{"id":1845,"date":"2015-06-05T18:59:47","date_gmt":"2015-06-05T17:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eyeplug.net\/magazine\/?p=1845"},"modified":"2011-06-09T14:50:47","modified_gmt":"2011-06-09T14:50:47","slug":"the-crassical-collection-the-feeding-of-the-5000-%e2%80%93-crass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/the-crassical-collection-the-feeding-of-the-5000-%e2%80%93-crass\/","title":{"rendered":"The Crassical Collection: The Feeding of the 5000 \u2013 Crass"},"content":{"rendered":"
This entry is part 4 of 5 in the series Anarchive<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>

International \u00a0Anthems<\/strong><\/p>\n

Do they think guitars and microphones are just fucking toys? <\/em><\/p>\n

In terms of punk rock\u2019s political legacy, it\u2019s difficult to overstate the primacy of Crass. Whereas the class of \u201976 adopted a received petit bourgeois version of anarchism as a fashion accessory, the Epping Forest collective and fellow travellers such as the Poison Girls established a far more considered reading of the ideology, in far harsher times, as Thatcher\u2019s clampdown began to coalesce.<\/p>\n

What followed has been well documented \u2013 tens of thousands bought Crass’ output, read the sleeve notes, and thought about politics in a way that could never have been facilitated by The Clash\u2019s confused mix\u2019n\u2019match dogmatism and the thousand vague calls to rebellion from the reductive copyists that followed in their wake. Many of those were inspired to re-assess their lives, form bands, start their own labels, or fanzines, or take direct action via protest. Crass supported new bands, welcomed hundreds of visitors into their home, contributed to centres where people could meet and exchange ideas, and rattled the establishment to the degree that questions were asked about the band in Parliament, and the collective found itself under constant state surveillance. The eyes of a generation were opened.<\/p>\n

Crass engaged, inspired and polarised in equal measure. For every individual who subsequently questioned the way in which their lives were being controlled, there was another \u2013 often so affronted by the nerve<\/em> of being encouraged to think for themselves \u2013 who would erupt into a blind rage at the very sound of \u2018Reality Asylum\u2019 or \u2018Shaved Women\u2019. Likewise, careerist hacks with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo aimed weekly brickbats at the group from the pages of NME<\/em> or Sounds<\/em>. The likes of Parsons and Bushell (both soon to be lured by the gaping coffers of The Daily Telegraph<\/em> and The Sun<\/em> respectively) sought to caricature the group as humourless, mung bean munching hippies, bent on imposing an ascetic regime of po-faced, counter-intuitive \u2018anarchism\u2019 on us all.<\/p>\n

Nothing could have been further from the truth. To a large degree, Crass\u2019 use of \u2018anarchy\u2019 was simply a means of distancing the group from being tarred with any specific dogma. \u2018I don\u2019t think that we were particularly anarchist,\u2019 explains Steve Ignorant. \u2018But because we were being courted by the left wing \u2013 by the SWP, and by the NF at that time, people were saying, \u2018Well, you dress in black and you wear sort of Nazi-looking things\u2019 and we thought that the only way that we could be unpolitical was to be anarchists, and put an \u2018A\u2019 in a circle and it sort of built up from there.\u2019 As Penny Rimbaud explained in his sleeve notes recounting Crass\u2019 origins and early development, \u2018Having already had a brush with the British establishment, we then got a charming letter from an organisation called the \u2018Sicilian Americans\u2019 who thought that they ought to let us know that they were aware of \u2018Asylum\u2019 … They continued by stating that \u201cwe believe that we should all work together to live in harmony, don\u2019t you?\u201d Adding, \u201cIt\u2019s an offer you shouldn\u2019t refuse.\u201d It was the first, and certainly not the last, of missives from organisations left, right, and centre seeking either to silence, or co-opt us.\u2019<\/p>\n

The effect of Crass\u2019 determination to distance themselves from the established political and radical orthodoxy quickly ensured that they accrued detractors on all sides. At the same time, the group\u2019s initial burst of releases sold (at less than cost in the case of \u2018Reality Asylum\u2019) in such quantities that they quickly found that they had a burgeoning cottage industry on their hands. People were taking notice, considering the lyrical content and informative sleeve notes, and thinking about the issues therein. Of course, there were those who bought into the received idea of what Crass were all about and followed the group on that misguided basis, or those who saw anarchism as a fundamentalist credo with its own set of strictures, but then there\u2019s always someone who gets a Sid Vicious tattoo.<\/p>\n

For seven years, Crass relentlessly ploughed their own unique furrow. They were largely ignored by the mainstream media, excluded from the record charts, and seldom heard on the radio. This, in turn, led to a revitalisation of the sagging fanzine culture as hundreds of new DIY publications were produced, each seemingly carrying an interview with Crass. On the rare occasions that the band did receive national coverage, it invariably took the form of hand-wringing outrage at the issues the group were addressing. The series of moral panics that the media set in motion around Crass served to establish the primacy of their message over the band\u2019s music. To a large extent, the Crassical Collection<\/em> (of which, this represents the first instalment of a comprehensive overhaul of Crass\u2019 studio output) appears to be an attempt at correcting that imbalance.<\/p>\n

Aside from a pleasing package that includes a booklet featuring contributions from Ignorant and Rimbaud alongside a fresh presentation of the band\u2019s lyrics, a reproduction of the original Crass Records sleeve, and a selection of demo tracks, the meat of the album is the remastering of the original 18 songs from the 12\u201d disc. This largely takes the form of enhancing the mix\u2019s bottom end. As Steve Ignorant observed, \u2018To me, there was always something missing, some bit of \u201coomph\u201d that I knew we put across live … Just something about it that didn\u2019t quite hit the spot.\u2019 For Steve, Penny and Harvey Birrell\u2019s efforts have been successful, \u2018I thought that it was well worth doing \u2013 the music needed updating and I think it\u2019s got a bit more oomph in it now and the artwork, I think is just great.\u2019<\/p>\n

Mostly, this holds true \u2013 certainly Feeding<\/em> sounds a lot more rounded; \u2018Asylum\u2019 has greater texture, the guitars skitter and chug far more noticeably, and Pete Wright\u2019s pumping bass, at times, takes on a more glutinous, liquid quality than had been previously evident. At times, Penny\u2019s drums seem further down in the mix than is usual \u2013 this is possibly a result of the enhanced bass, which mitigates against the percussive, rattling nature of the original album. However, once one becomes accustomed to the way in which the album has been remastered, subtler aspects of Rimbaud\u2019s playing become more evident \u2013 particularly the overlapping percussive salvos in \u2018Sucks\u2019.<\/p>\n

This specific emphasis on Crass\u2019 music allows the group to be viewed as exemplifying several aspects of post punk \u2013 avant garde<\/em> influences being particularly evident in the musique concrete<\/em> of \u2018Asylum\u2019, \u2018Women\u2019, and \u2018Angels\u2019, while the way in which individual instruments drop out of the mix indicates a clear dub influence. Indeed, Crass\u2019 clearly stated desire to move on from the growing orthodoxy of punk, identifies them as being among the post punk vanguard, rather than marginalised in the anarcho sub-category. In this respect, the remastered album wholly fulfils its brief, enabling a new assessment of Crass\u2019 musical depth.<\/p>\n

The timing of the re-issue is prescient; Steve Ignorant is currently touring many of these songs for the final time, and is discovering \u2013 on a nightly basis \u2013 just how much they mean to so many people. \u2018I\u2019ve just been overwhelmed by the response from the audiences,\u2019 he reveals. \u2018I didn\u2019t think that it was going to be like that<\/em>, I thought there might be a bit of applause, but people have really travelled from far and wide to come and see it and I haven\u2019t seen a negative response yet on email, or Facebook, or whatever and the whole thing\u2019s just been totally overwhelming.\u2019 Elsewhere, David Cameron and his kangaroo cabinet are attempting to enforce a simpleton\u2019s version of the kind of monetarist policies that Thatcher used to divide and rule thirty years ago. Everything comes around again, especially Crass.<\/p>\n

Order the album from Southern Records: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0http:\/\/www.southern.net\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This entry is part 4 of 5 in the series Anarchive<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>

In terms of punk rock\u2019s political legacy, it\u2019s difficult to overstate the primacy of Crass. Whereas the class of \u201976 adopted a received petit bourgeois version of anarchism as a fashion accessory, the Epping Forest collective and fellow travellers such as the Poison Girls established a far more considered reading of the ideology, in far harsher times, as Thatcher\u2019s clampdown began to coalesce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1847,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,74],"tags":[216,151,121,339],"series":[158],"class_list":["post-1845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-punk","category-reviews","tag-crass","tag-dick-porter","tag-eyeplug","tag-feeding-of-the-5000","series-anarchive-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1845"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=1845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}