And if you know me, you know I have a bunch.
But one band I love that rarely gets serious attention is Chumbawamba.
Now, yes I did know them before the hit. They surely are the most unlikely of bands to have a big pop hit.
While I could go into some detail of my fandom, let’s just skip to the part we know about. Tubthumper was one of the decade’s biggest hits but where did the band go.
As a fan, I bought all the albums afterwards and think most of them are great until they called it a day in 2012.
But that band that rode into the sunset - was a folk tinged five piece.
In 2004, Chumbawamba released Un- and afterwards, the most recognizable faces from the Tubthumper video (and accompanying media appearances) Danbert Nobacon, Alice Nutter and Dunstan Bruce would all leave the band and none would appear on 2005s A Singsong and A Scrape.
So the 2021 documentary I Get Knocked Down was perfect for me.
Holy crap - where did the last 27 years go? Even among one hit wonders, as a superfan, it’s hard to find any coverage on the band. Even artists like White Town or Right Said Fred seem to occasionally pop up on the “where are they now” radar. Even information on Lou Bega surely isn’t too hard to find.
The documentary is a bit of a mortality play.
It’s subject (Danbert) as close to a frontman as the band had. The band surely torn by the dual pulls of being pop stars and being political anarchists. Were they too much of one and not enough of the other.
It’s certainly a very artsy (and very on brand) way of making a documentary. It still covers the band’s start as an ambitious collective influenced by Crass and the Mekons through near pre-Tubthumper break up and then that hit (and after). But it works well in those moments like when Danbert interviews Penny Rimbaud to ask him if Chumbawamba had done the right thing.
That might not be the documentary you expect but in many ways it works well. Dunstan is 59, hair white, an aged version of the bleached hunk of that ubiquitous music video. Was it a life wasted? An opportunity wasted? Surely many of us blink and go from an idealistic youth to seemingly irrelevant elder.
Alice and the other members of the band show up too. It is easy to focus the film on Danbert but it was always a collective and it’s nice that everyone shows up.
The truth is the post - Chumbawamba projects have not gathered attention. They are fortunately easy to find in the modern internet age but out of sight, sadly. The film ends with Danbert fronting his new band Interrobang! If I was aware of them, I doubt I had heard them and even the film only has snippets so I probably need to seek it out more.
Of course, the main event is Tubthumping and the rise to fame which was such a huge event. The signing to EMI. The band selling songs to General Motors and then using the proceeds to anti- GM consumer groups. Alice Nutter appearing on Bill Maher’s show and encouraging theft of their album from Virgin Records. The pouring of water over Deputy Minister John Prescott at an awards show.
As silly as the idea may sound to some, it works well.
I would have preferred a more well rounded look at the band, but it surely would have been unruly. The anarchic chaos the band created still stands up as successful as any act of pop subversion.
And older punks may be inspired by the second act. It may not play in the headlines, but it is a fine legacy and the band still lives their ideals.
Surely, I don’t know where the time went. I remember going to the Chumba.com website which was as good of a primer for interesting music, books and history of social justice. Though I suspect you could possibly find it through archive services, I am still a bit heartbroken that it doesn’t exist in a more tangible form (the website now has the band’s final statement of breakup).
Though this is hardly an overview of the band, it is as good as a postscript to the story that could have been made.
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