gave us more than the joy and love of playing live,
Speaker 2: writing songs and singing together. It gave us a chance
Speaker 2: to be part of a broad coalition of activists and hectors,
Speaker 2: optimists and questioners. But eventually the rest of our lives
Speaker 2: got in the way and we couldn't commit the time
Speaker 2: and enthusiasm that the band demanded, couldn't keep up with
Speaker 2: whatever responsibilities came with a band like this. If there
Speaker 2: were ever a Chumbawamba manifesto, it would and the inconsistent,
Speaker 2: contradictory language of the dataists part strident belligerence and part foolishness.
Speaker 2: This ending is no different. It comes almost as much
Speaker 2: of a surprise to us as it may do to you.
Speaker 2: Always more clown than politician, the band trips over its
Speaker 2: outsized feet and performs its final tumble. There have been
Speaker 2: squabbles and arguments along the way, a deal of griping, frustration, moaning, exasperation,
Speaker 2: but always alongside a huge amount of good will and generosity,
Speaker 2: good humor and love. What a riot it's been, frankly,
Speaker 2: and now it's time to clear up the mess and
Speaker 2: move on. And Dan, I'm gonna read one more quote
Speaker 2: about from one of them about this, Dan in an
Speaker 2: interview with band Camp in twenty twenty two. This year,
Speaker 2: I guess I can just say this year, if I'm
Speaker 2: talking about the year I'm in, I'm very proud of
Speaker 2: what we did. The whole way through. We tried to
Speaker 2: push the envelope. We weren't always successful, but we always tried,
Speaker 2: and that's probably a defining characteristic of Chumba Womba. Whatever
Speaker 2: era or genre we tried, it always had a working
Speaker 2: class basis, which is a whole other story. When we
Speaker 2: signed with the major labels in the mainstream, it didn't
Speaker 2: destroy us. You could accuse us of selling out, but
Speaker 2: we weren't bought up, and I think that's a testament
Speaker 2: to the way we had each other's backs. The mainstream
Speaker 2: usually swallows people and spits them out. I mean it
Speaker 2: did split us out, but we took it as a compliment.
Speaker 4: Really there you go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like what you were saying about, Like it
Speaker 2: is just how you fucking look at it, you know.
Speaker 8: Yep, they're like prose or you know, I don't know
Speaker 8: if that last quotation was what you know, said to
Speaker 8: a reporter or something like that.
Speaker 5: But it's so beautiful and it's like better than their lyrics,
Speaker 5: I know, their own sort of like yeah, assessment of
Speaker 5: their story is is really deep and just like so
Speaker 5: on point and includes.
Speaker 7: All of the admittedly seemingly contradictory things that made made
Speaker 7: up Shambawamba, this thing that was you know, on one level,
Speaker 7: just like a vessel for entertainment and diversion, and on another,
Speaker 7: you know, straight up you know activism.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And it's interesting because I was thinking about
Speaker 2: this as I was writing this out. I was like,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm not really talking about their music, right,
Speaker 2: and like their songs, and I'm not talking about like
Speaker 2: their instrumentation and like and all that stuff really matters,
Speaker 2: And it clearly mattered to them because the whole time
Speaker 2: they're always like, oh yeah, we don't have to play
Speaker 2: our instruments. They are like musically really talented to the
Speaker 2: point where it's like sort of almost annoying. Like their
Speaker 2: a cappella album, I'm like, you all wrote these amazing
Speaker 2: like multiple harmonies and like all this crazy shit, you know,
Speaker 2: and it's about all of these things at once. It's
Speaker 2: one of the things I've had.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the music is an aspect of this thing that
Speaker 5: as a whole is like yeah activist performance art. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: is really inspiring.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: I mean, they they they they they did buck the system,
Speaker 5: as as he put like, yeah, maybe they they sold.
Speaker 4: Out, but they didn't. What's the language he used, it.
Speaker 2: Spits them out? Oh right, But.
Speaker 4: Maybe but they weren't bought up. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 4: really cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah that it is really like this is funny
Speaker 2: because it's like, I know, you're in a band and
Speaker 2: I'm in a band, and I'm like, doesn't it make
Speaker 2: you want to start a band or like makes you
Speaker 2: want to like be in a band, you know, like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm writing right now. I've been in a bunch of
Speaker 2: bands that have done various things, and right now I
Speaker 2: like signed to my first indie label with my metal
Speaker 2: band Cool and we have an album do soon, right
Speaker 2: and it's our It'll be our second full length of
Speaker 2: the band. And I'm like, oh, I should really care
Speaker 2: about that, you know, in a way where I'm like,
Speaker 2: I care about it and I've been working with this
Speaker 2: band for years, but I'm like, I don't know it. No,
Speaker 2: it's inspiring, yeah it it uh, you know, trains your
Speaker 2: your eyes back on like what's important? Fun, joyful?
Speaker 5: Yeah about about a project and you know, exposes all
Speaker 5: the things that aren't, all the metrics that are seemingly
Speaker 5: important and that matter, and all of that shit which.
Speaker 2: Don't ultimately yeah yeah, and the way in which they
Speaker 2: matter is the vehicle with which to do it, like
Speaker 2: the thing that, you know, getting the money to make
Speaker 2: the music allows them to make the music. That is
Speaker 2: the the part of that that matters, you know. It's
Speaker 2: just the ability to continue to allow to continue to happen, Right,
Speaker 2: That's the end.
Speaker 5: It's not it's not you know, to make yourself obscenely
Speaker 5: wealthy or you know, fame or whatever whatever else. It's like,
Speaker 5: how that in their case, how that served their project.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, and both as individuals and as activists and
Speaker 2: as artists, like the music that they make, how it
Speaker 2: matters for its own sake and.
Speaker 4: Like mm hmm.
Speaker 2: And so they actually they released one album after they
Speaker 2: broke up, because the very last release came in twenty thirteen,
Speaker 2: the year after they broke up, and because in two
Speaker 2: thousand and five they recorded an EP called in Memoria
Speaker 2: Margaret Thatcher, and they were like, this would be released
Speaker 2: when Margaret Thatcher dies, And so in twenty thirteen, Margaret
Speaker 2: Thatcher did that did the world that that favor and
Speaker 2: went ahead and died, and the EP came out along
Speaker 2: with a statement, our deepest sympathies go out to the
Speaker 2: families of all Margaret Thatcher's victims and it's a very
Speaker 2: happy little album.
Speaker 4: It's amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so okay, so this is and so thanks
Speaker 2: for coming along with my episode that I totally didn't
Speaker 2: write in order to get myself off the hook for
Speaker 2: taking corporate money Giant Faceless Corporation to run a podcast
Speaker 2: about radical history. Now you all know my secret reason
Speaker 2: we're telling you about Umble them. But but I I look,
Speaker 2: I think the analogy works.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, yeah, I think I think they might
Speaker 5: you know, tip their their bowlers.
Speaker 2: I hope. So if you're listening Jumble one. But yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, well well uh yeah, what what can people
Speaker 2: you say? You're in a band? What what is that band?
Speaker 2: What do you you're the the band that ripped off
Speaker 2: Eve seven?
Speaker 5: I think, right, yeah, Look, there's there's a bunch of
Speaker 5: you know, vicious like rumors going out going around that
Speaker 5: I have no footpold in the truth. Eve six came
Speaker 5: before Eve seven, and Eve seven has been like, you know,
Speaker 5: biting our vibe, you know, agreed egregiously and and and
Speaker 5: you know, anyone who's got.
Speaker 4: Their ear to the ground Margaret has.
Speaker 2: Heard of Eve six, this quiet band that yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, okay,
Speaker 2: And it does chronologically, six does come before you?
Speaker 4: Could you could use that that six comes before seven?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I actually here it's afraid of
Speaker 2: seven because seven eight.
Speaker 4: Nine, that's right. See, And that's that too, is true.
Speaker 2: That was despicable.
Speaker 1: If the lizards could only see how happy she was
Speaker 1: while making that terrible joke, they would.
Speaker 5: Be they would be truly dismayed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, truly the worst. I lost all of my my
Speaker 2: goth points went out the river river.
Speaker 4: Yeah, down the river.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, so so what a what do you have
Speaker 2: going on? You play or like, how can people check
Speaker 2: it out? Maybe you have a new album out coming out?
Speaker 2: Maybe it's even out by the time people listen, because
Speaker 2: this will come out about a month after we record it.
Speaker 4: Yeah it might be.
Speaker 5: I have I have no idea when our album comes out,
Speaker 5: but I know it comes out in like a few weeks.
Speaker 4: I think I should know this.
Speaker 5: But it's called hyper relevisation. If you follow us on
Speaker 5: Twitter at Eve six, you'll you'll hear about all of
Speaker 5: that stuff.
Speaker 2: That's the only thing you talked about on Twitter, as
Speaker 2: I recall.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's that's that's all I talk about on Twitter
Speaker 5: is just uh, just you know, we just do band
Speaker 5: promo on there. It's a very typical nineties band account
Speaker 5: where we just like post photos of ourselves with with
Speaker 5: wallet chains, you know, doing the devil horns and saying
Speaker 5: come out to our show, the rib Fest, you know
Speaker 5: in Tulsa.
Speaker 4: That's that's what. That's the kind of content that you're
Speaker 4: going to find at our on our Twitter.
Speaker 2: Okay, cool? Do you still have the pants which are
Speaker 2: the ones that you cut slits in the side to
Speaker 2: make wider so you.
Speaker 4: No, I wish I can't changed, I know, I know. Yeah,
Speaker 4: those were so cool.
Speaker 5: Like when I see pictures of us from from back
Speaker 5: in the day, it's just really funny because none of
Speaker 5: us have feet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I used to. I used to chain when my
Speaker 2: when my pants would rip down the side, I would
Speaker 2: chain the hole between the two sides of it, make
Speaker 2: chain men.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's pretty tough, pretty tough.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's what people saw. I saw me coming and
Speaker 2: we're like, well that girl's tough. That is absolutely the
Speaker 2: vibe I managed to communicate when I was a goth
Speaker 2: girl didn't know she was a girl in the nineties. Yeah, okay, Well, Sophie,
Speaker 2: do you have anything you'd like to plug just at.
Speaker 1: Cools on media on Twitter and Instagram for all things Margaret.
Speaker 1: And you have a book coming out.
Speaker 2: Correct, I do, but I should pitch my band. I
Speaker 2: have a band called Feminage School where a feminist, atmospheric
Speaker 2: black metal band. And we have a bunch of different releases,
Speaker 2: mostly on band camp or through various labels. And then
Speaker 2: also eventually we'll have a full length again, we already
Speaker 2: have one, but it's not up for pre order right now.
Speaker 2: Unlike my book We Won't be Here Tomorrow, in which
Speaker 2: I name every short story things that sound like they
Speaker 2: would be black metal album titles like The Devil Lives
Speaker 2: Here and Into the Gray and you know, very dramatic
Speaker 2: things a very dramatic person. And that is okay. So
Speaker 2: my book is available for pre order. You can get
Speaker 2: at Akpress and if you get it, you get a
Speaker 2: little postcard of art. That is nice part. We love that.
Speaker 1: And we'll be back what next week?
Speaker 2: Monday, I believe so cool every Monday and Wednesday. Great,
Speaker 2: I'll see you there, all right, Thank.
Speaker 4: You both so much for having me on. This has
Speaker 4: been really fun.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Cool people who did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.