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Crass

Crass was an influential English anarchist punk rock band.

Contents

Overview

Crass pictured at Bristol, September 1981
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Crass pictured at Bristol, September 1981

Crass formed in 1977, based around Dial House, an anarchist community near Epping, Essex, in England.

They were progenitors of a militant anarcho-pacifism that became pervasive in the punk music scene (see also anarcho-punk). Whereas the Sex Pistols' anarchism seemed to be a self-consciously nihilistic prank, Crass's anarchism was more directly linked to the libertarian socialist or communalistic varieties of 20th century political thought.

Taking literally the punk manifesto of "anyone can do it," Crass combined the use of song, film, sound collage, graphics and subversion to launch a sustained and innovative critical broadside against all that they saw as a culture built on foundations of war, violence, religious hypocrisy and blind consumerism.

Origins of the band

The band came together when Dial House founder and former member of avant garde performance art group EXIT Penny Rimbaud (real name Jerry Ratter) began jamming with Clash fan Steve Ignorant, who was staying at the house at the time. Between them they put together the songs "So What?" and "Do They Owe Us A Living?" as a drums and vocals duo. For a (very) short period of time they called themselves Stormtrooper, before choosing the name Crass, a reference to the David Bowie song "Ziggy Stardust" (specifically the line "The kids was just crass"). Other members of the household began to come onboard, and it was not long before Crass performed their first live gig as part of a squatted street festival at Huntley Street, North London. Shortly afterwards they played at the legendary Roxy punk club in London's Covent Garden area. By the bands' own account this was a drunken debacle, ending in the group being ejected from the stage, and immortalised by their song "Banned from the Roxy" [1] and Rimbaud's essay Crass at the Roxy [2].

After this the band decided to take themselves more seriously, particularly paying more attention to their presentation. As well as avoiding drugs such as alcohol or cannabis before gigs, they also adopted a policy of wearing black, military surplus-style clothing at all times, whether on or off stage. They also introduced their distinctive stage backdrop, a logo designed by Rimbaud's friend Dave King, as seen on the sleeve of The Feeding Of The 5000. This gave them a militaristic image, which led some to accuse them of fascism. Crass countered that their uniform appearance was intended to be a statement against the "cult of the personality," so that, in contrast to the norm for many rock bands, no member would be identified as the 'leader'.

The logo represented an amalgamation of several "icons of authority" including the Christian Cross, the swastika and the Union Jack combined with a two headed snake consuming itself (to symbolise the idea that power will eventually destroy itself). Using such deliberately mixed messages was also part of Crass' strategy of presenting themselves as a "barrage of contradictions," which also included using loud, aggressive music to promote a pacifist message, and was in part a reference to their own Dadaist and performance art backgrounds.

Sleeve art for Crass' "The Feeding Of The 5000" 12" record, illustrating the bands' logo
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Sleeve art for Crass' "The Feeding Of The 5000" 12" record, illustrating the bands' logo

Crass Records

Crass' first release was The Feeding Of The 5000, an 18 track 12" 45 rpm EP on the Small Wonder label in 1978. Workers at the pressing plant refused to handle it due to the allegedly blasphemous content of the song "Reality Asylum". The record was eventually released with this track removed and replaced by two minutes of silence, ironically titled "The Sound Of Free Speech". This incident also prompted Crass to set up their own record label, Crass Records, in order to retain full editorial control over their material, and "Reality Asylum" was shortly afterwards issued in a re-recorded and extended form as a 7" single. A later pressing of the album on Crass Records restored the missing track.

As well as their own material, Crass Records released recordings by other performers, the first of which was the 1980 single "You Can Be You" by Honey Bane , a teenage girl who was staying at Dial House whilst on the run from a children's home. Other artists included Zounds, Flux Of Pink Indians , Rudimentary Peni, Conflict, Icelandic band KUKL (who included singer Björk), classical singer Jane Gregory , and the Poison Girls , a like-minded band who worked closely with Crass for several years.

They also put out three editions of Bullshit Detector, compilations of demos and rough recordings that they felt represented the DIY punk ethic.

The catalogue numbers of Crass Records releases were intended to represent a countdown to the year 1984 (eg, 521984 meaning "five years until 1984"), both the year that Crass stated that they would split up, and a date charged with significance in the anti-authoritarian calendar due to George Orwell's novel of the same name (see 1984 (novel)).

Penis Envy, Christ the Album and a change of strategy

Crass released their third album Penis Envy in 1981. This marked a departure from the somewhat testosterone-driven 'hardcore punk' image that Feeding of the 5000 and its followup Stations of the Crass had to some extent given the group. It featured more complex musical arrangements and exclusively female vocals provided by Eve Libertine and Joy De Vivre (although Steve Ignorant remained a group member and is credited on the record sleeve as not on this recording).

The album addressed feminist issues and once again attacked the institutions of 'the system' such as marriage and sexual repression. One track, a deliberately saccharine parody of an 'MOR' love song entitled "Our Wedding", was given away as a flexi disk with a teenage girl's romance magazine after having been offered it by an organisation calling itself "Creative Recording And Sound Services" (note the initials). A minor tabloid furore erupted once the hoax was revealed, with the News of the World going so far as to state that the album's title was "too obscene to print."

The band's fourth LP, 1982's double set Christ The Album, took over a year to record, produce and mix, during which time the Falklands War had broken out and been fought. This caused Crass to fundamentally question their approach to making records. As a group whose very reason for existing was to comment upon political issues, they felt they had been overtaken and made to appear redundant by real world events. Subsequent releases, including the singles "How does it Feel to Be the Mother of A Thousand Dead" and "Sheep Farming in the Falklands", and the album Yes Sir, I Will, saw the band strip their sound back to basics and were issued as "tactical responses" to political situations.

Direct Action and internal debates

From their earliest days of spraying stencilled graffiti around the London Underground network, the band had always been involved in direct action as well as musical activities. In 1983 and 1984 they were part of the Stop The City actions that can be seen as fore-runners of the early 21st century anti-globalisation protests. Explicit support for such activities was given in the lyrics of the band's final single release "You're Already Dead", which also saw Crass abandoning their long time commitment to pacifism. This led to further introspection within the band, with some members feeling that they were beginning to become embittered as well as losing sight of their essentially positive stance. As a reflection of this debate, the next release using the Crass name was Acts of Love, classical music settings of 50 poems by Penny Rimbaud described as "songs to my other self" and intended to celebrate "'the profound sense of unity, peace and love that exists within that other self."

Crass all but retired from the public eye after becoming a particularly irritating thorn in the side of Margaret Thatcher's government following the Falklands War. Questions in Parliament led to a round of court battles and harassment that finally took its toll. On July 7th 1984 the band played their final gig at Aberdare in Wales, a benefit for striking miners, before retreating to Dial House to concentrate their energies elsewhere.

Steve Ignorant went on to join the band Conflict, with whom he had already worked on an ad hoc basis, and in 1992 formed Schwartzeneggar (sic).

Influences

The philosophical and aesthetic influence of Crass on numerous punk bands from the 1980s cannot be overstated, even if few bands mimicked their later more free-form musical style (as on Yes Sir, I Will and their final recording, 10 Notes on a Summer's Day). The band has stated that their musical antecedents and influences were seldom drawn from the rock music tradition, but rather from classical music (particularly Benjamin Britten, from who, Rimbaud states, some of Crass' riffs are direct plagiarisms!), dada and the avant-garde such as John Cage as well as performance art traditions. Their painted and collage-art black-and-white record sleeves produced by Gee Vaucher themselves became a signature aesthetic model.

Artwork by Gee Vaucher for "Bloody Revolutions" single, 1980
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Artwork by Gee Vaucher for "Bloody Revolutions" single, 1980

2002 onwards: The Crass Collective/Crass Agenda

In November 2002 several former members of Crass collaborated under the name The Crass Collective to arrange Your Country Needs You, a concert of "voices in opposition to war" held at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London's South Bank that included a performance of Britten's "War Requiem". In October 2003, the Crass Collective changed their working title to Crass Agenda, and continue to perform on a regular basis at the Vortex Jazz Club in Stoke Newington, North London.

A "new" Crass track (actually a remix of 1982's "Major General Despair", with new lyrics), "The Unelected President", is also available [3].

Members

  • Penny Rimbaud (drums)
  • Gee Vaucher (artwork)
  • Steve Ignorant (voice)
  • N.A.Palmer (Guitar)
  • Phil Free (Guitar)
  • Pete Wright (Bass)
  • Eve Libertine (Voice)
  • Joy De Vivre (Voice)
  • Mick Duffield (films)

Discography

(all released on the Crass record label unless otherwise stated)

  • The Feeding Of The 5000 (12" EP, 1978, originally released by Small Wonder Records )
  • "Reality Asylum" (7", 1978)
  • Stations Of The Crass (LP, 1979)
  • "You Can Be You" (single by Honey Bane, backed by Crass under the name Donna and the Kebabs, 1980)
  • "Bloody Revolutions" (single, joint released with the Poison Girls , 1980)
  • "Tribal Rival Rebel Revels" (Flexi disc single given away with Toxic Grafity (sic) fanzine, 1980)
  • "Nagasaki Nightmare" (single, 1981))
  • Penis Envy (LP, 1981)
  • "Our Wedding" (flexi disc single recorded under the name Creative Recording And Sound Services given away with magazine Loving [4])
  • "Merry Crassmas" (single, 1981, Crass' tongue-in-cheek stab at the Christmas novelty market [5])
  • Christ The Album (double LP, 1982)
  • "Sheep Farming In The Falklands" (single 1982, originally distributed anonymously as a flexi-disc)
  • "How Does It Feel To Be The Mother Of 1000 Dead?" (Single 1983)
  • "Whodunnit?" (Single, 1983, pressed in "shit coloured vinyl," Crass' response to the re-election of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher)
  • Yes Sir, I Will (LP, 1983)
  • "You're Already Dead" (single, 1984)
  • Acts Of Love (LP and book, 1985 (described as "50 songs to my Other Self", this features the poems of Penny Rimbaud set to classical music and sung by Eve Libertine and Steve Ignorant. The book is illustrated by the paintings of Gee Vaucher)
  • "It's You" — track on P.E.A.C.E. international anti-war benefit compilation released by R. Radical Records (1984)
  • "Powerless With A Guitar" — track on Devastate to Liberate benefit compilation for the Animal Liberation Front, TIBETan records, (1986) (the title is a reference to a poem by Günter Grass)
  • "Ten Notes On A Summer's Day" (12" EP, 1986)
  • Best Before 1984 (retrospective LP compilation, 1986)
  • Christ: The Bootleg (recorded live in Nottingham, 1984, released 1989 on Allied Records)
  • Christ: The Movie (a series of short films by Mick Duffield that were shown at Crass performances, VHS, released 1990)
  • Semi-Detached (video collages by Gee Vaucher, 1978-1984, VHS, 2001)
  • You'll Ruin It For Everyone (recorded live in Perth, Scotland, 1981, released 1993 on Pomona Records)
  • You've Heard It All Before (1993, Ruptured Ambitions Records ), a 'tribute album' consisting of cover versions of songs by Crass performed by various artists.

Related writings

  • A Series Of Shock Slogans And Mindless Token Tantrums (Exitstencil Press, 1982) (originally issued as a pamphlet with the LP Christ The Album, much of the text is now published online at [6] )
  • Shibboleth- My Revolting Life (Penny Rimbaud, 1999, AK Press)
  • The Diamond Signature (Penny Rimbaud, 1999, AK Press)
  • Crass Art and other Post Modern Monsters (Gee Vaucher, 1999, AK Press)
  • International Anthem: A Nihilist Newspaper For The Living issues 1-3 (Exitstencil Press, 1977-81) (see [7])
  • Love Songs (collected lyrics of Crass with an introduction by Penny Rimbaud, Pomona Books, 2004) [8]

See also

External links


Last updated: 11-07-2004 05:10:07