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Crass were a punk rock band based around Dial House, an anarchist community near Epping in England, and were progenitors of a militant anarcho-pacifism that became pervasive in the punk music scene (see also anarcho-punk). Taking literally the punk manifesto of ‘anyone can do it’, they combined the use of song, film, sound collage, graphics and subversion to launch a sustained and innovative critical broadside against all that they saw as a culture built on foundations of war, violence, religious hypocrisy and blind consumerism.

Crass all but retired from the public eye after becoming a particularly irritating thorn in the side of Mrs. Thatcher's Government during the Falklands War and the Miners Strike. Questions in Parliament led to a round of court battles and what the group describe as harassment that finally took its toll, and the band retreated to Dial House to concentrate their energies elsewhere.

The philosphical and aesthetic influence of Crass on numerous punk bands from the 1980s on cannot be overstated, even if few bands mimicked their often free-form musical style, as evidenced on the album Yes Sir, I Will. Their collage-art black-and-white record sleeves produced by Gee Vaucher themselves became a signature aesthetic model.

Whereas the Sex Pistols' anarchism seemed to be a self-consciously nihilistic prank, Crass's anarchism was more directly linked to the libertarian socialist or communalistic varieties of 20th century political thought.

File:Crassbanner1.jpg

Crass were

Recommended listening

(all released on the Crass record label)

  • The Feeding Of The 5000 (12" single, 1978)
  • Stations Of The Crass (LP, 1979
  • Reality Asylum (7", 1978)
  • Penis Envy (LP, 1981)
  • Christ The Album (LP, 1982)
  • Yes Sir I Will (LP, 1983)
  • Acts Of Love (LP and book, 1985)
  • Best Before 1984 (Retrospective LP compilation, 1986)

Recommended reading

  • A Series Of Shock Slogans And Mindless Token Tantrums (Exitstencil Press, 1982) (originally issued as a pamphlet with the LP 'Christ The Album', much of the text is now published online at http://www.southern.com/southern/label/CRC/text/09438a.html )
  • Shibboleth- My Revolting Life (Penny Rimbaud, 1999, AK Press)
  • The Diamond Signature (Penny Rimbaud, 1999, AK Press)
  • Crass Art And other Post Modern Monsters (Gee Vaucher, 1999, AK Press)
  • International Anthem- 'A Nihilist Newspaper For The Living' issues 1-3 (Exitstencil Press, 1977-81)


See also

Crass tell their story in their own words at;

http://www.southern.com/southern/label/CRC/