Was anyone’s politics changed by “Tubthumping”?

I’ve always thought of it as an anthem of the working class

never forget

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/9/24/1411575636536/70ace800-1842-49c9-b552-eb64ed0b4e7e-1024x768.jpeg?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=0e75176c9ade8234b098ca1db020ac8f

I’ve always thought of it as an anthem of the working class

lol

i mean the band’s whole m.o. is political

that's true, but this song not so much

While I was well aware of Chumbawamba's agitprop preludes before the hit, I never took a political message from this particular song. Just seemed like a rowdy Mekons/Pogues glass-raiser that was nudged onto the charts along with other oddly promoted crossovers of the era like Squirrel Nut Zippers. What's a political reading?

Adopted as a theme song by Bob Dornan when he tried to run in 1998 against Loretta Sanchez, who'd defeated him in 1996. Not joking.

ok that is lol

Just read a Punk Planet interview with Chumbawamba’s Boff from around that era. I love “Tubthumper” for reason’s I can’t quite describe — to the point where I nearly cry when I hear it. Maybe how it deals with class in a way that’s similar (for me, at least) to “Common People”. It was huge, but did it (or the album) change minds politically in any way?

― john. a resident of evanston. (john. a resident of chicago.)

that song inspired me to burn a million quid on television

unfortunately it was cable public access so it didn't quite have the desired effect

I’m not smart enough to do some sort of deep political analysis (and, fine, the lyrics aren’t in any way deeply anything), but I’ve always thought of the chorus as being about resilience in the face of anything. So, sure, not explicitly political. But the rest of the album? Did buying a chumbawamba album based off this song about getting drunk change anyone’s politics?

yes, it made me an anarcho-capitalist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NVO75mlstM

^^^great track

I too have a soft spot for that song, and though not explicitly political, like say, Guns of Brixton, there is still an anthemic working class quality to it -- the Pogues comparison is otm. I have two copies of the 7" split Chumbawumba did with Negativland -- one was a factory error that had the wrong music on it.

My dad had this album, and the liner notes gave a brief explanation of the political significance of each track plus relevant quotes:

TUBTHUMPING "Tubthumping" is Shouting to Change The World (then having a drink to celebrate).It's stumbling home from your local bar, when the world is ready to be PUT RIGHT...

"Don't let my unseriousness make you think it isn't serious..." Phil, anti-road protestor; From The Observer, January 1997 +

"It is essential to be drunk all the time. That's all: there's no other problem. If you do not want to feel the appalling weight of Time which breaks your shoulders and bends you to the ground, get drunk, and drunk again. What with? Wine, poetry, or being good, please yourself. But get drunk. And if now and then, on the steps of a palace, on the green grass of a ditch, in the glum loneliness of your room, you come to, your drunken state abated or dissolved, ask the wind, ask the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, ask all that runs away, all that groans, all that wheels, all that sings, all that speaks, what time it is; and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, will tell you: 'It is time to get drunk!' If you do not want to be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk, always get drunk! With wine, with poetry or with being good. As you please." Charles Baudelaire, 1866 +

"I declare a permanent state of happiness" Grafitti, Paris 1968 +

"DRUNKENNESS, noun: A temporary but popular cure for Catholicism." Charles T Sprading +

"Knock hard, life is deaf." Mimi Parent +

Yorkshire TV Interviewer: "It's said that you're sick on stage, you spit at the audience and so on. I mean, how could this be a good example to children?" Malcolm McLaren: "People are sick everywhere. People are sick and tired of this country telling them what to do." YTV, 1976 +

"Don't let the bastards grind you down." Joseph Stilwell, translation of 'Illegitimati non carborundum' +

"In 1990 McDonalds sued two London Greenpeace activists, David Steele and Helen Morris, for distributing a leaflet critical of McDonalds. The two were denied both legal aid and a jury trial; and it was quickly revealed that McDonalds had used spies to collect information on them before the trial. The trial became the longest in British legal history. Despite the Judge ruling against the McLibel Two - but awarding McDonalds only a tiny fraction of their costs - the trial showed that two anarchists could take on one of the biggest capitalist corporations in the world and come out with the vast majority of public opinion on their side. This, in effect, was where the trial was won - as a showcase victory for the notion of People Against Profit." Sally Skull, 1997 +

"I'm a human being and I've got thoughts and secrets and bloody life inside me that he doesn't know is there, and he'll never know what's there because he's stupid. I suppose you'll laugh at this, me saying the governer's a stupid bastard when I know hardly how to write and he can read and write and add-up like a professor. But what I say is true right enough. He's stupid, and I'm not, because I can see further into the likes of him than he can see into the likes of me. Admitted, we're both cunning, but I'm more cunning and I'll win in the end even if I die in gaol at eighty-two, because I'll have more fun and fire out of my life than he'll ever got out of his." Alan Sillitoe, from 'Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner', 1959

https://www.reddit.com/r/punk/comments/4g6qeu/the_liner_notes_to_chumbawambas_tubthumper_since/

NB I don't think Tubthumper changed my politics but I do remember some of the quotes with fondness 20 years on

I’m not smart enough to do some sort of deep political analysis (and, fine, the lyrics aren’t in any way deeply anything), but I’ve always thought of the chorus as being about resilience in the face of anything. So, sure, not explicitly political. But the rest of the album? Did buying a chumbawamba album based off this song about getting drunk change anyone’s politics?

― john. a resident of evanston. (john. a resident of chicago.), Wednesday, January 30, 2019 12:58 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think the chorus is ironic? as in it's anthemic but in a knowing way and in the context of the other parts of the song "pissing the night away, pissing the night away" should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt?

i had no idea chumbawumba were a political band when this was a hit, until they dropped the paint on Two Jags

I’m sure it motivated many a teenager to shoplift a filler-packed album when they could have just downloaded it off Napster a few short years later.

until they dropped the paint on Two Jags

can't hear this song without thinking of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZAGNSk4pm8

love this album, but my politics were already in line with it so I can't say it "changed" them.

personal faves: the heartbreak of corrupt union leadership documented in "One By One" and the examination of housing politics in "The Big Issue"

iirc the title track was written as a drunk post-pub contest about who could write the simplest song, so probably not initially political

xps and yeah as with most Chumba albums the liner notes are essential for context

my politics were already in line with it

yeah, exactly, i was in grad school

it's a song in precisely the same political tradition as this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B96qKs4-EI8

"I declare a permanent state of happiness" Grafitti, Paris 1968 +

also if someone were to start a thread about music that cites/is inspired by Paris 1968/SI stuff, I would love you, or at least not troll yr other threads/posts

... been done, I think?

but I’ve always thought of the chorus as being about resilience in the face of anything.

the bottle gets back up again?

...the drink.

also if someone were to start a thread about music that cites/is inspired by Paris 1968/SI stuff, I would love you, or at least not troll yr other threads/posts

Some discussion on this subject on this thread on Aprhordite's Child.

where you'd expect to find it

Of course!

I like the trumpet on this album. what was the most recent big hit song that features prominent solo trumpet?

that cheerleader song

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Blair_(song)

Composition and lyrics

The song is an attack on then British Prime Minister Tony Blair, performed in a 1950s doo-wop style. The lyrics read like a heartbroken letter to an ex lover, who had broken all his promises.

Backlash
Rupert Perry, the head of EMI Records UK at the time, was reportedly very displeased with the band for issuing the single, and sent them a letter which included the statement "I actually think Tony is really fab".[2] All copies of the CD in EMI offices were later confiscated.[3]

Always loved this tour de force anagram treatment of the band's longest album title: http://warmvoices.blogspot.com/search/label/Chumbawamba

lol

man, that's a bunch of snide hipster bullshit from people who seem to think that anything political is automatically hypocrisy

they actually did a ton of great stuff with that money, like bankrolling The Ex's tour of Ethiopia and then donating all the equipment to a school

nothing funnier to me than clueless people saying that this band "sold out"

You should browse thru the others, they're all "snide" (and great). Laugh a little...

I mean

Browse by Tone
Negative (357)
Neutral (152)
Positive (15)

that review's absolutely brilliant, by the way. I don't care how off the mark it is. I love how wordy and pretentious it gets before "Way to build your brand, dude!"

btw I'll let you guess which album this is for:

Wow.

How fucking dumb would you need to be to write such a long, mawkish, shallow album title? If you seek the world record for length, why not put some thought into the effort, instead of getting high on hash oil — hookah on bed — and writing down any frothy tween-angst horseshit that wanders into your empty skull?

Frankly, honey, we'd rather hear nineteen elephants shit together, in unison, than listen to thy weak, wheezy poetry.

Heh heh heh.

Oh, wow.

The book (which I think has all different "reviews" than the blog) is one of the crown jewels of the Drag City library.

There's a lot of great jams throughout their mid-90s imperial period, though a bit out of place musically nowadays and I'm not a huge fan of the hey-nonny-nonny elements but yeah, some really good songs. The politics frequently works - ie. gets you pissed off and/or riled up.

Interviewed them maybe around the release of "Tubthumping", they were lovely people, and funny too. They introduced a couple of striking workers from some part of the Man Group iirc during the subsequent gig and let them explain to a bunch of bemused students why they were striking and ask for donations for the support fund. I don't care whether stuff like that is corny tbh, it's better than not doing it.

^^^

The book (which I think has all different "reviews" than the blog) is one of the crown jewels of the Drag City library.

strong cosign

I'm cool w/ Chumbawamba but any jeremiad of that nature invoking "boy bands" in 2007 deserves some funpoking

it’s called “tubthumping”

― maxwell’s silver hang suite (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, January 30, 2019 8:37 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The album was called Tubthumper.

I'm Kilgore Trout
By Kurt Vonnegut
You're never gonna keep me down

^^ this post changed my politics

The album was called Tubthumper.

I've always preferred the Simpsons lyrics.

I drink a lager drink
I drink a chocolate drink
And when I need to pee
I use the kitchen sink

In the early 90s I spent a miserable week in a cold damp cottage in Kerry with a girlfriend who played their English Rebel Songs cassette constantly. Put me off for life, obv.

lose points for appropriating "rebel songs"

?? the term was def used in UK history

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Straw_(rebel_leader)

or did you mean the tunes themselves? I like that release but it would not hold up well to repeated listens in a short timeframe

being a little facetious but i mean that specifically the term "rebel songs" in Britain and Ireland has the connotation of referring to Irish rebel music

I've long thought the Mekons must rue the day they were never able to write a pop song like this.

xp ah, gotcha, agreed

as far as the Mekons, "Millionaire" comes close but it doesn't have a shouty pub chorus

"tubthumping" changed everyone's politics! the album tubthumper did not because no one actually listened to any of it beyond "tubthumping" and maybe two other tracks.

speaking of the album. it had a bunch of interludes, intros/outros, other nonsense like that. the one at the front end of "tubthumping" has a terrific bit of distorted speech, apparently sampled from the 1996 film brassed off:

The truth is, I thought it mattered. I thought that music mattered. But does it? Bollocks. Not compared to how people matter.

it drops right into the track and is quite effective. it's the people that matter! i didn't know it until i was 7 years old and heard (the album version of) this song.

Why was the thread title fixed?! The original version was perfecto

hello yes I would just like to say that no, despite the fact that I was of a most impressionable age at the time this particular song was put out into the world, that no, my personal political ideologies were not affected in any way by this musics, and nor have they been affected in any way since then, but thank you very much for asking

I've long thought the Mekons must rue the day they were never able to write a pop song like this.

― Your sweetie-pie-coo-coo I love ya (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, January 31, 2019 7:59 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Where Were You?"

as far as the Mekons, "Millionaire" comes close but it doesn't have a shouty pub chorus

― sleeve, Thursday, January 31, 2019 8:04 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Happy days recalled, playing that single for Amber and Alice, and they would shout "NO!" at the end of each line in the last verse..

Not really, come to think of it.

speak for yourself, buddy

Tried a cider for the first time because of it, if that counts.

fond memory: DJing an Earth First "Wild Cascadia" party for lawyers and activists in 1999-2000, spinning a bunch of stuff from Anarchy and Tubthumping, at some point a lawyer dude comes up and is like "it is imperative that you play more Chumbawamba"

also milo that is excellent, do you like cider now?

He likes a cider now
He likes a vodka now..

Big fan of dry ciders

The Brassed Off sample at the start of this has at times genuinely made me reconsider the things in my life that I prioritise, and reminded me to get my head out of my computer and to try to actually do a better job of connecting with the people in my life. So, kinda?

was really curious about this album when I was 13 but could not bring myself to buy it with that godawful cover

They Might be Giants covered this song for AVClub and they actually did a pretty good job with it. fits right into their style.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QbWHQUzKGs

that rules

agreed

I heard them once or twice described as "one of the Crass bands" so I assumed they shared a band member or two. I just did a quick 60 second Google search and it looks like they have an indirect crossover. They're on a few of the same comp releases, probably played shows together at some point.

TIL napalm death, another one of the crass bands, played their first gig with chumbawamba

whose path ended up changing more hearts and minds? idk

aiui "Crass bands" refers to bands who were on the label - a lot of bands put out one release and then formed their own labels after, I think that may have been a deliberate label policy

also good q about who changed more people, I love 'em both but Chumbawamba has an emotional impact for me that Crass doesn't.

the left has certainly "pissed away" the good will it built up in the post-trump, post-brexit era, when people felt open to alternatives to the neoliberal status quo. the moment has passed, tubthumping again becomes the most prescient song of the era or something.

there is the outline of a tweet thread here, for sure.

I have no idea what you are talking about

lol

great revive

Wait.

ffs

previously I was not going to get up again, but this song convinced me that I should

aiui "Crass bands" refers to bands who were on the label - a lot of bands put out one release and then formed their own labels after, I think that may have been a deliberate label policy

yes, although one they (Crass) kind of circumvented by having another label they put out subsequent records on (Corpus Christi), and there were a few bands that had more than 1 record on Crass records - Dirt, Poison Girls, KUKL

first they came for the Tubthumpers, and I did not speak because I got knocked down but couldn't get up