Crass were the genuine article. The original anarcho-punk band, or at least the first to embrace the title and live by its tenets. If you’ve ever seen a band wear all black on stage, seen an album cover that embraces monochromatic depicts of State oppression, or if you’ve ever heard (or been a member) of a band living communally as a countermand to the edicts of the State and the demands of capitalism, then you’ve encountered the long, intellectual lineage that Crass has bequeathed to the artists and revolutionaries of the underground.
Cohering together in Essex, England in 1977, as an expression of the radical tendencies and an unquestionable need for a potent artistic outlet for the expression of their positions, the band, or collective as they may more rightly be referred to, famously consisted of vocalists Eve Libertine, Steve Ignorant, Joy De Vivre, bassist Pete Wright, guitarists N.A. Palmer and Phil Free, visualist and performances artists Gee Vaucher, and lyricist and
producer Penny Rimbaud.
Working out of a collective living space known as Dial House, they lived and worked communally, creating some of the best-remembered sonic art and socio-political commentary of the era, while developing a dedicated audience of disaffected youth, eager to learn more about how to confront State oppression and capitalist imperialism. They also gained the attention of the British authorities who placed the band under surveillance, even going so far as to tap the phone at Dial House. It is for this reason that some members of the group, even to this day, cannot be connected by phone.
Crass would eventually disband in 1984 following a final, fateful performance in support of the miner’s strike in Wales. The inability of the miners to overcome the aggressive, neoliberal agenda of the Thatcher government is often seen as the beginning of the end of organized labor’s role as an effective political force in the 20th Century. Despite this, the battle against the corrosive and inherently corrupt mechanism of capital continues into the 21st Century, in new and varied forms.
There is an increased interest in anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian ideologies on the rise all over the world, gaining expression through the inspiring Presidential campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in the U.S. and Jeremy Corbyn’s bid for Prime Minister in the UK. Surprisingly, the momentum and adoption of radical ideas seemingly increase in the wake of these campaigns, even though neither proving ultimately successful in winning office. Crass’s politics, of course, were widely left of either of these candidates, but as the political winds change and the spirit of emancipation and liberty once again ascends, this would seem to be an ideal time to return to the anarchist collective’s discography in search for inspiration for the fights ahead.
As serendipity would have it, this increased reception to Crass’s political message comes at a time when the group, spearheaded by the efforts of Penny Rimbaud, have reissued their back catalog in the form of a box set with improved masters and newly redesigned artwork. The box set, dubbed the Crassical Collection, is available through Flux of Pink Indians bassist Derek Birkett’s label One Little Independent Records.
As you might have guessed, many of Crass’s members have retained their radical tendencies and continued their activism following the break up of the group, including Penny Rimbaud. Penny has just released a new collection of his poetry set to music back in October of this year, titled Arthur Rimbaud In Verdun, which can also be found through One Little Independent Records.
Despite some initial scheduling issues, I was able to track down Penny for an interview, and he was gracious enough to offer time away from his busy schedule to chat with me about his new solo project, the legacy of Crass, and how the new Crass box set came together. Beyond whatever role this article plays in promoting a consumer product, I want to say for the record, that we had a frank and invigorating discussion of world events and philosophy, the merits of which I believe stand on their own.
Penny was warm and open as always, and I feel as though we hit on some indelible truths about humanity at this moment in history that is often discarded by the political elites, the institutions that support them, and the noxious discourse that they foster. I hope you will enjoy reading the transcript of our conversation below, and that it will inspire reflection in your meditations on life and your connections to your community going forward.
The transcript of my conversation with Penny Rimbaud is the product of a conversation that took place in November of 2020. It is reproduced below with minor edits for the sake of clarity and brevity.
You’ve been working on some new material; it’s one of the reasons we had to reschedule so many times to get together. [Laughs] Would you mind telling us a little about what you’ve been working on?
Well, I just finished a lockdown movie. Working with Mick Duffield, who used to work with Crass back in the day, and we’ve stayed in touch, and when there is a film project, that’s what we do.
We did a lockdown movie where most of the images and dialog was filmed on Skype. So, we did it 20 miles apart, but he did visit here as well. That was last March. There is a strange, derelict fort near us where the local graffiti kids have taken over, and it’s really a fantastic spot. Really wonderful to work there. So, it’s based around an essay that I wrote about COVID and a poem that goes with it. So, that’s that project.
Another one is a two-hour lockdown meditation which I’ve put out on Youtube and which I’ve asked people to donate to and which they can download. Any money donated will go to Refuge. Refuge is an organization that aids victims of domestic violence, particularly women and children.
Domestic abuse has really risen drastically while in lockdown, so it was a way for people to direct money to that cause. So, it’s two hours of heavily edited stills. I took lots of stills and little aphorism fed throughout, played against a background of … I used to be in a band called EXIT, which was a very avant-garde, ahead-of-its-time, electronic outfit in the ‘60s and early ‘70s, and we had a reworking of one of our big gigs, and I thought that would be a good soundtrack. It was a 45-minute piece, so I stretched it out to two hours of the film, knowing that it would be kind of ghostly and magical, which it did. That was another project that just came out.
Hmmm … let’s see, I just released Arthur Rimbaud In Verdun, which is a long poem I wrote and performed with three jazz saxophonists. That’s something that’s just come out, or will be coming out, I’m not really sure [Editor’s Note: Arthur Rimbaud In Verdun dropped on November 20, 2020 on One Little Independent Records.]. There are two or three new recordings in the pipeline right now that I’m working on.
Again, more in the progressive jazz field around my poetry. I’m very much hampered by the lockdown in the sense that it makes it very hard to arrange to be … we’ll for one of the recordings I need a grand piano and of course they’re only in big studios, and big studios means traveling, etc, etc. … Most of the projects I’m doing now, I’m doing in the Eve Libertine’s basement with electronic composer Charles Webber. So, we’ve been using that studio as a place where we can actually go on producing noise. [Laughs] So you know, busy time. [Laughs]
So, what has recording been like under COVID? You’ve had a different experience of it than we have in the United States. In the States, depending on the state, most studios are closed; you can’t book time, you can’t get in, and in others, the state leaves it up to individual owners whether or not they will let people in, and the owner has to make that decision for themselves.
The general picture is that small studios can get away with it, but large studios have definitely had to shut their doors. I do a lot of work over at Abbey Road, mastering not recording. And that was just a no-go area. I know the guy that I work with is back there now, but I’m not sure how they are effected by the new lockdown which just went into effect yesterday [November 5, 2020]. So for the next month we’re in pretty serious lockdown.
Whether or not Abbey Road will continue after that, I’m not sure. But that’s been the only thing that I’ve really missed, I have to say during lockdown, is doing mastering at Abbey Road. It’s always a lovely day out. The equipment is just out of this world, as you’d expect it to be, and the guy I work with, Alex Gordon, is just superb. And I really miss that. It means returning to really more of a bohemian world, which is where I exist, but Abbey Road is just such a treat. It’s like “Woah! This is like wealthy land,” or something! [Laughs]
I don’t often, but I have recorded in some of the big studios, but generally, most of my own work is done in a small, one-to-one type studio situation. Like the studio at Eve’s place. So people are doing stuff! It’s amazing how much is getting done. But my only regret is that people are just doing the same thing but under a more difficult social situation. I mean, a lot of my work, certainly over the last six months, has been trying to distinctly understand what is happening.
Not in an, “Oh, someday this will all be over and we can get back to the normal” way. No, the normal we knew is over. It’s never going to return. And that’s more than anything the kind of economic devastation that this is all leading to and is going to disallow so much. So actually the kind of DIY, bohemian approach is going to be the only way that we can do anything.
And I have to say that I miss Abbey Road, that’s my luxury holiday, but beyond that, anything that makes it difficult for the capitalist music business to continue is good in my opinion. About 99 percent of what they produce is unnecessary. It contributes nothing to our lives.
It’s just more product.
Yeah, it’s more product than anything. Which enhances that whole mindset which doesn’t look at itself, is always looking outside for the next thrill. And that’s ok for a day, but, come on.
Do you think there are going to be a rash of evictions and business closures in the U.K. as a result of the pandemic? Because that’s what we’re looking at here in the United States in the next couple months.
Oh yeah, it’s already happening. Particularly with the sort of the High Street shops, they’ve gone forever. A lot of the small catering outfits as well are disappearing. We have to adjust to a new way of living. I hate to say it, but lockdown would have been incredibly difficult without people like Amazon. We live miles away from any shops and those shops weren’t open.
So, we were buying food through Amazon. I mean, we don’t have to buy a lot, we’re pretty self-sufficient, but stuff we can’t grow ourselves, and which we need … for quite a while we were ordering through Amazon. And that’s the kind of future we’re going to have to get clear to. I mean, the High Street is no big deal. It’s just small businesses trying to make lots of profit. What’s the difference? Amazon is a big business making lots of business. Do I mind? Not really. I think that there are more important things than the things that we consume.
But I don’t think we can even begin to calculate the devastating effect of what is going down, and it seems like what I know about what is going on over there [in the United States], something it got to burst, something’s got to break. I don’t see this in a negative sense either, like when are we going to say, “No, we’ve had enough!”?
We’re being helped in a way. Climate change is saying, the planet is saying, “I’ve had enough. I can’t take any more of it” Well, it’s obviously not saying anything, it’s not actually saying that, but it’s how we can interpret it. And I think it’s a directive. It’s either we do something pretty radical, or we’re not going to survive. And I think COVID has added to that. When the real truth comes out about COVID and the way it’s been used politically, how it’s really allowed a new form of totalitarianism to creep in the back door… But I don’t see this as a negative.
Crass were yelling 40 years ago, “Watch Out! We’re about to be stomped on.” And now we’re being stomped on. The human spirit, which I praise and adore, not the conditioned spirit, but the human spirit, its amazing powers, its creative powers, that’s what will survive. It can’t not.
I think that’s something that people have been reckoning with. There has been a resurgence of the political left in recent years. Particularly an interest in political theory. But, that’s a subject in and of itself, and there is a feel like, despite our knowledge of economic systems and power structure, we don’t seem to be going anywhere. None of these podcasts and groups, cataloging all of our oppressions seem to be taking us forward. So, what is that thing that will allow people to organize around their class interests, or take the work of affinity groups and translate it into something that can effect change?
I think that’s happening almost because it’s been being forced. Like, you have an increase in damaging street protests. Which seems more like shouting for the sake of shouting, it’s not going to change all that much. Taking on the police and all that. We know what the police do. We know why they are the way they are. It’s how we treat the people on the other side of the police, or our responses to the people on that other side. It’s a negative picture, but I think people are getting wise to it.
There has been a great growth in co-operatives, in food supplies and neighborly behavior. That’s the kind of positive side. Actually, looking out for each other, you know? It’s always destroyed by the press though. Human goodness doesn’t sell newspapers. And I think underneath all of the negative aspects, there seems to be a warmth, and greater outwardness that is inquiring. We live in a very isolated spot, but it is on a public footpath, so people are out walking because they don’t have that much else they can do. And whereas before people didn’t used to stop, now they do, and they ask, “Oh hey, what are you doing there??” Because you know, it looks like a magical place, and it is magical. And people are showing interest in that.
Wherein before people weren’t, or maybe they were interested in it, but they never said anything about it. And there is a sort of “Yeah, well, how does that work? ect, etc…” Something is being stirred into people to look a little bit deeper then maybe they have before. And the deeper they get, the closer they get to some sort of real solution.
Because the real solution, effectively, is silence. Silence and the blank canvas is where real change comes about. There is no sense in trying to affect a revolution while you’re halfway through a painting. You’ve got to go to a new canvas. Because if you start with an existing painting, then the corruption that exists and the order of political outfits is going to still be present. And it’s only by returning to the blank canvas, to that silence, that any true spirit will grow. Whether it will be now or later, is not really my concern. My concern is to contribute to that development and growth, or deconstruction as another way to put it.
So you don’t think that the cross-talk that occurs between people on the left, or people in an established left vs newly radicalized people, you don’t see it as being effective towards their goals.
No! It’s all schoolyard stuff. It’s largely people who haven’t learned their way out of the schoolyard. When you are in your early teens, that’s what you do. You kick other boys and you kiss other girls, and that sort of thing, that’s what boys and girls do. But once you’ve gone twenty and you’re still behaving the same way it’s just sad. Seriously thinking that going around with a baseball bat and whacking someone with different political beliefs is going to have a positive effect, or any effect whatsoever, other than someone getting hurt, which is horrible… I mean, what is the big game? I just don’t get it. I mean, I never have.
I’m not an out and out pacifist. I think that pacifism is one of the many tools that we can use in our lives. But I know quite well, just as Castro proved, you can set up a radical, revolutionary government, or non-governmental structure, but there are always going to be people who are going to get in the way… I mean the Zapatistas would try to re-educate people, and a moment later they would be back on the other side aiming a bazooka at them. Some people would ultimately have to be taken out. It’s not something that I want to think about. It’s not something I want to think
about now, and I won’t, but I think it’s the truth.
And I think we were coming up against that in Crass. We were getting close to some sort of possibility. When the authorities really start responding by sending their secret service to listen in on you, then you know that you are getting close to the mark. You know that you might get taken out, or you have to do something to avoid being taken out. So suddenly you get serious, and that’s a whole other ball game that I was never part of, but I’m not ruling out the potential of an organized, systematic, well-trained people’s militia.
Well, those do exist, but you’re saying that those types of organizing are not going to produce the type of change we need to see in the world.
No, no, no, that’s quite possibly the last resort. I’d like to think it won’t be necessary, and I’d like to think that it wouldn’t be necessary, but I think it’s rather naive to think that it won’t be. So I can’t call myself an all-out pacifist.
Something you just said about your experience with authority I think this kind of brings us back to your band Crass in a good way. I’ve read a book recently where one of the reasons alluded to as to why Crass broke up was that you and the other members weren’t having fun with it anymore. Do you know it? The Day the Country Died by Ian Glasper.
Ah, yes.
The way the breakup is described there is that there was an increased interest by the British police in the band that resulted in your being wired tapped and you all just decided, “Ok, this isn’t what we necessarily got into this for. It’s no longer fun. Maybe we should call it a day.” Is that accurate?
No, that’s not a very good interpretation of how it happened. It started happening when we did a miners’ benefit, a benefit for the strikes down in Wales. It was the last gig we ever did. It was in the Welsh valleys, where people were suffering terrible poverty through the strike. There was horrible depression. People were at their wit’s end. We did a gig. It was a great gig, and the miner’s president presented us with an old miner’s lamp as a thank you. And it was all heartbreaking actually. The whole community was destroyed. We went down with a whole van of food to distribute because there was so much hardship going on.
And it was absolutely ludicrous. I mean it was a packed gig, people showed up from all over the country. And it was wild and wonderful, but was it the right thing to be doing? We had to rethink. We hadn’t managed to bring about the kind of revolt, not rebellion, a revolt, against authority, a revolt that could have led to some actual revolution. We failed because we didn’t actually trust the people we would had to have worked with. Not that we didn’t have any criticisms for them.
We should have contacted the leader of the miner’s union, Arthur Scargill, we should have talked to him about whether or not we wanted to go beyond the line, “Do we actually want reform, or do we want revolution?” We should have contacted people like the IRA, who have been fighting a war, not a revolution, against the British since they arrived up there. So there were people who had better knowledge than us, but we didn’t feel we should ally ourselves to anyone because it would put us in danger, not us, but the picture of us.
We were very well aware that people were looking to us for some kind of guidance. And it would be irresponsible for us to ally ourselves to some kind of a major organization. But that’s what happens all the time! Most of the time that organization is capitalist. Band go and get signed to a major label. But equally well, that organization can be political. And we didn’t want to do that. We always said, “There is no authority, but yourself. Look to yourself.” Don’t look to any leaders, don’t look to us. And really after that miners’ strike we realized that we weren’t doing the job.
We needed to rethink. It was a painful process. We sort of broke up and all went our own ways. Some of us kept on trying to sort out a new position, with the major premise being a world of peace and love. Some of the others probably still think it, but aren’t so active. But certainly, some of the band remain very active to this day. In fact, trying to say the same things but in a new context, which means different forms of activism or action.
So you saw that the band, as a political project, wasn’t going anywhere. It was just a band.
Yeah, we had come up against the wall. In a way it was infantilizing. For us to be dancing around on stage saying “Do they owe us a living? Of course they do, of course they do.” A lot of miners came into our last gig and had probably never seen a punk band before, and they were standing in the back, and they just looked sad.
They had just been shown that the state owes them a living, and the state had turned its back on them, and they were suffering the consequences. So it was a bit like going to a concentration camp in Nazi Germany as a punk band and going, “We’re all free! There is no authority but yourself!” Hmmm… I don’t think so.
Right, what you were doing doesn’t change the material reality that those workers were living.
Nooooooooo, no no no. [Laughs] It became obvious to some of us that we needed a rewrite… I still remain very committed though. I like where Crass came from. In its day it was very appropriate. It wouldn’t be appropriate now. That’s why I’m not too keen on punk bands still performing their old material.
I mean Crass became increasingly, almost by the day, attempting to respond to what was going on in the day. Something would happen in the news and we’d go and write a song about it. We didn’t have time for pretty songs. We had a position that we had to approach and probably attack.
Right, sort of, in the moment, what condition are you speaking to, what do we need to address today… Speaking of old material, is there anything that bothers you about the legacy of your band and its image today?
No. We did the best we could for what I feel was the best reasons. In fact we lived the life, and many of use still do live the life. It’s, let’s say, underfinanced because because we don’t do things for money, we do them because we believe in them, and I won’t be persuaded otherwise. When I say we, I speak primarily for myself, Gee [Vaucher], who still lives and works here at Dial House, and Eve and Steve.
I’m just always curious when talking to musicians who have been at this for a long time whether they feel as though their image has been appropriated, or if they feel like the impression people have of their band is not what they would like it to be. But it sounds like you feel Crass’s position is pretty good, and that you’re still able to inspire the types of thought in people that you were aiming for.
Well, an album like Penis Envy is probably more pertinent now than it was back in the day. And I feel that with so much of Crass’s material. The only thing that needs to change is the immediate subject, or the aims, but most of it could have been written yesterday, especially the warnings about global capitalism, which as we know it now really didn’t exist in Crass’ time.
The corporate management of politics, etc, etc. … the prescience of our work 40 years ago, with reissues and remasters and all that stuff, have lead people to really seeing what Crass was up to. I’m doing more talks and having more conversations today about Crass than I ever did, because people are seeing that there is a clue in there. Generally, that clue is “look to yourself.” “Don’t wag a finger.” We did a lot of finger-wagging, but it always turned around and came back in your face, and that’s how it worked.
And you were attempting to inspire people to think and act, and not just chastising them.
Yes, yes.
So, with the renewed interest in the types of politics that you’re talking about with Crass, and the conditions that you were responding to, the rise of global capital and how it effects people’s lives down to the micro-level, is this why it seemed like a good time to reissue your back catalog? How did that come together?
Well, it started about 10 years ago when we worked with Southern Records, who had actually developed entirely around Crass, they turned into quite a big operation, but the genesis of that was my relationship with the guy who ran Southern, John Loder, who created Southern actually to accommodate Crass. And then it became a mega business, not a mega-corporation, but a mega business. Very powerful. And … I’m sorry what did you ask?
Oh I just wanted to know about the timing of the reissue.
Oh yes, well it started about 10 or 12 years ago, and it was quite simply because I went into a record store, saw a rack of Crass records and they looked tired. There was so much pastiche of Gee’s artwork, and the general style that we had created, black and white, a dead corpse on a beach, stencil letters, all that stuff which was basically like parodies of our work.
They were parodies! And it looked mucky. Back in the day, black and white was really radical. Dropping all color from a record sleeve, people would say “Oh golly, you can’t do that!” Making the huge fold-outs which were a carry through from broadsheets back in the hippy days, people printing out posters and doing newspapers. It was and it was incorporating that element of what we had been doing back then into a new situation.
But anyway, it came about because the stuff looked tired. There was one album of which I had done the mastering, and I had never liked the mastering, but for whatever reason, I wasn’t able to, or couldn’t afford to pull it in to redo …
What album is that if you don’t mind me asking?
Ten Notes on a Summer’s Day. Our last album. Crass’s last album. Anyway, I managed to start work with Harvey Birrell, the guy who did the mastering at Southern, and I got a really good result because mastering techniques and technology have incrementally grown and grown. As you probably know yourself, you can essentially remix during the mastering, anything can be pulled out or remixed, etc, etc, etc. …
I was very impressed with that, because it basically sounded like it did when we recorded it. Not as it did when it had been translated to either vinyl or CD, where it just lost a lot due to compression. And I was so impressed that I said, “Well, I’m going to do the lot.”
So I started, not even thinking about how to market it, and then Gee heard about what I was doing and she said “Well, gee that is just so exciting! To hear that stuff as it was. Why don’t I do what you’ve done, take all of the available technical advances and use them in a new
artwork?” So she set out, in her inimitable way, putting together these … you’ve seen them I assume, these beautifully designed packagings, which is so 21 st Century.
It’s obviously all done on a computer. Back in the day, we had taken the best of what we could get, stencil lettering and all that which was available, and that’s why it was like that. Well, likewise with the design, with what is available, we’ve used it and pushed the limits of
it.
Anyway, that was the beginning of it. We released some of the remasters I did with new packaging 10 years ago. Some of the band objected to me doing it. They said, “Why are you mucking about?” Well, I’ve always been mucking about. I’ve always been remastering it and having to make new format designs, Gee has had to reformat the packaging designs so many
times, etc, etc… So yeah, we had taken a radical approach, but nothing was lost, and it was all gain, but some of the band really objected to what we were doing.
And that lead led to threats of legal action which never actually came off, although. Southern were obliged to withdraw all of our material for 6 months, and at the end of that 6 months we were as good as bust, so we couldn’t do anything anyway! So the thing just festered. We never actually, I never actually, finished the remastering program. It just lay dormant.
And eventually Southern was simply not functioning in any comprehensible way anymore. Then Allison [Schnackenberg], who was then running Southern, moved to the States and we lost all personal contact. It became unworkable. We pulled out of our agreement with
Southern and worked out a new one with One Little Independent. I’ve known Derek [Birkett], he was the boss man. He used to be in Flux of Pink Indians, who I did a lot of production for and released one of their singles on Crass Records, and so the who whole thing started again.
This time I was able to take Ten Notes on a Summer’s Day into Abbey Road, and I will never need to do it again. It was absolutely spot on. So that’s why it happened. Gee and myself thought that what people were being offered in the record stores looked like crap, sounded dated, because it wasn’t keeping up with current possibilities, the breadth and depth of sound, and we brought Crass into the 21st Century. And the results are self-evident.
It’s cool that you approached this as wanting people to hear your music how you originally made it, how it was originally performed. You saw that people were buying something inferior to that and you wanted to give them something better.
Nothing that Crass has ever done, and nothing that I’ve done since Crass, which is a lot, has ever been done with any sense of what we’re going to get out of it. The consideration is always: What can we give with it? And if something doesn’t come up within that framework, then the question is “why are we doing it?” A large number of bands don’t ask, “Why are we doing this?” Well except for one reason, probably because they enjoy the kudos and the cash. And if the kudos and the cash aren’t there then they lose interest.
Well, that has never been a consideration within Crass, and it was never a consideration after Crass. I run Dial House and it’s the same with that. No one has ever asked for something, they are simply given whatever we have to give them. And that is a good premise to start any relationship. Then the stuff starts coming back. You make as much as you give and you give as much as you take. Like the old Beetle’s song, “the love you take is equal to the love you make.” And I profoundly believe that. It’s a very simple exchange.
That’s a very beautiful sentiment. And it demonstrates the lack of a barrier between yourself and the people who are the audience for your music. Do you feel connected to your audience?
There is an old Mayan greeting, “I am thee, as thou art I.” Which is their way of saying “good morning.” In other words, we’re one person. And the people who I am happy with are the people who I don’t feel apart from. And I know that whole identity stuff, “Oh, she said this,” or “He said that” that kind of nonsense is what holds us apart all the time. I don’t try to
impose anything on anyone, because I’ve got nothing to impose. If someone wants something, and I’ve got it, then they can have it. I don’t actually do anything, unless I can serve the purpose, to go back to that old corny phrase, of “peace and love,” I don’t actually do anything unless it serves that.
And what that actually means is that peace and love are dependent on one thing, which is kindness. I can’t claim compassion. It’s something that claims a person. You can’t develop compassion, you can only develop kindness. Compassion is part of the very nature of life. So that’s why we have a whole system of kindness- giving and listening. That’s why Krishnamurti talks about the greatest act of loving being to listen, and I think that’s true. And that’s what we try to practice in the house, let people be who they are. I’m comfortable with that. Even if we perhaps find that their politics and their religious beliefs obnoxious. That’s their business.
And that’s the way I view myself in the public eye, it’s none of my business what people think… I don’t care what they think about me. I’ll just go about pumping out peace and love in various different forms. I guess there is a hope that someone will be touched. We used to say as Crass, “If there is one person in the audience who is inspired to look deeper into their life, then it was worth doing.” And that’s always been pretty much our way of working.
It’s cool to hear you say that. And I’m glad to know now that what I always thought was the message of the band, is in fact what you were trying to express. Your music has had a deep impact on me, even though I discovered you relatively late in life. To question why the rest of us must suffer for the benefit of the elites.
Right, and that’s the basis of everything I’ve ever done. Asking people to look to themselves, and look deeply into themselves. That’s the baseline of what Crass is about. There is no authority but yourself. That can be so easily interpreted in a hedonistic way. Taking license really. But that’s one of the ways that it can be misunderstood.
And I know that during this century I’ve been doing a lot of talks and conferences, and generally speaking, when I’m asked to speak it’s because I’m Penny Rimbaud of Crass, and I don’t like that, but I go, “Ok, well my subject is one of Crass’s major statements, ‘There is no authority but yourself’, but how many of you have asked what that self is? Who is that self? Why is that self? Is it something that you got second hand? The name your parents gave you? The religion your parents gave you? Your nationality? All these things are given. And we don’t have any choice. We’re too naive, too innocent, or too young to realize that we are being processed.” Most of us by our mid-teens start to think, “Well there is something wrong here, but I don’t know what the fuck it is.”
I think my whole life had been spent trying to point to the, “I don’t know what the fuck it is.” And I’m pointing to this and that, and the whole statement “There is no authority but yourself.” However, the idea of self needs to be understood in a Zen sort of way. In the material world, most people seem to believe that the self is their identity, which is a complete
construct, or that their ego is the self, which is equally a complete construct.
Well, I know through Zen practice that those things are pure constructs. They don’t even exist. But that’s how we live, with these sort of masks. And the mask covers one thing, which is emptiness. And that emptiness is love, and silence, and the blank canvas.
Photos courtesy of One Little Independent Records.
Buy Arthur Rimbaud In Verdun here.
Crassical Collection can be found here:
- Crassical Collection:Best Before 1984 (Crassical Collection)
- Ten Notes on a Summer’s Day (Crassical Collection)
- Yes Sir, I Will (Crassical Collection)
- Christ – The Album (Crassical Collection)
- Penis Envy
- Stations of the Crass
- Feeding of the Five Thousand (The Second Sitting)
