Chumbawamba biography
Chumbawamba are a British alternative music band who have, over a career spanning three decades, played punk rock, pop-influenced music, world music, and folk music. Their anarchist politics exhibit an irreverent attitude toward authority, and the band have been forthright in their stances on issues including animal rights, pacifism (early in their career) and later regarding class struggle, feminism, gay liberation, pop culture and anti-fascism.
The band are best known for their song "Tubthumping". Other singles have included "Amnesia", "Enough Is Enough" (with MC Fusion), "Timebomb", "Top of the World (Ole, Ole, Ole)", and most recently, "Add Me".
Early years
Chumbawamba formed in Burnley in 1982 with an initial line-up of Allan "Boff" Whalley, Danbert Nobacon (born Nigel Hunter), Midge and Tomi, all four previously of the band Chimp Eats Banana, shortly afterwards joined by Lou Watts. The band made their live debut in January 1982. Their first vinyl release was a track ("Three Years Later") on the Crass Records compilation album
Bullshit Detector 2.
Sky and Trees and Agit-Prop Records
By the mid-1980s Chumbawamba had begun to release material using the vinyl format on their own Agit-Prop record label, which had evolved from an earlier project, Sky and Trees Records. The first release was the
Revolution EP in 1985, which quickly sold out of its initial run, and was repressed, reaching #4 in the UK Indie Chart, and staying in the chart for 34 weeks. The first LP,
Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records (1986) was a critique of the Live Aid concert organised by Bob Geldof, which the band argued was primarily a cosmetic spectacle designed to draw attention away from the real political causes of world hunger.
The band toured Europe with The Ex, and a collaboration between members of the two bands, under the name Antidote, led to the release of an EP, Destroy Fascism!, inspired by hardcore punk band Heresy, with whom they had also toured.
Chumbawamba's second album, Never Mind the Ballots...Here's the Rest of Your Lives, was released in 1987, coinciding with the general election, and questioning the validity of the British democratic system. The band adopted another disguise with the "Let It Be" release under the name Scab Aid, a song mocking the charity version of the Beatles song by the popstar supergroup Ferry Aid, which aimed to raise money for victims of the Zeebrugge ferry disaster.
Their 1988 album English Rebel Songs 1381-1914 was a recording of traditional songs from that period, and was very different from their preceding work. It became their biggest selling record in Germany.
One Little Indian Records
By the late 1980s and early 1990s, Chumbawamba had begun to absorb influences from techno music and rave culture. The band members quit their day jobs to begin concentrating on music full-time as they could now guarantee sales of 10,000 and they moved away from their original anarcho-punk roots, evolving a pop sensibility with releases such as
Slap! (1990) and the sample-heavy
Shhh (1992) (originally intended to be released as
Jesus H Christ!, this album had to be withdrawn and re-recorded because of copyright problems). They also toured the United States for the first time in 1990.
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