Chumbawamba

Chumbawamba is a British Alternative rock band who have, over a career spanning nearly three decades, played punk rock, pop-influenced music, world music, and folk music. Their vocal anarchist politics exhibit an irreverent attitude toward authority, and the band have been forthright in their anti-racist, socialist, anti-war, and feminist social stances.

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".

Chumbawamba formed in Burnley in 1982 with an initial line-up of Allan "Boff" Whalley, Danbert Nobacon (born Nigel Hunter), Midge and Tomi. The band made their live debut in January 1982 and their first vinyl release was a track ("Three Years Later") on the compilation album Bullshit Detector 2.

Chumbawamba 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. The band's collective political views are often described as anarchist. They made several songs about the UK miners' strike, including the Common Ground cassette and a song dedicated to the pit village of Fitzwilliam, which was one of the worst cases of economic decline following the strike.

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, 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. 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.

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.

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, Chumbawamba had begun to absorb influences from techno music and rave culture. The band released Slap! in 1990 and the sample-heavy Shhh in 1992. They also toured the United States for the first time in 1990.

In 1994, Anarchy was released and continued to address issues such as homophobia, the Criminal Justice Act and the rise of fascism in the UK following the election of a British National Party councillor in south-east London in 1993. The album was the band's biggest success to date reaching the top 30 in the UK and the singles "Timebomb" and "Enough Is Enough" both entering the low end of the UK Singles Chart. The latter featured Credit to the Nation's rapper MC Fusion. Their first live album Showbusiness!, was released in 1995.

In 1997, Chumbawamba's biggest chart hit, "Tubthumping", was followed up with "Amnesia", which reached #10 in the UK. During this period.Chumbawamba gained some notoriety when they performed "Tubthumping" at the 1998 BRIT Awards with the lyric changed to include "New Labour sold out the dockers, just like they'll sell out the rest of us", and vocalist Danbert Nobacon later poured a jug of water over UK Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, who was in the audience. A few weeks later Nutter appeared on the American political talk show Politically Incorrect and advised fans of their music who could not afford to buy their CDs to steal them from large chains such as HMV and Virgin.

Chumbawamba released the album WYSIWYG in 2000 which included a cover of the early Bee Gees song "New York Mining Disaster". The single "She's Got All The Friends That Money Can Buy", was backed by "Doomed Flight 1721", a song that listed all of the people that, at the time, Chumbawamba would like to see disappear.

In 2002, Chumbawamba formed their own record label and released their eleventh official album, Readymades, which mixed samples of folk music with dance beats.In 2004, the band released an album called Un which opens with one of the earliest recordings of a human voice, that of Thomas Edison reciting Mary Had A Little Lamb. The album gave an inkling of the folk sound that Chumbawamba would move towards on their next releases.

In 2005, Chumbawamba took a hiatus from full-scale touring and recording projects, but a trimmed-down acoustic line-up of Boff Whalley, Lou Watts, Jude Abbot and Neil Ferguson continued to tour the UK and Europe throughout 2005 and 2006. It was this line-up that recorded the album A Singsong and a Scrap, released late in 2005. They followed this up with a second live album, entitled Get On With It, recorded during 2006 at various venues throughout Britain.

The Boy Bands Have Won was released in March 2008 which record contained 25 tracks, some of them full length songs, some of them no more than a minute long and was again acoustic folk in style. In late February 2010, they released their 15th album, titled ABCDEFG. In September 2011, past and present band members protested when the UK Independence Party used "Tubthumping" at their annual conference.

Music Videos

 * Amnesia
 * Homophobia
 * On eBay
 * She's Got All The Friends
 * Timebomb
 * Tubthumping
 * Ugly Houses