Chumbawamba Musings

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That Song

As we never hesitate to tell you, playing in Chumbawamba is nothing if not diverse. In the course of one week this summer we played at an old-style hippy festival, a quiet and intimate Arts Centre and on the optimistically named ‘Acoustic Stage’ at the Rebellion punk festival.

After the Arts Centre gig someone emailed expressing their disappointment that we hadn’t played Tubthumping. At the hippy festival, a couple of very drunk people shouted for it constantly, and at the punk festival somebody came backstage afterwards and expressed their heartfelt relief that we hadn’t played it. Like it or not, that song is still an issue, so I thought it was worth addressing it.


We don’t play Tubthumping as part of the acoustic set. There you go. We’re not ashamed of it – we played it until the very last of our electric gigs – but we’ve never found a way to play it and make it fit with what we do acoustically. It’s not just because it’s an old song of ours either – we still find room for Timebomb and Homophobia. We did do an acoustic ‘neo-billy’ version of it with a fiddle, and the temptation was always to sing with an American accent (never a good idea). But even then the verses were spoken. That whole ‘whisky drink, vodka drink, cider drink’ bit just doesn’t have a tune, frankly. Pop band in ‘hit song without tune’ scandal – I know, it’s shocking. Believe me, we did try and find a way to make it work as an acoustic song. We tried doing it as a waltz, attempted an acappella version, even slowed it right down. And we got nowhere, so we decided that it had had its day and put it to bed. Does that appear a disingenuous answer? I hope not.

But we’re not unaware of the significance of the song – both to ourselves and some of our audience. So now we make do with wry references to it in the set: there’s a tantalising ‘pissing the night away’ moment in Charlie, and the entire last verse of Buy Nothing Day has been rewritten to acknowledge the weird position we’re in of not playing the hit anymore (‘And the bastards won’t play the one song that you know’). Because what we don’t want to be is one of those ever so precious pop stars who dissociate themselves from the songs that made them famous (and wealthy) because they see it as somehow sullying their integrity. As if it happened against their wishes. If they really wanted to eschew the possibility of mainstream exposure and financial reward and pursue a more artistically pure path then they’d get out of rock’n’roll and start playing jazz.

What’s the difference between a rock musician and a jazz musician? A rock musician plays three chords to thousands of people and a jazz musician plays thousands of chords to three people. Don’t worry, I got told that joke on a jazz course.

So that’s where we are with that song – not ashamed of it, grateful to it for the exposure and success it brought us, and for allowing us to still be making music today – but you won’t be hearing an acoustic version of it in a town near you anytime soon.

Jude

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