Chumbawamba | SpiralEarth.co.uk

Chumbawamba are the very first Spiral Earth guest editors, for the week of 22nd February 2010 we gave them the reins and these are the rambles, rants and insights into the wonderful world of Chumba...

'We used to get so many terrible reviews that were basically just slagging us off that we had an entire page on the website dedicated to them'

'Radiohead said they weren’t going to record another album because it would kill them – I just laughed and nipped upstairs to do a backing vocal'

'The organisation of the band was based on all sorts of post-Crass hippy lefty ideological structures, communal living and sharing everything, all distilled into something we could understand and work with.'

I love that vulgar and debased street music... I’d say it has as much right to be seen as an important part of our culture and history as John Barleycorn...'

Treading the boards with Red Ladder – or why I’ll never moan about being in a band again.

Chumbawamba formed in Burnley in 1982 and were at the forefront of the 1980s anarcho-punk movement, frequently playing benefit gigs in squats and small halls for causes such as animal rights, the anti-war movement, and community groups.

No strangers to controversy their outspoken views have pricked egos and consciences for nearly thirty years. Their musical style has veered from punk to dance, a cappella and world music to acoustic folk. Currently a five piece they released their latest album ABCDEFG in March 2010.

It is probably Chumba's complete lack of fear in telling it how it is that has defined their career. Their first LP, Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records (1986) saw them laying into Bob Geldof and the Live Aid concert, their argument being that it was a superficial exercise that completely missed the real political causes of world hunger. Recently they recorded the 'In Memoriam, Margaret Thatcher' ep that will be mailed out the day after the Iron Lady (to some, the Milk Snatcher to others) shuffles off her mortal coil.

Despite their headline grabbing actions they have a wonderful ability to pick out some of the eccentricities and anomalies of moden life, the song Add Me on The Boy Bands Have Won wonderfully encapsulates all that is just plain daft about social networking and the internet.

The Wikipedia entry on the band is an excellent resource at wikipedia.org/wiki/Chumbawamba

Current Line Up
Jude Abbott – vocals, recorder and trumpet
Lou Watts – vocals, guitar, percussion and keyboards
Boff Whalley – vocals, guitar, ukelele and clarinet
Neil Ferguson – vocals, guitar and bass
Phil Moody – accordion and vocals

ABCDEFG
abcdefg 'Seven letters to hint at what Chumbawamba have spent their adult lives doing: fashioning something weird, funny, eccentric and challenging from a seven-note Do-re-mi of possibilities. Or by another name, music.'

Chumbawamba focus their eye on music, or more specifically, the ideas that bring it into being and the ideas that it engenders on their seventeenth album.

It is a fascinating angle...

Full review coming soon

Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records (1986)
Never Mind the Ballots (1987)
English Rebel Songs 1381-1914 (1988)
Slap! (1990)
Shhh (1992)
Anarchy (1994)
Swingin' with Raymond (1995)
Tubthumper (1997)
WYSIWYG (2000)
Readymades (2002)
English Rebel Songs 1381-1984 (2003)
Un (2004)
A Singsong and a Scrap (2005)
The Boy Bands Have Won (2008)
ABCDEFG (2010)

Official site: http://www.chumba.com/

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/acoustichumbawamba