Chumbawamba
The members of the band Quixote, interviewed in the most recent issue of the zine Punk Planet, were asked “What is ‘selling out’?” They replied: “Very simple… Chumbawamba.”
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Chumbawamba’s first single–“Revolution,” on the band’s own Agit-Prop label–was competent, abrasive art-punk, along the lines of what the Ex were doing around the same time. The lyrics mostly concerned the counterrevolutionary treachery of the music business. “Packaged and marketed, we become the product,” the extensive liner notes read. “The music industry is capitalism in practice: the manipulation and selling of people as commodities, to an audience of consumers. Everything within it is dictated by big business–from the passive, diluted radio crap to our taste for that product.”
One of those comps was 1990’s Fuck EMI, on which “peace punk” types–including both Chumbawamba and covocalist Danbert Nobacon on his own–detourned versions of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Yellow Submarine,” and other songs originally released on EMI in the UK. (“He’s just a poor boy, from a poor family / Sell him a dream on our latest LP.”) The point of the album, the liner notes needlessly explain, “is to reveal some of the dirty dealings of multinationals such as Thorn EMI–who make millions out of exploiting people. The music and home entertainment side of EMI is just one way they make a fast buck–using pop stars as puppets and manufacturing them as product, until they too become part of the money-making machine and exploit too, in their bid to make millions.”
Nobacon claims that left politics are still an important part of the band’s work. “We’re in the top ten or whatever, but we’re not, like, a top ten act. We have anarchist ideas and we want to express them. We want to put these ideas out that you normally don’t see in mass culture.” But what does that mean, to be “in the top ten but not a top ten act”? Either what you have to offer is widely consumed or it’s not. If Chumbawamba had introduced rarely discussed ideas to mass culture, they’d have something to crow about, but “Tubthumping” isn’t about radical sexuality or urban planning (as earlier singles were)–it’s largely about drinking and singing.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo by Casey Orr/ album cover.
