Chumbawamba Musings

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Old Hat

Boff's come up with this little gem of a poem about Bono and his hat. If you've forgotten the finer details (it was 2006, after all) here's a link to refresh your memory.

The Twat In The Hat

Pens at the ready
Reporters, report!
The news just came in
From the Dublin High Court –

The case of the stylist with no leg to stand on
Who brought such a case with such ruthless abandon
A case she could never have hoped to have won
Has been lost.
But of course.
Now it’s over and done.

Let’s start at the start, where most tales often do
With a baby, a boy who like most babies – grew
But whose growing was out of proportion, you see,
For his body:head ratio was at least 1:3
Like a weeble he wobbled but sometimes fell down
For his legs couldn’t carry his noggin around.
And his eyes, look, see! Far too big for their sockets
Like snooker balls heading for opposite pockets.

But big heads, small bodies, while strange in a boy
Are common in rock stars. So imagine his joy
When he found his strange shape had some use, after all:
And this way they’d love him.
Though bug-eyed.
Though small.

So the first thing he did was come up with a name
That would dovetail just so with his imminent fame.
“My real name – Paul – just won’t do. Oh no.
From now on (such trumpets will sound!) I am Bono.
In truth, Bono Vox. Let the minions rejoice!”
(Translated, it means in bad Latin, ‘good voice’.)

Then he gathered around him a tight little band:
A bassist so drunk he could just about stand
A good-looking drummer who couldn’t quite play
And a balding guitarist with a pedal delay
With a pedal delay with a pedal delay.
They named the band U2.
With a pedal delay.


So. We’ve come this far
But we know very little.
Enough of beginning –
Now on to the middle.

There are various ways to get noticed. Some think
You can shout very loudly. Make a big stink.
Kill someone famous. Go on Big Brother.
Marry a film star. Then marry another.
“There are easier ways of skinning a cat,”
Thought Bono – who went and acquired a big hat.
Just that. A hat. A stetson, in fact
Which gave him the status his empty head lacked.
I say “he acquired,” as opposed to “he bought” –
For when you’re a millionaire rock star of note
You don’t do the shopping. There are people for that.
“Fresh underpants, master. New socks. And a hat.”

Well he wore the hat here
And he wore the hat there
And it sat on the mullet
That passed for his hair.

He sang in the hat and he read in the hat.
(Some said they wished he was dead in the hat).
But no. That was it: Bono, hat.
The two went together like spoilt and brat
Inseparable, married, three marvelous years
Of man and chapeau sharing one pair of ears –
Then
dropped.
Separated.
Parted.
Divorced.
Rock’s own Lone Ranger without Silver, his horse.

And out with the bathwater went baby by chance –
The waistcoats, cowboy boots, black leather pants.
“From now on,” said Bono, “I’ll have tailored suits made
I’ll grow dignified stubble and always wear shades
No stetson or leather to suit my fresh start;
For a man, newly sanctified, needs to look smart.”

(Which he did, for a while, though the specs were just daft
Especially in very dark rooms. How we laughed
When he got himself stuck in a lemon one night
As he fumbled around for the switch to the light.)

So the ego went hatless and took to the streets –
So many African babies to meet!
They popped up whenever a camera was pointing
Catching him unawares – see him anointing
Their little black faces with stigmata’d hands?
(It was dark with the glasses. He thought they were fans).

Lunch with George W, tea with John Paul
Such heights for a man who was really quite small.
On top of the world with a Boomtown Rat,
Adieu to the past! (The trousers. The hat.)


So that was the middle,
And now it’s all gone
No time to hang round
For the end has begun…

In a passed-over shop in a passed-over street
Of the town where you live, all alone and discreet
On a shelf at the back where the sign says, Sale
Is a book, and that book is the cause of this tale.
Inside the Zoo with U2. That’s its name.
The book’s badly-written and dire. That’s a shame
Because here is the book that made Bono see red
Oh the tears that he shed! The crusade that he led
In defence of the twenty-six people who bought it!
“I’ll get even,” he hissed, “with the woman who wrote it!”

He stepped to the plate.
A swing of the bat.
Crying “This is for justice!
(And some pants, and a hat).”

Oh what a palaver! What a to-do!
As the chip on his shoulder it grew and it grew
With Bono declaring himself stabbed in the back –
“My honour and ego are under attack!
Crucified, scorned, like that time in the lemon
(Me and our Lord, we’ve got plenty in common)
Oh Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!”
(Christ calls his Dad. Bono talks blarney.)

So for justice, then. For doing what’s right
Bono determined to fight the good fight.

Now the author (named Lola) had toured with U2
As the buyer of sunspecs and T-shirts and shoes
And undies and socks for the band. And trousers.
Vests for the drummer. A few frilly blouses.
And a hat. That hat. That stetson, size 10.
Need I remind you – apologies! – again?
How he wore the hat here
And he wore the hat there
And it sat on the mullet
That passed for his hair?

(Some say that Lola should’ve earlier been charged
By the style police. Stiff sentence, very large
Fine, thirty-five licks of the cat
For giving the world – what a rat! – the hat.)

But there was our man, the last day of that tour
Our backstage Messiah, pop’s entrepreneur
Sallying forth from the shower’s apt cloud
Half-naked, sweating, addressing the crowd –
Which was Lola. The singular Lola remained.
“Everyone had to… rush off,” she explained
And our hero, bereft in the valley of plenty
The rockstar whose stadium is suddenly empty
Cried “Lola! Nobody loves me! It’s true!”
And Lola replied, “Er… I’ve got to go, too.”

So down on one knee, torso bared, croaky voice
The Man Who Would Save All The World made a choice,
Pleading “Lola. Friend. Soulmate. Amigo.
Don’t leave me alone with this oversized ego!
This demonic bloodsucking vampire bat
Has outgrown me. Now it won’t fit in my hat.”

And grabbing said hat from off his said head
Pleaded “Here, take this gift!”
So she did.
Then she fled.
A backward glance, a stolen look –
Then off home to write it all up in a book.


Which brings us back neatly to Dublin’s High Court
Nineteen years on as reporters report
And Lola, accused, holds her head in her hands
‘Til the Judge bangs his gavel and loudly demands
That she take to the stand. “Take to the stand!”
In the case of herself versus U2, the band.
The case of the singer who took home his bat
Who roared like a lion and cried like a rat
Who hired the best lawyers to beat on the brat
And whose unhatted head, like his wallet, grew fat.

The Judge gave B. Vox such obsequious respect
As to remind one of The OJ Simpson effect
To wit: Judge, though in charge, is quite clearly in awe
And for a couple of autographs will sell out the law.
“Here you go, Your Honour – from Bono, with love.
Free tickets? No problem. Here Sir, hold my gloves –”

So the hat and the pants were thus placed on display
And paraded and prodded then taken away
While the Judge and Sir Bono slapped each other’s backs
And made jokes about wigs, about pants, about hats.
At some point in proceedings – in no sense ironic –
Bono described the old hat as “iconic”
As if he’d invented it, made it OK
To be clueless and copyist. Cowboy as cliché.
Ten-gallon Gump with his one-gallon brain
Amateur ham ends up playing The Dane
King of the sandcastle, Lord of the Prance
Reunited with hat, at last. (And pants.)

So. Pens at the ready
Reporters, report!
The news just came in
From the Dublin High Court –

This case – which should never have even begun –
Is concluded. Finished. Bono has won.

But let it be known that in lieu of this act
(This crusade to obtain both the hat and pants back)
That Bono, resplendent in stetson and leather,
Shall be known as the Twat in the Hat. Forever.



Dr Sue Us

An Evening With Chumbawamba and O'Hooley and Tidow

Sixteen days in March 2010.

Here are some random impressions from the tour, little things that pop into my head rather than the 'and then on Tuesday we drove to London' narrative you normally get. That's partly because my rock'n'roll brain is so fried that once it's done the details of the tour start to blur and merge.

We started in the Lake District, I remember that. Boff got up early the next morning and ran up a small mountain before breakfast and then slept all the way to London - a gig which will sadly be remembered by all mainly for the persistent drunken heckling by a lovely woman who was essentially over-excited about seeing us, thought it was still the late eighties, and wanted to hear Whitewash. Good job we're used to it. I wonder if The Unthanks have to put up with that sort of thing?

Food featured, as it always does. The hours on the motorway are punctuated by service station stops. Our observations? Waitrose was a bit of a disappointment, and M&S don't do as good a range of veggie sandwiches as they used to, although the falafel and hummus wrap was quite a hit. We try and stay reasonably healthy on tour - most of us go running if there's time (Phil pops into an art gallery or admires the Norman architecture of a nearby church while we're doing this, and then joins us for breakfast), but illness, as ever, featured on the tour. Heidi (the Tidow of O'Hooley and Tidow) ate some re-heated rice in Keswick and paid a hefty price for a few days afterwards. Lou went down with a humdinger of a cold halfway through, and a couple of times it was touch and go whether she'd be able to do the show. But we are, if nothing else, troopers. Lou did point out, between bouts of coughing, that we have never yet cancelled a gig due to illness, a comment which led us to tell the audience about all the times various of us have thrown upon stage. Thank you for sharing.

Philip, with his crinkly metal tie, and his George Melly impersonation was the star of the show. I think his spell as Narrator in Riot, Rebellion and Bloody Insurrection (where he had the audience eating out of the palm of his hand) may have gone to his head. He took plenty of photos too, so expect a gallery sometime soon.



The new songs went down very well. You can never predict exactly which ones will work and which won't. The rattles were bit hit in Wagner At The Opera and the couple of songs where Belinda and Heidi joined us onstage made it feel like a proper Evening With … rather than just the usual band and support band set-up. Belinda was ecstatic when there happened to be a grand piano in the venue.

We revisited some of or favourite haunts on this tour - take a bow West End Centre and Bury Met, you know you deserve it. We played in pubs, Arts Centres, beautiful old churches, and of course, the wonderfully posh surroundings of the Howard Assembly Rooms in Leeds. Thank you everybody who made the effort to dress up for the occasion - it was wonderful looking out at you all.

We clocked up a lot of miles on the tour - Neil's got the driving equivalent of bedsores - but like the pain of childbirth, I'm told, it's receded and forgotten. We've all got used to making our own breakfasts again now and anticipating the joys of the next batch of shows. Germany (Switzerland and the Czech Republic) here we come. Now, how do you say Devil's Interval in German?

That Thing I Seem to End Up Writing Every Five Years

Voting and Not Voting: a cyclical discussion that’s perpetuated by those well-embedded myths about all the half-arsed deadbeats who can’t leave the sofa for long enough to get down to the Polling Station. Me, I’m usually one of them. Wallowing in my own ignorance, unaware of the great disservice I’m doing to the petticoated women who threw themselves in front of horses for me to be able to vote.

So here’s the discussion again; or at least my side of it. My defence against being burnt at the stake for not voting. And my defence is basically that whether or not I vote isn’t, in most cases, important; what’s important is what I do the rest of the time, in that five-year gap between polling days.

First though, I’ll cover myself. If you live in an area where there’s a genuine chance of your vote ousting the Tories or the BNP, or if you genuinely feel better for having voted, or if you use your vote as a springboard to getting involved in real community politics, or if you just feel like a walk down to the polling booth will do you good and stretch your legs, then it makes sense to vote.

But if your vote is the expression of your political view, if it’s the focus of your politics, then it ridicules the people who lobbied, chained themselves to railings, spent time in prisons, marched and campaigned for the vote in the first place. Those people were activists, not politicians. They believed in the politics of community action, striking, debating, leafleting, singing, direct action, changing the world around them. If they thought for a minute that the eventual extent of our political power would be making a cross on a ballot paper, they might have some sympathy with the half-arsed deadbeats like me.

Don’t be satisfied with your vote against the Tories or BNP; get involved in actively working to stop them gaining ground in your area – I’m talking about every day other than the day of the General Election, here – by talking to people, writing, organising, whatever it is you feel you can do. Because the bigger problem than the right-wing bigots getting Parliamentary seats is right-wing bigots taking over our cultural and social lives, because that’s where people really get hurt. On a day-to-day level.

In my constituency (West Leeds) the Labour Party have such a safe seat that they’ve parachuted in a London-born Oxbridge career politician (and a huge vote-loser in another constituency at the last election) to contest the General Election. She was placed there in front of local candidates because she’s one of New Labour’s up-and-coming stars and they need her in Parliament. Whether we, the people who live here, need her in West Leeds is irrelevant to the Party.

The Labour vote here is usually around the 19,000 mark. The Lib-Dems get around 6,000, the Tories even less. The BNP struggle to top 1,000. This is a safe Labour seat. My vote is irrelevant. There are enough people here who will vote for an unknown Blairite outsider to stop any chance of the Tories or BNP getting a sniff at power. So what’s important for me is that I use my passion for this area and for its people and its politics to get involved in it on an everyday level. Do the things I do best, locally. Maybe part of that involvement would involve keeping a check on our new Labour MP, trying to encourage her to work for the people here and not just for Party Central Office. I don’t know if I could stomach that, to be honest; but I will try.

There’s another argument here. A vote ‘against’ the Tories and BNP doesn’t register as a vote against anything, it registers only as a vote for (in this instance) the Labour Party. And once a party has that mandate, they’ll up and run with it for the next five years, doing whatever their leader decides to do. It’s what whips are for; to stop your local MP (who you voted for) from opposing the Glorious Leader (who you didn’t). That war we opposed? We inadvertently voted for it; shut up.

Yes, people worked, fought (and some died) for the vote. But they did it because they wanted it as a right, not an obligation or a duty. As a right to be used wisely and sensibly. Right now we live in a country where cynicism of the major parties is at an all-time high; understandably so. Basically, they’re all crooks, the lot of ‘em. Why shouldn’t I have the right to refuse to support any of them? Why should I have to demean my intelligence, my work and my ideas by thinking that by putting my cross in a box I am suddenly A Participant In This Democratic System? I think I play my part in this society in the way I live and work, not in whether or not I vote. People who would accuse me of “not caring” or “not bothering” are wrong. I ‘care’ and ‘bother’ every day.

It’s been said before a thousand times, but if ballot papers included the option ‘None Of The Above’ we might have to rethink our attitudes to non-voters; basically they couldn’t be accused any more of “not bothering”. All those people (including me) who are generally typified as suffering from ignorance, or lazyitis, or both, would have the chance to at least pro-actively register their dissatisfaction with the candidates. Which wouldn’t solve anything, really, other than putting a halt to the assumption that my refusal to vote for one war-mongering, self-interested bunch of Oxbridge careerists over another means I don’t care.

There’s a new and hugely-popular group called Folk Against Fascism. I love the whole idea of it, because it works within a definite community and works on a cultural issue (the far right’s infiltration of traditional music) that it understands and knows. It’s a good example of one of the most effective ways of affecting the political landscape – because I believe that most real change comes from the bottom up, through culture and society, not from the top down by laws and statutes and those schoolboy Commons debates.

Changed attitudes to race, sexuality and gender over the past few decades have come about through huge shifts in media, culture and community; in my lifetime, and where I live, black music and black footballers have changed our attitudes to race more than any number of anti-racist laws (essential though they may be). Laws concerning Civil Partnerships, equality for women and tolerance of others’ beliefs have been a response to a changing culture, they didn’t create it.

I see the day-to-day ways we try to change things as being the real politics. Voting with your feet, your mouth and your purse. Where you choose to go, what you choose to do. That’s all more important than that one cross on a ballot paper. I don’t want the BNP in Parliament. But let’s face it, that’s highly unlikely. Much more likely is that they’ll meet in a local pub, or march down the street, or smash the Asian shop’s windows, or start the racist chants at the football match, or join your local Morris Dancers. And those are the places where we can be really effective in changing attitudes and ideas.

There’s an awful lot of ground between “Can’t be bothered to go down the Polling Station” and “People fought for the right to vote. It’s my duty!” An awful lot. It’s in that space that campaigns can be fought, laws can be made and broken, communities strengthened or crushed. And it’s in that space where the real stuff happens.

As I say, if there’s a chance the Tories or BNP could win a seat in your constituency, then it’s worth that trip to the Polling Station on Election day. But the real politics – the way things change – is down to what you do every other day.

Pope To Visit Britain

So. The Pope is coming to visit us. In September. He’s been invited by Gordon Brown, and he will be warmly welcomed by the Queen.

This is a Pope who opposes women's reproductive rights, gay equality, embryonic stem cell research and the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV.

And this is a Pope who plays an ongoing role in the cover-up of child sex abuse by Catholic clergy, a Pope who happily rehabilitated the Holocaust-denying bishop Richard Williamson, and decreed the beatification and sainthood of the war-time Pope, Pius XII, who stands accused of failing to speak out against the Holocaust.

Right now, the Leaders of the Catholic Church – and the Pope as its head – stand accused of child abuse on a mass scale. Meanwhile, a spokesman for Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: “The PM is obviously delighted at the prospect of a visit from Pope Benedict XVI to Britain.

“It would be a moving and momentous occasion for the whole country and he would undoubtedly receive the warmest of welcomes.”

Conservative leader David Cameron said he was “delighted” to hear of the possible visit. He said: “Such a visit - the first in over a quarter of a century - would be greatly welcomed not only by Roman Catholics but by the country as a whole.”

Really? Will his visit be welcomed by the country as a whole? That whole would include me and you. I certainly don’t welcome a visit from a holocaust-denying, homophobic and backward leader who is in the act of covering up child abuse.

Pope Benedict XVI will make his visit between September 16 and 19. He will be received by the Queen, who is Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and the Duke of Edinburgh at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh on September 16.

Leeds Refuse Workers

The other night I went to a benefit concert in Leeds, a large hall full of supporters of the Refuse Workers strike. Keith Allen (him off Fat Les) played, and some others. It wasn’t about who played, though, it was about the strike and the workers.

The Leeds Refuse workers – bin-emptiers, street-cleaners – have been on strike for almost two months, because they’ve been singled out by the Leeds Council as scapegoats for a cost-cutting exercise.

The 600 strikers walked out on the 7th September over Leeds Council’s proposals to level down pay for workers in the refuse and street cleaning department as a bizarre way of equalising women’s pay, which they’ve been forced to do by law. These workers face pay cuts of up to £6,000 down from an average of £18,000. The City Council is run by a Lib Dem/Tory administration.

In short, the council officers, the suits and leaders (all on substantial, protected wages, some earning well over £100,000 a year) picked on the sector of the council workforce that they thought might give them the least trouble. They thought wrong, obviously. Bins are overflowing, rats are thriving, but significantly the people of Leeds are almost unanimously supporting the strike.

At the gig I was shocked because this was the union’s crowd, the workers crowd. Where were the young people? Where were the eco-activists and anti-fascists? Leeds is a student city. Where were they all? They get their bins emptied, don’t they? Mind you, we all choose our forms of protest and activism, and I’m happy to have witnessed and been encouraged by the determination of the Refuse strikers.

How long this strike will last I don’t know. Me, I’ll put up with having to take my rubbish down to the dump. I’ll laugh at the council’s scab refuse workers on their once-a-month collection. And I’ll raise a fist for the workers who don’t give in to unreasonable demands, who do a job that we all respect, and who have decided not to be treated like serfs by the well-paid councillors who came up with this scheme.

And to jump issues: The crypto-fascist English Defence League are turning up in Leeds on 31 October. Here’s hoping there’s a huge turn-out of anti-racists; and here’s hoping people might make a connection between the relatively clear politics of anti-fascism and the politics of supporting workers’ rights.

We’re not Jamming!

Canadian Folk Festivals 2009

The Canadian Folk Festival – it’s a closed secret. What happens over there doesn’t seem to happen anywhere else on the planet, but all the British musicians who make the trip over there and play these things don’t ever say anything once they get back. Shhh! Canada? Folk Festival? Don’t know what you’re on about, mate.

It’s like the Freemasons. You meet someone who’s played at one and suddenly you’re all fancy handshakes and nods and winks. Oh yes, ha ha, how weird and freaky… But between ourselves, let’s keep it quiet, eh?

Here’s the big secret (what a blabbermouth. Half a lager and a cocktail with an umbrella in it and I’ll tell you anything). You go to Canada and play one of the Folk Festivals. You may or may not get the chance to play on the main stage (and to be honest, the main stage is an irrelevance there). You’re given an itinerary that tells you that you’ll be doing four workshops over the weekend, at any given time of day, sharing a stage with any given type of act/musician/band. It’s like opening Xmas presents. Ooh, what’ve we got? It’s exciting and weird and interesting.

Canadian festivals open their gates at some unearthly hour of the morning, and hundreds – no, many thousands – of people pile through the gap armed with folding chairs and rucksacks full of sandwiches. At one such festival last year we were told that this morning rush was called (after the preferred choice of footwear) ‘The Birkenstock Dash’.

Those few hundred who get to the main stage first set up their chairs and their little rugs and blankets, do their territorial pissing, and then wander off to find coffee. The chairs and blankets stay put, ensuring that the space is reserved for the time seven hours later when some ageing old folkie strums his/her way through a couple of old hits as the evening’s finale.

Thus, the main stage audience is claimed and staked out first thing. The only thing to do is see what’s going on on the other stages. There are usually four, five, six other stages. Here’s where the interesting stuff goes on. No Birkenstock ‘claim your patch’ bollocks here. Turn up and watch. Elbow your way to the front, like at a proper gig.

The Canadian organisers call them ‘workshops’. That implies teaching, or demonstrating, or something. In reality they’re loose gatherings of several musicians, stick ‘em on a stage together and see what they come up with. And call it ‘a workshop’.

Now anyone that knows Chumbawamba will know that we’re not Grateful Dead or Phish or any of those jamming bands. In fact, we are officially the anti-jamming band. We don’t jam. We meet. We don’t play loosely together, hoping for musical inspiration. We meet. We don’t cruise the old twelve-bar looking for inspiration. We meet.

We meet and discuss what we should sing about, and how, and why, and in what form. It makes everyone’s life simpler and clearer. It’s verbal and open, not hidden behind fretwork and foot-tapping and fancy musicianship. That’s how we see it, anyway.

So the idea of this band sharing music with other bands on stage at these Canadian Festivals could be seen as the ultimate horror. But no! Because, despite our aversion to jamming/noodling/communicating with the musical muse, we love a challenge. Love being thrown in at the deep end. Swim, y’buggers!

And this is what the Canadian Festival has taught us – get up there, and make it work. There’s an audience. Yes, we know it’s 11 o’clock in the morning. But the audience want to be entertained. Now! Fear and thrill all rolled into one.

Over the past few years we’ve been up onstage playing with Scottish trad fiddlers, fey singer-songwriters, African dancebands, the lot. This year at Edmonton we were pitched right in with Arrested Development, fantastic Atlanta rap group, great tunes, amazing history, great politics. But a hip-hop group nonetheless, and how do we fit in with that? We shared a stage for an hour. We played our songs, laughed together, sang ‘Enough is Enough’ and kept the rhythm and chords going as Speech from Arrested Development rapped over the top. We joined in with them, they joined in with us. We marvelled at the ass-shaking women on stage (don’t cry ‘sexist!’, we all love to see a woman shaking her behind), they laughed at our ridiculous Englishness, and we all met somewhere in the middle … somewhere that’s friendly and funny and political and audience-friendly and entertaining.

And half-way through the show I caught myself thinking, ‘this wouldn’t happen this easily anywhere else in the world.’

I recently saw Tinariwen and Tunng playing in Leeds. Two different cultures meeting in the middle. It was brilliant. And I thought then, as I think now, this is what happens on stage at all those strange and obscure and massive and amazing Canadian festivals. Every day of the long weekend, on five different stages. Sometimes it’s a disaster. Sometimes it’s boring. But it’s always an adventure. Always.

We did other workshops that weekend. One with some bands I can’t remember the name of. One with Oysterband and Dick Gaughan (which, frankly, was too easy – joining in with Gaughan on ‘Diggers Song’ and convincing Chopper from the Oysters up to sing Johnny Cash with us) and one with Mongolian throat singers Hanggai, which was incredible. Singing one of our acapella songs along to a throat-sung drone was risky, ridiculous and beautiful, all at the same time. Joining in with their Chinese drinking song was a joy.

So there you have it. The secret of the Canadian festival. It doesn’t seem to happen anywhere else in the world – the Canadians have their own strange rules within their own cultural bubble, and I’m happy for them. Happy that they don’t think like we do, that festivals have to be neatly parceled into genres and styles and boxes. Happy that they don’t feel the need to massage the artist’s egos by keeping them well separated from the other acts. Happy that it forces us musicians into thinking on our feet, working together, dealing with stuff outside our cosy worlds.

And believe me, the Canadian Festivals are well outside this band’s cosy world. Good. I’m glad. Just don’t expect me to buy a pair of Birkenstocks.

Boff 2009