It seems sadly ironic that in a week where we lost a truly inspirational and confrontational female spirit in Poly Styrene, we should also pay witness to the rise of Kate Middleton whose anorexic body image and ludicrous, farcical, fictional life-goal, i.e. marrying a Prince, could not send out a more risible and belittling message to young British women. So with that in mind, I felt it only right that we should address the issue of the lack of positive role models for young women within music or indeed culture itself these days, and ask 'Where have all the strong feminist Pop/Rock icons gone?"
Looking back at the ghastly, sexist, misogynist 1970s, it seems only right that, from the original explosion of Punk, strong independent women would arise who simply weren't going to take any of the bullshit dished out by the media, the advertisers and the entertainment industry any more. Women like Poly, Ari Up, Siouxsie Sioux and Pauline Murray (from Penetration) were too much for some to handle, tackling the male dominated media without having to 'glam-up' to do so. But if Punk gave Women a head start, it was Post-Punk where we would find true Feminist ideals again, not sugar-coated in a layer of tawdry make-up, but drenched in anger, vitriol, piss and vinegar!
The Post-Punk era gave us some of Feminist-Pop's greatest voices; from Lesley Woods of Griff's beloved Au Pairs, Julz Sale of The Delta 5, Eve Libertine and Joy De Vivre from Crass, Honey Bane from The Fatal Microbes, Vi Subversa of the Poison Girls, Zillah from Rubella Ballet, Annie Anxiety, and of course Linder Sterling from Ludus who, it should be noted, was wearing dresses comprised of rotten meat and chicken heads before Lady Gaga was even born, and for far more salient reasons.
You could also throw into the mix Punk singers like Beki Bondage (of Vice Squad) and George Cheex (from Action Pact) as examples of strong female singers not pandering to the Boys Own mentality that hung around rock music like the stink of the Rolling Stones dressing room.
The 1980s, that horrid Me-Generation of Big Hair, False Smiles and Yuppies, gave us precious little as the original Punk and Post Punk bands faded. There was Alison Statton of Young Marble Giants and Weekend, and Jayne Casey of Pink Military/Pink Industry (and allegedly once Morrissey's fiancee....no, seriously!), and of course there was Kim Gordon (of Sonic Youth) over in the US.
But it would be in the cultural wasteland that we now call the 1990s that Radical Feminist ideologies would arise. Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the world of Riot Grrrl!
Sure, the Riot Grrrl movement was sadly under-represented in the UK, but what we had was more than enough. The mighty Huggy Bear genuinely frightened people, for the first time since the Punks had crept on to Top Of The Pops. Some more right-wing music papers simply didn't even cover them, many buried their heads in the sand and tried to assure it was Grunge and Brit-Pop that we wanted. Oh no it wasn't!
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised they tell us, but on dreadful Scum-athon TV show 'The Word' we saw the nearest thing to it as Huggy Bear ran through 'Her Jazz' to a befuddled and bewildered audience. It was almost TOO good, it was almost TOO powerful. Things reached an apogee when, after a sleazily sexist article, a member of the Huggy Bear entourage jumped from the crowd and slapped host Terry Christian's smug face. If you see the clip, watch as a startled Christian lashes out with his foot to try and kick her. (Sadly the video clip has now been removed from Youtube!!)
Huggy Bear were GENUINELY exciting in an era of bland faceless mediocrity, but apart from friends Blood Sausage, the Riot Grrrl movement didn't have much of a voice over here. In America, however, Riot Grrrl became a phenomenon with bands like Bikini Kill, Heavens To Betsy, Bratmobile, Slant 6, Babes In Toyland, Cheesecake, Excuse 17 and Team Dresch to name but a few. Some of my friends (though not Griff and Ray, I should point out) HATED the whole Riot Grrrl thing, but we loved it. In an era before the Internet, the whole cut-and-paste, fanzine culture, DIY ethic coupled with some of the spikiest, most scattershot music imaginable was a pure and honest thrill at a time of utter complacency.
The decade would end with the Spice Girls proclaiming 'Girl Power'.....but that was a decidedly Thatcherite brand of so-called 'Girl Power' and should be swept away into the nearest litter bin.
The 2000s saw ex-members of now defunct Riot Grrrl bands continue the cause; Kathleen Hannah of Bikini Kill now made music as Le Tigre and Julie Ruin, while members of Excuse 17 and Heavens To Betsy became Sleater-Kinney, and Kat Bjelland of Babes In Toyland continued as Katastrophy Wife. Britain, however, became rather barren on the Feminist Pop front, sadly.
(Sleater-Kinney above) The rise of dreadful TV Talent Shows and Reality TV guaranteeing microcelebrity has once again brainwashed the masses. Why make a splash and rock the boat when you can make yourself financially safe for a few minutes of televisual ridicule. It's horrific. The ideal British Woman now seems to be a grotesque hybrid of Katie Price and Kate Middleton; a pornographicised caricature with no life goals other than sitting around on their pampered arses, unaware of the dangers of their own objectification. Piffle and Poppycock my friends! Yesterday the three of us ~Streetlampers~ found ourselves questioning where the new Feminist Pop/Rock icons were. Lady Gaga? Katie Perry?? Madonna??? Do us a favour!! Face it, Madonna may be held up as some Feminist icon but this is a woman who promoted and created objectified pornography. Yeah, right on Sister! Sadly we couldn't come up with too many of our own; Shrag and Vile Vile Creatures were about it, although there is a Manchester band called (hooker) who I'm very fond of and who do seem to be blazing a Feminist trail....but that's it! Unless, of course, you can tell us differently!
That is the whole point of this Blog. Away from our usual smug, we-know-everything twattery, we hope we are proven wrong here. We really hope that readers will get in touch and tell us of some Radical Feminist bands that we are unaware of. Hell, we even hope some of the said bands will get in touch so we can write about them and enjoy their music. Please prove us wrong, Friends!
"How can you ban language? How can you suppress someone's opinions just because you don't share them?"
Thus spake John Lydon on one of those endless list TV shows, this time on banned records, as he discussed the convenient removal of his band's single 'God Save The Queen' from the top of the charts in the Queen's Jubilee week. But it's always easy to castrate artists who are outspoken and whose views upset the moral guardians that oversee our every movement, and under Thatcher's jackboot many who spoke out in the 1980s found their tongues cut or found themselves facing arrest. How dare we speak out! How dare we voice our opinions! And today we are here to look at Conflict and how one of their songs became a criminal offence. Aaaahhhh....don't you just long for the good old days...I Love The 1980s indeed! Conflict started out on Crass Records releasing 'The House That Man Built' e.p before branching out and forming their own Mortarhate Records upon which they would release all further records. Their full length debut album included a track called 'Meat Means Murder' a full two years before The Smiths would take a mightily similar title into the British charts.
Conflict's approach to music was quite different from that of their friends Crass, in that where Crass would apply a more minimalist approach to their music to let the lyrics be heard, Conflict applied far more bluster as though they were REALLY ramming the message home, taking NO prisoners. When Crass split in 1984 vocalist Steve Ignorant would go on to join forces with Conflict, adding a second voice to that of Colin Jerwood, as the lyrics became more frantic and more impassioned. In 1986, as Thatcher's reign ground agonisingly on into its 7th year, Conflict released their ultimate statement 'The Ungovernable Force'; housed in a provocative sleeve showing a close-up of an armed riot police officer, it was a complete statement of their political and aesthetic beliefs. Conflict had so much to say about the state of Britain, and its status as America's lapdog, that there are almost too many words on the album. Take for instance 'Force Or Service' and the moment at about 43 seconds in when Steve Ignorant (acting as the voice of a British Police Chief) proclaims: "The CND are communists, we're sick of petty pacifists, Greenham dykes, Trotskyites, Greenpeace and the rest of it Rioters, muggers, looters, shooters, niggers are the cause of it Repatriation for the nation, the simple way to deal with shit Rastas, punks, mods and hippies, students, queers and dirty pakis Demanding more than nothing less, but never want to work for it Miners, printers, paddies, pickets, givin' it all the demo bit We'll smash them back with our attack, because we're the guys to deal with it"
Now, I dare you to try and follow those lyrics while listening to the track. How does he fit all those words in?
But the album would also contain Conflict's most notorious moment, the track 'This Is The A.L.F", a song whose entire lyric gives both suggestion and information about how you, the listener, can fuck up all those who inflict pain and suffering upon animals in the name of health and beauty. This was deemed a step too far by the governing powers and the song was treated as a terrorist statement, meaning any reproduction of the lyrics, or any performance of the song was breaking the law. A song! An act of terrorism! Give me a fucking break!! Given that two thirds of the ~Streetlamp~ team are borderline vegans and passionate animal rights supporters, and have been for over a quarter of a century, and given that we are at present in fighting mood, we reproduce the lyrics here for you now:
"What does Direct Action Mean?
It means that you are no longer prepared to sit back and allow terrible, cruel things to happen. The camerman in Ethiopia took direct action, he filmed the worst disaster that has ever happened to human beings. He realised it was too enormous a problem to handle himself - so he took the films home in the hope other people would help. They did. Are you prepared to sit back any longer? Direct action in animal rights means causing economic damage to those who abuse and make profits from exploitation. START!
It's possible to do things alone, slash tyres, glue up locks, butchers, burger bars, the furriers, smash windows, bankrupt the lot. Throw paint over shops and houses. Paint stripper works great on cars. Chewing gum sticks well to fur coats. A seized engine just won't start, sand in the petrol tank means that delivery's going nowhere. When the new death shop opens up make sure you're the first person to be there. If the circus comes to town remember what goes up must come down. Stop contributing to the abuse yourself - don't eat meat, don't buy leather. Buy non-animal tested make up, herbal soap and shampoo's better.
Try and form a group of people that you know that you can trust and plan ambitious direct action, sometimes risky but a must. Only when you have animal liberation will we obtain human freedom, when the last vivisectionist's blade is snapped. It will be that one step nearer to peace. Direct action in the animal movement is sussed and strong, and our final goal is not far off.
Animal lovers, vandals, hooligans, cranks; recognise the labels? They say we don't care about human beings. We say all sentient beings, animal or human have the right to live, free from pain, torture and suffering. They say because we are human and speak the same, we matter more. Is our pain and suffering any greater or lesser than that of animals? Human v. animal rights is as much a prejudice as black v. white or the Nazis versus the Jews an affront to our freedom.
Vivisection is a violation of human beings, the same as it is for animals. We have a chemical world built on a pile of drugs to thanks for their experiments. Drugs are designed for profit, manufactured to suppress symptoms. Human freedom, animal rights. It's one struggle, one fight. When animal abuse is stopped then human abuse will soon stop also, an attitude of mind. "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind". Start by protecting the weak, the defenceless, animals, the sick, the disabled. Compassion and emotion are our most important safety values. If we lose them, then 'we lose' the vitality of life itself. Emotional? Hooligans? Cranks?...."
The song would prove to be detrimental to the existence of Conflict in its original guise as live shows were constantly under threat and the band's every movement surveyed with ruthless scrutiny. The world, especially Britain, needed bands like Conflict then, and we need them now. Under Major and Blair, Britain sat back on its fat complacent arse and let the world get into the state it has now. The student protests at the tail end of last year showed that a swing back to Direct Action is on the cards. Get ready to do your bit! For more information about the Animal Liberation Front please check out their website, and do everything you can to help them. They are a truly wonderful cause. ~Gordon~
A Selection Of Seasonal Songs In The ~Streetlamp~ Stylee! If, back on Christmas Eve last year, you had said to me that the one band I would re-connect with to the point of obsession in 2010 would be Crass, I would either have punched you or suggested that you immediately seek psychological assistance. For, as I have already explained at great length in my original Crass Blog, this was a band that Griff and I not only hated but couldn't even explain why we ever liked them in the first place. Often we would lament the wasted hours we spent listening to Crass when we could have been listening to 'What's Going On', 'After The Goldrush' or 'Nebraska'. You really have to understand just how much we REALLY hated them between 1985 and the beginning of this year....but that hatred only existed because we had once been SO passionate about them....their music, their politics and their stance. It was back in the early Summer of 2010 that, as Griff and I at the height of our obsession with 'The Flats' by Mariel McCormack and Marie O'Hara/Botched Fairytale, sat trawling their Myspace page for influences etc and were surprised to see that they listed Crass as one of their Top 10. This led to a discussion about how Crass could be a major influence on a lot of new artists who weren't around when Crass released their original records. Griff practically bullied me into considering writing a Blog on Crass but I remained sceptical. Once I started researching and writing the piece, it all fell into place. It became my favourite piece of my own writing and the one Blog I am most proud of. Yep, even ahead of my Smiths piece.
One of the reasons that Crass has become so important to us again is not just the music, but because the political landscape has changed again. This is probably one of the reasons that Crass had become so archaic in the first place. Cosy, complacent, bland governments(Major, Blair, Brown) failed to spark the wrath that Thatcher's government had. Suddenly in 2010 we were presented with a government that the British public had NOT voted for, and who proceeded to make a bit of a Gareth Hunt of everything; students rioting because of massively increased tuition fees(which the Lib Dems said wouldn't happen), massive cuts in public spending, family allowances slashed, 12 year old boys arrested for protesting via Facebook against the closure of their Youth Club(Cameron's pre-Election rhetoric claimed that society needed Youth Clubs, but once in power began shutting them down....Yeah, arrest those pesky 12 year olds Dave, they might grow up to be Socialists). We also face the unacceptable censoring of the Internet(see Griff's Blogs on Wikileaks), as well as Murdoch's biased News corporation indoctrinating the British Public how to vote, plus huge wastes of public money like the London Olympics and TWO Royal weddings coming up. It really is like 1980 all over again! Is it any wonder we feel the fire in the belly that Crass gave us all those years ago? It's not that we tired of them, we just saw them as redundant as the political system in Britain bored itself to death.
So, on this snow covered Christmas Eve, I've chosen Crass(my band of the year) to serenade us into the Festivities. I should point out to anyone unfamiliar with Crass that two tracks below(both sides of their 'Merry Crassmas' single) is totally unlike the rest of their output. It was a bit of a novelty single, released when those awful 'Stars On 45' records were all the rage. This was a medley of Crass's most infamous tracks played in jaunty fashion upon a cheap Casio keyboard. And Santa is on hand too, to bid you 'Seasons Greetings'.
There's very little left for me to say now, but rest assured that here at the ~Streetlamp~, tonight we're gonna party like it's 1981!! Merry Crassmas Everybody!
~Gordon~
PS: If you haven't already done so, please check out our Festive Top Thirty!
It's interesting to read you write in the first paragraph about how our love for Crass turned to hate for a while.I think you've hit the nail squarely on the head when you say that it was precisely because we were so overwhelmingly passionate about them that this was the natural corollary; as best summed up by the famous Elie Wiesel quote"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference".
"Same old stuff// You've heard it all before// Crass being crass..." You may think that here at Streetlamp HQ we swan around in smoking jackets, sipping the finest Chardonnay, watching Bulgarian arthouse movies and trawling the Internet for Twee Pop and Folktronica....and tragically, you'd be pretty spot on. BUT....there was a time when we were prepared to get our hands dirty. Just like the shellshocked dead-eyes who returned from the Somme, we rarely speak of our time in the later stages of the Punk Wars....but we were there, and we've kept our silence....till now! For you see it's time for us to tell you about Crass, and Crass are a band who TOTALLY polarise people. You don't just like or dislike them, you either bought in totally to their ethos, their ideals, their way of life, their dark, uncomfortable, scary world view....or you listened to Sting!
It's not often that Griff and I admit to being wrong about anything to do with music, and we'd certainly never say it out loud, but we WERE wrong about Crass. Not just once...but TWICE! How so? Come with us on a journey into a black and white world of anarcho-punk and the small matter of the end of the world. Folktronica and Field Mice fans be warned....rudeness will most definitely abound!
"Said they only wanted well behaved boys// Do they think guitars and microphones are just fucking toys?// Fuck'em, determined to make my stand// Against what I feel is wrong with this land"
My first encounter with Crass was through Griff. He gave me a tape of himself accompanied by drums 'singing' Crass's 'Do They Owe Us A Living' from their debut 12" 'The Feeding Of The 5000'. Crass had emerged at the same time as The Sex Pistols and The Clash but had refused to sign up to any corporate record label. Many called them old hippies jumping on the Punk bandwagon, but in truth they were more university drop-outs who took John Lennon a little too seriously, and fed off the energy of Punk to deliver their anti-war, anti-government, anti-meat eating, anarchist message. They lived in an artistic community called Dial House in Epping, near Essex, dressed in black militaristic clothes, eschewed elaborate stage lighting for basic 40watt bulbs, and bedecked their stage in flags bearing slogans such as "Fight War Not Wars, Destroy Power Not People" and the Crass logo. Crass almost immediately began to criticise their fellow punks for selling out to the big record labels, and by waiting till they could press up their own records, their debut didn't arrive until the Winter of 1978. But, by almost constant gigging, they had built up a formidable following. Their opening salvo, a 7" single called 'Reality Asylum' was also given to me by Griff, and it proved a shattering and uncomfortable listen. As far removed from the music of Punk as it is possible to get(but force-fed by the energy of Punk)'Reality Asylum' is a disturbing sound-collage over which female vocalist Eve Libertine narrates a poem/rant decrying the use of Jesus Christ a tool to oppress women and keep the masses in line through the power of guilt. Uneasy listening indeed, but also quite far removed from Crass's usual fare.
"Do you get a buzz when you reminisce?//"Too much man, it was better than this"//I don't want a relativity talk//If that's the bus ride, I'd think I'd rather walk".
'The Feeding Of The 5000' and it's almost immediate follow up 'The Stations Of The Crass' pretty much set out the blueprint for Crass's oeuvre; from the black and white sleeves designed by Gee Vaucher, to main vocalist Steve Ignorant(Steve Williams) snarling, profanity-drenched lyrics, to the usual subjects like 'the system', the suppression and oppression of women, right-wing thuggery, media brainwashing, the nuclear arms race and the imminent destruction of the planet. Both albums sold in massive quantities, as did brilliant accompanying singles like 'Bloody Revolutions', 'Nagasaki Nightmare' and 'Big A Little A'.By this time Crass had set up their own record company, putting out releases by Poison Girls, Conflict, Flux Of Pink Indians, Rudimentary Peni, The Mob and Zoundz, to name a few.
Debunking The Myths Of Crass#1: Crass's music is basically Punk-by-numbers! Not so; for me, Punk-by-numbers is the rubbish churned out by The Exploited, GBH, Discharge, Chaotic Dischord and Disorder etc. What Crass tended to play was more Post-Punk, often the bass would form the basis of the 'melody' and one guitar would form some sort of backdrop while the other would become almost a percussive instrument.Sometimes Crass would show that they really COULD play and would pepper their albums with piano ballads, avant-garde soundscapes, and acoustic folk weirdness.
"They sell us love as divinity// When it's only a social obscenity//Underneath we're all lovable!" In 1981 Crass released what is my own favourite record of theirs, 'Penis Envy'. On this album ALL vocals were delivered by the two female vocalists, Eve Libertine and Joy De Vivre, and the album is pretty much an attack on the phalocentric media and it's depictions of women as nothing more than goddesses, mothers and whores. It contains some of my favourite Crass songs of all time such as 'Berkertex Bribe', 'Health Surface', 'Where Next Columbus?' and 'Bata Motel'. On some of these tracks the playing seems to have stepped up a gear; check out the Calypso introduction of 'Berkertex Bribe' or the eerie synthesizer on 'What The Fuck?'.
Second pressings of the album came with a new final track, 'Our Wedding'; this was an infamous prank played by Crass on a teen girl magazine called 'Loving'. Calling themselves Creative Recording And Sound Services they gave away a flexi-disc ('Our Wedding') with the magazine. The song features a sweet synthpop backing over which Joy delivers a simpering vocal parodying a young Bride promising to be forever true whilst all the while knowing her new Husband will soon be back out on the pull. Trust me, this could have been a chart hit!
"Good old Crass// Our make-believe secret society// Our bland passport to perversity// They're nothing but a caricature....and a joke!" Crass's next statement of intent was their own 'White Album'; a double set called 'Christ - The Album'. Two full albums, a poster and a book entitled 'A Series Of Shock Slogans and Mindless Token Tantrums' all housed in a jet black cardboard box sleeve which resembled the monolith in '2001: A Space Odyssey'. This was seen by many as Crass's ultimate statement, an unrelenting, pitch-black slamming of the world in general. The problem for Crass however was that the album had taken over a year to record, mix and then produce in full, during which time Thatcher had instigated a 'war' against Argentina over sovereignty of the Falkland Islands in a bid to sweep back to power in the following year's General Election. By the time 'Christ - The Album' was released it was already seen as out of step and redundant. This forced Crass to reassess their whole recording strategy. Records would be released more immediately now, like news bulletins.All that aside, 'Christ - The Album' is still regarded as their masterpiece, containing many favourites like 'Rival Tribal Rebels Revel', 'It's The Greatest Working Class Ripoff'(an attack on Garry Bushell's racist OI! movement), 'Major General Despair', plus a couple of left-field avant-garde pieces, 'Sentiment (White Feathers)' and 'Birth Control 'n' Rock 'n' Roll'. And in 'Reality Whitewash' there was ALMOST a commercial sounding 'rock' song, an excellent downbeat and melancholic track dealing with a young wife chained to the kitchen while her spouse drives up and down looking for women, or being seduced by the models on the billboards.
Debunking The Myths Of Crass #2:They are a bunch of humourless tossers! Again, not true. This criticism seems to stem from their own opening lyric on 'Christ - The Album'; "Same old stuff, you've heard it all before// Crass being crass about the system or is it war?// We ain't got no humour// We don't know how to laugh// If you don't fucking like it...fucking tough!". There is a lot of humour in Crass, from the 'Our Wedding' flexi to singles like 'Merry Crassmass' and 'Whodunnit?'(on shit-brown vinyl), from tracks like 'The Smelliest Arse' and 'Salt & Pepper' to Gee Vauche's surreal artwork. If there hadn't been any humour they'd have been practically unlistenable!
"If it's a fight they want, it's beginning// Throughout history, we've been expected to sing their tired song// But now it's our turn to lead the singing..." Almost as a direct response to missing such a target as the Falklands Conflict, Crass spent the rest of 1982 and all of 1983 singing about nothing else; 'Sheepfarming In The Falklands', 'Gotcha!', 'How Does It Feel To Be The Mother Of Thousand Dead?' and virtually all of their next album, 'Yes Sir, I Will'. 'Yes Sir, I Will' was their most extreme gesture to date, the album is practically one huge song stretched over two sides...this tested even their most loyal fans. I'm pretty sure I've only played it in it's entirety about three times.
"Surface agreements, statements of fact, trying to prove we can do it//But sometimes when I'm alone like this I wonder just who can see through it". Crass always said they would cease in 1984....and they did. One more experimental album, '10 Notes On A Summer's Day' and a final single 'You're Already Dead'. This last single, excepting the shouty sweary opening 30 seconds, was their most commercial song to date. Over a polished sound Steve Ignorant pretty much raps the lyrics. The song is practically saying "We've tried all we can, but we've as good as failed", the lyrics bear this out;"By letting it happen without a fight// You're already dead, You're already dead!" and "Four hundred thousand people marched for CND//They're already dead, They're already dead!". On the last verse of the last Crass song Steve practically shrugs his shoulders and gives in, "In a world where the people can't make it//They've simply got to learn to break it// And if the wealthy aren't prepared to shake it...//O.K., we'll simply have to take it...". And that was it!
Steve Ignorant would go on to join label-mates Conflict, whilst Crass founder and drummer Penny Rimbaud wrote and recorded spoken word and poetry albums, almost always voiced by Eve Libertine.
For me, Crass were a sorbet(I'm guessing the first time they've ever been described as such) between Adam & The Ants and The Smiths; cleansing the palate after the pantomimic fantasies of Adam before the emotional songs-as-lifeblood of Morrissey. Pretty soon Griff and I turned our backs completely on Crass. We began to openly criticise them, to admit we had been wrong. We spoke angrily of their awful music and their dodgy ideologies, we bemoaned all those teenage hours spent listening to their appalling drivel when we could have been listening to far better music. Griff even once suggested we burn all their records as a grand statement, we weren't going to listen to them again anyway!Then, we eventually just stopped acknowledging them altogether. We would never speak of them, we became like the battle scarred of Paschendale, never alluding to what we had seen or heard....Crass no longer existed to us. For the next 20 years or so we would remember Crass only through gritted teeth and clenched fists.
The change back happened slowly. A few years ago I bought Rough Trade's 'Indiepop' collection CD which came with a booklet with stories and essays by such Indiepop players as Stephen Pastel, Everett True and Matt & Claire from Sarah Records. Most of the stories came from main compiler Sean Forbes though, and in his stories of Tallulah Gosh, The Popguns, Modesty Blaize and Lush etc, he mentioned over and over again that his favourite band of all time was Crass. Huh?? How can that be? How can anyone possibly like Sarah Records and Twee Pop AND like Crass? That doesn't work! That cannot be right! Then it dawned on us....of course it was right! It was us who had been wrong!
And as the dark clouds of the Cameron/Clegg Utopia descend upon us with it's twin leaders looking like a pair of Uberstumpenfuhrers from the Hitler Youth, with un-reality TV brainwashing the huddled masses, with glamour models and football stars treated like royalty, with huge spending cuts in the NHS whilst money is poured into weapons and surveillance equipment, with Murdoch's media empire educating the populace of Britain which way to vote, with a ghostly terrorist enemy being used to keep the public in line....the time has never been more ripe for Crass.In a previous Blog I remarked that tragically The Beatles aren't coming to save us this time, and neither are Crass....BUT, to the kids armed with guitars and computer software, they may not become the new Beatles but they CAN become the new Crass. Already we've seen Botched Fairytale claim Crass as an infuence and their songs already grasp the nettle, and as Griff wrote in his previous Blog, female post-punk bands are on the rise....we need the new Crass NOW. Looking at you all, I know one thing...we CAN win! I want you to sense you're own strength....go back to your constituences and prepare for Pop Music! Crass are dead! Long live Crass!
"The rich are in their bunker, the poor are at the gate//Use our head to avoid confrontation// Our love to avoid exploitation// If the uniforms choose to stay//They'll have to learn to get out of the fucking way!" ~Gordon~
And to finish off, perhaps their greatest statement: 'Bloody Revolutions'
"The truth of revolution, Brother....is Year Zero!"
Crass Personel 1977-1984: Penny Rimbaud, Steve Ignorant, Eve Libertine, Joy De Vivre, Phil Free, N A Plamer, Pete Wright, Gee Vaucher, Mick Dufield
