Crass spray-painted stencilled graffiti messages in the London Underground system and on advertisement 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 domination such(a) 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 realise maintained a presence in punk. Due to their free experimentation and usage of tape collages, graphics, spoken word releases, poetry, and improvisation, they develope been associated with avant-punk and art punk.
History
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 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(a) as EXIT and Ceres Confusion, was workings on his book Reality Asylum. They portrayed "So What?" and "Do They Owe Us A Living?" as a drum-and-vocal duo. They briefly called themselves Stormtrooper ago choosing Crass in consultation to a mark 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 number one live gig at a squatted street festival in Huntley Street, North London. They forwarded 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 subject a four-date tour of New York City, a festival gig in Covent Garden andappearances 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 theshow 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.
They filed their stage backdrop, a logo intentional by Rimbaud's friend Dave King. This gave the band a militaristic image, which led to accusations of fascism. Crass countered that their uniform formation was intended to be a calculation against the "cult of personality", so in contrast to many rock bands no point would be identified as the "leader".
Conceived and intended as fall out artwork for a self-published pamphlet representation 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 theory that power to direct or determining will eventually destroy itself. Using such(a) 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 credit to their Dadaist, performance-art backgrounds and situationist ideas.
The band eschewed elaborate stage lighting during constitute 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 cost footage of Crass. They pioneered multimedia presentation, using video technology back-projected films and video collages by Mick Duffield and Gee Vaucher to reclassification their performances, and also distributed leaflets and handouts explaining anarchist ideas to their audiences.
Crass' first release was The Feeding of the 5000 an 18-track, 12" 45 rpm EP on the Small Wonder names in 1978. Workers at an Irish 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 family up their own independent record label, Crass Records, to prevent Small Wonder from being placed in a compromising position and to retain editorial sources over their material.
A re-recorded, extended representation 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 institution domestic by Scotland Yard's vice squad, and threatened with prosecution; however, the case was dropped. "Reality Asylum" retailed at 45p when near 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 component 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 "TheSitting", restoring the original version of "Asylum".
In 1979 the band released their moment 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 fabric and a fourth side recorded live at the Pied Bull in Islington.
The next Crass single, 1980's "Bloody Revolutions", was a service 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 conviction 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 value 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 Movementneo-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 sic] fanzine, was also a commentary approximately the events at Conway Hall attacking the mindless violence and tribalistic aspects of advanced 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 total 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."
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 precondition 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 MORlove song entitled "Our Wedding", was made usable 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 denomination 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 copies of the album were seized from the Eastern Bloc record shop by Greater Manchester Police under the direction of Chief ConstableJames 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".
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 made redundant by world events:
The speed with which the Falklands War was played out and the devastation that Thatcher was devloping both at home and abroad, forced us tofar 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.
From their early days of spraying stencilled anti-war, anarchist, feminist and anti-consumeristgraffiti messages in the London Underground and on billboards, Crass was involved in politically motivated direct action and musical activities. On 18 December 1982, the band helped co-ordinate a 24-hour squat in the empty west London Zig Zag club to prove "that the underground punk scene could handle itself responsibly when it had to and that music really could be enjoyed free of the restraints imposed upon it by corporate industry".
In 1983 and 1984, Crass were part of the Stop the City actions co-ordinated by London Greenpeace which foreshadowed the anti-globalisation rallies of the early 21st century. help for these activities was provided in the lyrics and sleeve notes of the band's last single, "You're Already Dead", expressing doubts about their commitment to non-violence. It was also a reflection of disagreements within the group, as explained by Rimbaud; "Half the band supported the pacifist line and half supported direct and if necessary violent action. It was a confusing time for us, and I think a lot of our records show that, inadvertently". This led to introspection within the band, with some members becoming embittered and losing sight of their essentially positive stance. Reflecting this debate, the next release under the Crass name was Acts of Love: classical-music structures 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".
Another Crass during the Falklands War and agree that Europe would be a target for nuclear weapons in a conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Copies were leaked to the press via a Dutch news organization during the 1983 general election campaign. The U.S. State Department and British Government believed the tape to be propaganda produced by the KGB as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle and The Sunday Times. Although the tape was produced anonymously, The Observer linked the tape with the band. Previously classified government documents made public in January 2014 under the UK's 'Thirty Year Rule' reveal that the prime minister was personally aware of the tape and had discussed it with her cabinet.
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 well and operating together, finally took its toll. On 7 July 1984, the band played a benefit gig at striking miners, and on the return trip guitarist N. A. Palmer announced that he intended to leave the group. This confirmed Crass's previous aim to quit in 1984, and the band split up.
The group'srelease as Crass was the "Ten Notes on a Summer's Day" 12" single in 1986. Crass Records was closed down in 1992 - itsrelease was Christ's Reality Asylum, a 90-minute cassette of Penny Rimbaud reading the essay he had written in early 1977 that gave him the impetus to form Crass.
In November 2002 several former members arranged Your Country Needs You, a concert of "voices in opposition to war", as the Crass Collective. At Queen Elizabeth Hall on London's South Bank, Your Country Needs You included Benjamin Britten's War Requiem and performances by Goldblade, Fun-Da-Mental, Ian MacKaye and Pete Wright's post-Crass project, Judas 2. In October 2003 the Crass Collective changed their name to Crass Agenda, with Rimbaud, Libertine and Vaucher working with Matt Black of Coldcut and jazz musicians such as Julian Siegel and Kate Shortt. In 2004 Crass Agenda spearheaded a campaign to save the Vortex Jazz Club in Stoke Newington, north London where they regularly played. In June 2005 Crass Agenda was declared to be "no more", changing its name to the "more pertinent" Last Amendment. After a five-year hiatus, Last Amendment performed at the Vortex in June 2012. Rimbaud has also performed and recorded with Japanther and the Charlatans. A "new" Crass track a remix of 1982's "Major General Despair" with new lyrics, "The Unelected President", is available.
On 24 and 25 November 2007, Steve Ignorantperformed Crass' Shepherd's Bush Empire with a band of "selected guests". Other members of Crass were non involved in these concerts. Initially Rimbaud refused Ignorant permission to perform Crass songs he had written, but later changed his mind: "I acknowledge and respect Steve's right to do this, but I do regard it as a betrayal of the Crass ethos". Ignorant had a different view: "I don't have to justify what I do...Plus, most of the lyrics are still applicable today. And remember that three-letter word, 'fun'?"