Chumbawamba - Luton Library - 30th May 1985 - 69 Tapes

An intense performance from Chumbawamba at the top of their game. Karma Sutra supported.

One of the most caring, honest and knowledgeable men on the scene is Sean 'Gummidge' who worked at All The Madmen records and distribution, the same time I was helping out there, 1985 to 1988. Sean was there early 1985, me late 1985.

Originally ATM was based at 96 Brougham Road in Hackney. Rob who was running ATM lived at that address, and also released cassette tapes on 96 Tapes releasing various demos and live performances by Blyth Power / Faction / Subhumans / Flowers In The Dustbin and others.

Sean called his 'company' 69 Tapes, as a reverse of 96 Tapes, just cos.

Other than this Chumbawamba cassette tape, 69 Tapes also released demos and live performances by Hagar The Womb, Blyth Power, Dan, We Are Going To Eat You (ex Hagar) and Sean's own band; Wat Tyler.

Text below from kipuka.net

“Chumbawamba: the message is more important than the music.” – Full extent of first ever live review, NME.

At this point Chumbawamba are fast becoming unmovable flag-burning agitators, a reaction against Thatcher’s election campaign involving nuclear stockpiling and stepping over dead bodies in the Falklands. This is the decadent 60’s and 70’s hangover, the Pistols’ “No Future” etched across a Boy George mirror. In the early eighties the choice seems straightforward – Brit-pop as complete escapism or the sub-culture of resistance that is burrowing it’s way from underground. Chumbawamba play gigs at peace camps, turning up at demonstrations and rallies like they’re going out of fashion. (Which they are). The band’s home is raided twice in under a year by ten burly drugs squad officers who ask, “You lot them Socialist Worker types, right?”. No wonder the likes of the Guildford Four got banged up for fifteen years with authorities like this on the case.

The entries on the Special Branch files get longer. Raids, obstruction, breaches of the peace, even “theft by housebreaking” – twenty-six hours in the custody of the Strathclyde police in December 1983 charged with “removal of dogs, mice and files” from a research bucket load; for single parents, local hospital closure campaigns, hunt saboteurs, the ALF, anti-Sizewell campaign, nurseries. Nine people, three cats and a dog living under one roof, fledging anarchist politics mixed with too-hefty doses of idealism and organic vegetables. The dog, Derek, appears on a couple of the early records and includes in his CV the greatest accolade bestowed upon a canine: that of biting members of the police force.

Two events that re-route the agit-pop politics of Chumbawamba, both from 1984. Firstly, the Brighton Bomb. Half the Cabinet covered in rubble, and suddenly political violence – of the type which defeated Hitler, freed Mandela, ended slavery, and overthrew the state communist dictatorships – blows a hole in the pacifist edge to the band’s polemic. Secondly, and more importantly, the beginning of the great Miners’ Strike. From early on, the Armley Miners Support group is twinned with Frickley pit in South Elmsall – Armley Socialist Workers make the connections and Chumbawamba supply the van and the street collections on Saturday mornings. The band mix playing benefit gigs for the miners with traveling down to the picket lines at five and six o’clock in the morning. And during this bitter winter some of Chumbawamba join a theatre group who travel from village to village putting on a Christmas pantomime for miner’s kids, down to South Wales and around Yorkshire. Coming from places like Barnsley and Burnley in times when the coal mines were part of the very fabric of these towns, it doesn’t take much effort to know which side of the fence you ought to be standing on; the band makes and sells a fast-selling three-track cassette for the Miners’ Hardship Fund, and Sounds writes:

“The Chumbas, as they are affectionately known, are refreshing and genuine pop anarchists. And no, they won’t go away".

“What we’re given is any old rubbish that won’t upset the apple cart. The only choice we seem to be left with it to play the part of the bad apple.”

On June 1st, 1985, Chumbawamba are recording their first single “Revolution”, whilst at the same time the Travellers' Convoy is being attacked and wrecked in a beanfield adjacent to Stonehenge. Cracked heads, massive publicity, and the start of an era of political change: when the marginal’s begin to come out from the underground.

The house is raided again, this time with sledgehammers. They’re looking for “explosives and bomb-making equipment”. Everyone is hauled down to the station, questioned relentlessly, kept separately, diaries and books confiscated – huge plastic bagful's of pamphlets, posters, even song lyrics… twenty-three hours in a Leeds copshop. Meanwhile, the first single sells out.

“We haven’t got a master plan – we react to things as they come along. As Anarchists we live with the contradictions that socialism doesn’t allow.”