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Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records

 
Album Review: Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records
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  • Artist: Chumbawamba
  • Rating: StarStarStarStarHalf Star
  • Release Date: 1986
  • Genre: Rock

Review

Long before a song about relentless alcohol consumption ("Tubthumping") made them the toast of sports stadia worldwide, a rather different Chumbawamba stalked the toilet venues of England's counterculture. In 1986, as the rock world congratulated itself on its new, enlightened attitude to world poverty following Band Aid, a refusenik group of Leeds anarchists pointed out some of the inconsistencies behind the arguments. On the aptly titled Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records, Freddie Mercury, Cliff Richard, and Paul McCartney are ridiculed for their patronizing hypocrisy ("How to Get Your Band on Television"). Other targets included apartheid, multinationals, and cultural imperialism. The group's pervasive lyrics were augmented by music varying from punk-thrash to folk and jazz. This was a sophisticated approach entirely divorced from their fellow travelers (who contented themselves with sloganeering and three-chord bluster). For an album that adopted Crass' admirable but po-faced concerns about commercial exploitation of the planet and its inhabitants, the results were surprisingly listenable, and also extremely entertaining -- an "inconsistent, over-wordy dog-bark pop record" according to its authors when it was reissued on CD in 1991 (alongside Never Mind the Ballots as First 2) ~ Alex Ogg, All Music Guide
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Wikipedia: Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records
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Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records
Studio album by Chumbawamba
Released 1986
Recorded August 1986
Genre Anarcho-punk, Post-punk, Alternative rock
Length 33:04
Label Agit-Prop Records (UK)
Southern Records (US 1986 LP)
Professional reviews
Chumbawamba chronology
Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records
(1986)		 Never Mind the Ballots
(1987)

Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records was the first full-length album by anarcho-punk band Chumbawamba, released in 1986 on Agit-Prop Records. It was released as criticism to Live Aid, which was a rock festival held in aid of charity efforts in Africa.

The sound of Danbert Nobacon vomiting into a toilet was apparently the first thing that sound engineer Neil Ferguson (who later joined the band) recorded for the band.

Track listing

All songs written and produced by Chumbawamba

  1. "How to Get Your Band on Television" - 8:23 (also listed in two parts as "Prelude" and "Slag Aid")
  2. "British Colonialism and the BBC" - 2:51
  3. "Commercial Break" - 1:02
  4. "Unilever" - 4:23
  5. "More Whitewashing" - 3:43
  6. "An Interlude: Beginning to Take it Back" - 2:41
  7. "Dutiful Servants and Political Masters" - 2:15
  8. "Coca-Colanisation" - 0:54
  9. "...And in a Nutshell" - 2:13
  10. "Invasion" - 5:07

Track details

Personnel

  • Harry - Drums, Vocals, bad guitar solo on "Slag Aid"
  • Alice Nutter - Vocals, Spoons, Kitchen Sink Melodrama
  • Boff - Guitar, Vocals, Clarinet, Fireblanket
  • Mavis Dillon - Bass guitar, Trumpet, French Horn, Vocals
  • Lou - Vocals, Guitar
  • Danbert Nobacon - Vocals, Half a jar of vegetable oil
  • Dunst - Whirlypipe, Turntables, Roto 613

With

  • Simon "Commonknowledge" Lanzon - Keyboards, Accordion, Voice
  • Neil Ferguson - Engineer
  • Derek Dogg - Bark, muzzle and chain
v • d • e
Chumbawamba
Lou Watts • Boff Whalley • Neil Ferguson • Jude Abbott • Phil Moody
Dunstan Bruce • Danbert Nobacon • Alice Nutter • Harry Hamer • Paul Greco • Mavis Dillon
Albums
Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records (1986) • Never Mind the Ballots (1987) • English Rebel Songs 1381-1914 (1988) • Slap! (1990) • Shhh (1992) • Anarchy (1994) • Swingin' with Raymond (1995)  • Tubthumper (1997) • WYSIWYG (2000) • Readymades (2002)  • English Rebel Songs 1381-1984 (2003)  • Un (2004)  • A Singsong and a Scrap (2005)  • The Boy Bands Have Won (2008)
Compilations & Soundtracks
First 2 (1994)  • Uneasy Listening (1998)  • Shhhlap! (2003)  • Revengers Tragedy (2003)
Live Albums
Showbusiness! (1995)  • Get On With It! (2006)
Singles and EPs
"Revolution" (1985) • "We Are The World?" (1986) • "Let It Be" (1987) • "Smash Clause 28! Fight the Alton Bill!" (1988) • "I Never Gave Up" (1990)  • "(Someone's Always Telling You How To) Behave (1992)"  • "Enough is Enough" (with MC Fusion) (1993)  • "Timebomb" (1993)  • "Homophobia" (1994)  • "Ugh! Your Ugly Houses!" (1995)  • "i - Portraits of Anarchists" EP (1996)  • "Just Look at Me Now" (1996)  • "Tubthumping" (1997)  • "Amnesia" (1998)  •  • "Top of the World (Ole, Ole, Ole)" (1998)  • "She's Got All The Friends That Money Can Buy" (2000)  • "Jacob's Ladder (Not In My Name)" (2002)  • "Tubthumping (Remix)" (2003)  • "Home With Me" (2003)  • "Salt Fare North Sea" (2003)  • "Add Me" (2007)
Related

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