Crash

Crass ("rude") was an English punk band formed in 1977, promoting anarchism as a political ideology, way of life, and resistance movement. Crass popularized the anarchopunk movement within the punk subculture and advocated for direct action, animal rights, and environmentalism. The band upheld and used a self-reliant ethical approach, producing sound collages, charts, albums, and films. Crass also criticized mainstream culture and attempted to subvert it with messages promoting feminism, anti-racism, and pacifism.

The band was critical of the punk subculture itself, as well as youth culture in general. Crass promoted the kind of anarcho-pacifism that other bands in the punk music scene would eventually follow. They are also associated with the art punk genre, due to their use of collages of cassettes, graphics, recordings with "spoken word", poetry and improvisation.

History

Origins

Crass, Birmingham, 1981. N. A. Palmer (left) and Steve Ignorant (right).

The band was formed in Dial House, an open community near Epping, Essex, when Penny Rimbaud (real name Jeremy Ratter), founder of Dial House and member of performance groups avant-garde EXIT and Ceres Confusion, began playing with Steve Ignorant (real name Steve Williams), who was living on the commune at the time. Ignorant was inspired to form a band after attending a Clash concert at the Colston Hall in Bristol, while Rimbaud had been working on his prose composition 'Reality Asylum'. Together they produced the songs "So What?" and "Do They Owe Us A Living?" as a voice and drums duo. For a short time, they called themselves Stormtrooper, before changing their name to Crass, in reference to the David Bowie song "Ziggy Stardust,&# 3. 4; specifically the phrase that says "The kids was just crass".

The singer of Crass, Eve Libertine, in May 1984.

Other friends and members of the commune joined them, including Joy De Vivre, Pete Wright, N. A. Palmer (real name Andy Palmer), Steve Herman, and Eve Libertine (real name Bronwyn Lloyd Jones), considered "the band's first fan", and it wasn't long before they played their first gig at the occupation street festival on Huntley Street in North London. His intention there was to play five songs; however, a neighbor forced them to stop after three. Guitarist Steve Herman would soon leave the band and be replaced by Phil Free (real name Phil Clancey). Other early Crass gigs included a four-day tour in New York, a concert at a festival in Covent Garden (London) where Charles Hayward of This Heat replaced Rimbaud on drums, and a concert with UK Subs at the White Lion pub in Putney. These last performances were not usually very well attended; "the audience consisted of us when the Subs played and the Subs when we played".

Crass also performed two concerts at the Roxy Club in Covent Garden. According to Rimbaud, all the band members arrived drunk at the second concert and were thrown offstage. This event was immortalized in their song "Banned from the Roxy" and in the essay Crass at the Roxy, by Penny Rimbaud.

After this incident, the band decided to take it more seriously, particularly paying more attention to their performance. In addition to avoiding alcohol or cannabis before a concert, they also adopted a dress policy that consisted of black military clothing that they had to wear at all times, whether or not they were on stage. They introduced their distinctive backdrop, a logo designed by a friend of Rimbaud's, Dave King of Sleeping Dogs Lie. This gave the band a militaristic image, leading some people to accuse them of being fascists. Crass responded that their uniform appearance was intended as a statement against the "cult of personality," thus, in contrast to the norm for most bands, no member would be identified as the " leader".

Originally conceived and devised as the cover of Penny Rimbaud's self-published version of the 'Christ's Reality Asylum' pamphlet, the Crass logo represents an amalgamation of various 'icons' of authority", including the Christian cross, swastika and the Union Jack, combined with a two-headed ouroboros symbolizing the idea that power would ultimately destroy itself. The use of these contradictory messages was deliberately part of Crass's strategy of presenting themselves as a "barrage of contradictions," which also included using loud, aggressive music to promote an anti-war message and was partly a reference to its Dadaist and performance origin.

The band avoided any type of elaborate stage lighting during their live performances, preferring instead to illuminate with simple 40-watt spotlights (the technical difficulties of filming under such light conditions partly explain why there are so few recordings of Live Crass). The band pioneered multimedia presentation techniques, making full use of video technology and displaying films and video collages made by Mick Duffield and Gee Vaucher backstage to enhance their performances.

The Feeding of the 5000 and Crass Records

The singer of Crass Steve Ignorant, June 1981.

Crass' first release was The Feeding of the 5000, a 12" with eighteen tracks under the Small Wonder label in 1978. Workers at the pressing plant refused to work citing the blasphemous content of the song "Asylum". The record was eventually released without the song and replaced with two minutes of silence, ironically titled "The Sound Of Free Speech" ("The Sound of Free Speech"). This incident prompted Crass to create his own independent record company, Crass Records, to prevent Small Wonder from compromising them in the future, as well as to maintain absolute editorial control over their material. "Asylum", renamed "Reality Asylum", was released shortly thereafter by Crass Records as a 7"single. Subsequent reprints of the album (also on Crass Records) restored the original version of the lost single.

In addition to their own material, Crass Records released recordings by other artists, the first being a 1980 single called "You Can Be You" of Honey Bane, a teenager who was staying at the Dial House while she ran away from her parents' house. Other artists included Zounds, Flux Of Pink Indians, Omega Tribe, Rudimentary Peni, Conflict, Icelandic band KUKL (with singer Björk), classical singer Jane Gregory, Anthrax, Captain Sensible, Lack of Knowledge and Poison Girls, a band of similar ideologies who worked alongside Crass for several years.

Crass Records also made three pressings of Bullshit Detector, compilations of demos and home recordings that had been sent to the band and which they thought represented the ethic of self-sufficiency. The catalog numbers of released Crass Records releases were intended to represent a countdown to the year 1984 (for example, 521984 meant "five years until 1984"), both the year Crass set to break up and a date laden with meaning in the anti-authoritarian calendar due to George Orwell's novel of the same name.

Penis Envy

Crass singer Joy De Vivre, 1984.

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

The album addresses feminist issues and again attacks institutions of the "establishment" such as marriage and sexual repression. The latest track from Penis Envy, a deliberately sugary parody of popular love songs called "Our Wedding", was made available as a white flexi disc for readers of Loving, a youth magazine. The free offer of the flexi to Loving was suggested by an organization calling itself "Creative Recording And Sound Services" (note the initials). A minor controversy arose when the hoax was revealed, with the tabloid News of the World claiming that the original album title of the flexi was "too obscene to publish" 34;. The album was banned from HMV stores. During the mid-1980s, Manchester Police under the direction of James Anderton seized copies from the Eastern Bloc record store, along with other recordings by Crass and The Dead Kennedys. Frank Schofield, owner of the store, was charged with displaying "obscene articles for publication for profit." The band Flux of Pink Indians, their two record labels and their publishing company were also charged with acts of obscene publication, but all charges were dropped by Manchester Police.

Christ - The Album and a change of strategy

The band's fourth LP, Christ - The Album, recorded as a double disc in 1982, took a year to record, produce and mix, during which time the Falklands War broke out and ended. This caused Crass to question his approach to making records. As a group whose primary purpose was political commentary, they felt they had been overtaken by real world events and become redundant. 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, returned the band to their basic sounds and themes that were "tactical responses" to political situations. They also anonymously produced 20,000 copies on flexi-disc of a live recording of "Sheep Farming...", copies that were randomly inserted into covers of other recordings by sympathetic workers of the Rough Trade records distribution house as a way of getting their views across to those who would not normally listen.

Direct action and internal debates

Since their early days spray-painting anti-war, anarchist, feminist and anti-consumer messages around the London Underground system and on billboards, the band had also been involved in political and musical activities. On December 18, 1982, Crass coordinated a 24-hour occupation of the vacated Zig Zag club in West London, primarily for an event attended by approximately 500 people to demonstrate "that the underground punk scene can manage herself responsibly when she has to and that music can truly be enjoyed without the restrictions imposed by the corporate sector".

Bands that played at Zig Zag (in order of appearance) included Faction, D and V, Omega Tribe, Lack of Knowledge, Sleeping Dogs, The Apostles, Amebix, Null & Void, Soldiers of Fortune, The Mob, Polemic Attack, Poison Girls, Conflict, Flux of Pink Indians, Crass and DIRT.

In 1983 and 1984, they were part of the Stop the City actions promoted by London Greenpeace in anticipation of the anti-globalization actions of the early 21st century. Explicit support for these activities was given in the lyrics of the last single released by the band, 'You're Already Dead', which also led Crass to publicly display growing doubts about his long-term commitment to pacifism. This led to further introspection of the band's the band, with some members feeling that they were beginning to resent their essentially positive stance. Reflecting this debate, Crass's next release was Acts of Love, a set of fifty poems by Penny Rimbaud along with classical music, described as "songs for my other self" with the intention of celebrating "the deep sense of unity, peace and love that exists within that other self".

Thatchergate

Another post-Falklands War hoax originated by Crass members was known as "the Thatchergate tapes".

This was a cassette of what appeared to be an overheard telephone conversation, due to crossed lines. The tape had actually been constructed by Crass, using recordings of the voices of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. On the Thatchergate tape they discussed the sinking of HMS Sheffield during the Falklands War and apparently argued that Europe would be used as a target for the use of atomic bombs in any conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The copies were leaked to the press and the US State Department believed the tape was propaganda produced by the Soviet KGB, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle and The Sunday Times. Despite being sent completely anonymously, the British newspaper The Observer was somehow able to link the tape to the band.

Dissolution

Crass withdrew from public life after becoming a nuisance to Margaret Thatcher's government after the Falklands War. Doubts in Parliament and an attempted impeachment under the Obscene Publication Act over their single 'How Does It Feel...' led to a round of court battles that the band described as harassment. which finally took effect. On June 7, 1984 the band gave their last concert in Aberdare (Wales) to benefit the striking miners, before retiring to Dial House and concentrating their energies on other things.

Guitarist N. A. Palmer had announced his intention to leave the band in order to pursue his artistic studies, and the group came to a consensus that replacing him would be "like having a corpse in the band". This catalyzed the assertion that Crass constantly made about his intention to break up in 1984. Steve Ignorant joined the band Conflict, with whom he had previously worked, and in 1992 formed Schwartzeneggar. From 1997 to 2000, he was a member of the Stratford Mercenaries group. He also worked as a puppeteer for Punch and Judy and as a soloist. Eve Libertine continued to record with her son Nemo Jones as well as performance artist A-Soma. Pete Wright concentrated on building himself a houseboat and formed the performance group Judas 2, while Rimbaud continued to write and perform, both solo and with other artists.

2002 onwards: The Crass Collective/Crass Agenda/Last Amendment

In November 2002 several members of Crass collaborated under the name The Crass Collective to organize Your Country Needs You, a concert of "voices against the war," held at Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank (London) which included a performance of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, as well as artists such as Goldblade, Fun-Da-Mental, Ian MacKaye and the Pete Wright's post-Crass project, Jude 2. In October 2003, the Crass Collective changed its working name to Crass Agenda. During 2004 Crass Agenda led a campaign to save the jazz club Vortex Jazz Club in Stoke Newington, north London, which was relocated to Dalston. In June 2005 Crass Agenda declared that it would no longer exist, subsequently changing the name of the project to the "more appropriate" Last Amendment (last amendment). A "new" by Crass (actually a new edit of the 1982 song "Major General Despair", with new lyrics), "The Unelected President", is also available.

2007: The Feeding of the 5000 (revised)

On November 24 and 25, 2007 Steve Ignorant performed the entire Crass album The Feeding of the 5000 live at Shepherds Bush Empire (UK) alongside a band of " select guests'. Other members of Crass were not seen as being associated with these concerts. Rimbaud initially denied Ignorant the right to perform Crass songs that Rimbaud had written, but later changed his mind. "I acknowledge and respect Steve's right to do this," he said, "but I view it as a betrayal of the Crass spirit." Ignorant took a different view: "No. I have to justify what I do. (...) Also, most of the lyrics are still relevant. And remember that word, 'fun'?'.

2010: The Crassical Collection (reissues)

In August 2010 it was announced that Crass would be releasing The Crassical Collection, consisting of remastered reissues of his back catalogue. The first in the series was a remastered edition of The Feeding of the 5000, restored from the original analog studio tapes, repackaged and backed with previously unreleased songs and new artwork by Gee Vaucher. Stations of the Crass was released in October 2010 and the others (Penis Envy, Christ – The Album, Yes Sir, I Will and Ten Notes on a Summer's Day) during 2011.

2011: The Last Supper

In 2011, Steve Ignorant embarked on an intensive international tour performing Crass material, ending with a final show again at the Shepherds Bush Empire on November 19 entitled "The Last Supper". He had declared that it would be the last time he would play Crass songs, this time with Rimbaud's blessing and support. In fact, Rimbaud joined him on stage to perform "Do They Owe Us A Living" on vocals and drums, closing the band's artistic circle after 34 years; & # 34; And then Penny came over and you gave her such a wave that she made my bottom lip quiver and then the bastard came over and hugged me before we started. I held him so tight and he smelled like Dial House and Petulia and herbs and the memories flowed and we did it, like the first time all those years ago. And just as he started, he finished. Steve's band for his tour consisted of Gizz Butt, Carol Hodge, Pete Wilson and Spike T. Smith. He was also joined by original Crass vocalist Eve Libertine for a series of songs.

The set list also included a cover of "West One (Shine On Me)" by the Ruts and a cover of "Shaved Women" where Carol Hodge and Eve Libertine sing together. The concert ended with an emotionally charged version of Bloody Revolutions during which Ignorant was joined on stage by the Norfolk Lifeguard team for which he is now a volunteer.

Influences

Crass influenced the anarchist movement in England, the United States and the rest of the world. With the growth of anarchopunk came new generations of people who became interested in anarchist ideas.

Crass's aesthetic and philosophical influence on numerous bands of the 1980s was far-reaching, including his late-break musical style of free improvisation (as on Yes Sir, I Will and its final recording, 10 Notes on a Summer's Day).

The band stated that their musical backgrounds and influences rarely came from the rock tradition, but rather from classical music (particularly from Benjamin Britten, from whose work, according to Rimbaud, some riffs are directly based), the Dadaism and the avant-garde, such as John Cage, as well as the performance art tradition.

Their black-and-white collage covers produced by Gee Vaucher became an aesthetic model and their influence can be seen on later artists such as Banksy (Banksy and Vaucher later worked together) and on the counter-advertising movement.

Anti-folk artist Jeffrey Lewis's 2007 album 12 Crass Songs features acoustic covers of material originally written by Crass.

In February 2011, artist Toby Mott displayed a small portion of his personal ephemera collection at the Roth Gallery in New York. The exhibition featured artwork, albums, including 12" original, 7" from Crass Records and a complete set of Crass' iconic zine series, Inter-National Anthem. The material presented in the exhibition shows the period of greatest initiative of Crass, from 1978 to 1984.

Members

• Steve Ignorant (Voz)
• Eve Libertine (Voz)
• Joy De Vivre (Voz)
• N. A. Palmer (Guitarra)
• Phil Free (Guitarra)
• Pete Wright (Lower and voice)
• Penny Rimbaud (Battery and voice)
• Gee Vaucher (Graphical material, piano and radio)
• Mick Duffield.
• John Loder, a probe and founder of Southern Studios, sometimes regarded as the 'new member' of Crass
• Steve Herman left Crass shortly after his first concert.

Discography

(All released by Crass Records unless otherwise noted)

Albums

• The Feeding of the 5000 (LP, 1978, Small Wonder Records) [UK Indie -#1]
• The Feeding of the 5000 - Second Sitting (LP, 1980, reissue of Crass Records 621984, with the simple "Asylum" reinstated) (UK Indie – #11)
• Stations Of The Crass (521984, double LP, 1979) (UK Indie – #1)
• Penis Envy (321984/1, LP, 1981) (UK Indie - #1)
• Christ - The Album (BOLLOX2U2, double LP, 1982) (UK Indie – #1)
• Yes Sir, I Will (121984/2, LP, 1983) (UK Indie – #1)
• Ten Notes on a Summer's Day (Cat No. 6, LP, 1985, Crass Records. Poems written by Penny Rimbaud and set with a slow rock song, sung by Eve Libertine and Steve Ignorant.)
• Acts Of Love (1984/4, LP and books, 1985. Penny Rimbaud poems together with classical music, sung by Eve Libertine and Steve Ignorant. The book is illustrated with paintings by Gee Vaucher)
• Best Before 1984 (CATNO5, double LP compilation, 1986) (UK Indie – #7)
• The Crassical Collection; The Feeding of the 5000 (CC01CD remastered edition of The Feeding of the 50002010)
• The Crassical Collection; Stations of the Crass (CC02CD remastered edition of Stations of the Crass2010)
• The Crassical Collection; Penis Envy (CC03CD remastered edition of Penis Envy]2010)
• The Crassical Collection; Christ - The Album (CC04CD remastered edition of Christ - The Album2011)
• The Crassical Collection; Yes Sir, I Will (CC05CD remastered edition of Yes Sir, I Will2011)
• The Crassical Collection; Ten Notes on a Summer's Day (CC06CD remastered edition of Ten Notes on a Summer's Day2012)

Simple

• "Reality Asylum" / "Shaved Women" (CRASS1, 7", 1979) (UK Indie – #9)
• "You Can Be You" (521984/1, 7" simple by Honey Bane, backed by Crass under the name Donna and the Kebabs, 1979) (UK Indie – #3)
• "Bloody Revolutions" / "Persons Unknown" (421984/1, 7" simple engraved with the Poison Girls, 1980) (UK Indie – #1)
• "Tribal Rival Rebel Revels" (421984/6F, simple flexi disc delivered in the fanzine Toxic Grafity1980)
• "Nagasaki Nightmare" / "Big A Little A" (421984/5, 7" single, 1981) (UK Indie – #1)
• "Our Wedding" (321984/1F, simple flexi disc Creative Recording And Sound Services for the readers of the youth magazine Loving)
• "Merry Crassmas" (CT1, 7", 1981, Crass satire to the Christmas market) (UK Indie – #2)
• "Sheep Farming In The Falklands" / "Gotcha" (121984/3, easy 7", 1982, originally released anonymously as flexi-disc) (UK Indie – #1)
• "How Does It To Be The Mother Of 1000 Dead?" / "The Immortal Death" (221984/6, 7", 1983) (UK Indie – #1)
• "Whodunnit?" (121984/4, 7" single, 1983), pressed in "shit coloured vinyl") (UK Indie – #2)
• "You're Already Dead" / "Nagasaki is Yesterday's Dog-End" / "Don't get caught" (1984, 7" single, 1984)
• "Ten Notes On A Summer's Day" (CATNO6, 12" EP, 1986) (UK Indie – #6)

Others

• "Penny Rimbaud Reads From 'Christ's Reality Asylum' (Cat No. 10C, C90 cassette, 1992)

Live recordings

• Christ: The Bootleg (played live in Nottingham, 1984, released in 1989 by Allied Records)
• You'll Ruin It For Everyone (labeled live in Perth, Scotland, 1981, released in 1993 by Pomona Records)

Videos

• Crass

Christ: The Movie (a series of shorts filmed by Mick Duffield that were shown in the presentations of Crass, VHS, released in 1990)

Semi-Detached (collages Gee Vaucher, 1978–84, VHS, 2001)

Crass: There is No Authority but Yourself (documentary "minimovie" by Alexander Oey, Minimovies.org, 2006)

• Crass Agenda

In the Beginning Was the WORD – live DVD recorded in Progress Bar, Tufnell Park, London, November 18, 2004 (Gallery gallery Productions @ Le Chaos Factory, 2006)