Sic - Chumbawamba

 SIC - CHUMBAWAMBA

Produced in 2002 by members of Chumbawamba when they were flush with money from the success of Tubthumping, Sic is subtitled as being a 'magazine of no value' and described on the back cover as 'an irony-free zone where artists, activists and sex and drugs and rock'n'roll meet up'. Design-wise it's more like a Reader's Digest than a typical kind of magazine you'd pick up at your newsagent and content-wise it's neither 'a pop magazine with politics or a political magazine with pop'. To be a bit more precise, it's probably better described by the mock caption on the cover: 'Adventures In Anti-Capitalism' - but without the exclamation mark.

So what do you get for your cover price of £4.95? A bargain that's what and a pretty good one at that. An interesting and easily readable compilation of interviews, articles and graphic design that whiffs of social change and do-gooding without the typically associated embarrassment. It's a roll call of participating names that if put together in the same room would erupt into arguments but on paper sit very well together. Jake Black of Alabama 3, Mick Farren, Jeremy Hardy, Seething Wells - and that's just the ones who have since passed away. Caroline Coon, Bill Drummond, Rob Newman, Jon Savage, Mark Thomas - and that's just some of the better known ones.

Twenty years after it first being published and it's interesting how 'soft' some of the politics and points of views expressed within Sic's pages now seem. Even though the kind of world being aimed at by all the contributors might appear even further away than ever, everything being expressed sounds so very reasonable and easily achievable with just a bit of good will and fortitude. So after twenty years it now begs the question that Marc Bolan first posed back in the early 1970s as Glam Rock wobbled on its stack heels: Whatever happened to the teenage dream?

In Italy that dream was represented for a moment by the Tute Bianche, otherwise known as the white overall movement on whom there is a very good article written I presume by one of Chumbawamba? Dressed in white overalls with home-made foam and cardboard body armour beneath and sporting crash helmets and home-made shields, the Tute Bianche would make their way to the front of demonstrations and advance towards lines of riot police with a chant of 'Here we come, bastards'. Significantly and importantly the only weapons they held were soft cuddly toys and bendy balloons whilst the foam padding meant they could only push and use weight of numbers. In effect, this meant that any violence could only come from the police. 

During the anti-globalization mass demos of the late 90s and early 2000s the Tute Bianche were a sight to behold and they easily stole headlines. Come the anti-G8 demo of 2001 in Genoa, however, these tactics came to a head when the Italian State responded in the way they knew could be most effective: by massive indiscriminate violence. To witness Italian police armed with tear gas, batons, guns and armoured cars attacking people armed with teddy bears, balloons and water pistols might well reveal the true face of the State but it doesn't bring that State down, though it does leave a lot of people injured and jailed. Clearly, post-Genoa 2001 it was time for a re-think.

Meanwhile in an interview with Sri Lanka-born writer Ambalavaner Sivanandan, migration is cited as a way of looking at what capitalism does to people's lives. 'Globalisation displaces people, I call it economic genocide by stealth. There's no such thing as an illegal migrant, there's only an illegal government,' he says. 'The cultural demonisation of asylum seekers takes place before the law comes into place. Capitalism moves in mysterious ways, its miracles to perform. There's a collective subconscious about capitalism which allows it to use the cultural feeling, the cultural instance, the cultural dynamics of a people in order to soften them up for the economic exploitation to come. In an old democracy like Britain it's a blotting paper society that absorbs and negates opposition.'

And then there's artist, writer and veteran of both the hippy movement and punk, Caroline Coon, who says 'The most heroic thing you can do is smuggle refugees into this country. I always feel that I should do it. The poor lorry drivers who are getting fined, it's a very heroic thing to do.' And remember, this was twenty years ago she was saying this.

More closer to home and in what is the best interview/article in Sic, the late Reverend D Wayne Love (aka Jake Black) of Alabama 3 expounds upon his interactions with Crass and whilst acknowledging their influence sees them now as having been extremely conservative in their politics. As for the One Little Indian label Alabama 3 were on at that time, according to the late Reverend all that label boss Derek Birkett was doing was accumulating and writing off groups as tax losses or viewing them as grist to the mill, just in the same way that any boss would do in terms of surplus value. The interesting thing about this is that One Little Indian was the label Chumbawamba were on prior to them signing to EMI and the release of Tubthumping - leading to the financial success without which Sic would never have been produced or published. There's some kind of lesson there.

As is there also a lesson in the fact that copies of Sic are currently for sale on Amazon and AbeBooks for £75...

John Serpico