Crass
Crass was an English art collective and punk rock band formed in Epping, Essex, in 1977 who promoted anarchism as a political ideology, a lifestyle, and a resistance movement. Crass popularized the anarcho-punk movement of the punk subculture, advocating direct action, animal rights, feminism, anti-fascism, and environmentalism. The band employed and advocated a DIY ethic in its albums, sound collages, leaflets, and films.
Crass spray-painted stencilled graffiti messages on the London Underground and on advertising-billboards, coordinated squats and organized political action. The band expressed its ideals by dressing in black, military-surplus-style clothing and using a stage backdrop amalgamating icons of perceived authority such as the Christian cross, the swastika, the Union Jack, and the ouroboros.
The band was critical of the punk subculture and youth culture in general; nevertheless, the anarchist ideas that they promoted have maintained a presence in punk. Because of their free experimentation and use of tape collages, graphics, spoken word releases, poetry, and improvisation, Crass has been associated with avant-punk and art punk.
History
1977: Origins
The band was based around an anarchist commune in a 16th-century cottage, Dial House, near Epping, Essex, and formed when commune founder Penny Rimbaud began jamming with Steve Ignorant. Ignorant was inspired to form a band after seeing the Clash perform at Colston Hall in Bristol, whilst Rimbaud, a veteran of avant-garde performance art groups such as EXIT and Ceres Confusion, was working on his book Reality Asylum. They produced "So What?" and "Do They Owe Us a Living?" as a drum-and-vocal duo. They briefly called themselves Stormtrooper before choosing Crass in reference to a line in the David Bowie song "Ziggy Stardust".Other friends and household members joined, and Crass played their first live gig at a squatters' street festival in Huntley Street, North London. They planned to play five songs, but a neighbour "pulled the plug" after three. Guitarist Steve Herman left the band soon afterward and was replaced by Phil Clancey, a.k.a. Phil Free. Joy De Vivre and Eve Libertine also joined around this time. Other early Crass performances included a four-date tour of New York City, a festival gig in Covent Garden and regular appearances with the U.K. Subs at The White Lion, Putney and Action Space in central London. The latter performances were often poorly attended: "The audience consisted mostly of us when the Subs played and the Subs when we played".
Crass played two gigs at the Roxy Club in Covent Garden, London. According to Rimbaud, the band arrived drunk at the second show and were ejected from the stage; this inspired their song "Banned from the Roxy" and Rimbaud's essay for Crass's self-published magazine International Anthem, "Crass at the Roxy". After the incident, the band took themselves more seriously, avoiding alcohol and cannabis before shows and wearing black, military-surplus-style clothing on and off the stage.
They introduced their stage backdrop, a logo designed by Rimbaud's friend Dave King. This gave the band a militaristic image, which led to accusations of fascism. Crass countered that their uniform appearance was intended to be a statement against the "cult of personality" so that no member would be identified as the "leader".
Conceived and intended as cover artwork for a self-published pamphlet version of Rimbaud's Christ's Reality Asylum, the Crass logo was an amalgam of several "icons of authority" including the Christian cross, the swastika, the Union Jack and a two-headed Ouroboros. Using such deliberately mixed messages was part of Crass's strategy of presenting themselves as a "barrage of contradictions", challenging audiences to "make your own fucking minds up". This included using loud, aggressive music to promote a pacifist message, a reference to their Dadaist, performance-art backgrounds and situationist ideas.
The band eschewed elaborate stage lighting during live sets, preferring to play under 40-watt household light bulbs; the technical difficulties of filming under such lighting conditions partly explains why there is little live footage of Crass. They pioneered multimedia presentation, using video technology to enhance their performances, and also distributed leaflets and handouts explaining anarchist ideas to their audiences.
1978–1979: ''The Feeding of the 5000'' and Crass Records
Crass' first release was The Feeding of the 5000 in 1978. Workers at an Irish record-pressing plant refused to process it because of the offensive and blasphemous content of the song "Asylum", and the record was released without it. In its place were two minutes of silence titled "The Sound of Free Speech". This incident prompted Crass to create their own independent record label, Crass Records, to retain editorial control over their material.A rerecorded, extended version of "Asylum", renamed "Reality Asylum", was released shortly afterward on Crass Records as a 7" single, and Crass were investigated by the police because of the song's lyrics. The band were interviewed at their Dial House home by Scotland Yard's vice squad and threatened with prosecution, but the case was dropped. "Reality Asylum" retailed at 45p, and was the first example of Crass' "pay no more than..." policy to issue records as inexpensively as possible. The band failed to factor value-added tax into their expenses, causing them to lose money on every copy sold. A year later, Crass Records released new pressings of The Feeding of the 5000, restoring the original version of "Asylum".
1980: ''Stations of the Crass'' and "Bloody Revolutions"
In 1979 the band released their second album, Stations of the Crass, financed with a loan from Poison Girls, a band with whom they regularly appeared. This was a double album, with three sides of new material and a fourth side recorded live at the Pied Bull in Islington.The next Crass single, 1980's "Bloody Revolutions", was a benefit release with Poison Girls that raised £20,000 to fund the Wapping Autonomy Centre. The words were a critique of the traditional Marxist view of revolutionary struggle and were partly a response to violence marring a September 1979 Crass gig at Conway Hall in London's Red Lion Square. The show was intended as a benefit for Persons Unknown, a group of anarchists facing conspiracy charges. During the performance, Socialist Workers Party supporters and other anti-fascists attacked British Movement neo-Nazis, triggering violence. Crass later argued that the leftists were largely to blame for the fighting, and organizations such as Rock Against Racism were causing audiences to become polarised into left- and right-wing factions. Others were critical of Crass's position, stating that "like Kropotkin, their politics are up shit creek". Many of the band's punk followers felt that they failed to understand the violence to which they were subjected from the right.
"Rival Tribal Rebel Revel", a flexi disc single distributed with the Toxic Grafity fanzine, was also a commentary about the events at Conway Hall attacking the mindless violence and tribalistic aspects of contemporary youth culture. This was followed by the double single "Nagasaki Nightmare/Big A Little A". The strongly anti-nuclear lyrics of "Nagasaki Nightmare" were reinforced by the fold-out sleeve artwork. It featured an article by Mike Holderness of Peace News magazine connecting the atomic power industry and the manufacture of nuclear weapons along with a large poster-style map of nuclear installations in the UK. The other side of the record, "Big A Little A", was a statement of the band's anti-statist and individualist anarchist philosophy: "Be exactly who you want to be, do what you want to do / I am he and she is she but you're the only you."
1981: ''Penis Envy''
Crass released their third album, Penis Envy, in 1981. This marked a departure from the hardcore punk image that The Feeding of the 5000 and Stations of the Crass had given the group. It featured more complex musical arrangements and female vocals by Eve Libertine and Joy De Vivre. The album addressed feminist issues, attacking marriage and sexual repression.The last track on Penis Envy, a parody of an MOR love song titled "Our Wedding", was made available as a white flexi disc to readers of Loving, a teenage romance magazine. Crass tricked the magazine into offering the disc, posing as "Creative Recording and Sound Services". Loving accepted the offer, telling their readers that the free Crass flexi would make "your wedding day just that bit extra special". A tabloid controversy resulted when the hoax was exposed, with the News of the World stating that the title of the flexi's originating album was "too obscene to print". Despite Lovings annoyance, Crass had broken no laws.
The album was banned by the retailer HMV, and copies of the album were seized from the Eastern Bloc record shop by Greater Manchester Police under the direction of chief constable James Anderton. The shop owners were charged with displaying "obscene articles for publication for gain". The judge ruled against Crass in the ensuing court case, although the decision was overturned by the Court of Appeal.
1982–1983: ''Christ - The Album'' and strategy-change
The band's fourth LP, 1982's double set Christ – The Album, took almost a year to record, produce and mix. This caused Crass to question their approach to making records. As a group whose primary purpose was political commentary, they felt overtaken and made redundant by world events:Subsequent releases saw the band's sound return to basics and were issued as "tactical responses" to political situations. Crass anonymously produced 20,000 copies of a flexi disc with a live recording of "Sheep Farming in the Falklands", and copies were randomly inserted into the sleeves of other records by sympathetic workers at the Rough Trade Records distribution warehouse.