At last and by popular demand -kinda! - the Crass thread! Your chance to rate their music, influence and politics!

oh fuck off they were absolute cunts

1/10 for politics.
5/10 for music.

"Banned from the Roxy" is simultaneously one of the worst and one of the best rock songs ever written. It starts with them giving out about not being allowed to play a venue and a verse and a chorus later it's onto "My Lai, Hiroshima know what I mean?".

I used to love crass when I was younger though nowadays the whole preachy-punk thing pisses me off.
Dial House also pissed me off a few years ago whn they were putting on a compost toilet building workshop that cost a couple of hundred quid for the course.
I'm not old enough to know first hand about crass but i know a few folk who were @narcho-punks back in the early 80's who think crass were tossers.
That said "Bloody Revolutions" is a great tune.

that's one of the two songs of theirs i like (the other is that "big A little A" song).

because of that song, i went out on a limb and got that album with that one... "feeding the such and such" whatever it was. that really wore me down - occasionally they have witty lyrics here and there, but *every* song on the album sounds virtually the same as "do they owe us a living," almost without break, except the couple times they stop for angry feminist ranting. ugh.

Yeah "Feeding of the 5000" - classic title and album and interesting "artwork" .

Actually i like the musical continuity (as you didn't refer to it as ) like i say you know where you are with Crass. The feminist ranting ( dara.. ) was a bit of a departure for them when they went for the female only vox on "Penis Envy" - got mixed reviews from the fans. I liked it of course and liked the lyrics a lot but still prefer prolly the male ranty bits.

Yeah Big A is awesome - that chorus of lil kids singing is awesome -

"Big A Little A bouncing b
The system might have got you but it won't get me.."

Really what's not to love..??

Love

LW XX

They were a healthy antidote to the Sex Pistols faux-nihilism They were capable of brilliant agitation, I don't think a few thousand pamplets could have created the stir that the first release of "how does it feel to be mother of a thousand dead?" achived. Somehow though they allways struck me as humorless and preachy. I really wanted to like them and even owned a couple of their records at one point and quite like "Acts of Love" and one or two individual songs (I've been know to go about singing "of course they fuckin do!" at odd moments).

im old enough to remember the furore they caused when the whole bandwagon got rolling and it was exciting, it got people interested in politics that probably didnt give a fuck. met a few of some of these anarcho people, not crass but flux, alternative and annie anxiety they really were a bunch of po faced miserable bastards!! love the music tho and still do.

Well they were a bunch of middle class hippies after all.
Zounds were/are far better, they could actually play their instruments and everything!

Don't think much to Crass.

But I quite like the Poison Girls.

Spill the beans mr lover lover (ehem).

Persons unknown (top tune), Flux blew crass out of the water, zounds aren't to bad either, nothing like a trip down memory lane.

Great music, great vision, loads of passion. Talking complete shite most of the time but doing it in a way that appealed to a lot of people, kinda like crimethinc do now.

I still have the entire crass discography and listen to it every now and then, I've given away all of my shitty crust records and the 'genre' crass spawned was pure shite but I still have time for them.

I would still agree with most of this article though - http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/awg/awg_thatcher1.html#lifestyle
And of course spit on people who have crass tattoos.

I was about to re-register to flame myself.

Is that the same department that won't let Jack have a PlayStation?

first real opening for me into thinking aout anarchy beyond the shallow pistols and clash (although still really liked their music). at the time 79-84 was in mid teens and found the stuff really challenging. RE teacher, of all people had the words to bloody revolution on her wall - later to be seen in my bedroom.

can't say that i understood all that they said (not just because of the way they sang) but totally tapped into the raw energy and the need to do something.

easy now to look back and see that some of the music was really bad and the ideas not holding together. but in terms of creative spaces to connect with a bunch of people who would have very little access to these ideas, bloody priceless. loved the cheap reacords, free/cheap gigs, films shows, even the CRASS badge (no tattoo youll be happy to hear guy)

they did get a stack of bad press and they did take them selve too seriously - just read last night from The Story of Crass- george berger 'we were too serious' say Penny 'And because I think people are threatened by commitment because it actually challenges their own commitment......we injected the politics into punk and took the fun out of it'. well to be honest not for a lot of those who listened, they were just part of the cocktail

seriously though without analysing every word and action that they said at the time they (and posion girls, flux...) were a world apart. may have been as much about alternative youth culture than radical poltics, but for me they had a good go at bringing the both together