Dig This: A Tribute to the Great Strike (1985)

While the death of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher earlier this year elicited a flurry of angry words, it also caused a lot of singing. There was even a brief chart war between "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead" from The Wizard of Oz and The Not Sensibles "I'm in Love With Margaret Thatcher" (with the level of musical animosity aimed at Maggie, apparently her proponents felt a humorously anti-Thatcher song would be their best shot at a rallying cry!) As for the radio in my head, it put The English Beat's "Stand Down Margaret" on heavy rotation. In the end, it's conceivable that the wealth of musical agitprop that the Iron Lady inspired may be her greatest legacy. Dig This: A Tribute to the Great Strike (Forward Sounds International) was a benefit album to support the Miners Solidarity Fund during the bitter miners' strike of 1984-1985. The album (good piece on it here) features a head-spinning stylistic variety; the driving folk-punk of The Men They Couldn't Hang, the twisted art-country of the Mekons, the loping reggae-punk of Omega Tribe, the frightening anglo-synth rap of Akimbo, the accusatory goth-rock of Leningrad Sandwich, the fierce noise-punk of The Ex, the anarcho-weirdness of The Posion Girls, the hard-to-classify Steve Lake and, of course, the only band on earth who can be described as both Crass' heirs and one-hit wonders, Chumabawamaba.







Tracklist

A1     Poison girls –     Cry        
A2     Poison girls –     Voodoo Pappadollar        
A3     Mekons –     Flitcraft        
A4     Mekons –     Trouble Down South        
A5     Men They Couldn't Hang –     Jack Dandy        
A6     Men They Couldn't Hang –     Rawhide
    
B1     Akimbo –     The Rap        
B2     Steve Lake –     Turn Out The Lights        
B3     Leningrad Sandwich –     We Will Rise        
B4     The Ex –     We've Got Everything We Never Wanted        
B5     Omega Tribe –     Young John        
B6     Chumbawamba –     The Police Have Been Wonderful        

Side I: Live at Southbank Poly
Side II: Studio Recordings





Give us your view on the musical legacy of Thatcher in the COMMENTS section!

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V.A. Bare Faced Hypocrisy Sells Records - The Anti-Chumbawamba EP (1998)

When Chumbawamba singed to EMI, after a career of attacking that arms-dealing label (Fuck EMI, anyone?) it was considered the anarcho-punk equivalent of the Nazi-Soviet pact.

So while the volte-face of the Nazi-Soviet Pact inspired perhaps the greatest book of thr 20th Century, George Orwell's 1984, this anti-Chumbawamba EP is a bit of a damp squib. There are those of us who'd prefer the Technicolor rave-punk of "Amnesia", "The Good Ship Lifestyle" and even the played-to-death "Tubthumping to this dour bit of vinyl posturing. Well, okay, there's a bit of dour Crass-like posturing here but really this is pretty amusing slab of satire, as all the titles nicely demonstrate. (Plus the Bus Station Loonies song is pretty fun.)

Tracklist

A1     Riot/Clone –    Chumbawanka        
A2     Anxiety Society  –     Always Tell The Punter...        
B1     Oi Polloi  –     Shhh-it        
B2     Bus Station Loonies  –     Give Me Charlie Harper        

Notes

On the 7" sleeve the tracklisting is:
A1 The Chineapple Punx - Grateful
A2 Riot/Clone - Chumbawanka
A3 Love, Chips & Peace - We Wish You'd Give Up
B1 Oi Polloi - Shhh-it
B2 The Bus Station Loonies - Charlie Harper
B3 Wat Tyler - New Labour New Chumbawamba

Tracks A1, A3 & B3 were removed before release, but were secretly made available for free by returning a coupon inside the sleeve to Ruptured Ambitions Records (or Propa Git Records fort this release).

So, readers, do tell.

What do you make of this facet of the Chumba backlash?

Feel free to vent in the COMMENTS section

Chumbawamba: Farewell to the Crown CD (B-Sides and Rarities)

Speaking of Chumbawamba (more HERE) and their sole HIT, "Tubthumping (see HERE), let us not neglect that single's phenomenal B-side, "Farewell to the Crown". It's a delicious mix of Pistols-ish treason ("Goodbye to the king of nothing really"), British folk-traditionalism (that's the legendary Oysterband backing them up) and the requisite BPMs (and who's really tried that mix before?)

This blatant bootleg, collects up B-sides, re-mixes, rarities and web-site freebies from the band's nineties era. Obviously, not everything here is as essential as "Farewell to the Crown" but it's fascianting portait of the depth of a group 99% of the world will forever consider One Hit Wonders.

(click to enlarge)

So tell me,

What do you think of "Farewell to the Crown"?
What do you make of all these B-Sides, rarities and remixes? 

The COMMENTS section is now open...


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Chumbawamba: Knock Hard...Life is Deaf (1997)

So, level with me, do you hate Tubthumping? (They Might Be Giants HERE)

Lots of people do (see here).

I think it's brilliant, a highlight of Chumbawamba's (more HERE) problematic anarcho-rave era.

That era's albums are is fitful, for sure but the singles from that time ("Ugh Your Ugly Houses", "Timebomb" and "Amnesia") were often excellent.

Now, obviously, I'm not gonna post an album that is both in-print and available in every dollar bin in the Western world but what I have to offer instead is even better. Knock Hard...Life is Deaf is a long out-of-print Japanese-only, limited edition 1997 CD that features acoustic versions of mid-nineties hit(s) as well as some interviews. The acoustic versions offer a unique view on the band's song-writing and a preview of their future





Tracklist
      Interview
1         Introduction     0:22    
2         Background History - Punk & Squatting     2:45    
3         Staying Together For So Long     1:11    
4         First Single (1985) And Scams     3:08    
5         Music, Popculture, Women In Rock 'N' Roll     1:48    
6         Tubthumper     1:43    
7         Kill Your Idols!     1:03    
      Previously Unreleased Versions
8         Tubthumping (Country & Western Version)     3:43    
9         Amnesia (Acoustic Version)     3:03    
10         Mouthful Of Shit (Country & Western Version)     2:58    
11         One By One (Acoustic Version)     3:14    
12         Drip Drip Drip (Country & Western Version)     3:55    
13         The Big Issue (Acoustic Version)     3:42    
14         Stitch That (Country & Western Version)     2:45    

 

So tell me,

What do you think of 'Tubthumping'?

What do you make of Chumba's anarcho-rave era?

Are these acoustic versions better, worse or just different?

The COMMENTS section is now open...


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Chumbawamba: Revolution EP (with booklet), 1985

Note: Chumbawamba fans are great commenters, therefore this series will continue, if irregularly and irreverently. Also, the series is wildly non-chronological not out of some attempt to adhere to anarchist principles but because the band's discography is utterly bewildering.

Hey, here's the first Chumbawamba (more HERE) single from 1985 (which is not to imply I don't have old demos, if you're so inclined). This single, whose track list won't help you much, feels kinda like a rehearsal for Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records, as a couple of the 'sections' done here are repeated on that classic album. Ultimately, it's a formative document, which, while not foretelling every shift the band would go through, does show a band determined to be attacking on multiple fronts simultaneously.


Tracklist
A         HMV Side, Introduction To History And Where We Stand. Which Side Of The    
B         Fence Side, And Its Application To Everyday Life. The R'n'R Factory Strike.    

Line-Up
    Bass, Vocals – Dunst
    Drums, Guitar – Artmi
    Guitar, Drums – Man Afraid
    Guitar, Vocals – Boffo, Loo
    Keyboards, Voice – Simon
    Vocals – Alice Nutter, Danbert Nobacon

Notes
Recorded at Woodlands Studio.
An ajit-prop rekawrd.
Disc is encased in 8-page booklet (in black & white & red).
Suggested retail price on front sleeve: "one pound + twenty pence".

If you wanna hear some STILL more rare Chumba, please leave a COMMENT, there's a folder full of oddities and absurdities that I'm willing to share, non-chronologically, if you're willing.

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Chumbawamba: A Night of Punk Rock Nostalgia (1988)

After releasing a 10" of a cappella folk and before releasing their first dance-rock album, Chumbawamba (more HERE) played a A Night of Punk Rock Nostalgia at the 1 in 12 Club in December 1988 wherein they played the hits of punk rock; The Clash, The Sex Pistols, Stiff Little Fingers, Buzzcocks, The Damned, The Adverts , UK Subs, 999 and, the Dead Kennedys! (Listen to the whole thing HERE)

This is a flagrant audience recording of the night in question and between songs you can hear the delightfully banal banter of eighties English punk punters. This of course, makes this whole affair that much more...tender?  After all, Chumba are taking the piss out of the idea of punk rock nostalgia by playing these songs in character, sort of like their mock-oi side project, Skin Disease but they also clearly love the material in question.

If you wanna hear some more rare Chumba, please leave a COMMENT, I have a folder full of oddities and absurdities that I'm willing to share, non-chronologically, if you're willing.

Support the band!

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Chumbawamba: Live in Bremen, 2008 (FM)

Worry not Powerpearls fans (see HERE), we'll return to the twinkie-ness soon enough, but in keeping with the simultaneously ADD and Obsessive-Compulsiveness of my work here we need to continue to mourn the passing of English-anarcho-folk-dance-punks, Chumbawamba (first take HERE). To remind of of what we've all lost, here's an amazing bootleg - stereling broadcast sound quality and a perfect performance by the smaller, folkier version of the band.





Chumbawamba
Bremen, Germany
Schlachthof
2008-04-23

01 Fade Away ( I Don´t Want To)
02 Song On The Times
03 Add Me
04 Sing About Love
05 A Stitch In Time
06 To A Little Radio  / (Words flew) Right Around The World
07 Unpindownable / On Ebay
08 By And By
09 Jacob´s Ladder
10 Charlie
11 I Wish That They`d Sack Me
12 The Digger´s Song
13 You Can (Kinder Trespass)
14 The Day The Nazi Died
15 Timebomb
16 El Fusilado
17 Bankrobber
18 Homophobia
19 Bella Ciao
20 Buy Nothing Day
21 Her Majesty


Support the band!

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P.S. if you wanna hear some more rare Chumba, please leave a COMMENT, I have a folder full of oddities and absurdities to share, if you're willing.

Chumbawamba Break-Up! (Plus Live Ammunition, 2010)

Make all the cheap one-hit wonder jokes you must but English-anarcho-folk-dance-punks, Chumbawamba have broken up (band statement here). This ends an endlessly fascinating (and not always enjoyable) thirty year career. It's terrible news, as their last three albums have been the most consistent of their career (with the possible exception on my beloved English Rebel Songs). As my send-off, here's a live bootleg of the smaller, folkeir version of the band playing in 2010 in Kassel, Germany.





01 Voices, that's all
02 Song on the times
03 Talk
04 Add me
05 Wagner at the opera
06 Thatcher in memoriam talk
07 So long, so long
08 Singing out the days
09 You don't exist
10 Stitch at the time (Stitch that)
-- break
11 Fade Away
12 Tritonus talk
13 The Devil's Interval
14 Ratatatay talk
15 Ratatatay
16 The Day the Nazi Died
17 Torturing James Hetfield
18 Charly
19 Credits
20 El Fusilado
21 Homophobia
22 A Love Letter to Margret Thatcher from General Pinochet
23 Underground
24 On e-Bay
25 Bella Ciao





Chumbawamba homepage 

P.S. if you wanna hear some more rare Chumba, please leave a COMMENT, I have a folder full of oddities and absurdities to share, if you're willing.

Chumbawamba: English Rebel Songs 1381-1914

I never loved Crass. No, it took the folk-riddled agit-punk of Chumbawamba to turn me into scowling, self-righteous prat back in the nineteen-eighties. Then, just after I'd fully absorbed their first album, Pictures of Starving Children Records and to a lesser degree their second, Never Mind the Ballots (crucifying a pop star like Cliff Richard I could understood but the significance of British politician Micheal Heseltine less so) along came this 10" record. It was during a three week vinyl bender, involving stops in Toronto, Montreal, Chicago and Minneapolis, that this record found me. For a few days I just read the liner notes, preparing for the time when I could find a record player. When I finally did put needle-to-vinyl, these A Capella songs actually surpassed my high hopes.

Freed from screeding against the modern machine, Chumbawamba created a righteous, historically-minded brand of folk that was quite unexpected. Though it does sounds a bit like the ideal listening for those dour socialist youth who streamed out of The Royal Albert Hall in '66 proclaiming "Bob Dylan was a bastard in there", there's a punk bluntness here that makes these songs hit like morning star. (As a bit of a Red Diaper Baby, I was hit hardest by the WWI trench song, "Hanging on the Old Barbed Wire".)

While this ORIGINAL version is out-of-print, the band RE-RECORDED the whole thing with two new songs and that revision (which does not replace the genuine article for me personally) is still available at their web-site. Please go there and support the band!

English Rebel Songs 1381-1914 link is in the comments.

Chumbawamba: ABCDEFG (+ Live Ammunition bootleg)

"Sometimes a melody is louder than a shout."
Chumbawamba

Seems most everybody - left, right, underground, mainstream, young, old - hates Chumbawamba. Really, it's hard to find anybody to say a good word about the men and women of this thirty year old British anarchist musical collective. (If you suspect MRML of rhetorical exaggeration, read the blistering responses to this Metafilter post about the band)

But maybe everybody is wrong. Yes, Chumbawamba's anarcho-propaganda might wear on some but they write these folk songs that seem immediately ready for a thousand-voice, Goodnight-Irene-style sing-along so effortlessly that it's alarming. Since they've stripped down to a small group and gone fully acoustic (a direction I've been hoping they'd go in since 1989's English Rebel Songs - still possibly their finest work) they've gone from strength to strength.

ABCDEFG a concept album about music (if I've kept you this far, please don't stop reading yet) is full of tunes your Grandmother (if you're grandmother was Emma Goldman) could strike up on a picket line to rally some match girls but with words that belong to our fucked-up 21st century. I could go on and on but perhaps check out a few songs in the faint hope that I might soften the resolve of a Chumba-hater or two.




Just to show how well the band works with an audience, here's a May 2010 bootleg, I've called "Live Ammunition".

01 Voices, that's all
02 Song on the times
03 Talk
04 Add me
05 Wagner at the opera
06 Thatcher in memoriam talk
07 So long, so long
08 Singing out the days
09 You don't exist
10 Stitch at the time (Stitch that)
-- break
11 Fade Away
12 Tritonus talk
13 The Devil's Interval
14 Ratatatay talk
15 Ratatatay
16 The Day the Nazi Died
17 Torturing James Hetfield
18 Charly
19 Credits
20 El Fusilado
21 Homophobia
22 A Love Letter to Margret Thatcher from General Pinochet
23 Underground
24 On e-Bay
25 Bella Ciao

Live Ammunition link is in the comments

Speaking of comments are you a fan or a Chumba-hater?