Crass were an English art collective and punk rock band formed in 1977 who promoted anarchism as a political ideology, a way of life and a resistance movement. Crass popularised the anarcho-punk movement of the punk subculture, advocating direct action, animal rights, feminism and environmentalism. The band used and advocated a DIY ethic approach to its albums, sound collages, leaflets, and films.
Crass spray-painted stencilled graffiti messages in the London Underground system and on advertising billboards, coordinated squats and organised 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. Due to their free experimentation and use of tape collages, graphics, spoken word releases, poetry and improvisation, they have been associated with avant-punk nd art punk.
1977: Origins
The band was based around Dial House, an open-house community near Epping, Essex, and formed when Dial House founder Penny Rimbaud began jamming with Steve Ignorant (who was staying in the house at the time). 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" ("The kids was just crass").
Other friends and household members joined (including Gee Vaucher, Pete Wright, N. A. Palmer and Steve Herman), and Crass played their first live gig at a squatted 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 afterwards, and was replaced by Phil Clancey, aka 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' 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 offstage.
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 (symbolising the idea that power will eventually destroy itself).Using such deliberately mixed messages was part of Crass' strategy of presenting themselves as a "barrage of contradictions",challenging audiences to (in Rimbaud's words) "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 situationis 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 (back-projected films and video collages by Mick Duffield and Gee Vaucher) 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 (an 18-track, 12" 45 rpm EP on the Small Wonder label) in 1978. Workers at the record-pressing plant refused to handle it due to the allegedly blasphemous content of the song "Asylum",and the record was released without it. In its place were two minutes of silence, entitled "The Sound of Free Speech". This incident prompted Crass to set up their own independent record label, Crass Records, to prevent Small Wonder from being placed in a compromising position and to retain editorial control over their material.
A re-recorded, extended version of "Asylum", renamed "Reality Asylum", was shortly afterwards released on Crass Records as a 7" single and Crass were investigated by the police due to the song's lyrics. The band were interviewed at their Dial House home by Scotland Yard's vice squad, and threatened with prosecution; however, the case was dropped. "Reality Asylum" retailed at 45p (when most other singles cost about 90p), and was the first example of Crass' "pay no more than..." policy: issuing 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" (subtitled "The Second Sitting"), restoring the original version of "Asylum".
Crass, 1981; N. A. Palmer (left) and Steve Ignorant pictured at Digbeth Civic Hall, Birmingham
Crass singer Joy De Vivre, 1984
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 which raised £20,000 to fund the Wapping Autonomy Centre. The words were a critique (from an anarchist-pacifist perspective) of the traditional Marxist view of revolutionary struggle, and were (in part) a response to violence marring a gig at Conway Hall in London's Red Lion Square at which both bands performed in September 1979. The show was intended as a benefit for the so-called "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 afterwards 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 (including the anarchist organisation Class War) 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 given away with the Toxic Grafity [sic] 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 single, "Nagasaki Nightmare/Big A Little A". The strongly anti-nuclear lyrics of the first song 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,and 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 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 (singer Steve Ignorant was credited as "not on this recording"). The album addressed feminist issues, attacking marriage and sexual repression.
The last track on Penis Envy, a parody of an MOR love song entitled "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 Loving's annoyance, Crass had broken no laws.
The album was banned by the retailer HMV, and in 1984 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 (except the lyrics to one song, "Bata Motel", which were upheld as "sexually provocative and obscene").
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 (during which the Falklands War broke out and ended). This caused Crass to question their approach to making records. As a group whose primary purpose was political commentary, they felt overtaken and redundant by world events:
The speed with which the Falklands War was played out and the devastation that Thatcher was creating both at home and abroad, forced us to respond far faster than we had ever needed to before. Christ – The Album had taken so long to produce that some of the songs in it, songs that warned of the imminence of riots and war, had become almost redundant. Toxteth, Bristol, Brixton and the Falklands were ablaze by the time that we released. We felt embarrassed by our slowness, humbled by our inadequacy.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's sound go back to basics and were issued as "tactical responses" to political situations.They anonymously produced 20,000 copies of a flexi-disc with a live recording of "Sheep Farming...", copies of which were randomly inserted into the sleeves of other records by sympathetic workers at the Rough Trade Records distribution warehouse to spread their views to those who might not otherwise hear them.
1984: Breakup
Eve Libertine, May 1984
Crass had become a thorn in the side of Margaret Thatcher's government after the Falklands War. Questions about the band in Parliament and an attempted prosecution by Conservative Party MP Timothy Eggar under the UK's Obscene Publications Act for their single, "How Does It Feel...", made them question their purpose:
We found ourselves in a strange and frightening arena. We had wanted to make our views public, had wanted to share them with like minded people, but now those views were being analysed by those dark shadows who inhabited the corridors of power (…) We had gained a form of political power, found a voice, were being treated with a slightly awed respect, but was that really what we wanted? Was that what we had set out to achieve all those years ago?The band had also incurred heavy legal expenses for the Penis Envy prosecution;this, combined with exhaustion and the pressures of living and operating together, finally took its toll. On 7 July 1984, the band played a benefit gig at Aberdare, Wales, for striking miners, and on the return trip guitarist N. A. Palmer announced that he intended to leave the group.This confirmed Crass's previous intention to quit in 1984, and the band split up.
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