"I get knocked down," they sing, "and I get up again." Not, though, if you are the legendary Duchess venue, due to be knocked down next week after 12 years playing host to the likes of Nirvana and The Verve.
Local heroes turned international hitmakers, Chumbawumba are the last to play, although this is less a riotous send-off than a downbeat goodbye. The nature of the event puts a noticeable damper on the atmosphere. In the toilets, people frantically graffiti "Farewell, Duchess". In the audience, l half expect someone to cry.
It's left to Chumbawumba to raise the spirits, and if a crowd can't rouse themselves to a 10-piece band of anarchist punk rockers armed with a brass section and gold lamé outfits, there must be something wrong with them.
Actually, there is something wrong with them - as if preparing for their fate, the Duchess's beer pumps have given up the ghost.
Mind you, the Chumbas themselves also sound a little creaky. It is almost three years since the working-class pride anthem-cum-terrace chant Tubthumping took the veteran pranksters to the top of the charts, and they have yet to recover. What do a bunch of anarchist former squatters do when they come in to a truck load of money? Put themselves in storage?
Still, as a clutch of new songs show that their mischievous pop nous is undiminished, things begin to levitate. She's Got All the Friends may be trivial (a rant at Tara Palmer-Tomkinson), but it is deliciously singable and viciously funny. Equally wickedly, a musical list of the band's hate figures manages to somehow equate the Manics' Nicky Wire with General Pinochet.
Beneath the mischief, though, there's genuine danger when Enough Is Enough (dedicated to events in Vienna) advocates the murder of fascists. Genuine pop terrorism, but not quite as scary as when Duchess promoter John Keenan - dressed as Elvis - joins the band to wail, excruciatingly, the Stranglers' Duchess. It's business as usual for Chumbawumba, the end of an era, and, hopefully, the end of an Elvis.
Chumbawumba play Rocket, London N7, tonight. Box office: 0171-753 3200.
