CRASS

DISCOGRAPHY Releases FEEDING OF THE 5000 LP (Small Wonder, 1978) REALITY ASYLUM /SHAVED WOMEN 7" (Crass, 1979) STATIONS OF THE CRASS 2xLP (Crass, 1979) PERSONS UNKNOWN SPLIT 7" w/ POISON GIRLS (Crass, 1980) NAGASAKI NIGHTMARE/BIG A LITTLE A 7" (Crass, 1980) RIVAL TRIBAL REVEL REBEL flexi (Crass, 1980) PENIS ENVY LP (Crass, 1981) OUR WEDDING flexi (C.R.A.S.S., 1981) MERRY CRASSMASS (C.R.A.S.S., 1981) CHRIST: THE ALBUM 2xLP box (Crass, 1982) SHEEP FARMING IN THE FALKLANDS flexi (Crass, 1982) HOW DOES IT FEEL? 7" (Crass, 1982) YES SIR... I WILL LP (Crass, 1983) WHO DUNNIT? 7" (Crass, 1983) YOU'RE ALREADY DEAD 7" (Crass, 1984) 10 NOTES ON A SUMMER'S DAY LP (Crass, 1985) Reissues SHEEP FARMING IN THE FALKLANDS 7" (Crass, 1983) BEST BEFORE 2xLP (Crass, 1984, singles collection) Compilations BULLSHIT DETECTOR LP (Crass, 1980) "Do They Owe Us a Living?" P.E.A.C.E. 2LP (R Radical, 1984) "It's You" INFO Southern Studios' Crass Page The definitive Crass page from their distributor Southern, also the studio where most of the label's releases were cut. Gee Vaucher The artist who painted most of Crass' LP covers is still very active and has a few books out. An amazing an inspirational individual. Crass Interviews Some interesting conversations with Penny & G that are worth checking out. Do They Owe Us A Living? Kind of redundant if you've been to Southern, but can you ever get enough Crass?

Crass, the band whose name and image is synonymous with the genres of "anarchopunk" and "peace punk," emerged in the second wave of punk rock which began immediately following the Pistols in 1976. As a band, label, and collective Crass delivered on many of the ideas which were posited but never fully explored by the original punks: they made punk an explicitly ideological, revolutionary enterprise and they applied that ideology to every aspect of their art. By choosing DIY (do it yourself) as a political stance rather than a necessity of survival, they pushed punk to the next level and set the stage for a countercultural revolution that activists and artists today are still trying to catch up to.

Crass the band was comprised of individuals who, by and large, came from an earlier generation than most of their audience. Veterans of the hippie counterculture, the '60's activist scene, and especially the anti-nuclear Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), the band brought a historical perspective to their endeavor. They heard Johnny Rotten's cry of "I am an anarchist!" as more than a shocking confession of depravity, and in fact took it quite at face value. Drummer/producer Penny Rimbaud and singer Steve Ignorant spent the early part of 1977 assembling the band, and were operating as a full-functioning unit by the summer. With a handful of songs they set out to play rowdy drunken shows wherever they could, and were promptly banned from the premiere London punk venue: the Roxy. This act of censure only reinforced their growing feelings of betrayal as their forebears turned into preening pop stars, leaving the underground to rot. Crass resolved to get serious and stake their own path.

The band quickly adopted an aesthetic approach that would set them apart from the vacuous fashion punk that was turning the scene into a fad and a marketing scheme. They took to wearing all black, projecting video and film during their set, and stringing the stage with political signs and banners. All of this served to emphasize the importance of the message over the cult of the performer. Since the lyrics were often indecipherable, the band also printed a newspaper and handed out leaflets containing political screeds, artwork, and tasty recipes. They adopted an enigmatic logo, two intertwined serpents, that has become almost as ubiquitous a punk symbol as the circle A they adopted from traditional anarchism. Their cover artwork was similarly challenging. Gee Vaucher's amazingly complex, collage-like surrealist paintings provided an elegant counterpoint to the abrasive music and spartan, stenciled graphics that Crass deployed on stage. The thick booklets for their records read like political pamphlets.

The band themselves were close-knit, living together in a commune-type farm hidden away in the countryside outside London. The farm has seen a fluctuating guest list since it was established in 1968 (including, for those that care, a young Bjork who was in the band KUKL). It was another way the band embodied what they sang about. The insular atmosphere gave birth to the unique Crass sound that has never really been duplicated: a hellish noise like cats fucking in a garbage can during a police riot. Penny's military drum beats and Phil Free's plodding basslines drive along as the guitar feedback screeches and crunches, often with no discernable notes being played. Over this Steve, or Eve, or someone is yelling like a mad ranter about some kind of injustice, often with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

The band's first LP, The Feeding of the 5000 was released by the tiny label Small Wonder Records in 1978. The title referred to the minimum requirement for a run of records (5000), which the band had little hope of ever selling. The Irish pressing plant also refused to press the record if it was to contain the first track, "Asylum." That song was an all-out attack on Christianity delivered in a venomous spoken word poem by singer Eve Libertine over white noise and sound effects. The song ends with Libertine contemptuously stating, "Jesus died for his own sins, not mine." The LP was released with a silent first track titled "The Sound of Free Speech." The record, with its barely musical songs, enigmatic black and white packaging and wordy, shouted lyrics, was unlike any other punk band at the time. The press hated it. Crass was courted by Sham 69's Jimmy Pursey for a spot on his big-time punk tour package, but declined.

When the band found a less pious pressing plant willing to handle "Asylum," they re-recorded the track (this time adding a jarring tape-splice job to the already disquieting rant) to release as a single in 1978. The Reality Asylum/Shaved Women EP was the inaugural release for Crass Records. While they had finally gotten the music on vinyl, the controversy was far from over. Scotland Yard, acting under a loophole "criminal blasphemy" law, began raiding record stores and confiscating the record. The band personally received a visit from inspectors who warned them against ever trying to do anything like that again. Like most big punk bands at the time, Crass records charted on the pop charts. When "Reality Asylum" charted, however, a blank space appeared where the name should have been.

Crass Records' second release was a single by the Honey Bane vehicle Donna & the Kebobs. The label quickly became not just a vehicle for Crass to release their own work, but a showcase for like-minded artists who might otherwise have toiled in obscurity. Crass' first two records had caused quite a stir, and when their second LP, the double-disc Stations of the Crass sold 20,000 copies, they suddenly found themselves with ample resources to put out records by amazing bands such as Zounds, the Poison Girls, the Mob, Rudimentary Peni, and Omega Tribe. Several of these artists also did their own labels such as Flux of Pink Indians (Brave Little Indian), Rudimentary Peni (Outer Himalayan), the Mob (All the Madmen), Conflict (Mortarhate), etc.

In 1980, Crass began gigging to raise money for the legal defense of the "Persons Unknown": jailed anarchist activists who were subsequently released. The money then went, along with the proceeds of a split 7" with Poison Girls, to founding an Anarchist Center in London. The two bands, along with the Mob and others, played a part in establishing the center and operating it for a year. Eventually, tensions between the anarchopunks and the more traditional anarchist activists proved too great to keep the project going and the Center folded. Although fleeting, it was still a great accomplishment for a band to use their music as a catalyst for changing things. Crass played exclusively non-paying shows, mostly benefits, and played a large role in bringing CND back from the edge of obscurity.

While Feeding and Stations stuck fairly closely to the iconoclasm of anarchism, Crass' third album, 1981's Penis Envy focused completely on radical feminism. The female members of the group shared complete vocal control over the 10 tracks of empowered indignation. Although "Systematic Death," makes it clear that this is still an anarchist attack on the patriarchal standards of capitalism, Penis Envy made the connection explicit in a way that no other Crass record had. They were motivated by the sexism rampant in the Chaos Punk/Oi! craze sweeping England, but the band set their sites even higher with the fast one they pulled on Loving magazine. Loving was a "women's magazine" and was planning a special Bridal Issue. Crass, under the alias "Creative Recording And Sound Services," sold the magazine the song "Our Wedding," which was pressed onto a special flexi sent to Loving readers. The song is a sarcastically saccharine send-up of the traditional myths of marriage. Sung with mocking primness by Joy de Vivre, the song collapses into a messy cacophony of wedding bells as it slowly fades out. The magazine realized too late that they'd been tricked, and the scandal broke in the mainstream press that the flexi was really the work of the "pornographic" band Crass. It was a supreme act of "culture jamming" before such a concept existed.

This wasn't the last subversive act perpetrated by the band. The Falklands War demanded that all of their attention return to their anti-war, pacifist ideals. The 1982 single How Does it Feel to be the Mother of 1,000 Dead? addresses Margaret Thatcher directly. Although the war is a minor point in history to most Americans, it was a crucial issue in England at the time, and did in fact claim around 1,000 lives. The record, sold for the usual low Crass price, sold thousands of copies. An additional flexi, Sheep Farming in the Falklands was distributed by the covert act of slipping it inside other records inside stores. Unsuspecting record buyers would return home to find a bonus inside their LP: a bitter, sarcastic attack on the Tory war machine. The How Does it Feel? single actually made it to the floor of Parliament, where conservatives led by Tim Eggar tried to get it banned as obscene. The controversy was swept under the carpet after Eggar was humiliated by Crass in a debate aired on the BBC. Another lawsuit over a track on Penis Envy also lead nowhere, but sapped many of the label's resources with legal fees.

By contrast to the Falklands War, and the outrage and urgency of the How Does it Feel? EP, 1982's Christ the Album appears somewhat jumbled and anti-climactic. Its targets are scattered across the board: from the familiar anti-system rants to a critique of the meat-headed Oi! scene that had made Crass and their slogan "Anarchy and peace" one of its favorite targets. The booklet, their most extensive yet, contains Penny's literary account of the mistreatment their hippie-activist friend Wally endured at the hands of the British mental health system. The year ended with a monumental all-day-and-night gig at the Zig Zag squat in London, with many of the premier anarchopunk bands performing to a drunken, enthusiastic crowd who were getting to see first hand and all-at-once how much great culture the scene had produced.

In 1983 Thatcher was re-elected and the prospect of opposition to war and suffering seemed even less likely. Crass' next album was their most reactionary yet. Yes Sir... I Will is nothing if not immediate, catching every desperate pang of pain and frustration in an atonal mess of twisted bass lines and totally trashed guitars. While the album borders on unlistenable, it also might be the band's most ingenious work. There are moments where a sort of quiet, calm breaks through and then you're sucked back into the chanting, flailing fray. In many ways it was the band's dying word: delivered kicking and screaming in true Crass style. Although they did go on to do other work together, Yes Sir was the last project to include all the members of Crass, and it's dual message of "There is No Authority but Yourself," and "Love is the Root of our Anger," are appropriate parting words.

Crass had been involved in subversive activity since their early days of spray-painting situationist-style stencils over adverts in tube stations (the source of the double pun in Stations of the Crass). Around 1984, a tape was spliced together in which Thatcher and Ronald Reagan appear to discuss the Falklands War, with her admitting to purposely starting it, and him threatening to nuke Europe to defend American pride. The tape found its way into the hands of the US State Department, who issued a categorical denial of its veracity. It was then included in a study released to the press about the increasingly "fine-tuned" technological disinformation tactics being employed by the KGB. When it came to light that the tape had in fact been compiled by Crass bassist Phil Free and leaked by Crass, the State Department looked ridiculous. The band had struck another victory for subversion and found themselves doing interviews and speaking out all over the British and American press. The "Thatchergate" tape would be the last controversy for the band. Facing a high-profile that made it harder to get away with such actions and a cult status that bordered on the same hero-worship they hated about the punk sell-outs, the band broke up (as they had always planned) in the Orwellian year 1984. Their last gig was a benefit for striking miners.

I've left out much of the gossipy details of who slept with who and who did what why, because that's the way the band always tried to make it, and it's really not that interesting anyway. Also, I've lost all of the notes I wrote for a more in-depth oral presentation I did about Crass for my "Art and Politics" class a few years ago (I got an A). A lot of this bio coincides with Penny's excellent liner notes to Best Before, found on Southern's site. Most of the band members are still active in either politics or art, and several have reunited to put on a benefit to protest the US's current warmongering efforts in the Middle East. Good for them! More info is on the Southern Records website.

Crass was:
Mick Duffield (film, video)
Phil Free (guitar)
Penny Rimbaud (drums, production)
Steve Ignorant (vocals)
Pete Wright (bass)
NA Palmer (rhythm guitar)
Eve Libertine (vocals)
Joy De Vivre (vocals)
G. Sus (painting, tape manipulation, harmonium, etc)

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