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Glmethlnc.: Hurnan sufung, r€du€ad to e commoffiy, now lvlllrble fior your l€lsrne.tirn€ listaning pcasm. (advordeament for the anarcho-punk collective, "Crimethlnc.')

Crass

crumblg

In 1984, after

geven yeerg 9f touring and producing reeercls, the English pun[ rock band Crass broke up, That 9afiie year, Penny

Rimbaud, the band's founder and ene of its vocali5ts, commented "[w]e were no longer convinced that by simPly providlnE what had br.oadly become entertainment we were having any real effect"

(",.. In Whlch Crass Voluntarily"). What made the breakuP of

Crass

different from that of any previous punk rock band--for example, the much more famous collapse of the Sex Pistols ln 1978--was what

erass had come to represent for punks across the globe. As the English music magazine Sounds noted in 1985. "Crass became an unwilling tegend. Their complete control over their records and thelr unbridled assault on all things authoritarian made them the reluctant leaders of an anarcho-punk movement that wa$ about anything but leaders" (qtd, in Rimbaud 303), What era$s was about was an

attempt to carve out a non-commodified cultural space inside a late capitalist economy that seemed eapable of co-opting any cultural prgduetion, na matter hgw aesthetieally or esongmiea!!y resistaRt to thc eommodity market, for its own end6, IR 1984. Rimbaud and the other members of Crass believed that they had failed,

It is difficult to disagree raiith Rimbaud's

assessment that erass did not achieve its aim of freeing itself from the commodiEy market. The

band's history demon$trates that even when punk bands refuse to sign with major record labels, attempt to develop an anticommercial aesthetlc, and operate as small enterprise$ rather than corporations, they still remaln vulnerable to the very forces of commodification

that they oppose, Hgwever, the band suqqeeded, inadvertently, in a different register. The efforts of Rimbaud et al. to regist c9-aptation iRto eommodity culture successfully map the shape of the very impossibility of such a prgj€ct.

I do not aim, then, to celebrate Crass or

demonstrate the band's r€sistance to the commodity market, but rather to derive from their failure the logic of their inability to do so.

Whrt

lE p$nk?

In order to grasp the signiflcance of Crass to the field of punk, it is first necessary to sketch out, in broad strokesr the "punk history" from which the band emerged. First, punk is the contemporary cultural form that refuses to abandon aesthetic negation and economic resisfance, both ofwhich inflect the entire "punk project," understood as notjust punk rock (both recorded and performed) but also punk

writings (including fanzines or'zinas), style (especially clothing), film, and events (punk happenings aside from shows), This adherenee to aesthetic negation, where negation means the rejection of any and all commercially viable ae$thetrcs coupled with an attempt ta found aR aRticommodity market aesthetic or" "antiaesthetic,'' persists degpite it€ ultimate ineffe€tualnass, Nevertheles6, through varieus textual

forms, punks have end€avored to resist the Funk project's commodifiqation through hqth aBsthetic and economic practiceS, b€ginning

with punk's 1974 birth in CBGBs (a small nightclub in

Nenr York City's East Village) and continuing through

its current multiplicity of

scenesr \^/hich i$ international in scope,

Second, for many punks, the majar record labels represent the threat of eommodification, In 2002, the "Big Five" rflajor labels were Time

Warner, Sony, Universal, EMI, and Bertelsmann AG. As lohn Goshert, a former member of the punk bend Monsula, comments, punk's ''tendency is a resistanee to working within the usual termE of commercial suecess and visibility" (85).

Tt$rd, a s€,rlG of -gcaneg. GoocsaftGs 'pr.mk hlssry," tyier? a SoglG

lt

a nenrs of punk parfornrenccs, wri6ngc' hand8'

ggyles'

past 28 years, each of which had participants numhering in participants Eituated in a spccifie place and time, The maior scenes of the

thpusaRds,include the1g74-76Newyo*cityseenepopularizedbylheRamones,the

1'g76'TAEnglishscenegf thesexPistolsandthe

and mid-1980s Washington' D'c' straight Edge clash, the @afly 198Os califernia Hardcore scene, whlch included Black Flag, the earty york ciEy straight Edge seene from which Youth of roday emer=ged, the early 1990s scene of Minor Threat, the mid- and late 1gg0s New

olympia, washington Riot

Gr"rrl scene

Green Day' Numerous minor of Bikinl Kill, and the early and mid-t99os Berkeley PoP'Punk scene of

up alongside the major sgenes' one of these is the anarcho=punk scen€s, with participants numbering in the hundreds, have sprung to exi5t in 2002, although erass does not' 6cene that crass initiated in the outskirtg 0f Lcndon in tg77 and which continues

crass, whose members wish This essay unfolds from the eanflict between eulture and ecgnorrlics embodied in

to egehew the

they cannot preYent the interpenetrBtion of punk and the cammodification of their pfoductions (and of themselves) but discover that variou$ aesth€tic and econQmic practices aimed at commgdity market. unwilling to aecept this inevitability passively, they employ medlating between ae$thetics and economics. Below,

I

will detail thoEe practices and thelr effectiveness' not to celebrate erass's

do, but becaus€ the b'and's existence speaks direetly to distanclng of themselves from the conlmoclity ma!"ket, which the hand could not possibility of cultural re$istance to late eapitalism, As the progenitors of one of the eentral concern$ of contemporary cultural studies==the within Punk history, consequently, the band'a the most anflcommer.cial strain of punk--anarcho-punk--crass occupie$ a ratified space that Cra59 faeed and lhat Punk, in general, still intera*tions with commodification are mere telling as a representatign of the impasse faces, than as a means of overcomiRg that prgblem'

M

odernism=- pu nk= = postm cdernisrn

qurrent possibilitiee for reEistance to a globally In much of the theory on modernism/modernity and postmodernism/ postmgdernity. the by the commodity and commodification $eem to be shrinking r"apidly. Midway through rhe origins of structured economy dominated

postmedernity (1gg8), perry Anderson defines modemlsm as

a "field of force" out of whieh

exploded

a "wide variety of

artlstie

opposed "the market as the organlzing innovations,,(g1). Despite the plurality of these innovationE, they shared a defining featuret they

of taste but' more principle of a modern culture" (81); in f€et, they urere "constitutively oppositlonal; not simply flouting conventions and signlficantly, defying the solicitations of the market" (63), In shoft, modernism employed negation,

it was the commodlty market

modernizatien of the globe wasi that it attempted to negate by e6tablishing a market-free sphere. But, Andcrson argue$, by 1972 the

all but compleLe. obliuerating the last vestiges noe only of pre-capitalisL soeial forms, but every intact natural hinterland, of space or experisnCpr that had sustained or survived them,... tlnl a univer€ie thuE ab-1uted of nature, culEute has 4esessarily expanded to the point where it has become virtually coextensive with the

eeonomy

itself'

(55)

Echeing Freclric Jameson, Anderson claims that

it is at this moment that the late capitali$t eommodity rnarket

beeame inaluqtable, that

the turn from ntoderfiisrn to postiilodernisr:r q{(urred.

Z

I j 7

and Jameson, this tum elosed down certaln cultural options, Anderson Rames the situationl6t International, which dissolved

^ra"rson

,rnr,,,the

last of the historic avant-gardes" (70) and understands it as the final moment of msdernist art, the la$t mornent when art

could still stake out, via negation and oppositionality, a $emi-autgnomous sphere for itself that both opposed the rnarket aod endeavored

to imagine alternatives tg it, JamEgon, theqrizrng Fq5tmodernism in 1991, rema!'kecl that:

theory of eultural politics current on the Left today has been abfe to do without one notion or another of a cerLain mj-nim-a1 aesthetic dlstanqe, of the possibility of the positioningr of the cultural act outside the massive Being of capital, from which to

DIo

assault Icapital].... (including "critical

[I{]owever, that distance in general

distance" in particular) has very precisely

heen aboli-shed in the new space of postmodernism. (Postmodernism 48)

Consequently, ,'even overtly political interventions like those of The elash are all somehow secretly disarmed and reabsorbed by a system of which they themselyes might well be considered a part, since they can achieve no didance from it" (49), "Critical distance" disaPpears,

for Jameson, because he understands post-modernism "not as a style but rather as a cultural dominant" (4), although "not the cultural dominant of a whglly Rew soeiat order .,. but only the reflex and the eoncomitant of yet angth€r sygtemic modification of sapitalism itEelf" (Cultura! xii). While the preductigns of the qultural realm du!"ing mgdernism eould challenge the economic realm from outside of it9 confinesf modernism concluded with the collapse of the last avant-garde movement, and the cultural realm lost its outsider status.

Jameson labels the r€sult of this modification in the relationship between culture and economics "late capitalism" and uses the term to

refer to the economic and cultural ordering of the globe post-1972'

Anderson and Jameson thus situate

a break

Regation of the market and absorption by

bGhrveeR

modernism and postmodemisrn, monop,oly capitalism and l€te caFitalism, the

it, and, in eaeh of thege paired terms. thE s€cond terfi €ancels out the first. Postmgdernism,

late capitalism, and their concomitant powers of absorption displace modernism, rnonopgly caBitalismr and negation in favor qf

an

uninterrupted flow of commodity produetionr distribution, and eonsumption. In his concluding move in Postrfiodernism, though, Jameson describ€s

the book as an experiment, an "att€mpt to see whether by systematizing something that is resolutely unsystematic

lpostrnodernism], and historicleing something that !s resolutely ahisto!'ical, one cguldn't outflank lt and ferce a historical r4,ay gf at least

thinking about that" (418), This critical $trategy is what he has called "cognitive mapping" elsewhere, Here, then, is where punk's (and Crass's) sueces€ lies: although ultimately unsuccessful at negating the commodily market or establishing a sustainable realm tg some

extent removed from it, punk's efforts can be read as a social text that describes the shape of that very problem

Hefiod: negatlon Ther€ !s a history of loeating negation $/ithin punk, a move most forcefully advaneed by Greil Marcus, who invokes

it as one of punk'g

constitutive features, describing Malcolm McLaren, the Sex Pistols' manager, as someone who believed "that the affirmation wh€re freedom is grasped is rooted in a ncgation ra,here freedom is glimpaed" (56). MarcuE does not advanee negation much further as .nnrgni

a

thnr rnh hcrar rec he lifte lt nr rt nf Thenr'lnr Arlnrnn'c wnrlz ruithnr rt rranr rnlinn fnr thc len timo hefir.ean the Fr:nlzfr rrt Srhnnl anrl

I

p(slk. In so ddrq, ho rffi6H $O 6hfr, bcHuian fitr,dlrntsnl $rqnermeCIt of

ft' don@c

monopsly caplElimt and alnk's,

,'a new yersion of the old Frankfurt School c!-itique of mass culture" (70), a critique now capitalism. when he casts punk as

the Place where sgrnething new needs ta emerge: a coming from wirhin masS cultur€r the stsrne laeuna reappears. This gap undersecres of criti@l P!'aetife that emerged to count-er man9poly gf a tq grips wlth punk,s apprgprlalianr at the heginning lat€ capitalism, of mode the Lettrist International' and the while the earlier cultural forms that Marcus investigates--inclucting Dadaism, surealism, eapitatism.

capitalism and could consequently enjoy th€ distance Situationist Internatioflal--and their employments of negation emerged alongside €xiFt$ within the realm of late cepltalism ar!d' from it that critical theery hao traditipnally demanded (accor"ding to Jameson), Punk that is the right word-'a different relation to negation' consequently, cannot attain the Eame distance from it. Punk must enioy--if

th€ possibility of n€gatiot:' iemeson wi'ote; Ai]dressing tne iQlatlonship bet}..rgen eoRtemporary cultui'al Froduetion and

There is some agreement thats the older modern:'sm functioned against its soe-iet1r in ways which are variously dessribed as cr-itrca1,

negati-ve,contestaEory.subversive,opposj-tionalandthelike.Can anything of the sort be confirmed about postmodernism and its social moment? we have seen that there is a way i-n which postmodern'ism replicateaorreproduces.:reinforces*_thelogicofconsumer capitalism; the more significant quesLion is whether there is also a way in which it resists that logic' (Cul-tural 20) H* addr that:

there is very little in either the form or the content of contsefl$)orary arE that soeiety finds intolerable and scandalous' The most sffensive forms of tshiE art-punk rock, saYr or what is called sexually explicit maLerial-:-are all taken in its stride by society. and they are commercial-Iy suecessful, unlike the productions of the ol-der high modernism' (19) punk'$ early mission=-which was quickly co'oPted Jameson ralses an impoftant question about punk's adoption of negation{ but, although

instructive QoRtestatory Practieei of punk lie neither in by the major record labels--was hound up with shock and affensiveness, the mo$t Paradoxically, its capaclty for Feandal nor in itq provoeatign of so€ial intoleranee, but iR its very failures using these aesthetic strategieE'

proffered, not by rejecting them through negation, punk shuts down some of the aesthetic possibilities that negation has traditionally This traverEal of outright but by passing thr"ough them, by driving them to the point where they fai! to transcend the cammodity market.

the options Clear5 the ground for other, as yBt nonexistent options to emerge.

Tho

crrer collrctlvr

+

I

I

r

er6ss eoilective (,,cras5',J is the first End iarge6t farn: ef an ea!.ty sub-eenrq of Funk, Enarrha-pcnk, and ean b€ unde.rctooci as an

Jutrc,r"1pt, sn e lccal $cale, at in'raqining a cutiurat sphere that is not entireiy qletern"rine by,

J /

eoexlensive \/iih, the econaffiy of latE

a

ProfeuRd mistrust of, and

to, the eommodificAtiOn of punk; the member5 af Crass endEavor tO oBpase and negAte' through

eqonomiCG And aesthetics,

Eapitalism. The parfleular and material form that thi$ prob!€m assumes rcsistAnce

err

in

Crass finds exPres€iQn as

the commodity market of roek music,

In its aftempt at negation, Crass is shot through with a set

oF

aesthetic practices: the Collective experiments with the punk-rock sound.

the form and content of punk songs and albums, the prastice of deferring the consume!''s expected forms of satisfadion, and dialectieal attempts to negate aRd transceRd the punk/eommodity cgntradietign at the cgre of anprcho-punk, Crass also engages in economic practices aimed at op,Fosing punk products'eotrance into, and cireulatign within, the qgmmodity market gf late eapitalism: the Callective

pracices a DIy (Do-It-yourselF) (?) approach to business, favors punk enterprises over punk corpoi'ations, atternpts tg inducc other punks to produce, and, whenever possible, gives away wh€t it could opt to s€ll.

However, just as CrasE eould not. ultimately, c$tablish a viable antiaB*hctie, Reithe!'could the critique that the Collective brought to bear

upon commodification transcencl the clash between culture and economic€ in thc specific forms that punks found themselves pqsitioned

to negotiate, The critique absents neither a "punk sphere" from the commodity market in general no!' an "anarcho-punk" sPhere from the punk commodiry market. At

b$t, it is precisely in its failure that Crass gegtures toward the possibility of En aesthetic

space within the

cultural fleld of punk that economica do not determine or e\ien slgnificantly condition,

Aesthetie negation and economic oppositionality

Anarcho-punk, a subgenre that emerged in England in 1977 and continues to exist in the year 2002, figures within Punk as the most oppositional strand of punk's reslstance to commodiflcation.

ln t976, an English

hippie, leremy Ratter, and his commune mate Steve

heard the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the U.K," for the flrst time, Ratter recounts their reaction;

a-lthough we both felt that the PiEtols probably didn't mean it,

to

ery. llhen,fohnny RotLen proelaimed that the.re was "no future", we saw it as a challenge. We both knew EhaL there was a future if we were prepared tso fight for it. (Rimbaud 2LGl

us it was a |sttle

Shortly after he first heBrd the Pistols, Ratter witnessed what he took to be the death of English punk, a death that he attributed to capitalism and, specifically, to commodification:

Within six months the mevement had been lo-nght ouL, The capi-talisL counterrevolutionaries had killed with cash, Punk degenerated from beinq a force for change, to becoming just another element j-n the grand med-ia circue. Sold out, sanitised and sErangled, punk had become

just another soeial- eommodity' a burnt-out

might have been. (14)

memory

of what

in i?77, Ratter

Chensed hiS nEt.re

to Peni'ly Rimbeud, Steve's bec6me Sieve Ignorant, and togethcr with some sf the mernbers af

eommune and, later, people who trekked to the commune and expressed interest in the project, they formed a band--Crass=-to attempt

to push punk toward "what might have beBn." The band began in 1977 and dissolved in 1984. It featured Ignorant, Rimbaud,

Eve

Llbertine, and Joy de Vivre en vocals; Rab Herman helped found the band as the lead guitarist, but Phil Free replaeed him after a few months; Pete Wright played bass; Gee provided backing vocals and tape loops; and N. A. Palmef played rhythm guitar. (Fingers Tarbuck played piano on one album, on which Honey Bane sang, and Paul Ellis played "strings" on a single album.) The commune that Rimbaud founded in 1955 in a decaying farmhouse in northern Essex, England, a few miles from London, was erass's combined living and working space throughout the band's existence.

Aesthetic negatlon

Sound

In a

confessional moment, Rimbaud notes that Crass

did not push the aesthetic negation of the punk song--in its major

label,

commodified, English form, as exemplified by the Pistols' songs (3)--as far as they might have. He comments that it is "true we have not greatly influenced musie itself, but oureffeet on broader social issues has been enormous" (",,, In Whieh erassVoluntarily"), but it seems

to me that he underestimates Crass's aesthetic choices, True, their flrst 7-inch, (4) The Feedlng of the 5000 (1978)f diverges only slightly From what beeame the typical punk instrumentation of guitar, drum$, and bass guitar; Rimbaud addE

a radio to the mix while N, A,

Palmer plays rhythm guitar, ,qnd, initially, the band adopts a sound similar to the sex Pistols'; Ignorant sing$ in a $notty, na$al whine, while Rimbaud/ Libertine, Bnd de vivre shgut mgst of their lyrics; the drums, guitar, and bass gurtar parts do not reguire much teehnieal proficiency. There are few solos for any af the instruments. Feeding'$ fir$t song, "Do They Owe Us a Living"--with its traditional punk rock

instrumentation, rapid tempo, rhythm section devoted solely

to laying down a hard, rapid, steady beat with little variation,

and

predictable guitar chord progressions--is among Crass's most accessible songs. Its sing-song, repetitive, and oft-repeated chorus even

,!*",

as a simple, melodic hook: "Do they owe us a livingryOf course they dol0f course they dolDo they owe us a living?/ Of course

they dol Of course they dol Do they owe us a living?/ OF COURSE THEY FUCKING DO!"

However, in contrast to most punk bandsn as erass's sound matured,

it shlfted away

fr"om the commercial end of the late '7Os punk

sound and tried to stake out an anticommercial antiaesthetic. Between 1978 and 1984, the band incor"porated additional musicians so

that by the time ehrist--The Album appeared in 1982 frass's lineup included a sitar and a synthesizer player, and the band's sound included samples

of "strlngs" as well as "tape collages." By this time, the band had dispensed with choruses for the most part and

ssunded something like an insane cireus with a crazed barker chanting oyer the din, Melodic hooks and melody itselr yanished almost entirely, while the interaction$ between the instruments grew discordant and eombative, at times verging on cacophony, Songs did not so much eonâ‚Źlude as wind dswn, one instrument aft6r Enother go!ng silâ‚Źnt unul a final few guitar chords reverberated arhythmieally, The members

oi Crass understood themselves as opposed ta the major label farm intg which the Pistqls'records had been stamped;

consequently, their songs attQmpted to eonfront the commodif,ed forms that the songs of English punk bands assumed,

Form and contant

,dihionally, while Pistols songs have simple lyrics and catchy, sing-along choruses, rnost Crass Eongs are simply structured but lyt"ic-

heavy tirades against war, consumerism, Repressive State Apparatuses, and Ideological State ApParatuses, (5) and, aE

I

rnentioned

abev€, as the band's career prggressed, the songs contained fewer end fewer ehoruses, IR eontent, Crass's lyrics differ somewhat frQm those of the pistols as well. The Pistols' "Anarchy in the U,K," begins with "I am an Anti-Cht"ist/ I am an anarehist/Dgn't knaw what I waRt but

i know how to get itl I wanna destroy Who

passers-by/ Cos I wanna be anarchy," Crass's "Nineteen Eighty Bore" begins;

needs a ]obotomy r*hen we've got the ITV?

!{ho needs ECT when Ehere's qood old

Btsc?

Swit.eh on the set. J-iqht up the screen

Fantasise and dream about what you might have been I{ho needs controlfi-ng when they!ve got the cathode ray?

They've got your fuckj-ng soul, now they!Il- fuse your brains

away.

While the Sex Pistals invoked anarchy hy name but did not engage in political activisrR, Rlmbaud, who Penned most of the lyrics for

Crtss, addressed popular '60s and '70s liberal reform issues, ineluding the dangers gf consume!'i9m and apathy and their eonneetions with the culture industry (specifically TV in the lyrics above), the threat of nuclear war and of war in general, and corporate greed,

Where the Pistols' songs make a quick attack before beating a hasfy retreat, a Crass 6ong launches an offen$ive and repeats it numerous

limes within a single song. "Ninet€en Eighty Bore," which is not an especially iyric-heavy Crass song, contaln$ 36 lines of roughly twelye syllables eaehf eompared with "Anarehy in the U,K."'E $+venteen lines gf roughly seven syllableg eaeh. While in much of late'70s English puRk !'oek, the lyries and iRstrumcRts command equal imBgrtaRce, in Crass songs the in$trumentation serves as e vehicle for the lyrics, and the

lyrie are so copious that the

songs seem

almo* incapable of containing them, It

iE also

worth noting that the sex Pistols employ

little profanity, while even an early, relatively catchy Crass song such as "Do They Owe Us a Living" begins with the word "fuck"

and

regularly cycles back to the chorus, ln whlch the word "fucking" figures prominently. This cgn$istent use of profanity throughout erasS's work guaranteed that their songE weuld not obtain the commercial alrtime that the Sex Pistols enjoyed.

Deferred tulfillm€nt

The sound and Brofanity of Crass's ranting5/songs combine with the bitter and mocking affect that lgnorant, Rimbaucl, tibertine, and de Vivre's voices carry to produce a specific effecti the singers seem simultaneously gripped with both the need to condemn a paftieular soeial issue, o!' eluster of isgueg. and the realization of the futitity of their Bffort. The band members play their instruments at breakneck

speed, which adds to the sense that they have much to commuRicate but cannat pgssibly tran$mit it all within the limits gf a song or album. This aesthetic approach speaks of Crass's effurts to militate against the eommodification of their music, if the commodity, as Marx claimsn is "a thing which through its qualities satisfies human needs of whatever kind" (Captial, Vol, 1 125). hstead of

xtisfying needs,

Crass songs speak to their own inability to do so. Where most commediues prgmise at least the partial fulfillment 0f a naed, Crass sgngs

attempt to axacerbate need, adopting the logie of the advenisement rather than the logic of the qqmmodlty, but the advertisement is for a product that does not yet exist, All protest songs-=and Crass songs are protest songs--are anti-ads: they try, with one hand, to prgduce

a need where one did not exist but v/ithaut ofrering, with the other hand, the remedy for the new need, Thi$ idea ean be expressed

anoti€r wry:

Cr3Es Eoltgs

dd not fiorgo $a Gffort to med n€€ds hrt only lf the needs ffa urderstoo<l

a6

gu:lltatlvdy dlffiercnt

ones that commercial commqdities address.

Dehr"ed tunlhent (the dielectlc) Crass alsq introduqed sampling--the inelusion of lound saunds--into punk, Although early albums do not employ this technique, as Crass

eamplicated their sgund and Gee joined the hand, she would insert what 6he termed "tape collaEeg" between songs. These were

frequently short snippets of news from the radio, often related

to British

police actions or, after 1982,

to the British conflict

with

Argentina over the Falkland Islands. To the end of a snippet, she would splice another sniPpet that seerned at odds with the first in its

form, content, or both. Between the first and second songs on Crass's ehrist--The Album aPPears this montage: a clip taken from

a

documentary on insects begins in mid sentence: "... then they find their mate. The female climbs into the male, where she'll live the rest of her life. It's a simple life," This samBle is fused to a $econd clip, in \r/hich a woman spaaks to a baby and the bahy's mother: "Come on now Ursula, come en, eome on, She's lovely, Yes isn't she" I'm gonna pinch you, I am,

I am'''

Gee's Juxtapositioning of these byvo clips suggests that they are related to one another, although the subjects do not seem

to be: insect

mating habits and human child rearing, This tape montage is sandwiched between "Have a Nice Day," a song about the "psychopaths" of

Westminster, and "Mother Love," a song denouncing parenting as idEological brainwashing. Again, the form of the Crass commodity endeavors

to militate against its own cansumption as a commodity, In place of satisfaction, Crass tried to present their listeners with a

dialectical mix of media whose forme and messages seem to conflict with on€ another and that, wh€n Presented together. posit h{o

implicit questions: What sort qf $oqial order could eontain these contradictions within itselft And how ean these contradictions be resolyed? In the above examplc, the tape montage and the gongs that surreund

it

poEe twg gpeeifie que6tian

tg their audience: How

de

insect mating habits resemble the way in which an EnElish weman raises her baby? And how are both of the$e phenomena related to Westminster and ideological brainwashing? An implicit injunction, again directed at the audienee, accomPanies theec questione: find

a

concept that can explain the interactions between these phenomena, Bather than satisfying needs, the album aQts as an anti'ad-'lt attempts to create n€ed and dissptisractiqn without offering a "eure."

There is anqther way ta read Crass's use of tape moRtages, though, that dissolves their effectiveness as antieQmmodities: Crass alhums are themselves resolutions to the problems that they pose. Gee does not attempt to splice her samples together seamlessly; she allows

the sound of her recording apparatus's halting of one sample and starting up of another to remain as proof of the apparatu8's-.and, metaphorically, her process's--violenee as

it cuts off one speaker

o!" sound and startg another in order

to force the two gounds into

juxtapo$itian. However, despite Gee's method, erass albums materially demenstrate the power of the qgmmodity

to

incQrporate

seemingly discordant elements into a whole. Christ=-The Album resolves the friction between its disBarate elements by bindlng them

together on

a single vinyl (or aluminum, in the

case

sf a compact disc) platter to suggest that

perhaps, within the form of the

commodity. Ro two sounds EBn be brought tq bear upon one another in suEh a manner that they eaRRot be sold as connected pafts of

a

whole. In this senge, the Crass commodity stands as the reconciliation of seemingly uncennected fragments. AlthouEh no one really tracks the sales of independently produced musie, a potentially even more damning fact is that Crass albums sold. Not only did an intensely loyal group of fans aequire the LPs and 7-inches when they were released, but Crass's noncorporate distributor, Southern

years .dords, continues to keep the music in print in both LP and CD formats, Fuggesting that demand for them still eontinues eighteen

after the group disbanded, There is a further way in which a Crass commodit} eancels the aesthetic possibility of negating the commodity market. Marx initially presents the commodity, in the first six chapters of eapital, Vol. 1, as a fairly undeveloped economic form operatlng within the "sphere of

simple circulation" (280). where

it

"saEisfies human needs of whatever kind" (125).

h

the Grundrisse, he notes that, in the market,

where a capitalist confronts poten$al consumers, the capitalist "searches for means to sPur them an to consumBtion, to give his wares ney'/ charms, ta inspire them with new needs by constant chatt€r" (287). However, the eapitalist rarely aPpears as a person in the market

but sends th€ cammodity in his or her ptace and relie$, for the ereotion gf needs, upon the cgRtradietory Rature of the commgdity--the manner in whieh it funstions bath to satisry desire. which bccomcs inyested within it, and ts defer indefinitely th€ eomplete realization of desire. The Crass commodiiy renders this logic material, in the sense that Crass albums serye as ads, and flot anti-ads, for other Crass albums, The perfect commodity never satigfies a neecl permanently: obeying a logic of eternal deferral, it only partially fulfllls a Reed, while allowing for the possibility that a further commodity might satisfy the Same need more comPletely or a new need suggested by the original commodity, Even if a erass album seryes more to exacerbate need than to meet it, it also prepares the way for subsequefit erass albums, which bear with them the possibility that they mlght, flnally, resolve tensions that the earlier albums left open. In $hort, each

erass album opens up on all the other€, $uggesting, through its fragmentation, its po sible completion vvithin the nettvork Crass's complete output.

Economlc opposltionality

DIY

Although erass experimented ylrith aesthetic strategies for negating the commodity market, the band also focused much of its energy upon economic forms of oppo$itionality, To begln with, the band recognized the commercial music industry as its enemy and refused to slgn with a ma1or label, desplte EMI's offer of 50,000 [pounds st€rling] in L978. Earlier the same year, Crass released its fi'5t 7-inch, "The Feeding of the 5000," on Pete Stennet'$ independent label, Small Wonder Reegrds, but could ngt find a Pressing plant willing to rnaRufacJure the record gr a printer willing

to pnnt the cover, which Gee had designed, ag long as the reeorcl ineluded, as its first track,

"Reality Asylum," a song that attaeked or"ganized Christianify. Crass eventually substituted a minute of silence, entitled "The Sound of Free Speech," tor the original gpening song and had the r"ecord manufaetured, To avoid causrng trouble fot'Stennet, later in 1978, when

the band members found a pressing plant willing to press "Reality Asylum," they founded their own label, Crass Records, to relea$e lt' They printed 5,000 covers thBmselves, rather than searching for a printer again,

Although necessity seems at least partially responsible for driving Crass toward a DIY approach

to producing records, Rimbaud claim€

that, by the time DIY had bscome associated with punk in 1976, the members of the commune that he founded "had been doinE just that

,., [for] many year$" (".,. in Whlch

CrasE Voluntarily"), Either way, Crass's apprgpriation of the means of productten marks an attemPt tp

resist the "punk commodity" in its Sex Pistol6 and Engtigh punk forml while the PlstolE and other EngliFh punk bands forfeited control over their means of producing eommodities, in both artistic freedom and the manufacturing procBss, Crass dld so to a lesser degree, In

faet, in order to maintain aesthetic cgntrol--speciflcally, in order to produce "Reality Asylum"--the band members realized that they had

F md wtyt to bwas tht doilli0ntt& or trdu*rv,

rnodB

of produdng psnk mmrE{tltles. Having fnfid€d cr.EF Recofdq

released th€ir music on any other label, The band alsomanageditse|f.bookedallofitsQyyntours.distributeditsown designed and printcd its Ewn record covers'

C-M-e not M-C-H'

The memberg of cra5-9 also attempted

to

mcdiate betrreeR the two poles of the eommsdity--use-value and exchange-value--by

price. while reducing a commodity's Price facilitates its exchange in deemphasizing their commodities, exchangeability expressed as a

must exchange for the commodity, expressed as a one register--affordability--it also reduces the amount of labor that the consumer not control the prices of their 7-inches and LFs' and' portion of her or his wages, while the sex Fistols and other English bands could consequently, the bands, labels set the prlces according

to how much the market would bear, erass controlled its Prlcing' The band

,,Reality Asylum,, 7-inch for 45 pence each, significantly below the market value of a 7-inch in 1978' Since th€y first members sold the punk label produets and, later, for less than most other appeared on the market, crass albums have always sold for less than maior p rgcl u

ets.

that had engulfed the first wave of English punk bands' they The members of crass claimed that, unlike the commercial music industry and their commune, and, as Rimbaud claimed' their dld not want to make a profit. Instead, they wanted to be able to sustain themselves ,,pr,me purpose was the dissemination of intormation" (241), For this reason, even on their first 7-inch. they included all Eix songs that

song per side. Rimbaud claims that "The Feeding af the they could play at the time, although the industry standard for a 7-inch was one the band members net a5 a methad for translatinq the 5000,, was the first multitraeked 7-ineh ever, In short, the commodity s€rvcd sur-plus labor

a small enterprise' of others into $urplus value for themSelves, b,ut as e method far sustaining themselves as

Marx

where "c" stands for "commodit}," "M" stands for "mQney," and "c"' expresses this pr"ocess of exchange as c-M-c', (capital, Vol. 1 2g0)

(c prime) stands for a different

other commodities that it eommodity, The band exchanges eommodiries for money solely to Purchase

according to Marx's mo{El, as M-e-M', where "M"' (M prlme) needs, For the record industly, the proce.$g of exchange can be expresgedr grder to exchenge them for greater ,'M,,: the major labels purchase bands and their products ln stands for a larger amount of money than

form of exehange than that of the music industlY' sums of money so that the labels can grow as cor.porations, By adopting a different the enterPrising drive to transmit "information'' of crass replaced the corporate drive for profit aE the force behind making music with produetion of musis. Nevertheleg6, the hand still oPe!'ated some sgft and the pes$ibility that moncy need not entirety determine the over the corporate ver6ion that EMI wlthin the logic of capitalist commodity exchange, at b€st choosing an earlier staEe of capitalism otr€red them.

Induce to producq Records in 1980' Rimbaud recalls that; Despite their low prices, Cr-ass albums Eold well enough for Rimbaud et al. to expand Crass

over the years we were abl-e to introduce ar-r ever broadening cross:section of the record:buying public to the music of nearly one hundred different

bands. Many of the records released on

crass Recorcls kraralv eoverad thaj r nrocltlction costs. hr:t as nrofit-

lo

,

wasn't the aim, iL didn't seem to maeter [w]e had ereated outlet for ldeas and information which, aparl from the smal_l anarchist presses, had hitherto been unavail_abl-e.

an

(l-2S)

eommenting upon the process of productlon in general, Walter Benjamin wrote that "what matters ... is the exemplary character of production, which is abte first to induce other produc€rs to produce, and second to put an improved apparEtus at their disposal,' (Z3g).

Where critics

of punk such as lvlichael Hoover and Lisa Stokes claim that "radical pop music without concerted political aetion and

organization lessens the impact of cultural critique" (35), Benjamin demands that cultural critics distingui$h betwe€n political/i{eological and materialist work, More important thtsn the prgdueers' attitudes towBrd the retatlong of produetion--expressed, for example, through

the "p9litical" song ly!'i€S and even aetivigm that Hoover and Stokes deseribe are their positions within those material relations (Eenjamin 222). Similarly, Crass Records induced other bands to pr"oduce by covering their production expenses, regardless of whether gr not the bands showed a profit. The "apparatus" that the label placed at their bands' disposal was not "improved" upon technically (in fact, it was

cruder than the industry model), but it was qualitatively difterent from the maJor- labels' apparatust tt granted the bands a degree of control over their means of production simllar to the degree that erass e;<ereised over their own. In short, erasa helped make possible

a

number of new, srnall, capitalist enterprises,

The band extended it€ efforts to establish a sphere of music production not entirely conditioned by commodification in its approach to performance, Rimbaud estimates that, over the band's Seven y€ars

olo

existence,

it performed

roughly three hundred shows, most of

which did not mtske any money for the band. For their first gig, the members of erass played a benefit for squatter6 in a North London children's playground in L977, and, for their final gig, in August 1984, they played a benefit for striking miners ln South Wale$, Apaft

ftom their first few gigs. erass did not play commercial venues, opting inst€ad for what Rimbaud d€scrib,es as,'an extraordlnary venue of far-flung places in the British Isfes where no band had ever played before... [including] scout-huts. church halls and spefts centres,, (L24-ZS), During performanees, the band dressed all in bfack and used only "domestic lighting" in an efFort

to create a

sensc of

anonymity and avoid the "cult of personality" pervasive in commercial music, a strategy that was mar"ginally. if at all, effective according

to Rimbaud (102). The band also tried, with litile success, to work against the establishment of its individual members as commodified rock stars, a move the collective hoped would express the possibility that audience members could become performers, because the difference in economi€ class between the two would not be underscored by the rock star status that the commerclal music industry manufactured for its artists.

Glve it away

Crass employed one other technlqu8 against the form gf commodification that the major labels engaged in; the band gave away as much as it could forfree,

It printed leaflets on topics ranging from "industrial sabotage to breadmaking" (F.imbaud toz) and di$tributed them at

show$, and, in 1982, reacting

to the British cgnftlct with Argentina over the Falktand Islands, the band reegrded a frexl, (6)

,,sheep

Farming in the Fucklands," without identifying themselves on it and sent it to France to obscure its origin$. Frem there, it ,,was smugEled

into the country lEngland] and.. with the aid of like-rninded distributors and retailers, was randomly slipped into albums and singles of any label but our own," recounts Rimbaud (220), The band proFfered gifts whenever. it could afford to; the Eift negates exchange between

t(

iln$:r

of

orrnorfficc

.,Rd

srri€tr of mmsy becaute ro extlrurge

oiccurs. InSutd, a matBrlal ots eEt nEves frum ons cHrer to

but no reciprocal movement of money occurs'

very thing that we were In 1gg4, the band broke up. Rimbaud comments that "[aJfter seven years on the road, we had become the ,,twle may once have had revolutaonary potential, but somehow we'd been nullified, becoming merely another elernent attacking,' (25a); end: first, as Rimbaud notes, crass had of the grand social clrcus that i'd predicted could destroy us" (274). Two factors led to the band's punk bands had been" while the Pistols never had much of a become commodified, although not in the same way that the early English

(although, Rimbaud and political position to begin with, aRd signed yyith major labels three times, crass explicitly Promoted anarchism never $igned to a maior label. However, the band Ignorant admit, without eny detailed knowledge of its history, theoryr or practices) and professed helief that all autherity resides in fllembers diseovereet that they had becoma salespeople for "anti-authoritariani6m" and their

the individual, Steve Ignorant remembers occasions when Crass

would be playinq to paeked houses of anarqhist Punks who Iknew] al-1 our songs, reeords, and ideas by heart. we were up there saylnE "be

indj-viduals" while leading a movement ful-l- of followers. Tt's always "Crass did this" or "Crass said that," (qtd. in O'Hara 97-98) producers of their own ideas and lives, The members of the band believed thatf rather than givlng anarcho-punks the impetus to become packed the band's shows and behaved they had produced fans who consumed crass's ideas as they would any other commodity: fans much like other audieneBg at roek show-s, fairly Bassively aecepting thei!- roles aE eoRsumers.

punk desire to when Rimbaud et al, founded crass, they were optimistic about their powers to construct active fans who embodied a

not embody that reshape the music industry along noncapitalist lines. B€cause they eventually became convinced that their fans did upon the youth model, they dismissed the potential agency that their fans exercised outside of crass's sphere of influence, commenting

subcultures prevatent

in

England

ju$t prior to punk, Stuart Hallf Tony Jefferson, John Clarke, and Brian Roberts claim that

subqultures ,,a!-e not simply,ideologieal'construets, They, too win spaee

these

for the young: cultural Space in the neighbout'hood

and

gtreet-comer" (45).PartiqlPaRts algo "adopt and adaPt in5titutioRs, real time for leisure and r€creation, aetual room oR the strBet or material objects--goods and possessions--and r-eorganize th€m into distinetive'styles'which expr"ess the collectivity of their being-as-agroup,, (47), Hall et al. temper this explanation of subcultures' material gainsr thoughf when they insert the subcultures back into the geographieal, historieal, and economic context from which they, and punk, emerged: "There is no'subcultural Solution'to working-class

youth unemployment, educailonal dlsadvantage, cgmpulsory misaducation, dead-end jobs, the routinisation and sPecialisation ol'labour, low pay and the loss of skills" (47), Instead, youths "'solve', but in an imaginary way, problem6 which at the concrete mat€rial level rernain unresolved" (47 =4il,

Like the youth$ that Hal! et al, eomment upon, erass fans briefly won space for lhemselves.

In 1980, with a glft of lpounds sterling]

,qnarchy 12,000 from Crass (but no ectual Barticlpation from the band's members), a group of anarcho-punks and anarchists opened the

Centre in London and kept performance venue,

It

it op€n for a

year, The Centre contained

a bookstore, living quarters for punks without hornes, and a

elosed after numerous intra-Centre clashes between anarcho=Punks and older, nonPunk anarchists. l""lowever,

IZ

a

iniflcant differenee distinguishes the Centre from Hall et al.'s primarily symbolic victorie$, On a public street corner, the "pos$cssors" can he shooed alxay at any time hy the police, but the same could not be said of the Centre, whose occupants owned it, despite the fact

that th6y eould not sustain it,

erass, and punk as a whole, are both underpinned by a desire for more than symbolic ownership or irnaginary solutions to real problems, though, and, regarding these aims, the members of Crass were correct in their assessment of their erfectualness: they had not ShaPed

fans who could restrudura the caBitalist mode oF produeing music in England. and they refused to be satisfied with anything less, because they believed that radical, matsrial changes could still be effected by cultural movements, by subcultures, Cra$s'$ question to

Hall et al, might be; Why is a "subcultural solution" impossible rather than absolutely necessary? Howevâ&#x201A;Źr, Crags's absorption into the entedainmeRt business of its historical moment might serve as the response,

Crass also folded because

it had becgme a

members had intentionally attempted

business

that torced its members into a single, nonindividuated unit, Although the band

to maintain their anonymity in front of their fans, by 1984, after an especially effective

media

FrEnk, they became increasingly oceupied with interviews (although they egchelryed the commereial press) aRd the operatign of the band

and record label. Rimbaud rememherg: "'There is no authority but yaursBlf,' we said that, but we'd lost oursQlves and become CRASS"

("... In Which Crass Voluntarily"), Not only had the bancl produced consumers ratherthan revolutionaries, but it had fashioned the band's members into workers responsible for maintaining the producer of commodities that was the band, Rimbaud et al, had believed that erass's distaneing of itself from the maJor labels aRd the forms into whlch they pressed bands would grant the band's members some

type gf freedom, but they discovered, instead, that the ecoRomic basis of their band determined thelr lives. Marx wrote that there i$

an

economic "realm of neeessity," but the "true realm of freedom, the development of human powers 35 an end in itgelf, begins beysnd it,

though it can only flourish with this realm of necessity as its basis" (Capital, Vol, 3 959), Ironically, the more economically suecessful Crass became, the more it relegated its membcrs tg the "realm of neeessity."

In Rimbaud's writings on era$s, he decries the Callective's eo-optation into capltalism and reads that subsumptlon as, ultimately, the band's failure; Crass did not suecessfully negate or oppose the sphere of commodification aesthetically or economlcally' The Collective interrogated the extent to which the punk song, as a commodity, could incorporate aesthetic contradictigns and still sell, but, as Rimbaud would have it, in their suecess at selling their ov''/n and others' anarchopunk commodities, the members of Crass accidentally cancelled

the potential ta negate the eommodlfication that they had hoped that their products would offer.

Tho Fhrps of thG probtem

Neverthâ&#x201A;Źles$, Crass's t\ryo-pronged attack upon the eommodity, whieh employed bath aesthetie and e(pnomic P!"aetiees, participateâ&#x201A;Ź

productlvely in the project within contemporary cultural critique to sketch the shape of the current impasse between culture and economacs. The collective applied pressu!'e

to the pop culture commodity, pushing at the form of the mass-pt'oduced punk rock song,

including its sound and its content, by foreing it to contain multiplicities. And, by turning the logic of the commodity upon its head and

producing commodities aimed at creating rather than gatisfying needs, erass inadvertently demon$trated that eternally deferring sati$factlon

is in faci the very purpose of the commodity, The collective's attentlon to this aspect of their albums simultaneously

t9

underscor€d both tha conrmelfry': porrsr tp srbonilnate to

l$ frrrn and

rGndGr salaable

th€ rno6t dEFrate cotnPon€nts and the

Bnother commodity' sf the commodity=-its inability eyer to sati$fy a need, because every commodity adveftises

that effofts to avoid corporstization can lead' Additionally. and inter€stingly, the history of cr"ass serves as a cautionary talef suggesting aesthetic sells. (7) crass never separated itself unexpectedly. to successful small business enterprises, in part because the anticorporate

wholly from capitalism, try as

it

might

to

highly replace the commodity with the glft. but demonstrated, inadvertently, that in the

form of capitalism prevalent at the current industrialized economy of late.,7gs England, severing oneself from the dominant, advanced form of the same old Eapitalist mode sf mornent might land cne not sutside the economy but rather in the net of a Elightly less Fdvancerl produetion.

If

gf crass--and abolishing (apitali$m through punk roek was the ultimate aim

it

Yvag--then the collective failed'

It

never

and listen to music produccd what paul Kohl, bortowing from Jaeques Attali, describeg as a syFtem of "iRdiYiduals [whol creatB, Peff€rm,

(6).But' with Jamesgn, the crass far its own ends, ne longer praducing digtinctions between producers, commodities, and audiences" commgdity culture is a sheer face that offers collective counter€ the frequent postmodernist assumption that the surface of contemporary

thay look more like failures than ns handholds to those who would grasp and change it. In fact, there are flssures everywhere, but York succes$Bs, and they are not mapped in the ',Arts and L€isure" section of the New

nmes. Instead, their topography ia described

in

just down the street' the ,zlnes that punks distribute, for flee, at the local, independently owned record $tore

Not6 Thompson' we (1.) A revlsed version of this essay appears in the sUNy press book Punk Productions; unflnished Bu6iness by Stacy reprint it here with permission in acqordance with fair use legislation'

the maiors (2.) For punks, DIy (Do-It-yourselF) means producing punk produsts without any support from the major labels' In the us, are responsible for between 85 and 90 percent of all music production. provoked and (3.) In 1977 aloner the Sex pistols slgned with A&Mr EMI, Vlrgin{ and warner Bros. In response to scandals that the Pistols

that were widely reported in the English mediar both A&M and EMI dropped the band shortly after signing it. (rpms) while others 4,) What userl to be ealled ,'4Sg" Ere now referred to as "7 inches." b€caus€ some Spin at 45 rotation$ per minute spin at 33 rpms, but they are all seven inche$ in diameter,

(s.) For Louis Althusser,s famous description of Ideological State Apparatuses (iSAs) and Represslve State APParatuses (RSAS), refer

t!

the chapter ,'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an Inve$tigation)," in his bqok Lenin and Philosophy and Othel Essays,

cardtroard. {C.} A ',fi€xj" is a 7-inch pr"essed cn cheap and extrem€tV thin (hence itexible) Platlie or

(7,j

For-

an ifl$igntful sxai-ninetien of a nrora reeent exampie of thi$ phenomenon, see Fairehild'

l^lorlG cited

t11

ihusser, Louis, "Ideology and ldeological State Apparatuses (NotesTowards an Investigation)," LeRin and Philasophy and Other Emays, New York; Monthly Review Press, 2001,

Anderson, Ferry. The Orlghs of Postmodemlty. New Yort: Verso, 1998.

Benjamin, Walter. "The Author as Produeer." Rqflections: Essays, Aphorisms, AutobiographicEl Writings. Trans. Edmund JephaQtt, N€w York: Schocken, 1985. 2?0-38,

Fairchild, Seuglas, "'Alternatlve" Music and the Politics of eultural Autonomy: The ease of Fugazi and the D,e. Scene," Papular Music and

society 19 (1995): L7=25.

Goshert, John Charlee, "'Funk' ,After" the Pistols: American Music, Economics, and Politics in the X.980s and 19905." PoPular Mu$ic and sociery 2a (2000); 85.106,

Hall, Stuart, Tony Jeffcrson, Jehn Clarke, and Erian Rohertg, "Subeultures, eultureg and Class.'' Resistance Through Rituals; Youth Subeultures in Post-War Britain. Ed, Stuart Hall and Tony lefferson, London; Harper Collins, L976,9-74.

Hoover, Hichael, and Lisa Stokes. "Pop Music and fhe Limits of fultural €ritigue: Gang of FourShrinkwraps Entertainment," PoPular Musl€ and Society 22 (1998): 21=38, JarneseR, Fredric, The Cultural Turn, NewYork: Verso, 1999.

--. F.stmoCernisrn, or Tne fuitura! Logic

Gf l-ate

e6pitaiism. Durham: Duke UP, 1991..

Kohl, Paul R. "Reading Between the Llnes: Muslc and Noise in Hegemony and Resistance." Popular Music and Society 2L (L997)t 3=17.

Merclrs, Grell. Llpstlck Tracgs: A S€{ret Hlst?ry of ths TwenUeth Century. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1989.

Marx, Kari, CaFital, Vol.

l.

Tfans, Ben Fowkes, New Yprk: Penguin, 199Q.

--. Capital, Vol. 3. Trans, Davld Fernbscfi. New York: Penguln, 1981.

--, Grundrisse. Trans" Ftartin Nicolaus. Ilew Yarkl Fenquin, i993"

o'Hrr!, crrig, Tile Phtlosophy of Punk: moro Than Noisct stn Rimbauej, Penny. Shjbbaleihr

D

fl--4y

Fmncl3c9: AK 1995.

Reyqlt,ng Llfe. 5an F:'anciggo: AK, 1998.

iseogra phy

Cras$. ''Ninete€n Eighty Bore," Christ--The Albuin. Crags R€coi"ds, 1982.

Craio. "... In Whlch

qa\- Pi€t^lc

Crr6 Voluntrrlly

Elory ffh€lr Ourn," Beet B€fure.... Crass Recordat 1984.

rr6.narrhr; in fhp ll ll " hlerr*r Minrl lh6 trnllnrlzc

\Al.4rnar Rrnc

1C7R

t5

Stary Thompson is an As$stont professor in the Engllsh Depaftment cf the University of Wlscosin-Eau Claire, \ilnere hB teafies Thaory and Cinerna Studies. His book, Punk Productions; Unfinished Businâ&#x201A;Źss, was recently published by SUNY Press.

COPYRIGHT

Francis

2OO4

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group

Crass

Vscalists Eve l-ibe#ine and "!ay de Vivre {above}; desigmer/artist G $us

ln terms of left-winS -. ffifiy, anare hist -- bands whieh are on s*easion used to oymbr:liae the entire British punk era {like where do you think that big A with a eircle aroun+ it eame f,rom, anyway?}, no-ans ean hpld i* eanrlie to Crass. Th*y w&ra ffte quintes*ential anare hist p*nk en*emble, true believers in their Gause. ln fact, while the $ex Pistols only sang about Anarchy in the UK, Crass did their darnedest to live and breatlie the tnue meaning rlf the phrase""" Cras= was for*oe# in 1979 by drummer Ponny Rimbaud and singer Steve lgnorant at Penny's farmhouse in N*rth Weald, Essex, wi:ieh was in faet a largc, speffi eommune of about a dozen like-minCed individuals. The members of this commuile soon started generating input into this musicm! endeaver, so that the original eiuo quickly grew and Bxpandcd to inelude v#calists Eve Libertine and Joy rle Vivre, iead guitarist Fhil Free, rhythm guitarist Andy Falnner, bassist Pete Wright and hacking voealist Miek G, Ouffield. Resident artist G. Sus {ar:*ther female -- interesting play on wordst) provided e r*ative dctails such as piano, flute and most impor-tantly eover art, ecmbining piaintings, slagans anrl eollage" Along the same artistic vmin, Miek',rua.* also a film" nraker who often provided a projected backdrop to Cnass'live perfone"lanecs, ages before the Butthmls $urfers attempt*d a *imilar speetacle.

Aftcr a live debut at a equattetrs'free fe*tival, erase secured a reco!'d deal in January {$7S with Small tlfonder Rs*orda ts rclpase Feedinq The 5000, a 1Z-ineh EP with an unlik*ly 17 tra'cksl )n

IU

;t, this EF was aetually released with only 16 tracks, as no pressing plant would agre+ tc nanufacture it hecau"e bf objeeti*ns to thi opening track '"' . " In the end, in order to release

ttreir record, th+ band agreed to delete the offending artiele and inetcad replaced that track with a two-minute silene* wtiich ttrey aptly dubhed Free $peeeh"

Obviously disenchanted with their brushing +ncounter with institutions in the real world, the group retreated to their sommune and launehed their own Crass label, on'nhieh the remainder of their releases appeared. Crass Records wâ&#x201A;Źre eharacterized by Do-lt-Yourself artwork, photocopied sleeves whieh doublsd as anarchlst propagaRda, and-a unique eatalogulng system whieh involved a eoundown to 1984, ayear of elaar symbolie signifieanee beeause of ita Orwellian arigins. In faet, the group had originally planned to break up durlng that year. somthing whieh they did aceornpiish, alihough perhaps not exaetly in the rray they had originally +nvisi*rted. {Do They Owe Over the next three years, the band releassd a number of strongly politieal Us A Living?, Reality Asylum, Bloody Revolutisn, Yes Sir I Will, Nagasaki Nightmare, How Doea it Feel to be fire Mother of tOOg Dead?i as well as three albums, all of which perforrned extremely camc out in 1979. This was followed in well in the indie e harts" The first, 1gS1 by , in whieh Eve and Joy took over full voca! responsibility and ambraee d the feminism eause : thc entire album tears apart society's ill-treatment of women" 1g8.2 saw tlre reiease ef .- . :,,,., ,:li:i a hoxed two-album set (the companion reeord was the live * to their ), eomplete with a colour booklet a bit upseale in comparison previous releases, perhaps, but no-one could ever acsuse erass of selling out. Needless to say, all tifles ensured that these reeords wcre rarely, if pver, stseked my mainstream reeord stores!

Grass's perceived sincerity to their cause and their adamant refusal to eompromise earned them a solid following {although the mueie itself certainly didn't hurt}" To sum it all up: Vllhite they lasted, hawever, erass probabty tived and espoused the minimalist punk lifestyle mare that any ather band before or since" (quote tak*n from Barry Lazell's Funkl An A Ta Zl. Steve later emerged as a member of band Conflict, while the erass riams lived on for a while tonger after the ictual group's demise in the fsrm of a collabsration between Penny and Eve; they

re!easedanalbumofromanticpoetrycaIled=:.::..:.]-:l..".-:...in1986aswellas -: . WflS later on that year. Also in 1986, the compilation album ,r'' released, featuring 2A d Crass's previously released singles. Lastly, in 1993 ef,fflâ&#x201A;Ź , , .. -. : , , '; ,.,, a post-humously released 1981 live reeording. This packagc was issuad with various essys by fans, a complete Crass diseography and a "what they're doing now" column". :