Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who
Speaker 1: Did Cool Stuff, your weekly podcast for things that I
Speaker 1: think are cool? And who am I to decide what's cool?
Speaker 1: I am a person, and every person gets to decide
Speaker 1: what they think is cool. And these are the things
Speaker 1: that I think is cool. But my name as a
Speaker 1: person who is the arbiter of cool like everyone else
Speaker 1: is Margaret Kiljoy. And my guest who's also officially the
Speaker 1: arbiter of cool is Julie Holland.
Speaker 2: So awesome to be here, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we were talking right before we hit record about
Speaker 1: how this isn't a new history podcast, this is an
Speaker 1: old history podcast, because we were talking about being incapable
Speaker 1: of remembering the word for news and calling it new history.
Speaker 1: That's unrelated to anything.
Speaker 2: It's comforting. It's like, uh, we're all gonna die kind
Speaker 2: of comforting phrase.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're all literally writing history right now, including writing
Speaker 1: the fact that we don't have a producer again today.
Speaker 1: But we do have a producer, she's just not on
Speaker 1: Mike and her name is Sophie, and our audio engineer
Speaker 1: is Rory. Everyone has to say hi to Rory. Hi,
Speaker 1: Rory Hi, riy And our theme music was written for
Speaker 1: us by unwoman who's going to be in this week's episode.
Speaker 1: In an aside, Hell yeah, but no one's going to
Speaker 1: know what it's about, unless do you know me, in
Speaker 1: which case do you already know the thing? But this
Speaker 1: is part three of a four parter about the band Crass,
Speaker 1: about a narco punk in general, and the fact that
Speaker 1: we took two episodes to not even get to the
Speaker 1: band Crass is because of the fact that punk and
Speaker 1: its broader impact has had a broad You can tell
Speaker 1: I'm off script here. I am entirely making this up,
Speaker 1: so I should probably just start, well, wait, what if
Speaker 1: people don't know who Jolie Holland is and they somehow
Speaker 1: skipped to just now and didn't know, would they know
Speaker 1: that you're a wait? We decided to sing a songwriter
Speaker 1: sort of an annoying word.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean singer songwriter. Yeah, I'm a musician. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I like that. Sometimes people don't know that being a
Speaker 2: singer is being a musician, which is really funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's weird because that's like, that's the part of
Speaker 1: musicianists that I'm worse at is singing.
Speaker 2: I believe everybody can sing.
Speaker 1: I know I technically can make singing. I don't actually
Speaker 1: hate my singing voice. I just have to I'm not
Speaker 1: as trained at it as I would like to be.
Speaker 1: But it wouldn't have affected me if I'd been an
Speaker 1: avant garde or punk singer. That's not true. Actually, punk
Speaker 1: singers are incredibly talented.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I know. It's so much power. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 2: had never consciously listened to Krass until we started this.
Speaker 2: So here we are starting episode three, and I just
Speaker 2: listened to a whole bunch of Crass and I think
Speaker 2: they're amazing musicians. I just really enjoyed. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 2: really technically powerful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's it changed, well, it changed a lot
Speaker 1: musically and not just like I'm going to talk mostly
Speaker 1: about its cultural and political impact because of my own
Speaker 1: background and focuses. But like when you listen to a
Speaker 1: bunch of crafts, you're like, oh, that's where that weird
Speaker 1: part of punk that doesn't make any sense comes from.
Speaker 2: You know, absolutely, Yeah, I really heard that. I heard
Speaker 2: the formativeness.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, where we last left our unlikely heroes, they
Speaker 1: were doing a bunch of avant garde stuff and living
Speaker 1: in a rented cottage outside of London called Dial House.
Speaker 1: After their divorce because they got divorced even though they
Speaker 1: never got married. Gee moved to New York City to
Speaker 1: work as a commercial artist, doing work for the New
Speaker 1: York Times and I think the New Yorker, and she
Speaker 1: lived around the corner from seatgb's the Classic punk club,
Speaker 1: and just a bunch of stories about those days and
Speaker 1: hanging out with CBGB's punks and stuff. Meanwhile, back in London,
Speaker 1: folks in the house were working as cover designers, and
Speaker 1: at least Penny, at least is the only person who's
Speaker 1: like jobs I knew. I was trying to figure out
Speaker 1: whether they're all just like living on the dole or whatever.
Speaker 1: Penny was doing book design, Penny was doing like some
Speaker 1: sort of coal delivery or carrying. I think people were
Speaker 1: heating their houses a coal and I think Penny was
Speaker 1: delivering it and house painting and just having a bunch
Speaker 1: of weird jobs. This is also oddly placed his Long
Speaker 1: Dark Night of the Soul. Normally that would come near
Speaker 1: the climax of the story, but his relationship has fallen
Speaker 1: apart and everything seems to be ending, you know, this
Speaker 1: whole end of this era, and so he spends a
Speaker 1: while just kind of Usually this goes really badly, but
Speaker 1: it works this time. He spends a while just like
Speaker 1: drinking and complaining about Christianity in the kitchen. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's like, that's like his thing for a while,
Speaker 1: as he just sits around the kitchen table at this
Speaker 1: communal house and screams about how Jesus should have run
Speaker 1: away from the people who were killing him. And he
Speaker 1: wrote a pamphlet called Reality Asylum, or I think it's
Speaker 1: called Christ's Reality Asylum. And in case anyone's wondering, I
Speaker 1: don't know how to spell the word asylum. Still. I
Speaker 1: took me like eight times writing the script. But he
Speaker 1: wrote this thing, and he was mad that Jesus hadn't
Speaker 1: run away from his captors. He was mad that his
Speaker 1: friend Wally hadn't either. He was just bitter, like all
Speaker 1: the hippie love stuff is kind of fallen apart. And
Speaker 1: so he decides to put out this piece, and he
Speaker 1: asks his housemate Dave King to make a piece of
Speaker 1: art for it, design a logo for it for the cover,
Speaker 1: and so Dave King sits down and he sketches something
Speaker 1: that we now know today as the crafts symbol, which
Speaker 1: is a sort of a circle slash made out of
Speaker 1: Ora Boris's against a cross. And this is one of
Speaker 1: the better pieces of branding in history. Like Crass is
Speaker 1: an anti corporate band, but the fact that they all
Speaker 1: come from like graphic design backgrounds and they know about
Speaker 1: commercial art shows this logo is part of what makes them.
Speaker 1: I think it's somehow kind of esoteric and slightly disturbing.
Speaker 1: Anything with radial symmetry is going to occasionally be mistaken
Speaker 1: for a swastika, and the Crass logo is no different.
Speaker 1: Have you seen the Crass logo of course.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I just spoke with my friend Sarah Berlin Game,
Speaker 2: who just got out of the State House in Wyoming today,
Speaker 2: just while I was walking my dog, and she said
Speaker 2: that they a bit of new history here. They just
Speaker 2: allowed open Carrie in the schools. Maybe for the students,
Speaker 2: I don't know. It's really upsetting, Okay, in Wyoming. In Wyoming,
Speaker 2: she's a she's like a lgbt Q plus organizer with
Speaker 2: white Wyoming equality and so tough, so badass, and uh yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just shocking. But she said her the first love
Speaker 2: of her life had a Crass tattoo, and he was
Speaker 2: always telling people that it was not a swastika.
Speaker 1: Yeah that Yeah, that's gonna end up sometimes a problem
Speaker 1: for them. And it's funny to me because I even
Speaker 1: like often think things look like swastikas that aren't. I
Speaker 1: have never looked at the cross logo and thought it's
Speaker 1: a swastika, but I do know an awful lot of
Speaker 1: people with the tattoo.
Speaker 2: It's it's a lot like the the Bad Religion image
Speaker 2: kind of is a iteration of the cross image in
Speaker 2: a way.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, isn't a circle circle slash through a cross
Speaker 1: is bad religion?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like almost the same.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. Oh that's a that's a good point. Bad
Speaker 1: Religions is much simpler. But you know, so they have
Speaker 1: this logo and they don't know that it's going to
Speaker 1: be the logo of Crass yet it's just the logo
Speaker 1: for Christ's Reality Asylum, and they make pamphlets of it
Speaker 1: and stuff and start distributing it. Well, I guess Penny does.
Speaker 1: Punk is doing this thing, And in nineteen seventy seven
Speaker 1: the whole house went to go see the clash. I
Speaker 1: really like the idea that they had, Like House field
Speaker 1: trips and they left and they were like, hey, this
Speaker 1: is fucking cool. And then they saw the Slits and
Speaker 1: they were like, oh, this is even more earnest, this
Speaker 1: is even better. And also they were like the Clashes
Speaker 1: was more technically competent than the Slits, let's say, and
Speaker 1: so they were like, you know what, and they can
Speaker 1: do it. Anyone can do it, we can do it.
Speaker 1: It also helped that Joe Strummer from the Clash used
Speaker 1: to challenge the audience to form their own bands at
Speaker 1: the end of shows, which is fucking cool. That is
Speaker 1: a cool thing to do, especially when you're like the
Speaker 1: rock star band is to be like, no, we're not
Speaker 1: better you. We could just everyone can do it, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think I think they somebody gave them that
Speaker 2: advice before they started too. They're like, we really have
Speaker 2: we want to start a band, but we feel like
Speaker 2: we're not good enough, and I forget some big band
Speaker 2: was like, no, you should just start.
Speaker 1: Hell, yeah, that's cool. I really like the Clash. About
Speaker 1: half of Crass is like, uh, Clash is bad and sellouts,
Speaker 1: and the other half of Crass is like, Clash is cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I saw I saw the track where it seemed
Speaker 2: like they was trying to start beef with them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They they do a lot of beef tracks. They
Speaker 1: are uh dis tracks, that's the word, not not beef tracks.
Speaker 1: I'm good at knowing new history.
Speaker 2: On new history. Yeah. They they seem very fighty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's interesting because like the whole time that
Speaker 1: they're a band, they're incredibly fighty with their like lyrics
Speaker 1: and they're the stuff they do. But then like their
Speaker 1: house is open and they're all peaceful and you can
Speaker 1: just like come hang out, and like it was kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. So they get home, they've seen the clash,
Speaker 1: they've seen the slits, and there's this young punk who
Speaker 1: had been hanging around the house because they're in their
Speaker 1: thirties and they're not punks, right, And this guy named
Speaker 1: Steve Ignorant was coming around, which is a good punk name.
Speaker 1: He would come around because his older brother, who was
Speaker 1: a hippie, used to take him there. And then young
Speaker 1: Steve he was originally a skinhead. This is before skinhead
Speaker 1: had racist connotations, and then after that he was glam
Speaker 1: but then he was punk and he liked this house.
Speaker 1: He's like in high school or whatever they call high
Speaker 1: school over there, maybe they called high school, I don't know.
Speaker 1: And he starts hanging out there more and more. He's
Speaker 1: like skipping school to hang out at dial House, even
Speaker 1: though the weird hippies wouldn't let him eat meat and
Speaker 1: there was like no TV to watch or whatever, you know.
Speaker 1: And so one day he shows up at dial House
Speaker 1: and he's like, well, I want to start a band,
Speaker 1: and Penny's like, yeah, sure, fuck it, all right, I'll
Speaker 1: be your drummer. Let's start a band. And it was
Speaker 1: a two piece at first. Steve would shout and Penny
Speaker 1: would smash on the RUMs. And Penny wanted to call
Speaker 1: it les font Terrible, the fucking surrealist fucking it's a
Speaker 1: uh in font Terrible means the terrible children, and it's
Speaker 1: a reference to some weird old artsy shit, a novel
Speaker 1: by John Jean Cocteau, Whereas Steve wanted to call it Stormtrooper,
Speaker 1: which is also not a very good name. But it's
Speaker 1: interesting because Stormtrooper is a better name in terms of,
Speaker 1: like it sounds like a punk band, but it's also
Speaker 1: a terrible name because it's a literally a Nazi thing,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So then they ended.
Speaker 1: Up picking the name crass, which comes from a David
Speaker 1: Bowie song Ziggy Stardust, in which there's a line that
Speaker 1: says the kids were just crass. And soon enough there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of them in this band. And this isn't
Speaker 1: a music history podcast, and I'm not going to give
Speaker 1: you the names of And I feel kind of almost
Speaker 1: like a jerk about this, but I'm not going to
Speaker 1: give you the names of like everyone in the band,
Speaker 1: and like when they joined them, when they left, and
Speaker 1: what instruments they played and all that stuff, because that
Speaker 1: is extensively covered. So that's not what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 1: Everyone in this band was important, and they really were
Speaker 1: a collective, but there were a bunch of them, and
Speaker 1: I would have a hard time crafting a narrative around
Speaker 1: all seven or eight of them. At first they were
Speaker 1: all men, and soon enough there's three women in the
Speaker 1: band as well. They played their first show and they
Speaker 1: pissed off the neighbors so much that the neighbors pulled
Speaker 1: the plug on their show. And I think that that
Speaker 1: is a good way to start a band. The reason
Speaker 1: that I think that is that I once was in
Speaker 1: an acoustic crass cover band, which you're making obviously that
Speaker 1: would be amazing face but and it was called best
Speaker 1: before eighteen eighty six, so is somehow a reference to
Speaker 1: Haymarket and crass. And it was with my friend on
Speaker 1: woman who did the theme music for this podcast, as
Speaker 1: well as another friend who doesn't like when they're named
Speaker 1: on air, so will not be And we got booked
Speaker 1: to play. This is really gonna I'm gonna really impress everyone.
Speaker 1: We got booked to play a steampunk convention in San Antonio, Texas,
Speaker 1: and we were so bad that not only were we
Speaker 1: kicked out of the bar where we played, the entire
Speaker 1: convention was kicked out of the bar, even though they'd
Speaker 1: booked it for a private event.
Speaker 2: That's incredible. And this is wait, this is an acoustic band.
Speaker 1: Yeah it was one one was playing cello, I was
Speaker 1: playing accordion, and my friend was playing acoustic guitar.
Speaker 2: So wait, you were wait you were amplified right.
Speaker 1: No, no shit, no, we were just shouting loud as hell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that that is I'm deeply impressed. That's thank you,
Speaker 2: that's that's that's another level. You got the convention kicked out.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, I was really impressed by that.
Speaker 1: Uh No, one else was impressed by that. Everyone else
Speaker 1: is upset by that.
Speaker 2: But you know, that's success, that's really success.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That was the only time we ever played. We
Speaker 1: did not continue. We got booked to play that convention.
Speaker 1: That was it.
Speaker 2: Wait was the name of the band again.
Speaker 1: Best before eighteen eighty six? Yeah, so soon enough Krass,
Speaker 1: the actual Crass, not the brilliant derivative band Best before
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty six. Soon enough, Krass developed their whole deal,
Speaker 1: which was to wear all black like a uniform and
Speaker 1: play in front of a bunch of political banners. Eventually
Speaker 1: they start using projection from various like artsy films and
Speaker 1: all kinds of imagery, and they use the big old
Speaker 1: Crass logo banner and this is all really effective branding.
Speaker 1: But for a long time, even though they were eventually
Speaker 1: like the a narco punk band, a lot of people
Speaker 1: saw them and were like, are these Nazis? And it
Speaker 1: didn't help that they all wore red armbands.
Speaker 2: Oh lord, yeah, because everybody knew what Nazis were, and
Speaker 2: people did not know what anarcho punks were.
Speaker 1: Well, because a narco punks weren't a thing yet, and
Speaker 1: what's and what's fascinating about it is that they like
Speaker 1: and they weren't like wearing like patches and stuff, right,
Speaker 1: they were like wearing solid all black. And to this day,
Speaker 1: like there's kind of a slight division in punk. It's
Speaker 1: not named, but there's like a slight division where the
Speaker 1: more Anarco you are, the more clean black, and the
Speaker 1: more punk you are, the more color and like patched
Speaker 1: up black, you know, but like punks wear a lot
Speaker 1: of black, but like the like slightly cleaner Anarco look like.
Speaker 1: I think this is the idea that punks just wear
Speaker 1: all black comes from crass And what's fascinating is I
Speaker 1: think they were doing it kind of to look a
Speaker 1: little bit like fascists because and this is a thing
Speaker 1: that like, Okay, the playing around with fascist imagery is
Speaker 1: a thing that is hard to look at in retrospect.
Speaker 1: But a lot of early punks were using this for
Speaker 1: three different reasons, as best as I can tell, a
Speaker 1: lot of people like Susie Sue, who has a kind
Speaker 1: of racist named or band. Anyway, Susi Sue used swastikas
Speaker 1: and stuff, and I believe is basically shock value. I'm
Speaker 1: not an expert on Suzi Sue and then some people
Speaker 1: were using swastikas and stuff because they were actually right wing,
Speaker 1: and Krass never used swastikas, but they used this kind
Speaker 1: of imagery, I believe, in a similar way to what
Speaker 1: they were doing with their visual art, whereas like Crass's
Speaker 1: like art is like close up photos of children on
Speaker 1: fire and the horrors of war and mutilation and all
Speaker 1: of this like edge Lord imagery, right, they were doing
Speaker 1: it to be like, look, these are the horrors of
Speaker 1: war that they're trying to hide from you. We're going
Speaker 1: to put it in your face that war is bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the expression of empire that and we're
Speaker 2: all living on the slightly cleaner side of it, but
Speaker 2: this is the reality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like we're going to show you the shit that
Speaker 1: is being done in the rest of the empire here
Speaker 1: in the colonial center, you know. And so I think
Speaker 1: that they are sort of playing around with like edgy
Speaker 1: uniforms and like being like kind of fashy in some
Speaker 1: of their fashion comes from that, like that desire, whereas
Speaker 1: like these days, most of the time when people dress
Speaker 1: up fascy, it's just bad, you know, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Mean it's also it also seems like it could be
Speaker 2: read as just an expression of militancy totally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then it's like kind of fun and interesting
Speaker 1: because they are like pacifists from the go, but they
Speaker 1: are like loud and angry pacifists in a way that
Speaker 1: like you don't see a lot of these days. You know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a oh I haven't read it, but there's a
Speaker 1: book that someone I know wrote called a pacifismin What
Speaker 1: it Used to be. Oh no, non violent ain't what
Speaker 1: it used to be anyway. So Crass is starting to play,
Speaker 1: and they didn't have advertisers cutting into the middle of
Speaker 1: their shows. They just didn't. They were really that is
Speaker 1: a thing that they were against. But that's fifty years
Speaker 1: ago and things are different. Sometimes advertisers come right now
Speaker 1: and we're back. So Crass is starting to play and
Speaker 1: they're not like a tight professional band for a very
Speaker 1: long time. They actually start getting more and more like
Speaker 1: technically competent or whatever, but they've never prioritized like clean
Speaker 1: production or technical mastery of their instruments. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of like some of the people from Krass talking about
Speaker 1: how they had sometimes had trouble at other shows because
Speaker 1: afterwards all the other musicians would like want a jam
Speaker 1: or something, and they're like, I know how to play
Speaker 1: the three chords that are in my song.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know how to play the songs that I
Speaker 2: wrote and not not anything else. Yeah, which I love that.
Speaker 2: I really appreciate those kind of musicians.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it because I am literally that kind of person.
Speaker 1: I cannot I love playing piano. I play piano. It
Speaker 1: was like my main happy place. I cannot play a
Speaker 1: piano song and write. I barely know how to read music,
Speaker 1: and I like write music, and I feel like a
Speaker 1: jerk because then people are like, oh, let's Jim, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I no, No, I kind of can if
Speaker 1: someone tells me what key we're in, I can do it.
Speaker 1: But anyway, there's a part of why I like Crassis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they prioritize their overall aesthetic and they prioritize political messaging.
Speaker 1: But they did write some fucking bangers right out of
Speaker 1: the gate. Their main issues included feminism and the peace movement.
Speaker 1: One of their first songs is one of their classics.
Speaker 1: I think it's like the second song they wrote. It's
Speaker 1: called do They Owe Us a Living? And the chorus
Speaker 1: is do they owe us a living. Of course they do.
Speaker 1: Of course they fucking do. And it's just this like angry,
Speaker 1: like no society needs to take care of people.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I just went and went by my friend Jessica
Speaker 2: Kinney's house and she comes walking down her hill and
Speaker 2: she's she's a old punk and I had told her
Speaker 2: that we were doing this and uh huh, she comes
Speaker 2: walking down our hill. She's screaming that song at me.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, the song is fucking good. And there's a
Speaker 1: punk club in London at this time called the Roxy.
Speaker 1: And I think this part's actually important. It grew out
Speaker 1: of a gay club and Crass played there twice, the
Speaker 1: second and last time they ever played there. Is it
Speaker 1: still in their very early stages, they were too drunk
Speaker 1: to play, possibly too high to play, but I've like
Speaker 1: read one thing that's too high to play. But overall
Speaker 1: I read that they kind of didn't do drugs, so
Speaker 1: at the very least they were too drunk to play,
Speaker 1: and they made such a shit show of it that
Speaker 1: they got banned from the Roxy, which is why they
Speaker 1: wrote a song called Band from the Roxy.
Speaker 2: When I read the lyrics, it seemed to imply that,
Speaker 2: like they were too cool, for the roxy, but they
Speaker 2: just couldn't they couldn't make it happen on stage. It
Speaker 2: sounds like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, basically like I've read a couple of different takes
Speaker 1: of it, but it was like they went up and
Speaker 1: they were too drunk, and so the club was like,
Speaker 1: get the fuck off stage, and they were like no.
Speaker 1: And then eventually the band was like, fine, you can
Speaker 1: finish your set, but your fucking band. And then afterwards
Speaker 1: they decided even though they were like, oh, we were
Speaker 1: unjustly banned or whatever, and you know, they were like, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe we shouldn't get so drunk before we play anymore.
Speaker 1: Like you can have like a beer or two before
Speaker 1: you play. That's the that's the new rules in Crass
Speaker 1: is we don't want to be too drunk to play,
Speaker 1: which is important. It's like a funny I see the
Speaker 1: like as a musician, you're like, okay, like, especially when
Speaker 1: you're first starting or something, you're like, you know, a
Speaker 1: drink might help loosen you up to be a little
Speaker 1: bit less nervous on stage, but it gets real, real bad,
Speaker 1: real quickly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't doesn't do anything for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's nice to having The writer is nice
Speaker 2: to share with friends, if if people whatever that you
Speaker 2: want to.
Speaker 1: Say, like to give drink tickets and drinks or whatever
Speaker 1: to your friends.
Speaker 2: And yourself to hang out in the hang out in
Speaker 2: the dressing room and then drink some tequila.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fair enough. I think by the end of Crass,
Speaker 1: I think only Steve Ignorant was drinking at all. And
Speaker 1: at Dial House there was almost no drinking and almost
Speaker 1: no drug use. And part of that was strategic cops
Speaker 1: like came by to raid and search and knock and
Speaker 1: talk to them like all the time. And you don't
Speaker 1: want a bunch of drugs at your anarchy house. That's
Speaker 1: a general.
Speaker 2: Rule, absolutely not. It's yeah, especially yeah, if you look
Speaker 2: really cool, other people are gonna notice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And they eventually become like too serious for drinking
Speaker 1: and drugs or whatever. And they are they're such good
Speaker 1: kill joys. They are like the archtypical like yeah.
Speaker 2: They really are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and kind of negative way as well, Like a
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff you read retrospectively about Krass is like, oh,
Speaker 1: basically they kind of created a puritanical scene, and they
Speaker 1: they built kind of this politically pure scene. This is
Speaker 1: their weakness and their strength for example, there was this
Speaker 1: Rock against Racism movement that I brought up last time.
Speaker 1: It's all these big concerts happening in London, pretty much
Speaker 1: in a response to Eric Clapton's wild unhinged racist rant.
Speaker 1: And Krass played Rock Against Racism once and then they
Speaker 1: decided not to again because they were so offended that
Speaker 1: they were offered money to play for it. Come on,
Speaker 1: they are like, you know, they we stand on the
Speaker 1: shoulders of giants. You know, they like offered a really
Speaker 1: important critique of the music industry, but like people need
Speaker 1: to eat food on a regular basis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for real, I'm gonna take this moment to Okay,
Speaker 2: Well two thoughts. Okay, Number one, they're commercial artists. Why
Speaker 2: how what's going on? Like they already they're already, but
Speaker 2: I guess they're like that's somebody else's job, you know
Speaker 2: that they're working on. So like like if they're creating
Speaker 2: the artistic parameters of the vision of their band, part
Speaker 2: of that is like this anti whatever. I don't know
Speaker 2: what their deal is. And then the second, the second
Speaker 2: thing that I wanted to say is that I was
Speaker 2: offered a lot of money for to do music for
Speaker 2: a de Beer's ad early in my career, before it
Speaker 2: was obvious what a shit talker I am or whatever,
Speaker 2: And that was at least a down payment on a house,
Speaker 2: Like my life could have been a lot better. So
Speaker 2: I'll at least I get to talk about it on
Speaker 2: your podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, did you end up doing it?
Speaker 2: Hell no?
Speaker 1: Fuck yeah cool.
Speaker 2: Buck No Yeah, oh no, I didn't get the house.
Speaker 2: All I got to do is tell you that I
Speaker 2: didn't do it.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah. Because that's like, that's like a good example of, like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a kind of a way of going
Speaker 1: a little bit too far in both directions. You know,
Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, if you can get away with it,
Speaker 1: don't work for de beers, you know. But then like
Speaker 1: I don't know, if you sell records and then use
Speaker 1: the money to eat, I don't know, this would be
Speaker 1: a great place to pivot to ads. But we don't
Speaker 1: have to pivot to ads. But like, I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess this whole thing about Crass is kind of a
Speaker 1: reflection on the commercialism of art, and so one of
Speaker 1: the things that they do is that they're basically always
Speaker 1: playing benefits. Basically every show they play is a benefit show,
Speaker 1: which is cool, and they like make amazing things happen
Speaker 1: during their career. And at one point they're playing with
Speaker 1: this band, the UK Subs, and then the UK Subs
Speaker 1: played a song called All I Want to Know is
Speaker 1: does She Suck? And so Kras was like, that song
Speaker 1: is sexist, and so they storm the stage, pull the
Speaker 1: singer off the stage in the middle of the show.
Speaker 1: But then later they all sit down after the show,
Speaker 1: they all sit down and talk about it, and the
Speaker 1: person who wrote that song is like, this is the
Speaker 1: context of why I wrote it, And they discussed the
Speaker 1: lyrics at great length, and in the end they all
Speaker 1: become friends.
Speaker 2: That makes me very happy. I'm trying to have room
Speaker 2: for that kind of energy in my life right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because like, if you're going to kind of create
Speaker 1: a vaguely puritanical scene, you need to not be complete
Speaker 1: assholes about it. You need to be like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: hear where you're coming from. But this is why we
Speaker 1: think it isn't presenting a good you know, it's like
Speaker 1: causing it. You know, it's a sexist thing to go
Speaker 1: up and sing and like, you know, this is why
Speaker 1: we have a problem with it. But I also think
Speaker 1: it's cute that they ripped them off stage.
Speaker 2: Oh me too, makes me very happy that they pulled
Speaker 2: them off the stage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so they didn't become a giant success over,
Speaker 1: but they started building a fan base though in the
Speaker 1: early years an awful lot of people headed for the
Speaker 1: doors when they started playing. Although I get the impression
Speaker 1: that that's kind of like a mystique that they're building up. Also,
Speaker 1: I suspect it's true, but I suspect they're like playing
Speaker 1: into that when they talk about it, especially since their
Speaker 1: previous band was called Exit, because they were like, ha
Speaker 1: ha haa, we're going to drive away all of our
Speaker 1: listeners or whatever.
Speaker 2: You know. They're good at that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it clearly by sticking to what they
Speaker 1: were doing. Yeah, they drove away a lot of listeners,
Speaker 1: and then they brought in even more, you know. And
Speaker 1: then geev ousher who's living in New York at this time,
Speaker 1: she books them some shows in America, so they go
Speaker 1: over and they loved New York, at least Steve did.
Speaker 1: Steve talked about how he loved that there was cross
Speaker 1: dressers everywhere, and there's vegetarian food everywhere, and the food
Speaker 1: actually tasted good, which makes sense because I've eaten British food,
Speaker 1: so I think that going to New York would be
Speaker 1: a culinary revelation. And then they headed back to England
Speaker 1: and Gee moved back to England with them. Basically, Ge
Speaker 1: was getting more and more politically radical, and she was
Speaker 1: getting tired of the feel good liberal vibe of the
Speaker 1: New York Times and the New Yorker and her employers
Speaker 1: in general, for example. And this was actually the final straw.
Speaker 1: I believe there had been this homophobic attack in Central Park,
Speaker 1: and so she did art for an article about it,
Speaker 1: and it included two men kissing in her art, and
Speaker 1: her boss got mad at her for including two men
Speaker 1: kissing in this article about people being attacked, no homophobic attack,
Speaker 1: and so she was like, you know what, fuck this
Speaker 1: and quit, you know, commercial art, and moved to back
Speaker 1: to London, into back into dial house and started a
Speaker 1: plane and cross And at this point, around this point
Speaker 1: when they get back from New York, they're like, are
Speaker 1: we doing this? Like is this? Are we going to
Speaker 1: take this seriously? And they all committed, and there's this
Speaker 1: whole thing where like basically and there's people saying that
Speaker 1: this didn't didn't happen there's a version of the story
Speaker 1: where Penny was like, Hey, if we don't take this seriously,
Speaker 1: I'm quitting and everyone was like, fine, then quit and
Speaker 1: so he quit, and then a day later everyone was like, no,
Speaker 1: let's take it seriously. You can come back, like and
Speaker 1: at this point, this is when when women started the band,
Speaker 1: including Eva Libertine, who's a mom and who's we were
Speaker 1: talking about before as an amazing vocal style and just
Speaker 1: like does really cool shit. And they Once women joined
Speaker 1: the band, more women started coming to the show. But
Speaker 1: as best as I can tell, the audience of punk
Speaker 1: music overall was drifting further and further towards angry young
Speaker 1: men instead of where it started as this like larger,
Speaker 1: more inclusive, youth led subculture. And I feel like punk
Speaker 1: has always had this like multiple sides to it, and
Speaker 1: one of them is this like beautiful feminists, liberating movement,
Speaker 1: and then there's this other part of it that's always
Speaker 1: been at least since the you know, late seventies, early eighties,
Speaker 1: like a angry young men are angry m hm. Around
Speaker 1: this point, they actually banned the word kunt from their lyrics.
Speaker 1: And this is kind of interesting to me because every
Speaker 1: British person I've ever met has tried really hard to
Speaker 1: convince me. I think they're right that the word kant
Speaker 1: has very different connotations in the UK than it does
Speaker 1: in the US.
Speaker 2: I love the word kunt.
Speaker 1: I know, it's such a yeah.
Speaker 2: I just think like I love it as as an
Speaker 2: anti imperialist word in a way, because the other the
Speaker 2: other terms, the like medical terms that we use for
Speaker 2: for the genitalia are fucking Roman okay, huh. And then
Speaker 2: the the English word gets turned into a swear word,
Speaker 2: and I would say, I.
Speaker 1: Was is kunt The English word kant.
Speaker 2: Is an English word interesting and it's and it's a
Speaker 2: venerable fucking word. It's it has the same root as kundalini, Okay.
Speaker 2: So it is like you know, classic, like Indo European
Speaker 2: ancient ass word, and it signifies the entire organ, unlike
Speaker 2: the you know, the medical words which are you know
Speaker 2: they are? They come from uh, from Rome, from Rome,
Speaker 2: from the colonizing force. And that always happens, like colonized people,
Speaker 2: their language gets turned into curse words.
Speaker 1: Yeah, even like when Finland is not well. Actually Finland
Speaker 1: was a colonized space for a very long time, but
Speaker 1: one of the Finnish course words Badcula is the name
Speaker 1: of like and it's like meant to be sort of
Speaker 1: like a word for satan, but it's just an old
Speaker 1: pagan deity. Like it's not a bad word at all,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, My a friend of mine is his mom is Filipino,
Speaker 2: and he was saying like his mother's language was very crass,
Speaker 2: and I was like, is it crass or is this
Speaker 2: just like a colonized perspective.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's that's interesting, and like I think it's
Speaker 1: like such a good indicative of crass, the band being
Speaker 1: like we're not gonna use the word cunt and songs
Speaker 1: because we're doing feminism in the nineteen seventies and eighties.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because like again, like Kant has much
Speaker 1: stronger negative like if you call someone a count in
Speaker 1: the US, it's a very like strong thing to say,
Speaker 1: and it it isn't as much that way in the UK.
Speaker 1: And so I think that the best comparison is like
Speaker 1: if they stopped using the word bitch in their.
Speaker 2: Lyrics exactly, yeah, I was gonna I was gonna.
Speaker 1: Call that yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: But like in I think in Scotland or something where
Speaker 2: somewhere over there they have a They're just like, there's
Speaker 2: a cunt of lake.
Speaker 1: Oh hell yeah.
Speaker 2: So it's it's like you can see that, like it
Speaker 2: did not have this kind of like very negative characterization
Speaker 2: in the past. And also I've seen some etymology that
Speaker 2: suggests that the word queen comes from the word cunt.
Speaker 1: That would rule, well, do you know who? I won't
Speaker 1: call a bunch of cunts, because then I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: a job anymore. It's our advertisers.
Speaker 2: It depends on whether or not you mean it as
Speaker 2: an honorific.
Speaker 1: That's true. Why in that case that I wouldn't as
Speaker 1: an honor You know what, sometimes some of our advertisers
Speaker 1: are right. You know, sometimes we get the like go
Speaker 1: walk in the woods more ads, and you know what,
Speaker 1: here's a free one for go walk in the woods more.
Speaker 1: It's nice, go walk in the woods more, especially right
Speaker 1: now when they're all being destroyed by the current administrator. Anyway,
Speaker 1: here's advertisers who have something to tell you.
Speaker 2: And we're back.
Speaker 1: And that was probably the most I've ever towed the
Speaker 1: line wait towd the line is like it has like
Speaker 1: two opposite meetings. The most I've ever been like, uh,
Speaker 1: can I get away with this anyway?
Speaker 2: Sorry, we'll find out.
Speaker 1: So if there was a if there was an episode
Speaker 1: where I should do that. And so the band Crass
Speaker 1: has a whole mystique around them. No one individual was
Speaker 1: under the spotlight. They were actually fairly anonymous, Like now
Speaker 1: we kind of talk about all the individuals in the band,
Speaker 1: but I'm under the impression that they didn't do that
Speaker 1: as much. And I think they would usually sign things
Speaker 1: as the band, like this is what Krass said, rather
Speaker 1: than this is what G said or Penny said or whatever.
Speaker 1: No one knew their names as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: for a long time, and they lived in some mysterious
Speaker 1: house in the country, but the house was open and
Speaker 1: people started camping there, going and hanging out. And then
Speaker 1: they started a graffiti campaign, which political graffiti is as
Speaker 1: old as politics and walls as far as I can tell.
Speaker 1: But I think that they kicked off a lot of
Speaker 1: the idea of stencil graffiti in the UK. And it
Speaker 1: started with G and Penny going out every Saturday to
Speaker 1: stencil basic slogans like fight war not wars.
Speaker 2: I was like, I love that one. It's really good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it captures that militancy so well, right, because
Speaker 1: you're like, no, we're going to fight something, but what
Speaker 1: we're fighting is the concept of war, you know.
Speaker 2: And it's like all of this, the like going out
Speaker 2: and like with their gorilla ad campaign, it really and
Speaker 2: like the ability to like create this like beautiful slogan,
Speaker 2: it's all. It all feeds back into thinking about them
Speaker 2: as coming from commercial art.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, you're completely right. This is an advertising campaign,
Speaker 1: but it's not, and it does promote the band, but
Speaker 1: they are set up to not cash in on it.
Speaker 1: They're set up to then use it to promote the ideas.
Speaker 1: And so for eighteen months, every Saturday they would go
Speaker 1: out and stencil until touring basically took up kind of
Speaker 1: all of their time. But that point more people have
Speaker 1: been doing it anyway, including as soon as they started
Speaker 1: doing stenciling campaigns, a conservative Christian group started counter stenciling
Speaker 1: to them, and they had this whole graffiti war, and
Speaker 1: soon enough all kinds of groups were getting into stenciling.
Speaker 1: And they put out their first album. They called it
Speaker 1: a single, but I think this was like literally around
Speaker 1: how they wanted to price it really cheap. It was
Speaker 1: twelve songs, long, so a little bit long for a single,
Speaker 1: and it was a twelve inch record called The Feeding
Speaker 1: of the five Thousand. I love how they play with
Speaker 1: all this sort of anti Christian imagery and lyrics constantly.
Speaker 1: But the Feeding of the five Thousand is a reference
Speaker 1: to when Jesus fed as many poor people as he could.
Speaker 2: I one thing I was trying to do in the
Speaker 2: minutes between these episodes is come to an understanding of
Speaker 2: Crass's theology.
Speaker 1: It is hard, have you come to conclusions because I
Speaker 1: haven't read everything yet.
Speaker 2: But you were raised, you were raised Catholic? Is that right?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I was raised in uh. I was raised Jehovah's Witness, okay,
Speaker 2: And like I never got baptized, I never drank the
Speaker 2: kool aid and it's blood, yes, So I had to
Speaker 2: That's so funny. I had to really grapple with theology
Speaker 2: from a very young age, you know, because I was
Speaker 2: I was just like presented with like this giant pile
Speaker 2: of bullshit as a child. So and it was like
Speaker 2: this language that I had to grapple with. So it's
Speaker 2: it was really fun looking at their theology because it's
Speaker 2: their stuff is so religious.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah. I like that about it. I
Speaker 1: like how they are playing with this. And when they
Speaker 1: put out The Feeding of the five thousand, every other
Speaker 1: album at the time was three ninety nine, and so
Speaker 1: they made theirs one ninety nine, and to make sure
Speaker 1: that shops wouldn't mark it up, they printed pay no
Speaker 1: more than one ninety nine right on the sleeve.
Speaker 2: They must have lost money, right, so they didn't.
Speaker 1: On this first one. They actually occasionally do lose money
Speaker 1: on their releases, but they basically like, we'll get into it.
Speaker 1: And so they had a song on there called Reality Asylum,
Speaker 1: and it was based on that pamphlet that Penny had written.
Speaker 1: But this was the most blasphemous track on the album,
Speaker 1: and the pressing plant refused to press the record because
Speaker 1: it was so blasphemous. So they cut out Reality Asylum
Speaker 1: and then replaced it with two minutes of silence shout
Speaker 1: out John Cage, and they called that song the sound
Speaker 1: of free Speech. Yeah, And they were able to sell
Speaker 1: their records so cheap because they lived collectively. They grew
Speaker 1: most of their own food, they didn't do a bunch
Speaker 1: of drugs, they didn't stay at hotels while they were touring.
Speaker 1: And then they like from their point of view, they
Speaker 1: passed the savings onto the customer.
Speaker 2: And they knew how to cook beans.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you watch the young ones.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And when I think whenever I think of the UK
Speaker 1: people eating slop, I think of the guy, the hippie
Speaker 1: guy with his lentils that he's always trying to feed everyone.
Speaker 2: That's too real. My lentils are really good.
Speaker 1: Though I believe it. I've probably even said this on
Speaker 1: the air before, but my favorite name for punk cooking
Speaker 1: is that when I stayed at a squad in Germany,
Speaker 1: they called it rice mitchie rice with shit, and it
Speaker 1: was just a stir fry of whatever shit you whatever
Speaker 1: you've dumpstered or grown or stolen, and then rice.
Speaker 2: Rice mit chice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, hell yeah. I think they ate a lot of
Speaker 1: rice mitche And I think that refusing to stay at
Speaker 1: hotels and they also refused to have roadies. They carried
Speaker 1: all of their own gear and stuff. It kind of
Speaker 1: fucked them up a little bit and burned them out.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, it's it's it's brutal. I have sometimes
Speaker 2: I'll get a taxi to carry my gear sometimes between
Speaker 2: you know whatever, between from place to place on tour,
Speaker 2: and sometimes it's hard for me to justify it to myself,
Speaker 2: but I just by myself, this is cheaper than the
Speaker 2: body work, like if I if I rip a muscle
Speaker 2: or whatever, or like, yeah, it's it's brutal. Carrying that
Speaker 2: gear is brutal. I have friends who've broken toes from
Speaker 2: dropping things on their feet. It's it's awful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it it makes sense to me as someone
Speaker 1: who's like I've before I ever toured on my own.
Speaker 1: I like tour it as like a roadie and like
Speaker 1: a merch girl or whatever.
Speaker 2: What is your tour with? Can you say? Are you
Speaker 2: at liberty to say?
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, a goth bank called Ego likeness, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know them. Yeah, no, that's that's fair. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And eventually I toured as their drummer, which was funny
Speaker 1: because they called me to be like, hey, we you know,
Speaker 1: our our guitarist left the band and we're about to
Speaker 1: go on tour. And I was like, I'd love to
Speaker 1: play guitar, and they were like, do you want to
Speaker 1: play drums? And I was like, I'd love to play
Speaker 1: key tar and they were like no, come be a drummer.
Speaker 1: And so but it was a very dead simple drum set.
Speaker 1: It was electronic drum, was just a kick and a
Speaker 1: snare on pads, and I was basically a glorified stage dncer.
Speaker 1: It was very fun.
Speaker 2: That sounds so fun. You're a stage dancer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, more or less. Yeah, I especially new because no,
Speaker 1: I don't want to reveal their secrets. Okay, Anyway, so
Speaker 1: they refuse to have roadies and they refuse to stay
Speaker 1: at hotels and this fucked them up a little bit
Speaker 1: and kind of burned them out. And they because they
Speaker 1: they never got a good night's sleep and they were
Speaker 1: all tired all the time while touring.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you need to stay in a goddamn hotel. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: nah fucking Airbnb, but.
Speaker 1: You need a private space with beds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you need to shut the door, you need to
Speaker 2: like have some mental health.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: And I like, I've arrived at Airbnb's in the middle
Speaker 2: of the night and there's like no toilet paper. So
Speaker 2: that's one of the reasons why I'm like, no, I
Speaker 2: want a real hotel that like knows what they're doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, especially because like if your goal is just
Speaker 1: to go there and sleep, a hotel is what works.
Speaker 1: And like on this last book tour I went on.
Speaker 1: I was I usually would go on tour and to
Speaker 1: stay with people who book the shows and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: or go camping and you know, my truck or whatever.
Speaker 1: And then while I was on this tour, I was
Speaker 1: just like, I am in my forties, and I am
Speaker 1: so exhausted and I am so oversocialized that I don't
Speaker 1: want to talk to anyone anymore. I would like to
Speaker 1: go to a space where me and my dog, because
Speaker 1: also had my dog with me, who's like kind of reactive,
Speaker 1: and so I was like, I just need a controlled environment.
Speaker 1: Now I'm done. I did my uncontrolled environment. But anyway,
Speaker 1: your dog.
Speaker 2: Wants to sleep too. Your dog needs to sleep as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, because he was protecting the car from all
Speaker 1: the other cars all day. So and so, no matter
Speaker 1: how big Crass got, they always would just stay at
Speaker 1: people's houses. And since punks are super young, this meant
Speaker 1: that they were often crashing at their fans' parents' houses.
Speaker 1: And I love it because, like, hey, mom, can this
Speaker 1: multimillion records selling anarchist punk fans stay on our living
Speaker 1: room floor? They're all about your age, you know, Like
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 2: That's adorable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so they put out this record and it
Speaker 1: was like the spiciest punk album yet to people. It
Speaker 1: was full of cussing and blasphemy. It was also almost
Speaker 1: specifically designed to be unable to be played on radio
Speaker 1: because it was so full of curse words. And they
Speaker 1: got an awful lot of negative reviews in the music press,
Speaker 1: so they would print the negative reviews in their liner
Speaker 1: notes or whatever their.
Speaker 2: Next thing was, that's lovely, and some of the.
Speaker 1: Negative reviews this kind of caught me by surprise. Some
Speaker 1: of them were basically leftist political infighting because the UK
Speaker 1: didn't have the same kind of red scare that the
Speaker 1: US did, and so a huge chunk of the working
Speaker 1: class and the intellectual class in the UK were leftists,
Speaker 1: especially Trotskyists, people who like Lenin but not Stalin, and
Speaker 1: you know, they don't like the worst excesses of state communism.
Speaker 2: So these leftist journalists were trotsky Ice and what did
Speaker 2: they want to fight about?
Speaker 1: So they didn't like the fact that Crass didn't do
Speaker 1: the traditional left stuff, and they weren't like trying to
Speaker 1: build the right kind of like mass movement, and also
Speaker 1: specifically Krass like wasn't fucking around with the traditional left.
Speaker 1: They were anarchists and the traditional left didn't like them either,
Speaker 1: and so the feeling was mutual. So the most influential
Speaker 1: music journalist in the country at the time was a
Speaker 1: Trotskyist named Gary Bushnell, and he was obsessed with how
Speaker 1: much he hated Krass, which is part of what made
Speaker 1: them so big. He constantly talked shit on them, and
Speaker 1: that really helped Crass grow like the ultimate Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's glorious, Thank you for your service, Gary.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But as anarchists, Crass were kind of outsider anarchists,
Speaker 1: although I'm going to complicate that in a moment when
Speaker 1: I talk about one of their best friends, the band
Speaker 1: Poison Girls. But eventually Crass is going to integrate, with
Speaker 1: various degrees to the with the mainstream anarchist movement. But
Speaker 1: they are coming from the outside. They are coming from
Speaker 1: having kind of hit upon their own ideas of anarchism,
Speaker 1: not from like bacun and reading groups. Steve Ignorant later
Speaker 1: said quote, if you ask me I'm an anarchist, I
Speaker 1: suppose it's the closest to what I believe. But I'm
Speaker 1: not going to loads of bloody rallies or meetings or
Speaker 1: to sit in a semicircle and chunder on about the
Speaker 1: minor strike in Poland in nineteen eighteen or whatever, which
Speaker 1: I both appreciate, but I also basically, if there was
Speaker 1: a minor strike and Poland in nineteen eighteen, I'll probably
Speaker 1: covered eventually on this show.
Speaker 2: So you're, yeah, the old history, the real history.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I like, you know, he basically he was like,
Speaker 1: I don't like the traditional anarchist culture that was around.
Speaker 2: Yeah he's and he's probably not like constitutionally suited for it.
Speaker 2: And that's you know, and that should that should always
Speaker 2: be fine. Like you know, diversity, diversity is strength.
Speaker 1: No, totally, absolutely, and their their biggest break with the
Speaker 1: traditional anarchist culture was that they were pacifists. In a
Speaker 1: weird way, you could say that Crass kind of developed
Speaker 1: or popularized the modern idea of the lifestyle anarchist in
Speaker 1: contrast to the revolutionary anarchist. But I hate this dichotomy
Speaker 1: and I think it's bullshit, and I think the way
Speaker 1: that you expressed it is what we should actually do,
Speaker 1: which is diversity as our strength, and different people want
Speaker 1: to do different types of organizing and living, and that
Speaker 1: is great. Crass's main selling point was just their sincerity.
Speaker 1: I mean also their songs were really fucking good. But
Speaker 1: sincerity became basically the cultural currency of the anarcho punk
Speaker 1: scene and the movement, honestly to kind of a problematic degree, right,
Speaker 1: you could prove like I'm the most earnest, you know,
Speaker 1: Krass for example, you called this earlier. Krass for example,
Speaker 1: once put out a single that said pay no more
Speaker 1: than forty five ps. So they lost money on every
Speaker 1: record that they sold.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got to look out for that.
Speaker 1: And so what they did is that after that they
Speaker 1: hired a financial manager, which is where we started this conversation.
Speaker 2: Maybe it was smiled business manager, although those they were
Speaker 2: a great firm that used to work for me. But
Speaker 2: like basically all they did was they weren't super intimate
Speaker 2: in the work. They were just kind of like making
Speaker 2: sure I was ready to you know, pay taxes or
Speaker 2: something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I mean that makes sense. Crass also passed
Speaker 1: up a lot of money because they wouldn't sell merch.
Speaker 1: They would like, if you wrote them a letter, they'd
Speaker 1: send you back like a one inch button or whatever
Speaker 1: you had a beg for, But they didn't make shirts.
Speaker 2: I knew this guy who would talk about his new
Speaker 2: record and he would say like, have you heard my
Speaker 2: new T shirt?
Speaker 1: And so so Crass wouldn't sell T shirts even though
Speaker 1: that's like where most of the money is at least
Speaker 1: currently that and you know, ticket sales. So all the
Speaker 1: T shirts were bootlegs. And after the nonsense with the
Speaker 1: first album being censored, they started to start their own label,
Speaker 1: Crass Records. They released the censored song as a single.
Speaker 1: Talked for a while about arresting them for this very
Speaker 1: blasphemous single, and Krass was investigated for a while, but
Speaker 1: in the end the government was like, fuck, if we
Speaker 1: arrest them for this, they'll just get more famous, and
Speaker 1: so they dropped it. True, there was another super earnest
Speaker 1: anarchist band worth mentioning here who was close friends with Krass.
Speaker 1: It was called Poison Girls. Have you heard the Poison Girls?
Speaker 2: Have not?
Speaker 1: They were fronted by a middle aged housewife named Visa
Speaker 1: Versa who started I think she was in her early
Speaker 1: forties when she started this band, and that fucking rules.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's so wait, So how old was everybody else
Speaker 2: in the band?
Speaker 1: So Kras were like mostly in their thirties and I
Speaker 1: think Steve was like probably in his late teens early twenties,
Speaker 1: and so they were like they were like half a
Speaker 1: generation older. And then but V was like had kids,
Speaker 1: and I mean so did Eve, but but yeah, Va
Speaker 1: was a little bit older.
Speaker 2: So the front woman for Poison Girls was she started
Speaker 2: in her forties, and then how old was the rest
Speaker 2: of the band?
Speaker 1: I actually don't know that. I think they were a
Speaker 1: little bit younger than her, because I know that some
Speaker 1: of the Dial House people ended up playing in Poison Girls.
Speaker 1: I actually did this thing where I kind of got sad,
Speaker 1: where I was like, I almost wish I'd done this
Speaker 1: entire thing about poisoned Girls instead. So I almost like
Speaker 1: I did some research on Poison Girls, and then I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, this is too much.
Speaker 2: You can do another thing on boys and girls sometime.
Speaker 1: It's true. And so V started Poison Girls independently actually
Speaker 1: before Crass and I think seventy six, but then moved
Speaker 1: it to a cottage near Dial House, and eventually Poison
Speaker 1: Girls and Crass would play one hundred shows together, and
Speaker 1: they were basically like they would really splits together. They
Speaker 1: were like the two things, and it's just Crass is.
Speaker 2: More famous, but they're like twin bands.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. And what's interesting is there's all this stuff
Speaker 1: about Crass being kind of outsider anarchists or whatever. Visa
Speaker 1: versa is not visa versa from the Poison Girls comes
Speaker 1: from the traditional anarchist movement. She had come up selling
Speaker 1: anarchist newspapers on the street, a newspaper called Freedom, and
Speaker 1: her partner in Baby Daddy was another anarchist activist guy.
Speaker 1: So this is like, she does come from this. Krass
Speaker 1: and the Poison Girls fit oddly into London punk In
Speaker 1: some ways they were kind of the biggest and most
Speaker 1: influential acts, but in other ways they were seen as
Speaker 1: old and out of touch. Visubverse in particular, have kept
Speaker 1: have to prove that she belonged there, because you will
Speaker 1: be shocked to know that there was misogyny and agism
Speaker 1: in the punk scene. I know this is gonna blow
Speaker 1: you away with surprise, but oh, it's.
Speaker 2: Just it's perennially disgusting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, so these are like old hippies living
Speaker 1: in the countryside. What do they know about the like
Speaker 1: London squatter punk scene, right? Is kind of the presentation that,
Speaker 1: you know, is what people say when they're mad at
Speaker 1: Crass and Poison Girls. And there's this huge squatter punk
Speaker 1: scene by nineteen seventy nine, and Crass aren't in it,
Speaker 1: but they were influential on it, and they constantly played
Speaker 1: benefits for it. They actually stopped playing outside the UK
Speaker 1: pretty early on. They played a show in Germany and
Speaker 1: the German punks overturned a cop car and set it
Speaker 1: on fire, and cops shut down the event, or rather
Speaker 1: cops tried to shut down the show, but Kras was like, look,
Speaker 1: if you shut down this show, all of the punks
Speaker 1: who just set a cop car on fire are gonna
Speaker 1: be like extra mad. And the cops were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, and so they let them keep playing. It's
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that doesn't happen in America as
Speaker 1: far as they can tell. One time, years ago, I
Speaker 1: was at a squad bar in Amsterdam and the old
Speaker 1: barkeep was telling a story about a punk night where
Speaker 1: cops had parked in front of the squat and then
Speaker 1: gone somewhere else, and so then the drunk punks came
Speaker 1: out and set the cop car on fire, and so
Speaker 1: then all these cops came and my friend, the bartender
Speaker 1: went out to negotiate with the cops, and the cops
Speaker 1: were like, we're so sorry about that. It was a rookie,
Speaker 1: he didn't know not to park in front of your bar.
Speaker 1: It'll never happen again.
Speaker 2: That's adorable, I know, I know.
Speaker 1: And it also made me feel like I was a
Speaker 1: never never Land because I was like, yeah, people go
Speaker 1: to prison for a long time for that stuff in
Speaker 1: the US, you know, there's currently a lot of people
Speaker 1: in prison from twenty twenty for that. But in Germany,
Speaker 1: when this thing happened, with this like sort of almost
Speaker 1: riot happened, Krass like thought about this really hard, and
Speaker 1: they were like, look, we're kind of role models. We
Speaker 1: show up, we sing about anarchy, we sing about fighting
Speaker 1: the police, and you know all this stuff. If we
Speaker 1: play shows in people riot in the UK, we know
Speaker 1: what to tell people, Like they would make pamphlets about
Speaker 1: know your rights and how to make it through court
Speaker 1: hearings and shit right, they would see it as their
Speaker 1: responsibility on some level if their fans did something like that,
Speaker 1: But what the fuck do we know about German law.
Speaker 1: We don't know how to support people. So they decided
Speaker 1: that if they couldn't help people handle the government repression.
Speaker 1: They shouldn't be inspiring people to fight that government as directly,
Speaker 1: and they stopped playing overseas, and this is I don't know,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. That is admirable, is it? I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's what, I don't know, it's just interesting.
Speaker 2: I like it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, these were some of the early days of punk
Speaker 1: versus Nazi skinhead fights, and Krass actually didn't do the
Speaker 1: Mostly the anarchist punks and stuff would just be like,
Speaker 1: all right, we're going to fight all the Nazis. Crass
Speaker 1: are like pacifists, and occasionally they would get into fist
Speaker 1: fights to protect themselves or each other, but largely they
Speaker 1: actually didn't try to kick skin heads out of their
Speaker 1: shows and instead were like, oh, we should expose them
Speaker 1: to anarchism, and we should expose them to pacifism and
Speaker 1: we'll help change their ways. And the middling success they
Speaker 1: succeeded sometimes, but I will say, from my point of view,
Speaker 1: the biggest l of their career that I've been made
Speaker 1: aware of is that there's this big Trotskyist versus Nazi
Speaker 1: bral At a benefit show that they played, and Krass
Speaker 1: later were like, the leftists are the red fascists basically
Speaker 1: like both sides are bad or whatever. Look, I don't
Speaker 1: like stay communism either, but when they are fighting the Nazis,
Speaker 1: I'm on their side, you know.
Speaker 2: But whenever I was trying to understand some of the
Speaker 2: things that Krass had said publicly, and some of it
Speaker 2: was just pretty confusing or like badly reported on and
Speaker 2: like including stuff about the Rock against Racism, I was
Speaker 2: just like, it seemed very reverse world.
Speaker 1: And I don't know, no, I understand. That's how I
Speaker 1: feel reading some of their stuff. I'm like, huh, everything
Speaker 1: is different at different times in history, and people have
Speaker 1: really different opinions despite this having the same labels as
Speaker 1: each other. Yeah, And so they were seen as out
Speaker 1: of touch for a while. And it's interesting because as
Speaker 1: the world starts getting worse, Crass actually starts struggling with
Speaker 1: their pacifism and starts taking on a more militant and
Speaker 1: more traditionally anarchist line with certain things, because things are
Speaker 1: about to get a lot worse. Specifically, in nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: a far right politician who was known to history as
Speaker 1: quote the only bad Margaret came to power. I think
Speaker 1: that's what people called her. I think people called her
Speaker 1: the only bad Margaret. Her name was Margaret Thatcher, and
Speaker 1: Thatcher wasn't the UK's Ronald Reagan. Reagan was the US's Thatcher.
Speaker 1: Thatcher came into power and was like, I am going
Speaker 1: to declare war on the leftist working class of the
Speaker 1: United Kingdom. She hated unions, she would give raises to
Speaker 1: cops that killed protesters. She agreed to host US nuclear
Speaker 1: weapons in the UK, and, in a move that will
Speaker 1: be quite familiar to modern listeners, she cozied up to
Speaker 1: the middle class to get their votes by pretending to
Speaker 1: support their interests. But in the end she only supported
Speaker 1: the rich, and so punk starts becoming more of an
Speaker 1: actual social movement in the Thatcher era. All of this
Speaker 1: a couple years after punk had been declared quote dead
Speaker 1: by the music press because it was no longer like
Speaker 1: the hot new thing. Like basically like the music press is, like, oh,
Speaker 1: punk was from seventy six to seventy eight, and then
Speaker 1: it was done, and then like this supposedly dead thing
Speaker 1: becomes an incredibly powerful social movement and aesthetic culture. But
Speaker 1: as for what it did once it became a movement,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about that on Wednesday. Yeah, anything
Speaker 1: you want to plug.
Speaker 2: I have a show coming up March sixth at the
Speaker 2: Oddfellows in Bellingham and then Constellation in Chicago. Hell yeah
Speaker 2: on March fifteenth.
Speaker 1: Hell yeam On March third, my book The Immortal Choir
Speaker 1: Holds Every Voice goes to Kickstarter and I'm really excited
Speaker 1: about it. And you're all probably tired of hearing me
Speaker 1: say that, but you're going to have to hear it.
Speaker 1: Actually you don't have to hear it. You can actually
Speaker 1: hit stop now and then just start the next episode
Speaker 1: and be fine. But instead you could hear me also
Speaker 1: talk about how I work with an anarchist collective publisher
Speaker 1: called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness and you should check
Speaker 1: us out at Tangled Wilderness dot org. If you give
Speaker 1: us ten bucks a month, we'll send you a zine
Speaker 1: every month anywhere in the world. We also put out
Speaker 1: a bunch of podcasts and do a bunch of stuff,
Speaker 1: and so you could check that out if you're like, wow,
Speaker 1: I've this is the first time I've heard of an arco.
Speaker 1: What does the collective make? Well, we make some stuff.
Speaker 1: We'll see you on Wednesday. Cool people who did Cool
Speaker 1: Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit our website foolzonemedia dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.