Crass - The Argument Against

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What do you like about Punk ? When I got into punk I was just a kid but I loved the clothes, music, colour and don't give a f**k attitude. My idea of women came from people like Gaye Advert, Joan Jett and Siouxsie and as I sat there eating beef burgers and chips for my tea and listening to The Stranglers, life was a peach. I loved the record sleeves and I didn't care whether a band was on a big label or small ... as long as they did the biz that was ok for me. But I was being naive coz music wasn't just music. Music was a means to a political end - a codification of a belief system that others could pick up and slavishly follow from record sleeves and lyric sheets.  Here were the new puritans who criticised everything left right and centre and offered in its place some unfeasible nirvana which if as they promised would be peopled like themselves.
By the time these funsters came punk was already being sidelined. It had run out of steam, and the cry was going up 'Punks not dead' You have to say Crass managed to fracture it more. To  the anything goes, imagination and the colour of punk they gave us black clothes with rigid austere stencilled slogans. To the vibrant record sleeves they gave us... yep more black and white sleeves with yep more stencilled slogans and grim collages.

Religion, meat eaters, marriage, politics, war all received the benefit of their wisdom..... worse than this they spawned imitators who also made our lives misery.

And what did Crass achieve.... fuck all... they preached to the converted with their uncompromising stance and yet for one brief minute had a chance of influencing people when the single Bloody Revolutions was going to be on the TV music programme Top Of The Pops. I wanted it to be on.... out of curiosity.... you know the same sort of thing when you throw an aerosol can into a bonfire just to see if it explodes. And what was the song about ... an 8 minute diatribe in the tradition of Led Zeppelin's Stairway To Heaven against revolutionary Marxists... Wow tell 'em like it is Crass. Another Crass target was religion... ooh pick a hard one. They chose all the white targets that don't fight back... in our multi ethnic society of which they were trying to forge a new society notice they missed out Islam and other cultures coz those cultures don't take kindly to it and tend to respond with equal fanaticism. Or more likely the right on Crass didn't want to be perceived as racist. How can such an overtly political group miss out such a large but integral section of our population ? .... Why .. coz they talked a load of bollocks ! Anarchy and peace my arse!

Crass's Shaved Women ...its a great poster for livening up your bedroom.

From their smash hit 'Bloody Revolutions'

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