‘HE’S A MOTOROLA MAN BABY’: ‘CHIPS’ BY RUMBLE
Paul (Blunt Recordings Archivist) posted the ‘Zip Up Your Boots’ compilation today at this link. It’s one of the many many things that Dead Elvis were involved in that I don’t have a copy of. I’ll talk about the process of getting it together later on. For now I want to just pick out one track and write a little about it - Rumble’s ‘Chips’ which is pasted above. Rumble were from the same general area as myself and Og - Dundalk and environs. They released quite a bunch of stuff on Dead Elvis between 1995 and 1997 and built up quite an incredible fanbase outside of the capital during the life of the label. I don’t have those releases to hand but thanks to Paul I have this song -‘Chips’. The title refers to computer chips.
Og had studied and worked in the computing field before Dead Elvis and to an extent was always on about computers in conversation. Pete from Rumble picked up on this and I can remember - sometime in the period immediately before the ‘Zip Up Your Boots’ compilation being done - myself and Og throwing computing terms at Pete in Og’s flat in Phibsboro. Pete turned them into a song literally live in front of us. The lyric is great and very playful indeed. The coda ‘386 486 chips’ is my favourite bit - but there’s a lot more. I must have thrown in ‘Avid’ as a useful word as it refers to a type of video editing software.
It’s basically a ‘get your motor runnin’ kind of song about the internet - but from waaay before it was a normal thing to be using or even generally understood. Og knew about the net for years. He’d used it in the 80’s in college in Scotland - but never thought to get the Dead Elvis label online - something I think about with some regret from this remove. Dead Elvis was strictly a phonecalls from coinboxes and post-office operation. We almost always had our house phones set to only receive calls during the period as we were chronically poor and just couldn’t risk big bills.
Sometime immediately after ‘Chips’ was written Rumble did a very short sharp session with a beautiful soul who myself and Og loved having a natter and a jar with - Paul Thomas. They banged the song out mostly live and he made an amazing job of the recording. It rocks hard and loose and is probably the song that best captures the feel of the band as they sounded live. I can remember being present at the end of the session which was I think in Sun Studios - to make full sure that my suggestion of including a computer speaking some of the lyrics was included. And a great line the computer gets too. ‘He’s a Motorola man baby’. Another lost classic imo. It never got any attention whatsoever. It was never mentioned in print or played on the radio. It was buried in the midst of riches on the ‘Boots’ compilation - and somehow didn’t fit the ‘scene’ that the compilation came from. Rumble had very mainstream instincts and the more indie Dubs around us never really took to them. Well a few did - but that’s a different story and one I’ll talk about in the fullness of time.
We talked seriously at the time about selling this song to Apple Macintosh for use as an advert soundtrack. That, I think, is one hare-brained scheme we really really should have followed up on. We were enjoying life so much at the time that to be just able to tell whoever you were having a jar with that you were thinking such thoughts was enough!
I’m listening to it now and I just have to giggle about the ‘Pet Lamb’ reference in the lyric. Runble knew right well that the crew who went to Wormhole, Jubilee etc. gigs were not exactly falling over themselves to see them play. We went to great lengths to make sure they got to see them anyway - including an infamous April 1st gig in the Ormond Multi-media centre where I booked a headline for Wormhole and Rumble appeared (with Wormhole’s approval) instead in front of an unsuspecting audience. We loved them. I had serious fallings out with some of them at a certian point in the whole thing but I absolutely relished any chance I got to see them play live - and any chance to get up on stage with them or help cause a scene - both before and after that.
The Photo below is Pete from Rumble around the period described.
