February 26, 2025 • 64 mins
Margaret talks even further with Jolie Holland about a multigenerational punk band from the 70s that introduced punk ethics to punk rock.
https://expmag.com/2019/01/when-your-real-life-friend-is-your-facebook-troll/
Rebel Clothes, Rebel Songs, Rebel Pose: Anarchists on Punk Rock 1977-2010, anonymous
https://www.ubu.com/papers/cage_montague_interview.html
John Cage, Anarchy
The Story of Crass, George Berger
https://crosseyedpianist.com/2017/07/15/silence-presence-and-challenging-conventions-thoughts-on-john-cages-433/
https://www.soundoflife.com/blogs/mixtape/history-punk-music
https://fastnbulbous.com/punk/
https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/punk-politics-music-rebellion/
https://beltmag.com/mc5-detroits-godfathers-of-punk/
https://dangerousminds.net/comments/our_wedding_crasss_magnificent_romance_mag_prank
https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/301-february-26-1980/british-anarchists-found-not-guilty/
https://thehippiesnowwearblack.org.uk/2016/03/12/vi-subversa-and-poison-girls-an-appreciation/
https://www.ukrockfestivals.com/henge-history-80.html
https://jprobinson.medium.com/the-rotten-etymology-of-punk-86db2fcc16f8
https://www.cbc.ca/strombo/news/crass-thatchergate-prank
https://libcom.org/article/stop-city-demonstrations-1983-1984
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did
Cool Stuff, a podcast that is sometimes recorded. Well, Margaret's
dog licks her hand and then Margaret has to move
her hand away from the dog, and then Margaret thinks,
rather than not have this be the introduction, it will
be the introduction. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and this
(00:22):
is Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff. And my guest
is really Holland.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hi. Hello, so deeply psyched to be here. Thanks for
having me.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Yeah, I'm excited to have you here. And I'm like, oh,
I'm talking faster, and that's probably because I ate a
banana in between breaks. And one thing I like about
Crass is that they don't really do drugs or drink,
because I also don't. But then instead I eat sugar
and then my pace of talking begins to go up.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
And that's so benign that you're like, You're like, sugar
rush is a banana. It wasn't like it wasn't like
a little Debbie or something.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Yeah, well I ran out of the sweets in my house. Besides,
fruit is what happened. And there's a snowstorm coming tomorrow
as I record this, so I will just be forced
to eat fruit, which is very good to deal with, Sugar.
But I think everyone probably knows who you are and
who I am by part four, and you might even,
dear listener, know who Crass is a little bit. But
(01:20):
we're going to talk about them more because where we
last left off, they had started a band and then
an arcopunk had become a serious movement, only I hadn't
told you what it was doing yet. So as the
seventies closed, oh geez, what will I do without Sophie.
Sophie's usually is our producer, but just isn't on the call,
(01:40):
and I almost forgot to say that Sophie's our producer,
and more importantly that everyone has to say hi to Rory,
our audio.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Engineer, Hi, Rory, Rory Hello.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
And our theme music was written forced by a woman
who once got an entire steampunk convention kicked out of
a bar. It was actually funny because then un woman
was headlining the main stage of that particular convention, but
as a solo act, not as a terrible Crass cover band.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Anyway, I want to hear like rehearsal tapes of that band.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
The best you can do is that there is a
version from that convention of all three of us playing
Bellachow from the main stage, and so I suspect that
if you look up Bellachow on Woman on YouTube, it
might still be there and you can. Why did I
just tell everyone that it was not my best but
(02:31):
anyway whatever. I used to make my music playing accordion
on the street, but I was never good at it.
I just didn't. I had an accordion and was broke.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
The accordion is such a beautiful prop and that's all
you need. Do you see this, Hold a beautiful instrument
and be a beacon of sound.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Yeah, it's a really good busking instrument because it is
loud and slightly. In punk scenes, it's like cliche. But
when you're out on the street, people are like, holy shit,
and accordion. I haven't seen one since my granddad's accordion.
And then they're like, here's a dollar, and I'm like, sweet,
thank you. And that's a thing that happens.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
But that's all you need, just need them to give
you the money.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah, exactly. As the seventies closed the idea of punk
as a broad musical label that might include bands like
The Cure and Bauhaus. Right next to the slits and
the cockney rejects that ended specific subgenres started things started
getting very more like particular and specific, which is it
(03:36):
happens constantly to every genre, and it's both good and
bad and equal measure, you know. And one of the
main subgenres of punk, especially in the UK, was a
narco punk, which basically meant sounds like crass. There's also
OI that came out at around that time, which started off
pretty leftist but then has earned a right wing reputation
(03:59):
and is more into catchy songs and working class anthems.
And I really like OI. I have to admit it
is more my style and taste, not politically. But anyway,
there's some good oy bands. So this isn't a story
about OI. It's a story about anarco punk Crass. They
really did walk the walk. Their albums started selling rather well,
(04:21):
and they simply pooled all of their money and then
gave themselves about five hundred pounds a year as an allowance,
and then all lived in dial house together. And I
think that's like minus the like food and whatever stuff
they need, you know.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
They gave themselves five hundred pounds a year to live on.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Well, I think they're living expenses is that they are
in Crass and live at Dial House, so it's like
five hundred pounds on top.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Of that it's a tip.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah, totally, that's not enough.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
You know.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
In the end, I think they probably agreed. They didn't
let mass me do interviews with them besides like once
or twice if the if the interviewer like really proved them,
because they didn't have a rule like we won't do
mass media. They had a rule where like we have
to trust the journalists or whatever, and it's just like
they almost never did, and they gave fanzines interviews constantly,
(05:16):
and so they said no to basically every mainstream journalist
and yes to basically every fanzine. So fanzine sales started
rising dramatically and the number of fanzines started going through
the roof. They would spend every Tuesday answering fan mail.
They responded to about two hundred letters a week, and
they would like refuse to answer with like form letters,
(05:37):
so they'd just sit around and divvy up the letters
and write the people.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Can we imagine any big band doing anything like this? Now?
Speaker 1 (05:46):
No? And this is like they are out selling ACDC
and they.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Are doing this, A that's amazing.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Yeah, it would be like I don't know whoever, I
don't I clearly don't know what we call it new.
I don't know who's currently the people who would be
comparable to.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
But can you imagine, Okay, so if they were bigger
than ACDC at the time, can you imagine you're driving
across Utah or whatever and you turn on the radio
and it's crass and not ACDC.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Yeah, but it can never be because they cuss so much.
But yeah, but that same level of like they are
bigger despite being underground, so which is probably why they
have kind of a like being underground is better because
it's working for them, you know.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
I imagine.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
I'm trying to think about different ways that artists could
draw lines with media, and yeah, one proposition is we
just talk about music because I feel like so much
music journalism is just all about.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Gossip and oh yeah, totally, and it.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Often gets incredibly misogynistic.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
I wonder if you could just be like, I will
only talk about my music or my political positions and
just like not talk about like who you're dating or whatever.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
You know.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Yeah, I mean I've seen so sort of worse.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Like you know, I had this one band where one
of the bandmates admittedly had a fantastic beard, and literally
this interviewer only wanted.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
To talk to the guitarist about his beard.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Oh my god, uh huh, yeah, it.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Gets it gets stupider than even like your proposal seemed
to suggest, or like late lately, I've seen and this
makes me. This is so upsetting to me. I've seen
press about bands like major press only talk about the
supposed mental health of the lead singer who is a woman.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Totally.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
Yeah, it's it's so depressing.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
It's like, yeah, it's it's fantastically progressive.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Absolutely, I love the like when I do interviews, when
I with Feminoschool, when we would do interviews, I loved
because it was almost always there was a couple mainstream
pieces about us, but not much. And just like the
fanzine journalists, especially like weird punk and metal fanzines from
Europe would have amazing questions even if it had to
(08:22):
be like translated in both directions or whatever, And so
Crass would spend Wednesdays Tuesdays answer letters. Wednesdays, fanzine journalists
would come over and a lot of people I think
only created fanzines literally as an excuse to meet and
talk to Krass, and they just let people do it.
They knew that was happening, they didn't care. That's great
(08:44):
and their stencyl campaign spread to listeners because they would
include stencils and the leaflets that they passed out and
teach people how to spray paint. And then in nineteen
eighty they released a benefit split with the Poison Girls
that was meant to benefit a bunch of anarchists who
are on trial because of this sum. There was this
case that was called the Person's Unknown Case, and I
(09:06):
don't have the full sense of it. It gets into
the Angry Brigade, it gets into Irish politics, it gets
into lots of complicated stuff, and I read a few
sources about it and they all kind of seemed to
disagree with each other about what it was about. But overall,
there was this case that happened where a bunch of
people were arrested as terrorists, including like some like like
an IRA person or a person accused of mean part
(09:27):
of the IRA was arrested and then accused of killing
Northern Irish cops, but then started being supported by anarchist
Black Cross and became an anarchist in jail. And there
was this whole thing where like it basically seems like
the UK cops were terrified that the IRA was going
to move more anarchists, and they started like rounding people
up or whatever. And four people got put on trial
(09:48):
or five I've read both by different sources, and having
anarchist literature was considered proof of guilt in this case
that was happening. So Crass and Poison Girls released a
benefit for the person's unknown case and the name comes
from the persons were known, the four people who are
on trial or the five people are on trial, but
(10:08):
they were accused of conspiring with persons unknown. So literally
it was a case where like, you are being accused
of conspiring with we don't know who about, we don't
know what.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Oh that sounds extremely illegal.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Yeah, and shockingly including in Thatcher's fucking UK. The defendants
were all found not guilty, or four of them were
on one of them, I keep keep again, I read
a bunch of different things whatever, and so they were like, Okay,
we don't need this ten thousand pounds we just raised,
and so they they looked at Northern Ireland, which had
(10:42):
an anarchist center, which I want to know more about.
I want to know more about Northern Ireland as being
kind of a center of UK anarchism for a while.
And they were like, London should have an anarchist center,
and we have ten thousand pounds. So they opened a
short lived place called the Autonomy Center. Only they spelled
center wrong because they're British and they don't know a spell,
and they I had to make at least one joke
(11:04):
about this. It's just I'm constitutionally incapable of not making
fun of the British.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Got to talk some shit.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Yeah, And it was a rented warehouse space that they
shared with an anarchist print collective called Little A. Every
Sunday they put on punk shows six bands for a pound,
and like people would come over it, you know, and
they made their money on that by beer sales, basically.
Steve Ignorant complains later about how it was all just
(11:30):
a bunch of people sitting around talking about Bakunin. So
he didn't really like the Autonomy Center very much.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Boring.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Yeah, sorry, that the place that once a week you
get to go see six bands for a pound and
drink like whatever. Anyway, the Autonomy Center itself only lasted
about six months, but this version of social centers spread also.
In nineteen eighty, You've got this fun event that I
really wish I could find more information about. And when
(11:57):
I say fun, that gets quotes, But me wanting to
learn more about is true. Remember us talking about the
Stonehenge festivals that their friend had started, like several episodes ago,
where Wally was like, we're all gonna go squat Stonehenge.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
That sounds so flaky.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
They kept happening. The Stonehenge festivals lasted almost a decade,
and in nineteen eighty Krass was like, all right, well,
we're going to bring punk to it. And not just Krass,
the Poison Girls and a bunch of other punk bands
were like, We're going to go play the Stonehenge Festival,
and the punks are going to come because it's a radical,
free culture event. Why not. So in the crowd was
(12:33):
a biker gang who took a fence to the punks
and attacked them. And this is a very like story
as all this time. At first, the bikers stormed the
stage during one of the other punk bands and said
that they weren't going to tolerate punks at their festival,
and then they just like beat up all the punks.
They just like went around and like beat everyone up,
and it was like a beating up massacre, where like
punks were like running away into the woods and being
(12:55):
chased by bikers and beating up. It's actually really bad
to quote Penny and Boa about it. Quote. Weeks later,
a hippie news sheet defended the bikers, saying that they
were an anarchist group who had misunderstood our motives. So
maybe the bikers thought that the punks were all fascists.
(13:16):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Yeah, indecipherable. There's gotta be okay, there's there's gotta be
people obviously.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Who know who're at it. Yeah, yeah, so who.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Have some more informed perspectives. So let's hear from y'all.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Yeah, Because even when I found things about the history
of the Stonehenge festival, they were just quoting Penny Rombau
from the same source that I was able to find it.
There's not a lot of people talking about this happening,
and there's even people saying like this sounds like a
huge big deal. When you read the book, the story
of Krass about it, but then other people talking about
the Stonehenge festivals are like, how come no one else
(13:57):
talks about that? And so like, maybe I think it happened,
but I don't feel like I totally know the story.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
I know I've met a couple of old punks from
that from those days in England.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Yeah, if you find out, we'll go back and edit
in a further explanation here.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
So, either way, both Crass and Poison Girls were unable
to play. Penny clearly wasn't having a good time at
the festival his friend started because the last time he
was there it also went really badly. But Crass is
growing still and they just get bigger and bigger because
DIY advertising, unlike mainstream advertising. The way that mainstream advertising
(14:39):
is that in the middle of your podcast, the host,
regardless of how they feel about what's about to happen,
just pivots to ads.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
Masterfully, thank you, and we're back.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
So nineteen eighty one, a reviewer said, quote, you come
across Crass in every place you look. They rarely play
and hardly ever advertise. They live outside the music business,
and they're far more successful than most people inside it.
They don't need to promote themselves because they're following does
that for them? Their logos on one hundred thousand black
leather jackets and their name is sprayed on town halls
(15:23):
and bus stops from Amsterdam to Aberdeen. Crass records regularly
sell well in excess of the figures achieved by outfits
whose faces adorn the megastore displays, yet next to nothing
is known of them.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
It is so important to look outside of the parameters
of the music industry because the way it's set up
is like a cattle choote and the musicians are the livestock.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
I mean, I know some musicians who've had a fair
amount of success through the industry, But the creativity of
artists can be applied as well to how we make
a living. Yeah, And uh, there's just there's no one way.
There is no one way to be an artist anything, totally,
(16:20):
and the industry only knows the way that's going to
make them the most money. So it's up to every
single artist to be creative about how we survive.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Yeah. And like when you work with mainstream stuff, which
you can do, you just have to be really aware
of what's happening. You have to be really aware of
that it's not your only thing. It's like not the
only way to be a musician. You can be You
can engage with different labels at different levels at different
times and then back out of it, like you know,
you can like well, I mean they try and stick
(16:56):
you contractually, but like, there's lots of ways of doing.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
It, and so you have to be extremely wary of
things that are independent as well, and don't just trust
that like because they're punk or because they have a
certain aesthetic or background that they will have the same
ethics as you.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
I think totally your community totally. And another thing that
Crass got to do is they pulled off a bunch
of really funny pranks, which is of course they did
one of their better ones. So they released this album
called Penis Envy that was an intentionally like feminist piece.
It was maybe their first like concept album or whatever.
(17:37):
It centered the women of the band. Also the men
in the band would do shit like write songs about
rediscovering how to be a man in a more feminist way.
Like they were actually had really good nuanced gender politics
as far as they can tell. And there's a song
that they did on penis Envy called Our Wedding, and
it is this over the top love song about getting married.
(17:58):
It's like a satire of marriage. The lyrics include things
like never look at anyone, anyone but me, never look
at anyone. I must be all you see, set to
like sweet organ music or whatever.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Right, it is so creepy it is, yeah, and you
could play that at lots of Christian Nationalists' weddings.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
And that's basically what they realized is they were like,
I wonder if we can trick someone into releasing this earnestly,
and so they wrote a teen girl magazine called Loving
who loved this new song by Joida Viv, which is
one of the Crass singers, and it was published by
According to them, when Krass wrote, they were like, oh,
(18:41):
is this new song by Joida Viv published by Creative
Recording and Sound Services Crass.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
A Oh so good, I know.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
And it's like a that's like a seamless acronym like
that that wouldn't raise any red flags if.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
I saw that, you know, and warms my heart.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
And so Loving Magazine agreed to release the single free
to any of their readers who would send them a stamp,
and then they told their readers that the single would
quote make your wedding day just that extra bit special.
Joy de Vive has captured all the happiness and romance
of that all important big day, your wedding, So make
sure you send off for your copy and time for
(19:24):
that grand occasion. It's a must for all true romantics.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
It's so eerie. I was listening to it as I
was walking my dog this morning, and yeah, I feel
like one of my bandmate's sisters is in a really
intense church and he talked about her wedding and the
vows reminded me of that song. So it's a yeah,
(19:53):
I really appreciate Crass's take on the patriarchy and religion. Yeah,
it's something that really really deserves to be roasted hard.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
And I think that I really love how feminists they
were at the gate, Like I love that, like because
that's I mean, that's one of the things that you
don't when I imagine old punk. I'm not immediately like, ah,
good feminist politics, you know, but like many of them did,
and certainly cross and when the magazine found out that
they got pranked, they were really mad. And Penny just
(20:29):
told them that their magazines and others like it were
quote absolutely obscene and despicable. They exploit people in aggressive
and unpleasant manner.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
They hadn't broken any laws, and they did not.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
And yeah, it sounds if you listen to the song,
like it really could just be played on the radio
as like a love song. Uh yeah, because that's how
patriarchal so many love songs are. I mean, it's very
like it's very phil Spectory in a way.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
I don't know Phil Specter as I feel terrible about
that he.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Was a he was a murderer.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Uh oh shit, okay?
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Who who was like a really important producer?
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Oh fuck okay?
Speaker 2 (21:14):
And like he like he was part of I don't
know fully, but because I I write off people who
are total pieces of shit sometimes and it's hard to
really remember everything about them. But like I think he
created the wall of sound. If that rings a bell, it's.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Just like really like the concept of like what a
lot of the like no wave bands and stuff were
doing of Like it's kind of as loud as possible.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
I love your misinterpretation of that. No, like no, it
was it was like a sixties sound esthetic.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Okay, Okay, no, I don't know it, but what I
do know about No, it's not time for an ad break.
I'll just keep reading the thing. So yeah, they hadn't
broken any laws, so they got away with it. In
nineteen eighty one, things were getting really heated in the UK.
Riots were breaking out across the country against police racism
and violence, starting in Brixton. Under Thatcher, unemployment continued to rise.
(22:13):
Punks responded with flyers that said things like national tragedy,
twenty three million people still employed in Northern Ireland. Irish
rebels were dying during hunger strikes in prison, and more
and more people were sympathetic to the cause of Irish unification,
although there were also more terrorist attacks and such, and
(22:34):
so people were getting polarized on it. In nineteen eighty two,
Crass released what they sort of figured it would be
their last record, Christ the Album, a big old double album,
but then the Falklands War kicked off. I actually only
learned about the Falklands War because of I really like
this band, New Model Army, that's like an old UK band,
(22:55):
and so I was like listening to them since I
was a teenager, and they talked about the Falklands were
and I was like, I had no idea what it was.
I was like seventeen or whatever.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
But that's that's like a that's an Elvis Costello song. Right,
New Model.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Army, Oh New Mottle Army gets its name from it
was part of the English Civil War. There was the
kind of group tied in with the Levelers and stuff
that we're trying to create a more just England. But
I actually hate the actual New Model Army from back
then because they were who invaded Ireland and like kind
of genocided them so and like you in like England,
(23:29):
they have this like oh the people fighting for good,
but then Cromwell used them as like useful idiot's. Basically
that was another revolution that was betrayed from my point
of view. If you want to hear more about it,
you can go back and listen to me talk to
John Darnell from The Mountain Goats about the Levelers and
the Diggers on an old episode. So I don't know
if it wouldn't surprise me if Alvis Costello would also
(23:51):
use that as a song, but I think the band
gets it from the old group.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Yeah, but the.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Falklands War kicks off. There're these off the coast of
Argentina called the Falklands Islands, and they are part of
the UK. For whatever dumb colonial reason, they're still part
of the UK. In nineteen eighty two, Argentina was like,
we want our shit back, and so they invaded and
the UK was like, are you kidding me? We're the
fucking UK. The war lasted seventy four days and ended
(24:19):
in argentina surrender. The UK stomped them. About one thousand
people died, mostly Argentinians, but two hundred and fifty five
Brits were killed in the fighting too. At the start
of the conflict, Krass was like, all right, well, we're
going to make fun of patriotism and we're going to
make fun of the British soldiers. And they put out
a single called Sheep Farming in the Falklands, which is
(24:41):
about British soldiers who just want to go there to
fuck sheep.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Yeah, that's fired.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
But as the war got all like, you know, killie,
they put out a song that just actually really shook
up British politics. Like I didn't go into this knowing
to what degree Crass impacted world politics. They wrote a
song called how does it feel. I've ever seen it
both as how does it feel? And how does it feel?
(25:08):
To be the mother of a thousand dead? Which is
fucking good title. Yeah, and that song is written directly
to Margaret Thatcher. Imagine writing a song aimed at a
politician and then the most important politician, and then having
the politician like listen to it, not like listen to
reason and change what they're doing, but have the song
(25:30):
like actually impact the country's politics.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Yeah, And whether or not she listens to it, it's
just important to say it and that everyone hears you
say it.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
And as the podcast idiot, I truly was an idiot.
I was just you know, in a scene where some
people obviously talked about Crass and yeah, big Crass fans,
but I had never consciously listened to Crass, And so
I have had my Crass immersion in the last few days.
And one of the things that I immediately really have
(26:03):
savored about Crass is how because they're part of the
inventors of punk rock, they sidestepped one of the biggest
pitfalls of punk rock in my opinion, which is that
it's it's this anger aimed outward and it doesn't state
(26:26):
the self lyrically, and I just loved, like, I'm a
fucking I'm truly the podcast idiot. What's what's the big
song that we were talking about earlier?
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Do they always a living?
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Do they always a living? It's it's so cool, and
that it like it states yourself. It's like it's it's
all about what we think and what we deserve as
opposed to like so I remember, it's not as you
are bad.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
It's like we're gonna we're gonna fight for what's ours.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yeah, And it's not like ranting at somebody that you
hate who's not even there.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Yeah, because Margaret Thatcher's there in this conversation when they
write this song, you know.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Yeah, and they have the power and they take aim
and they are they're so conscious of who they're able
to communicate with, and it's.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
It's astounding.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
It's really beautiful.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Yeah. No, And when they write this song, the Tories
actually her Thatcher's party actually circulated a memo internally that
was like, we really can't afford to respond to this
kind of provocation and we should not arrest them. But
the cops started showing up at record stores threatening anyone
who was like selling their record and about half of
(27:48):
their shows were shut down by cops before they even
got started. And with the Falkland War, Cress became one
of the main voices of the opposition. Instead of them
writing labor politicians, labor politicians were writing them. And then
they started getting leaked information by soldiers. What happened was
(28:12):
a soldier had written them an angry letter being like,
how dare you not you unpatriotic? Blah blah blah blah blah.
Right and Krass had responded, and I think they'd even
been like, oh, fuck you or whatever. But it had gone.
It had opened up a channel of communication, and eventually
this soldier who started off hating them, started telling them
all of the horrible things from the war that weren't
(28:32):
getting talked about in the press, including the fact that
there was almost a mutiny among British soldiers. So then
they pulled their most dangerous prank. This is the kind
of prank that I think could have gotten them killed.
They spoofed a conversation between Thatcher and Reagan about the
Falklands War and American imperial interests in Europe with nuclear arms.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
I didn't I didn't get a chance to listen to
that one did.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
They like do their voices?
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Like how like they no, they they they found old
recordings of them and like cut them up and then
like did enough like audio magic to like it's like
a lot of people can tell it's faked, right, but
not everyone, And it's like fairly well done. And this
thing that they put out and they they leak it
(29:23):
ahead of the nineteen eighty two UK general election and
it claims that Thatcher allowed a British ship to be
attacked so that the UK could counterattack, and Krass figured
the whole thing was like cheap and hacky and no
one would get fooled and it was just like not
going to go anywhere.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
But people are dumb.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Yeah, they tried super hard to make sure it wouldn't
be traced back to them. The CIA and MI six
couldn't figure out the source of the fake. They suspected
it was KGB, but a journalist at The Observer was like, Nah,
this is crass, and like basically like got them to
fess up. Uh yeah, I love that. Like the journalist
(30:03):
was just like, no, I've heard this audio production style before,
you know, incredible, and it's called Thatcher Gate, and it
did not cost Thatcher the election. The Falklands War made
her popular again. War is good for popularity. I sure
hope the current administration doesn't figure that out, but my
money is that they will.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
Did I just say people are stupid?
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Yeah, still upsetting.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Around this time, Krass opened up a squat. I suspect
this more than just Crass. I expect this other the
narco punk movement, but with Crass involved, opened up a squat,
an empty venue called the Zigzag that had gone under
a year earlier or whatever, and they opened it up
to have a twelve band show, which a thousand people
came to. And this was a new tactic, and it's
(30:52):
one that's spread across Europe. The implication in what I
read is that this is the first like open a
squat to throw a show in that era, in the
modern era in Europe or whatever. People who've listened to
the show know that I'm very skeptical anytime it's like
the first time anything whatever, you know. But it seems
like this is kind of how the tactic started spreading
around Europe, because they distributed a pamphlet about how and
(31:16):
why to do this kind of thing. When they did it,
and they gave it to everyone who came, and it
included the lines quote what happened at the Zigzag, we
hope was one step towards reclaiming what is ours. Freedom,
free food, free shelter, free information, free music, free ideas,
freedom to do whatever does not impinge on the freedom
(31:37):
of others. The idea of squat rock, I'm continuing to quote,
the idea of squat rock is not purely another way
of doing gigs, as we hope this handout explains. Hopefully
it will have been and is an inspiration to other
people to open up more places, whether it be for
gigs to live in whatever. As for what they hope
to accomplish, I want to quote Penny Rimbau from his
(31:57):
book The Last of the Hippies quote, we can open
up squats and from them start information services for those
who want to do the same. Or we can form
housing co ops and communes to share the responsibility of
renting or even buying a property in places we already live.
We can open the doors to others, form tenant associations
(32:18):
with neighbors and demand and create better conditions and facilities
in the area. We can form gardening groups that squat
and farm disused land or rent allotments where we can
to produce food for ourselves and others, that are free
from dangerous chemicals and grow medicinal herbs to cure each
other's headaches, and like, yeah, it's not limited to like,
(32:38):
oh we can have punk shows. They're like we can
have a better life.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Yeah. I love that. Uh, that tactic of community gardens.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Yeah too, Which is why this podcast I should just
start doing little ads for things that I think should
be the advertiser. This podcast is brought to you by
community Gardens, although it was all so even more explicitly
brought to you by that when we did a whole
episode about community gardens. But community gardens are great. So
garden and then give food to people, and that's good.
(33:10):
And that's the only ad.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
And we're back.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
If you heard other ads, it was a mistake, and
you should write to our complaints department, which is just
look for someone named Robert Evans is the complaints department.
So just tag Robert Evans and whatever social media and
we'll get right on that. So at this point KRASS
is just wildly important on the world stage in a
way that I didn't realize, and so folks are kind
(33:40):
of trying to sort them out politically. Folks from the
Red Army faction, which is like a German communist urban
guerrilla group, started hanging out a dial house to like
suss them out, be like, oh, are these people are
going to help us on a bombing campaign and then
realize that Crafts are pacifists and anarchists and not likely
to support them. The KG came around and tried talking
(34:01):
to them, trying to sort out how they knew what
they knew about the Falklands War. But my favorite interaction
of THEIRS with traditional rebel groups was in nineteen eighty
two they played an anarchist center in Belfast and the
first night there was trouble when some like loyalist skinheads,
like people who were not pro Irish unification but pro
(34:22):
the UK. They attacked people at the show. But the
second night, on a Sunday, there were no problems. There
was no violence at the show, and so Penny was like, oh,
I bet even these people take Sundays off. Was his
first guests or whatever. But then they got like a
letter that was like invited them to an IRA pub
and they were basically told like, no, the IRA has
(34:44):
your back. We kept the loyalists away. The reason that
was peaceful is we did security for you without you
even noticing it.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Uh, just seamless.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Yeah, and all of this political stuff that started happening
kept them involved in the band. They kind of thought
the band was gonna wind down. They thought that was
gonna be their last release or whatever. There's like people argue,
like they claim sometimes they claim that they were going
to disband the band in nineteen eighty four because of
George or well, like everyone everyone in the UK thought
nineteen eighty four was gonna be like a big deal.
(35:15):
When it happened, you know, it's kind of like a
year two thousand kind of thing. But some people were like, oh,
we were always going to disband in nineteen eighty four,
and other people were like, no, that was just some
bullshit we used to say. But all of this political
stuff kept them involved. That makes sense to me. Suddenly
being important in world political events is a bunch of
weirdo punks. That has got to be a trip like
that has got to feel at least interesting, you know,
(35:37):
how do you walk away from that?
Speaker 3 (35:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (35:39):
And also it's like you realize you're performing a service,
and totally, once you realize that the world needs you you,
you need to respond to.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
That no totally and it's got to be weird pressure too,
and maybe even in response to that pressure, I don't know,
they were like, we're going back to our roots really hard.
In nineteen eighty three, they released their most experimental album,
which is called yes, Sir, I Will, which comes from
a like one of the generals or whatever. There's like
a wounded soldier and he was like, get better soon,
(36:11):
and the soldier was like, yes, sir, I will, like
you know, and so that's what they called their album.
It didn't have so much as songs as like a
one noise spoken word track on both sides of the record.
It theoretically holds the record for the longest punk song
because there's no divisions between the different pieces of it
(36:32):
on the record, like where the little lines of you know,
you look at a record and you can see where
the song's end or whatever. And this album wasn't like
really enjoyable to a lot of people's very avant garde.
They started playing shows that a lot of people weren't into,
where they would just play the entire album start to finish,
instead of playing the hits and things like that, going.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Going back to their Rootsa's exit.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Yeah. Basically, Steve Ignorant in particular didn't love standing around
with a written script because it was so long that
they just literally had the script in front of them.
He was struggling at this point with the non rock
and roll nature of the band. He's the young you know,
the young punk who kind of started the whole thing.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
What's their age difference.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
I think he's about ten to fifteen years younger than everyone. Okay,
he said quote from Crass, like from his time in Crass,
I don't have any of those anecdotes. Oh there was
the night where we got the fire extinguishers, etc. Which
is the stuff people love to hear. We didn't have
none of that, Just cups of tea and staying around
people's houses and being polite to their mum and dad.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
I have read a ridiculous amount about Crass in the
past couple weeks, but I've only scratched the surface. I
did read this critique of them, though I read it
on my phone and I didn't tract the name of it,
so it's not my source. List. I'm sorry about that,
but I also don't agree with it, and so whatever.
And I read this thing that argues that the failure
of Crass in an arco punk was that it had
no involvement in actual social movements, and I was like
(38:05):
nodding along reading it when I first read it, because
I read it pretty early on, I was like, I'm
gonna look up some stuff about Krass. But after reading
more about Crass, I think that this is entirely untrue.
I wasn't surprised to realize that the article had been
written by an authoritarian socialist magazine that was basically like MAD.
That Krass wasn't specifically part of some specific named leftist
(38:26):
mass movement, right.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
Yeah, and they were. They wanted them to be their lapdogs.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
Yeah, totally, totally. Crass and an arcopunk in general were
absolutely directly involved with all sorts of mass movements, especially
the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament the CND. From what I
can tell, they revitalized it like it was kind of
a dying movement. But then Krass would use its logo
with a piece symbol like everywhere. You can also say
(38:56):
that the modern anarchist movement stems at least as much
from a narco punk as traditional anarchism. But fortunately it's
like left behind being only one subculture, because subculture is
fine when it's not. When people think like, oh, in
order to be a leftist or an anarchist or whatever,
I have to be a punk, that is nonsense, you know.
But it's cool when subcultures have radical politics within them.
(39:20):
I just want a million subcultures, as you said, like
diversity is our strength, you know. And modern protest tactics
and styles, like our styles of protesting owe an awful
lot to the UK in the eighties, specifically around the
turn of the millennia. Later, the US, Mexico and Europe
at least have these huge anti globalization protests which kicked
(39:42):
off twenty first century protest culture in the West, and
of course I have an affinity for it because that's
how I got involved, and we owe an awful lot
about those tactics and how those protests went to this
time period, there was this anarchist group called London Green Peace,
which threw me through a loop because I would just oh,
the articles would be like, oh, London green Peace did
(40:02):
this thing, and I was like, oh, okay, Green Peace
the organization, but in London, that was what I was thinking, right, right,
there's no relation to the organization we currently know today's
green Peace. It turns out both get their names honestly.
They both grew out of the same grassroots environmental movement
that called itself green Peace, but then a huge chunk
of it became green Peace International, the thing that grandma's
(40:24):
donate money to do to save whales or whatever. Yeah,
London green Peace was still grassroots, and in nineteen eighty
three they called for some protests. At least I've read
it was them. Other places say Crass called them for
the protests, and other places say it came about completely
organically and no one called for it. Whatever. The anarcho
punks and the pacifists called for some protests. Crass says
(40:47):
it was Greenpeace, so we'll go with that. There have
been these huge peace camps and such like. Basically tens
of thousands of people were showing up to block military bases.
But some people were like, why are we going all
the way out to the countryside to do this. The
halls of power are right here in London, So they
called for a stop the city demonstration. They wanted to
(41:09):
shut down London was the idea, specifically the Financial district,
and this was to bring together the pacifice and the
anarchists into this big mobilization, and this was an uneasy alliance.
Sometimes the pacifists were worried that anyone who defended themselves
against the police or damaged property would make the movement
look bad, and the cops themselves were super worried.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
I was just thinking, this is some Hampton shit, you
know Fred Hampton. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, this is like, yeah,
this is like like getting.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
Getting these different people. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Big coalitions really make you a target fast.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
Yeah, that's true. And it's interesting because this one it
it forms a coalition and it is this loose one
and yeah, like it absolutely worried the shit out of
the state because the cops were like for decades in UK,
well not nine Northern Ireland, but like in England, protest
organizers had been willing to like meet with cops to
(42:13):
coordinate the whole thing, you know, like, oh, we're gonna
do our march from here to there and get permits
and do everything the right way or whatever right And
for some weird reason, the anarchists in the past of us.
It didn't, and so cops showed up at an anarchist
meeting to be like, can we can we please talk
this over? Can you like we know you're doing a thing,
can we just can we be part of planning? And
they like, no one would work with them, and they
(42:34):
all had to leave.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Some it's some Hampton shit, and it's also some Judy
Barry shit. So yeah, it's like when you get really effective,
you get really it's it's really hot water.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
Yeah, totally. And so before the protests, they squatted an
empty office building to create an anarchist social center called
the Peace Center. Cops raided it the night before the protests,
looking for weapons. There weren't any weapons, but the raid
didn't stop the protest. To quote George Berger from the
book The Story of Crass quote, normal demonstrations had leaders,
(43:12):
stewards organization and an overload of Socialist Workers' Party placards.
Stop the city had kids in colorful rags, breaking off
from the main group on their own initiative to affect
their own actions. Graffiti, street theater, free food bank, locks,
glued patriot flags, burned leaf litting anti apartheid actions against
(43:32):
Barkley's Bank, many arrests. By the virtue of about fifteen
hundred leaderless young punks and a few older ones, the
anarcho punk movement had arrived. It was no longer simply
a bunch of kids who bought the same records. It
was and is a people's culture, and so I like that.
The thing that makes them real is like when they
(43:55):
start doing stuff outside of just subcultural spheres. You know,
a ton of people were arrested. Two hundred people caught
charges at the first one. Between the first one and
the second one, a thousand people were arrested, and the
financial district was like all chewed up. They did a
ton of financial damage, like by stopping the ability for
(44:15):
business as usual to continue. And so they did it
again the next year. But something even bigger happened the
next year. And these are the like, this is the
real coalition shit, this is the like I'm going to
eventually be doing a lot of episodes about this shit.
Have you heard about the miners strikes in the UK
in nineteen eighty four. It's okay if you haven't, but
(44:35):
I'm just curious.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
No I have, I'm not fully informed, but yeah, yeah, no, it.
It was gigantic.
Speaker 1 (44:44):
Yeah, in nineteen eighty four, Thatcher had decided in March
nineteen eighty four, Thatcher had decided to break the working
class and unions for good. About twenty thousand miners were
going to be laid off and so all of the
miners went on strike. And this became a battle for
the whole of the English working class because it was
fairly heavily socialist and Thatcher wanted to shatter that wanted
(45:06):
to just destroy class unity, you know, among the working class.
And this was a massive showdown kind of beyond what's
easy to imagine for an American. I think it was
almost a civil war between the right, Thatcher and the left,
which was working class miners and their supporters. And the
reason is so hard is that like the US has
(45:27):
had a strong ever since the Red Scare has had
a pretty strong hold, the right wing has had a
pretty stronghold on like rural culture, you know.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
Totally but not complete. But you know, you.
Speaker 3 (45:40):
Read your Robin DG.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
Kelly, and there was so much socialism coming from the
ground up all throughout this rural South.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Yeah, no, absolutely, like, and we have this idea that
somehow rural poor people have always been right winging that
this is a completely untrue, including in America, Like it
just socialism, leftism and anarchism and communism were just so
completely memory hold in the US, like starting in the
nineteen forties and fifties, and when this minor strike happened,
(46:13):
punks came out in droves to support the miners despite
this massive cultural divide between the urban weirdo queer punks
and the like normy you know, the miners who are
much more culturally conservative. And one day I'm going to
cover the strike in more detail because i want to
talk about this group called lesbians and gay support the miners.
But if you ever want to cry, watch the movie Pride.
(46:37):
It was about this.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Yeah cool, it's English movie.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
Yeah, it's an English movie about lesbians and gay support
the miners. And it's about learning to find solidarity between
these like urban gay punks and like weirdos showing up
in these like you know, small towns of culturally conservative
people and being like, well, we're here to support you
and people you know, like reminds me a lot of
(47:03):
like I've done a it's been a while, but I
used to do a lot of like role organizing with
like environmental campaign stuff, you know, and like queer punks
and trans people would be like showing up and hanging
out with people and like watching people like be like, well,
all right, what's this pronoun thing? You know? And like
and then like vice versa, like there's all kinds of
(47:24):
shit that we have to learn too, and like it's
just like, literally, this is what makes my heart move
forward on a day to day basis is like solidarity.
Speaker 2 (47:34):
Yeah, I love that scene in mate Wan where where
they're all playing music together, all the different all the
different factions of that the I'm.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
Getting teary eyed, I know.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
Yeah, like all the the bosses are trying to you know,
divide everybody and.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
Yeah, white versus Italian versus black, Yeah, I think.
Speaker 2 (47:59):
Was that one and then they just all like end
up playing music together.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
I got to see Will Oldham play the other night
here in Los Angeles. My partner used to be in
his band, and uh he he plays the child's preacher
in mate Wan.
Speaker 1 (48:19):
Oh shit, Oh cool.
Speaker 3 (48:21):
Oh you didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (48:23):
Yeah, that's that's a baby Will Oldham. Fuck.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (48:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
So during this strike in the UK, everything became very serious,
like it was just a really dire time spoiler alert them. Well, no,
I'll get to it. The miners are gonna lose. But meanwhile,
Crass started like, in order to get through police checkpoints
and play benefit shows, they would dress not as cops
(48:50):
but like cops and then drive the same kind of
car that cops drove. But like not, it wasn't like
they were like, hello, officer, I am officer. You know,
they were like they did it like legally. They just
wore the same outfits and shit, I think it's really clever.
And they hung a huge banner over the Thames, which
is the river that goes through England that if you
(49:10):
ever see something in writing and you're like the Fames,
well it's the Thames. And they hung this banner where
Parliament could see it. And this is probably my favorite
slogan I've ever seen from Krass. It read you picked
the scabs, Now the wounds will fester.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
Oh yeah, that's come on. There are such gorgeous lyricists.
I'm so moved by their writing.
Speaker 1 (49:37):
Yeah, and I think a lot of them because it
wasn't just like oh, it wasn't like Penny wrote it
or Steve wrote it, or Eve wrote it. You know,
it was like they all I don't know if I
think they each wrote different songs, but like they clearly
were challenging each other to write poetically and well, you know.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Yeah, I love I love that. Just yeah, seeing people
that all keep each other on their toes.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
Yeah. Crass played their final show in nineteen eighty four,
in July nineteen eighty four, and it was a benefit
for Welsh miners. And then basically it was nineteen eighty
four and they sort of promised to break up in
nineteen eighty four and then they started to Andy Palmer
went first. They were all just kind of burned out.
(50:18):
In nineteen eighty five, the miners called off the strike
Thatcher one she was fighting the enemy within and soon
she attacked the Stonehenge Festival and other like leftist and
free culture and whatever stuff. After the band broke up,
a song on their old album Penis Envy was banned
for obscenity, and slowly folks started drifting away from the
(50:40):
band and from the well from Dialhouse. After Crass, Steve
Ignorant said, quote, the bands that came after Crass outcrassed
Crass by being even more scruffy and dirty and being
even more square and even more miserable than we were
meant to be. They became even more politically correct, which
is to say Steve Ignorant was not a fan of
(51:02):
the or a copunk culture that Krass created. He didn't
like that people called him comrade. Oh yeah, and to
be fair, a lot of people don't like when you
call him comrade.
Speaker 3 (51:12):
No, it's cosplaying a bit.
Speaker 2 (51:14):
Yeah yeah. Also, politically correct started out as a leftist joke,
and then the right, oh yeah, and then the right
used it against the left. I'll just I'll take this
moment to say one of the I learned this phrase
(51:36):
from Eduardo Galiano's he was quoting Argentinian organizers at the time.
Power they say is like a violin. You grab it
with the left and you play it with the right.
Speaker 1 (51:58):
Fuck. Fuck that is I mean that's what Mussolini did right, like,
but I.
Speaker 2 (52:03):
Mean that's what Biden did, like recently, with like just
taking all the like George Floyd energy and then turning
it into whatever the hell he was doing.
Speaker 1 (52:18):
Yeah. The By the end of nineteen eighty nine, everyone
from Krass who was still at Dial House had a
big blow up fight if you listen to more critical
takes about Crass. Basically all the puritanical arguing about what
was the right political line like came to a head
without the band to keep them focused. I think their
(52:39):
like last fight that they had was about whether or
not like smoking was politically correct or whatever, you know,
And you know, they would argue about like can you
have milk in your tea? Like everyone in Crass's vegetarian
is to my understanding, but like people used to use
the word vegetarian where we might use were vegan now
and they were like a little bit more interchangeable and
you know whatever, people'd argu about that shit. After the
(53:02):
band broke up, Steve Ignorant started playing with the narco
punk band Conflict, who was one of the main bands
in the scene, and they were a little bit less
than the passifist tip and more on the animal rights tip.
Steve also became a puppeteer, doing punch and judy shows
for kids, and Penny and Eve and g started doing
free jazz and poetry as we all knew they would
do without Crass.
Speaker 2 (53:24):
I love I love seeing the end of bands, like
where everyone goes off and does their own thing and
everyone shows their colors, like like the one guy from
the Velvet Underground who like became a steamboat operator and
oh shit really yeah, and like I think like got
(53:46):
some kind of amazing degree and something very obscure, like.
Speaker 3 (53:50):
It's just it's it's it's sweet.
Speaker 2 (53:53):
People are yeah, yeah, okay, all right, I love this
part of the story.
Speaker 1 (53:57):
Yeah, like and then it actually as a happy ending
on some ways too. The land Dial houses on was
sold to basically become a golf course, but Dial House
sued and won, and so the landlords were like, fine,
when we're selling the house then, and they sold it
at auction. So all the friends of Dial House showed
up at the auction and bought it.
Speaker 3 (54:19):
Is it?
Speaker 2 (54:20):
Is it like one of the Is it like cob
or something like When I think of an old old
English house, I think like that ancient construction, you know.
Speaker 1 (54:29):
So I've looked at pictures of it. It's it was
first built in like the fourteen hundreds or the oldest
houses from the fourteen hundreds, and it's been added on
to room after room over time, and so I but
I couldn't tell you exactly the types of construction. Whenever
I leave the US I'm always like, wow, everything's built
different with like plaster and stuff, you know. But I
but I couldn't tell you it's cute. You can, there's
(54:50):
plenty of pictures of it, and so dial House, as
far as I can tell, still there. And I think, well,
I don't want to docks. I think that the people
still just live there, you know, and are still doing
their thing. Like fifty years later and along the way,
Krass sold about two million records in the seven years
(55:11):
that they were around, the population of the UK was
only fifty six million people at the time, and I
know it wasn't like one record for every you know,
couple being whatever. I can't do math in my head,
but like, selling two million records at any time is
a big deal, but selling it in a smallish country.
(55:35):
As for what they accomplished, At one point, an interviewer
was talking to Steve Ignorant about how he and others
had basically destroyed the legacy of Margaret Thatcher that when
she died in twenty thirteen, it couldn't be said that
like people had a harder time whitewashing Margaret Thatcher, right,
because history also remembers that people fucking hated her too,
(55:58):
and Steve said, in response to the interviewer, that's my
proudest thing that a spotty little oike from Dagenham actually
stood up knees trembling as he avoided the ash trays
being thrown at him and still fucking did it. And like, yeah,
here's the standing up knees trembling, dodging ash trays and
(56:18):
fucking doing it.
Speaker 3 (56:20):
You're making me cry again.
Speaker 1 (56:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (56:25):
Yeah, I love their immediacy.
Speaker 2 (56:27):
I love their you know, talking shit to power at
every turn.
Speaker 1 (56:33):
Yeah. It's interesting because the main critique that comes up
over and over again is about like PC culture, uh,
kind of creating a puritanical space where like we figure
out more and more things that are bad without figuring
out more and more like ways of being good.
Speaker 2 (56:50):
You know. Well, yeah, but people are we're such intelligent
animals and uh, you know, people are just complicated and
we were we're so dogged to grab another animal metaphor
and we just we just go for stuff. And it's
like that was part of their you know, their artistic
(57:14):
vision is that they were being critical and that they
were empowering people to be critical. So yeah, they yeah, sure,
of course they overdid it. They're they're people.
Speaker 1 (57:25):
Yeah, no, totally, and it it was necessary to to
break a lot of things by saying like, no, we're
just gonna do this shit. And I fucking love that.
It came from the combination of avant garden punk, which
are like actually go together me if you listen Acrass,
they go together very well, right, But like you wouldn't
(57:46):
know it thinking about it. You know, you wouldn't when
you're like thinking about, like, oh, would this work really
well to create this thing? And but they both like
were just like, oh no, fuck the rules, you know.
Speaker 2 (57:55):
Right, if you don't know any avant garde people, you
might you might be able to kind of fool yourself
into seeing those things as separate worlds. But in my experience,
they are all the same people.
Speaker 1 (58:12):
Yeah, totally, especially the ones who like take music seriously,
you know, yeah, like the people making the music.
Speaker 2 (58:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (58:20):
I was like trying to explain at some point when
I was like, you know, ten fifteen years ago or something,
I was like talking to someone, I was like, oh no,
like when I say punk now, like you know, I
was like walking somewhere with like my friend who like
wears clean clothes, and color, and I'm like, oh yeah, no,
like us punk's right, and it was just like it
was a much broader word and concept and like and
(58:40):
when I think about like not just like folk punk
as a genre, but literally like the fact that punk
culture also makes pop music, makes noise music, makes country music,
makes folk music, like you know, it's like it's all
gotten beautifully complicated instead of getting more and more obsessive
about I mean, sometimes people get more and more obsessive
(59:01):
about niche subgenres and that's actually fine, but like instead
just this like big mess of I don't know, just
because sometimes people are like, oh my, my ethos is
punk and it's not. It's not SLC punk, you know,
it's not the like cartoonish punk. I don't know where
I'm going with this.
Speaker 2 (59:20):
Well, genre genre is I'm I don't have a strong
relationship with genre and.
Speaker 1 (59:30):
Personally the singer songwriter, right.
Speaker 2 (59:33):
Because I you know, when I put up my last record,
Haunted Mountain, there's a dance song on it. Because I
don't know, I would assume partly because of the misogyny
inherent in the culture, but you know, maybe that has
to do with like pigeonholing me. I'm just like it
(59:57):
was so funny se all these reviewers look at this
dance track and the whole record and try to say
that it was folk. I really don't know what they're
talking about.
Speaker 3 (01:00:11):
I mean, especially listening to.
Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
Do They Owe Us a Living for the first time
a few days ago, was like this is oh yeah,
this is definitively punk. This is like this is classic punk.
And I remember like coming up in scenes where all
these Americans, all these Houstonians had British accents, like like
(01:00:41):
they needed all of it, you know, they took they
took the entire palette of of that that expression of
the genre of punk.
Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
Yeah, I like punk. I is that My closing thought
is I like punk. I was even like a punk
as a teenager is a weird goth kid, but like
once it became a squadron traveler and really kind of
fell in with the punks and the more political punks
and just it just felt it felt like home in
a way that like nothing ever had even if it,
you know, I would listen to Crass sometimes, but it
(01:01:16):
wasn't like it's not the thing I put on. I
would actually actually the same scene listen to a lot
of Julie Holland.
Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
So that makes me feel so good.
Speaker 3 (01:01:25):
That's lovely.
Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
Yeah. Well, if you're listening to this, if you want
to know more about an archo punk. Almost a sequel
to this is an episode about the the anarchist punk
band Trumba Wamba with that I did with the guy
from Eve six is the main way that you might
know him. Also, you can start a band, you can
(01:01:48):
make music, you can do whatever. You can start a podcast.
You can do these things and you should because why
not you only live once? Or whatever makes me want
to start a band, You just start a band. Yeah,
like another band, like two other bands. Oh, I'd have
to get better at electric guitar if I wanted to
(01:02:09):
play in a punk.
Speaker 3 (01:02:10):
Band, or learn as you go.
Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
That's true, that is the more classic way to do it. Well,
that's the end of this, And thank you Jolie for
coming on. And people should check out your music everywhere
that music is music.
Speaker 2 (01:02:26):
And yeah, Margaret, thank you so very much for having me.
Everyone should check out your podcast wherever podcasts are podcasted,
and read your books and listen to your audio books
and just enjoy your music.
Speaker 1 (01:02:44):
Oh thanks, Oh I guess I should say I probably
do talk about a fair amount. My music is. I
have a bunch of bands on band camp. If you
want to hear a black metal band that actually is
kind of avant garde, it's called Femino's School and that's
I also have a dark, gothy pop music project called
the medic War Machine that used to be more noisy.
(01:03:06):
And I have a one woman do metal EP but
I put it out but I never did follow up
called Vulgarite. But if you're like, I want to listen
to a one woman do metal band that is themed
after the works of William Blake, you can listen to Vulgarite.
And my newest album is years old and it's called
The Lathe and it is post punk and is with
one of my friends is an amazing songwriter, and that's
(01:03:27):
also on band camp. There that's my weird music shout
outs before podcasting consume my life.
Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
Is Yeah, well it's you know, it's good to figure
out how to get paid.
Speaker 1 (01:03:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
I you know when I was when I just started
listening to Krass a few days ago, I felt that
they were Blakian.
Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
Yeah, I could totally see that.
Speaker 2 (01:03:51):
Yeah, it's like they're so English, and they're like, hey,
what if this was a better place?
Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
And they even like come from graphic design, like William
Blake was a did etchings for a living.
Speaker 2 (01:04:04):
That's incredible exactly. And then they and also like they
have their own idiosyncratic theology theology exactly.
Speaker 1 (01:04:15):
Yeah, Well we had ended there and I'll talk to
you soon and all you listeners, I'll talk to you
next week.
Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
Adios.
Speaker 1 (01:04:29):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (01:04:33):
More podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Cool Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did
Cool Stuff, a podcast that is sometimes recorded. Well, Margaret's
dog licks her hand and then Margaret has to move
her hand away from the dog, and then Margaret thinks,
rather than not have this be the introduction, it will
be the introduction. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and this
(00:22):
is Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff. And my guest
is really Holland.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hi. Hello, so deeply psyched to be here. Thanks for
having me.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Yeah, I'm excited to have you here. And I'm like, oh,
I'm talking faster, and that's probably because I ate a
banana in between breaks. And one thing I like about
Crass is that they don't really do drugs or drink,
because I also don't. But then instead I eat sugar
and then my pace of talking begins to go up.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
And that's so benign that you're like, You're like, sugar
rush is a banana. It wasn't like it wasn't like
a little Debbie or something.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Yeah, well I ran out of the sweets in my house. Besides,
fruit is what happened. And there's a snowstorm coming tomorrow
as I record this, so I will just be forced
to eat fruit, which is very good to deal with, Sugar.
But I think everyone probably knows who you are and
who I am by part four, and you might even,
dear listener, know who Crass is a little bit. But
(01:20):
we're going to talk about them more because where we
last left off, they had started a band and then
an arcopunk had become a serious movement, only I hadn't
told you what it was doing yet. So as the
seventies closed, oh geez, what will I do without Sophie.
Sophie's usually is our producer, but just isn't on the call,
(01:40):
and I almost forgot to say that Sophie's our producer,
and more importantly that everyone has to say hi to Rory,
our audio.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Engineer, Hi, Rory, Rory Hello.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
And our theme music was written forced by a woman
who once got an entire steampunk convention kicked out of
a bar. It was actually funny because then un woman
was headlining the main stage of that particular convention, but
as a solo act, not as a terrible Crass cover band.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Anyway, I want to hear like rehearsal tapes of that band.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
The best you can do is that there is a
version from that convention of all three of us playing
Bellachow from the main stage, and so I suspect that
if you look up Bellachow on Woman on YouTube, it
might still be there and you can. Why did I
just tell everyone that it was not my best but
(02:31):
anyway whatever. I used to make my music playing accordion
on the street, but I was never good at it.
I just didn't. I had an accordion and was broke.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
The accordion is such a beautiful prop and that's all
you need. Do you see this, Hold a beautiful instrument
and be a beacon of sound.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Yeah, it's a really good busking instrument because it is
loud and slightly. In punk scenes, it's like cliche. But
when you're out on the street, people are like, holy shit,
and accordion. I haven't seen one since my granddad's accordion.
And then they're like, here's a dollar, and I'm like, sweet,
thank you. And that's a thing that happens.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
But that's all you need, just need them to give
you the money.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah, exactly. As the seventies closed the idea of punk
as a broad musical label that might include bands like
The Cure and Bauhaus. Right next to the slits and
the cockney rejects that ended specific subgenres started things started
getting very more like particular and specific, which is it
(03:36):
happens constantly to every genre, and it's both good and
bad and equal measure, you know. And one of the
main subgenres of punk, especially in the UK, was a
narco punk, which basically meant sounds like crass. There's also
OI that came out at around that time, which started off
pretty leftist but then has earned a right wing reputation
(03:59):
and is more into catchy songs and working class anthems.
And I really like OI. I have to admit it
is more my style and taste, not politically. But anyway,
there's some good oy bands. So this isn't a story
about OI. It's a story about anarco punk Crass. They
really did walk the walk. Their albums started selling rather well,
(04:21):
and they simply pooled all of their money and then
gave themselves about five hundred pounds a year as an allowance,
and then all lived in dial house together. And I
think that's like minus the like food and whatever stuff
they need, you know.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
They gave themselves five hundred pounds a year to live on.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Well, I think they're living expenses is that they are
in Crass and live at Dial House, so it's like
five hundred pounds on top.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Of that it's a tip.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah, totally, that's not enough.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
You know.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
In the end, I think they probably agreed. They didn't
let mass me do interviews with them besides like once
or twice if the if the interviewer like really proved them,
because they didn't have a rule like we won't do
mass media. They had a rule where like we have
to trust the journalists or whatever, and it's just like
they almost never did, and they gave fanzines interviews constantly,
(05:16):
and so they said no to basically every mainstream journalist
and yes to basically every fanzine. So fanzine sales started
rising dramatically and the number of fanzines started going through
the roof. They would spend every Tuesday answering fan mail.
They responded to about two hundred letters a week, and
they would like refuse to answer with like form letters,
(05:37):
so they'd just sit around and divvy up the letters
and write the people.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Can we imagine any big band doing anything like this? Now?
Speaker 1 (05:46):
No? And this is like they are out selling ACDC
and they.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Are doing this, A that's amazing.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Yeah, it would be like I don't know whoever, I
don't I clearly don't know what we call it new.
I don't know who's currently the people who would be
comparable to.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
But can you imagine, Okay, so if they were bigger
than ACDC at the time, can you imagine you're driving
across Utah or whatever and you turn on the radio
and it's crass and not ACDC.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Yeah, but it can never be because they cuss so much.
But yeah, but that same level of like they are
bigger despite being underground, so which is probably why they
have kind of a like being underground is better because
it's working for them, you know.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
I imagine.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
I'm trying to think about different ways that artists could
draw lines with media, and yeah, one proposition is we
just talk about music because I feel like so much
music journalism is just all about.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Gossip and oh yeah, totally, and it.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Often gets incredibly misogynistic.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
I wonder if you could just be like, I will
only talk about my music or my political positions and
just like not talk about like who you're dating or whatever.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
You know.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Yeah, I mean I've seen so sort of worse.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Like you know, I had this one band where one
of the bandmates admittedly had a fantastic beard, and literally
this interviewer only wanted.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
To talk to the guitarist about his beard.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Oh my god, uh huh, yeah, it.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Gets it gets stupider than even like your proposal seemed
to suggest, or like late lately, I've seen and this
makes me. This is so upsetting to me. I've seen
press about bands like major press only talk about the
supposed mental health of the lead singer who is a woman.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Totally.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
Yeah, it's it's so depressing.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
It's like, yeah, it's it's fantastically progressive.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Absolutely, I love the like when I do interviews, when
I with Feminoschool, when we would do interviews, I loved
because it was almost always there was a couple mainstream
pieces about us, but not much. And just like the
fanzine journalists, especially like weird punk and metal fanzines from
Europe would have amazing questions even if it had to
(08:22):
be like translated in both directions or whatever, And so
Crass would spend Wednesdays Tuesdays answer letters. Wednesdays, fanzine journalists
would come over and a lot of people I think
only created fanzines literally as an excuse to meet and
talk to Krass, and they just let people do it.
They knew that was happening, they didn't care. That's great
(08:44):
and their stencyl campaign spread to listeners because they would
include stencils and the leaflets that they passed out and
teach people how to spray paint. And then in nineteen
eighty they released a benefit split with the Poison Girls
that was meant to benefit a bunch of anarchists who
are on trial because of this sum. There was this
case that was called the Person's Unknown Case, and I
(09:06):
don't have the full sense of it. It gets into
the Angry Brigade, it gets into Irish politics, it gets
into lots of complicated stuff, and I read a few
sources about it and they all kind of seemed to
disagree with each other about what it was about. But overall,
there was this case that happened where a bunch of
people were arrested as terrorists, including like some like like
an IRA person or a person accused of mean part
(09:27):
of the IRA was arrested and then accused of killing
Northern Irish cops, but then started being supported by anarchist
Black Cross and became an anarchist in jail. And there
was this whole thing where like it basically seems like
the UK cops were terrified that the IRA was going
to move more anarchists, and they started like rounding people
up or whatever. And four people got put on trial
(09:48):
or five I've read both by different sources, and having
anarchist literature was considered proof of guilt in this case
that was happening. So Crass and Poison Girls released a
benefit for the person's unknown case and the name comes
from the persons were known, the four people who are
on trial or the five people are on trial, but
(10:08):
they were accused of conspiring with persons unknown. So literally
it was a case where like, you are being accused
of conspiring with we don't know who about, we don't
know what.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Oh that sounds extremely illegal.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Yeah, and shockingly including in Thatcher's fucking UK. The defendants
were all found not guilty, or four of them were
on one of them, I keep keep again, I read
a bunch of different things whatever, and so they were like, Okay,
we don't need this ten thousand pounds we just raised,
and so they they looked at Northern Ireland, which had
(10:42):
an anarchist center, which I want to know more about.
I want to know more about Northern Ireland as being
kind of a center of UK anarchism for a while.
And they were like, London should have an anarchist center,
and we have ten thousand pounds. So they opened a
short lived place called the Autonomy Center. Only they spelled
center wrong because they're British and they don't know a spell,
and they I had to make at least one joke
(11:04):
about this. It's just I'm constitutionally incapable of not making
fun of the British.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Got to talk some shit.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Yeah, And it was a rented warehouse space that they
shared with an anarchist print collective called Little A. Every
Sunday they put on punk shows six bands for a pound,
and like people would come over it, you know, and
they made their money on that by beer sales, basically.
Steve Ignorant complains later about how it was all just
(11:30):
a bunch of people sitting around talking about Bakunin. So
he didn't really like the Autonomy Center very much.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Boring.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Yeah, sorry, that the place that once a week you
get to go see six bands for a pound and
drink like whatever. Anyway, the Autonomy Center itself only lasted
about six months, but this version of social centers spread also.
In nineteen eighty, You've got this fun event that I
really wish I could find more information about. And when
(11:57):
I say fun, that gets quotes, But me wanting to
learn more about is true. Remember us talking about the
Stonehenge festivals that their friend had started, like several episodes ago,
where Wally was like, we're all gonna go squat Stonehenge.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
That sounds so flaky.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
They kept happening. The Stonehenge festivals lasted almost a decade,
and in nineteen eighty Krass was like, all right, well,
we're going to bring punk to it. And not just Krass,
the Poison Girls and a bunch of other punk bands
were like, We're going to go play the Stonehenge Festival,
and the punks are going to come because it's a radical,
free culture event. Why not. So in the crowd was
(12:33):
a biker gang who took a fence to the punks
and attacked them. And this is a very like story
as all this time. At first, the bikers stormed the
stage during one of the other punk bands and said
that they weren't going to tolerate punks at their festival,
and then they just like beat up all the punks.
They just like went around and like beat everyone up,
and it was like a beating up massacre, where like
punks were like running away into the woods and being
(12:55):
chased by bikers and beating up. It's actually really bad
to quote Penny and Boa about it. Quote. Weeks later,
a hippie news sheet defended the bikers, saying that they
were an anarchist group who had misunderstood our motives. So
maybe the bikers thought that the punks were all fascists.
(13:16):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Yeah, indecipherable. There's gotta be okay, there's there's gotta be
people obviously.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Who know who're at it. Yeah, yeah, so who.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Have some more informed perspectives. So let's hear from y'all.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Yeah, Because even when I found things about the history
of the Stonehenge festival, they were just quoting Penny Rombau
from the same source that I was able to find it.
There's not a lot of people talking about this happening,
and there's even people saying like this sounds like a
huge big deal. When you read the book, the story
of Krass about it, but then other people talking about
the Stonehenge festivals are like, how come no one else
(13:57):
talks about that? And so like, maybe I think it happened,
but I don't feel like I totally know the story.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
I know I've met a couple of old punks from
that from those days in England.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Yeah, if you find out, we'll go back and edit
in a further explanation here.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
So, either way, both Crass and Poison Girls were unable
to play. Penny clearly wasn't having a good time at
the festival his friend started because the last time he
was there it also went really badly. But Crass is
growing still and they just get bigger and bigger because
DIY advertising, unlike mainstream advertising. The way that mainstream advertising
(14:39):
is that in the middle of your podcast, the host,
regardless of how they feel about what's about to happen,
just pivots to ads.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
Masterfully, thank you, and we're back.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
So nineteen eighty one, a reviewer said, quote, you come
across Crass in every place you look. They rarely play
and hardly ever advertise. They live outside the music business,
and they're far more successful than most people inside it.
They don't need to promote themselves because they're following does
that for them? Their logos on one hundred thousand black
leather jackets and their name is sprayed on town halls
(15:23):
and bus stops from Amsterdam to Aberdeen. Crass records regularly
sell well in excess of the figures achieved by outfits
whose faces adorn the megastore displays, yet next to nothing
is known of them.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
It is so important to look outside of the parameters
of the music industry because the way it's set up
is like a cattle choote and the musicians are the livestock.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
I mean, I know some musicians who've had a fair
amount of success through the industry, But the creativity of
artists can be applied as well to how we make
a living. Yeah, And uh, there's just there's no one way.
There is no one way to be an artist anything, totally,
(16:20):
and the industry only knows the way that's going to
make them the most money. So it's up to every
single artist to be creative about how we survive.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Yeah. And like when you work with mainstream stuff, which
you can do, you just have to be really aware
of what's happening. You have to be really aware of
that it's not your only thing. It's like not the
only way to be a musician. You can be You
can engage with different labels at different levels at different
times and then back out of it, like you know,
you can like well, I mean they try and stick
(16:56):
you contractually, but like, there's lots of ways of doing.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
It, and so you have to be extremely wary of
things that are independent as well, and don't just trust
that like because they're punk or because they have a
certain aesthetic or background that they will have the same
ethics as you.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
I think totally your community totally. And another thing that
Crass got to do is they pulled off a bunch
of really funny pranks, which is of course they did
one of their better ones. So they released this album
called Penis Envy that was an intentionally like feminist piece.
It was maybe their first like concept album or whatever.
(17:37):
It centered the women of the band. Also the men
in the band would do shit like write songs about
rediscovering how to be a man in a more feminist way.
Like they were actually had really good nuanced gender politics
as far as they can tell. And there's a song
that they did on penis Envy called Our Wedding, and
it is this over the top love song about getting married.
(17:58):
It's like a satire of marriage. The lyrics include things
like never look at anyone, anyone but me, never look
at anyone. I must be all you see, set to
like sweet organ music or whatever.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Right, it is so creepy it is, yeah, and you
could play that at lots of Christian Nationalists' weddings.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
And that's basically what they realized is they were like,
I wonder if we can trick someone into releasing this earnestly,
and so they wrote a teen girl magazine called Loving
who loved this new song by Joida Viv, which is
one of the Crass singers, and it was published by
According to them, when Krass wrote, they were like, oh,
(18:41):
is this new song by Joida Viv published by Creative
Recording and Sound Services Crass.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
A Oh so good, I know.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
And it's like a that's like a seamless acronym like
that that wouldn't raise any red flags if.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
I saw that, you know, and warms my heart.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
And so Loving Magazine agreed to release the single free
to any of their readers who would send them a stamp,
and then they told their readers that the single would
quote make your wedding day just that extra bit special.
Joy de Vive has captured all the happiness and romance
of that all important big day, your wedding, So make
sure you send off for your copy and time for
(19:24):
that grand occasion. It's a must for all true romantics.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
It's so eerie. I was listening to it as I
was walking my dog this morning, and yeah, I feel
like one of my bandmate's sisters is in a really
intense church and he talked about her wedding and the
vows reminded me of that song. So it's a yeah,
(19:53):
I really appreciate Crass's take on the patriarchy and religion. Yeah,
it's something that really really deserves to be roasted hard.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
And I think that I really love how feminists they
were at the gate, Like I love that, like because
that's I mean, that's one of the things that you
don't when I imagine old punk. I'm not immediately like, ah,
good feminist politics, you know, but like many of them did,
and certainly cross and when the magazine found out that
they got pranked, they were really mad. And Penny just
(20:29):
told them that their magazines and others like it were
quote absolutely obscene and despicable. They exploit people in aggressive
and unpleasant manner.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
They hadn't broken any laws, and they did not.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
And yeah, it sounds if you listen to the song,
like it really could just be played on the radio
as like a love song. Uh yeah, because that's how
patriarchal so many love songs are. I mean, it's very
like it's very phil Spectory in a way.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
I don't know Phil Specter as I feel terrible about
that he.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Was a he was a murderer.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Uh oh shit, okay?
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Who who was like a really important producer?
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Oh fuck okay?
Speaker 2 (21:14):
And like he like he was part of I don't
know fully, but because I I write off people who
are total pieces of shit sometimes and it's hard to
really remember everything about them. But like I think he
created the wall of sound. If that rings a bell, it's.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Just like really like the concept of like what a
lot of the like no wave bands and stuff were
doing of Like it's kind of as loud as possible.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
I love your misinterpretation of that. No, like no, it
was it was like a sixties sound esthetic.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Okay, Okay, no, I don't know it, but what I
do know about No, it's not time for an ad break.
I'll just keep reading the thing. So yeah, they hadn't
broken any laws, so they got away with it. In
nineteen eighty one, things were getting really heated in the UK.
Riots were breaking out across the country against police racism
and violence, starting in Brixton. Under Thatcher, unemployment continued to rise.
(22:13):
Punks responded with flyers that said things like national tragedy,
twenty three million people still employed in Northern Ireland. Irish
rebels were dying during hunger strikes in prison, and more
and more people were sympathetic to the cause of Irish unification,
although there were also more terrorist attacks and such, and
(22:34):
so people were getting polarized on it. In nineteen eighty two,
Crass released what they sort of figured it would be
their last record, Christ the Album, a big old double album,
but then the Falklands War kicked off. I actually only
learned about the Falklands War because of I really like
this band, New Model Army, that's like an old UK band,
(22:55):
and so I was like listening to them since I
was a teenager, and they talked about the Falklands were
and I was like, I had no idea what it was.
I was like seventeen or whatever.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
But that's that's like a that's an Elvis Costello song. Right,
New Model.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Army, Oh New Mottle Army gets its name from it
was part of the English Civil War. There was the
kind of group tied in with the Levelers and stuff
that we're trying to create a more just England. But
I actually hate the actual New Model Army from back
then because they were who invaded Ireland and like kind
of genocided them so and like you in like England,
(23:29):
they have this like oh the people fighting for good,
but then Cromwell used them as like useful idiot's. Basically
that was another revolution that was betrayed from my point
of view. If you want to hear more about it,
you can go back and listen to me talk to
John Darnell from The Mountain Goats about the Levelers and
the Diggers on an old episode. So I don't know
if it wouldn't surprise me if Alvis Costello would also
(23:51):
use that as a song, but I think the band
gets it from the old group.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Yeah, but the.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Falklands War kicks off. There're these off the coast of
Argentina called the Falklands Islands, and they are part of
the UK. For whatever dumb colonial reason, they're still part
of the UK. In nineteen eighty two, Argentina was like,
we want our shit back, and so they invaded and
the UK was like, are you kidding me? We're the
fucking UK. The war lasted seventy four days and ended
(24:19):
in argentina surrender. The UK stomped them. About one thousand
people died, mostly Argentinians, but two hundred and fifty five
Brits were killed in the fighting too. At the start
of the conflict, Krass was like, all right, well, we're
going to make fun of patriotism and we're going to
make fun of the British soldiers. And they put out
a single called Sheep Farming in the Falklands, which is
(24:41):
about British soldiers who just want to go there to
fuck sheep.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Yeah, that's fired.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
But as the war got all like, you know, killie,
they put out a song that just actually really shook
up British politics. Like I didn't go into this knowing
to what degree Crass impacted world politics. They wrote a
song called how does it feel. I've ever seen it
both as how does it feel? And how does it feel?
(25:08):
To be the mother of a thousand dead? Which is
fucking good title. Yeah, and that song is written directly
to Margaret Thatcher. Imagine writing a song aimed at a
politician and then the most important politician, and then having
the politician like listen to it, not like listen to
reason and change what they're doing, but have the song
(25:30):
like actually impact the country's politics.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Yeah, And whether or not she listens to it, it's
just important to say it and that everyone hears you
say it.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
And as the podcast idiot, I truly was an idiot.
I was just you know, in a scene where some
people obviously talked about Crass and yeah, big Crass fans,
but I had never consciously listened to Crass, And so
I have had my Crass immersion in the last few days.
And one of the things that I immediately really have
(26:03):
savored about Crass is how because they're part of the
inventors of punk rock, they sidestepped one of the biggest
pitfalls of punk rock in my opinion, which is that
it's it's this anger aimed outward and it doesn't state
(26:26):
the self lyrically, and I just loved, like, I'm a
fucking I'm truly the podcast idiot. What's what's the big
song that we were talking about earlier?
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Do they always a living?
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Do they always a living? It's it's so cool, and
that it like it states yourself. It's like it's it's
all about what we think and what we deserve as
opposed to like so I remember, it's not as you
are bad.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
It's like we're gonna we're gonna fight for what's ours.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yeah, And it's not like ranting at somebody that you
hate who's not even there.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Yeah, because Margaret Thatcher's there in this conversation when they
write this song, you know.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Yeah, and they have the power and they take aim
and they are they're so conscious of who they're able
to communicate with, and it's.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
It's astounding.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
It's really beautiful.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Yeah. No, And when they write this song, the Tories
actually her Thatcher's party actually circulated a memo internally that
was like, we really can't afford to respond to this
kind of provocation and we should not arrest them. But
the cops started showing up at record stores threatening anyone
who was like selling their record and about half of
(27:48):
their shows were shut down by cops before they even
got started. And with the Falkland War, Cress became one
of the main voices of the opposition. Instead of them
writing labor politicians, labor politicians were writing them. And then
they started getting leaked information by soldiers. What happened was
(28:12):
a soldier had written them an angry letter being like,
how dare you not you unpatriotic? Blah blah blah blah blah.
Right and Krass had responded, and I think they'd even
been like, oh, fuck you or whatever. But it had gone.
It had opened up a channel of communication, and eventually
this soldier who started off hating them, started telling them
all of the horrible things from the war that weren't
(28:32):
getting talked about in the press, including the fact that
there was almost a mutiny among British soldiers. So then
they pulled their most dangerous prank. This is the kind
of prank that I think could have gotten them killed.
They spoofed a conversation between Thatcher and Reagan about the
Falklands War and American imperial interests in Europe with nuclear arms.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
I didn't I didn't get a chance to listen to
that one did.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
They like do their voices?
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Like how like they no, they they they found old
recordings of them and like cut them up and then
like did enough like audio magic to like it's like
a lot of people can tell it's faked, right, but
not everyone, And it's like fairly well done. And this
thing that they put out and they they leak it
(29:23):
ahead of the nineteen eighty two UK general election and
it claims that Thatcher allowed a British ship to be
attacked so that the UK could counterattack, and Krass figured
the whole thing was like cheap and hacky and no
one would get fooled and it was just like not
going to go anywhere.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
But people are dumb.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Yeah, they tried super hard to make sure it wouldn't
be traced back to them. The CIA and MI six
couldn't figure out the source of the fake. They suspected
it was KGB, but a journalist at The Observer was like, Nah,
this is crass, and like basically like got them to
fess up. Uh yeah, I love that. Like the journalist
(30:03):
was just like, no, I've heard this audio production style before,
you know, incredible, and it's called Thatcher Gate, and it
did not cost Thatcher the election. The Falklands War made
her popular again. War is good for popularity. I sure
hope the current administration doesn't figure that out, but my
money is that they will.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
Did I just say people are stupid?
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Yeah, still upsetting.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Around this time, Krass opened up a squat. I suspect
this more than just Crass. I expect this other the
narco punk movement, but with Crass involved, opened up a squat,
an empty venue called the Zigzag that had gone under
a year earlier or whatever, and they opened it up
to have a twelve band show, which a thousand people
came to. And this was a new tactic, and it's
(30:52):
one that's spread across Europe. The implication in what I
read is that this is the first like open a
squat to throw a show in that era, in the
modern era in Europe or whatever. People who've listened to
the show know that I'm very skeptical anytime it's like
the first time anything whatever, you know. But it seems
like this is kind of how the tactic started spreading
around Europe, because they distributed a pamphlet about how and
(31:16):
why to do this kind of thing. When they did it,
and they gave it to everyone who came, and it
included the lines quote what happened at the Zigzag, we
hope was one step towards reclaiming what is ours. Freedom,
free food, free shelter, free information, free music, free ideas,
freedom to do whatever does not impinge on the freedom
(31:37):
of others. The idea of squat rock, I'm continuing to quote,
the idea of squat rock is not purely another way
of doing gigs, as we hope this handout explains. Hopefully
it will have been and is an inspiration to other
people to open up more places, whether it be for
gigs to live in whatever. As for what they hope
to accomplish, I want to quote Penny Rimbau from his
(31:57):
book The Last of the Hippies quote, we can open
up squats and from them start information services for those
who want to do the same. Or we can form
housing co ops and communes to share the responsibility of
renting or even buying a property in places we already live.
We can open the doors to others, form tenant associations
(32:18):
with neighbors and demand and create better conditions and facilities
in the area. We can form gardening groups that squat
and farm disused land or rent allotments where we can
to produce food for ourselves and others, that are free
from dangerous chemicals and grow medicinal herbs to cure each
other's headaches, and like, yeah, it's not limited to like,
(32:38):
oh we can have punk shows. They're like we can
have a better life.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Yeah. I love that. Uh, that tactic of community gardens.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Yeah too, Which is why this podcast I should just
start doing little ads for things that I think should
be the advertiser. This podcast is brought to you by
community Gardens, although it was all so even more explicitly
brought to you by that when we did a whole
episode about community gardens. But community gardens are great. So
garden and then give food to people, and that's good.
(33:10):
And that's the only ad.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
And we're back.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
If you heard other ads, it was a mistake, and
you should write to our complaints department, which is just
look for someone named Robert Evans is the complaints department.
So just tag Robert Evans and whatever social media and
we'll get right on that. So at this point KRASS
is just wildly important on the world stage in a
way that I didn't realize, and so folks are kind
(33:40):
of trying to sort them out politically. Folks from the
Red Army faction, which is like a German communist urban
guerrilla group, started hanging out a dial house to like
suss them out, be like, oh, are these people are
going to help us on a bombing campaign and then
realize that Crafts are pacifists and anarchists and not likely
to support them. The KG came around and tried talking
(34:01):
to them, trying to sort out how they knew what
they knew about the Falklands War. But my favorite interaction
of THEIRS with traditional rebel groups was in nineteen eighty
two they played an anarchist center in Belfast and the
first night there was trouble when some like loyalist skinheads,
like people who were not pro Irish unification but pro
(34:22):
the UK. They attacked people at the show. But the
second night, on a Sunday, there were no problems. There
was no violence at the show, and so Penny was like, oh,
I bet even these people take Sundays off. Was his
first guests or whatever. But then they got like a
letter that was like invited them to an IRA pub
and they were basically told like, no, the IRA has
(34:44):
your back. We kept the loyalists away. The reason that
was peaceful is we did security for you without you
even noticing it.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Uh, just seamless.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Yeah, and all of this political stuff that started happening
kept them involved in the band. They kind of thought
the band was gonna wind down. They thought that was
gonna be their last release or whatever. There's like people argue,
like they claim sometimes they claim that they were going
to disband the band in nineteen eighty four because of
George or well, like everyone everyone in the UK thought
nineteen eighty four was gonna be like a big deal.
(35:15):
When it happened, you know, it's kind of like a
year two thousand kind of thing. But some people were like, oh,
we were always going to disband in nineteen eighty four,
and other people were like, no, that was just some
bullshit we used to say. But all of this political
stuff kept them involved. That makes sense to me. Suddenly
being important in world political events is a bunch of
weirdo punks. That has got to be a trip like
that has got to feel at least interesting, you know,
(35:37):
how do you walk away from that?
Speaker 3 (35:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (35:39):
And also it's like you realize you're performing a service,
and totally, once you realize that the world needs you you,
you need to respond to.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
That no totally and it's got to be weird pressure too,
and maybe even in response to that pressure, I don't know,
they were like, we're going back to our roots really hard.
In nineteen eighty three, they released their most experimental album,
which is called yes, Sir, I Will, which comes from
a like one of the generals or whatever. There's like
a wounded soldier and he was like, get better soon,
(36:11):
and the soldier was like, yes, sir, I will, like
you know, and so that's what they called their album.
It didn't have so much as songs as like a
one noise spoken word track on both sides of the record.
It theoretically holds the record for the longest punk song
because there's no divisions between the different pieces of it
(36:32):
on the record, like where the little lines of you know,
you look at a record and you can see where
the song's end or whatever. And this album wasn't like
really enjoyable to a lot of people's very avant garde.
They started playing shows that a lot of people weren't into,
where they would just play the entire album start to finish,
instead of playing the hits and things like that, going.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Going back to their Rootsa's exit.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Yeah. Basically, Steve Ignorant in particular didn't love standing around
with a written script because it was so long that
they just literally had the script in front of them.
He was struggling at this point with the non rock
and roll nature of the band. He's the young you know,
the young punk who kind of started the whole thing.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
What's their age difference.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
I think he's about ten to fifteen years younger than everyone. Okay,
he said quote from Crass, like from his time in Crass,
I don't have any of those anecdotes. Oh there was
the night where we got the fire extinguishers, etc. Which
is the stuff people love to hear. We didn't have
none of that, Just cups of tea and staying around
people's houses and being polite to their mum and dad.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
I have read a ridiculous amount about Crass in the
past couple weeks, but I've only scratched the surface. I
did read this critique of them, though I read it
on my phone and I didn't tract the name of it,
so it's not my source. List. I'm sorry about that,
but I also don't agree with it, and so whatever.
And I read this thing that argues that the failure
of Crass in an arco punk was that it had
no involvement in actual social movements, and I was like
(38:05):
nodding along reading it when I first read it, because
I read it pretty early on, I was like, I'm
gonna look up some stuff about Krass. But after reading
more about Crass, I think that this is entirely untrue.
I wasn't surprised to realize that the article had been
written by an authoritarian socialist magazine that was basically like MAD.
That Krass wasn't specifically part of some specific named leftist
(38:26):
mass movement, right.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
Yeah, and they were. They wanted them to be their lapdogs.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
Yeah, totally, totally. Crass and an arcopunk in general were
absolutely directly involved with all sorts of mass movements, especially
the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament the CND. From what I
can tell, they revitalized it like it was kind of
a dying movement. But then Krass would use its logo
with a piece symbol like everywhere. You can also say
(38:56):
that the modern anarchist movement stems at least as much
from a narco punk as traditional anarchism. But fortunately it's
like left behind being only one subculture, because subculture is
fine when it's not. When people think like, oh, in
order to be a leftist or an anarchist or whatever,
I have to be a punk, that is nonsense, you know.
But it's cool when subcultures have radical politics within them.
(39:20):
I just want a million subcultures, as you said, like
diversity is our strength, you know. And modern protest tactics
and styles, like our styles of protesting owe an awful
lot to the UK in the eighties, specifically around the
turn of the millennia. Later, the US, Mexico and Europe
at least have these huge anti globalization protests which kicked
(39:42):
off twenty first century protest culture in the West, and
of course I have an affinity for it because that's
how I got involved, and we owe an awful lot
about those tactics and how those protests went to this
time period, there was this anarchist group called London Green Peace,
which threw me through a loop because I would just oh,
the articles would be like, oh, London green Peace did
(40:02):
this thing, and I was like, oh, okay, Green Peace
the organization, but in London, that was what I was thinking, right, right,
there's no relation to the organization we currently know today's
green Peace. It turns out both get their names honestly.
They both grew out of the same grassroots environmental movement
that called itself green Peace, but then a huge chunk
of it became green Peace International, the thing that grandma's
(40:24):
donate money to do to save whales or whatever. Yeah,
London green Peace was still grassroots, and in nineteen eighty
three they called for some protests. At least I've read
it was them. Other places say Crass called them for
the protests, and other places say it came about completely
organically and no one called for it. Whatever. The anarcho
punks and the pacifists called for some protests. Crass says
(40:47):
it was Greenpeace, so we'll go with that. There have
been these huge peace camps and such like. Basically tens
of thousands of people were showing up to block military bases.
But some people were like, why are we going all
the way out to the countryside to do this. The
halls of power are right here in London, So they
called for a stop the city demonstration. They wanted to
(41:09):
shut down London was the idea, specifically the Financial district,
and this was to bring together the pacifice and the
anarchists into this big mobilization, and this was an uneasy alliance.
Sometimes the pacifists were worried that anyone who defended themselves
against the police or damaged property would make the movement
look bad, and the cops themselves were super worried.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
I was just thinking, this is some Hampton shit, you
know Fred Hampton. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, this is like, yeah,
this is like like getting.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
Getting these different people. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Big coalitions really make you a target fast.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
Yeah, that's true. And it's interesting because this one it
it forms a coalition and it is this loose one
and yeah, like it absolutely worried the shit out of
the state because the cops were like for decades in UK,
well not nine Northern Ireland, but like in England, protest
organizers had been willing to like meet with cops to
(42:13):
coordinate the whole thing, you know, like, oh, we're gonna
do our march from here to there and get permits
and do everything the right way or whatever right And
for some weird reason, the anarchists in the past of us.
It didn't, and so cops showed up at an anarchist
meeting to be like, can we can we please talk
this over? Can you like we know you're doing a thing,
can we just can we be part of planning? And
they like, no one would work with them, and they
(42:34):
all had to leave.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Some it's some Hampton shit, and it's also some Judy
Barry shit. So yeah, it's like when you get really effective,
you get really it's it's really hot water.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
Yeah, totally. And so before the protests, they squatted an
empty office building to create an anarchist social center called
the Peace Center. Cops raided it the night before the protests,
looking for weapons. There weren't any weapons, but the raid
didn't stop the protest. To quote George Berger from the
book The Story of Crass quote, normal demonstrations had leaders,
(43:12):
stewards organization and an overload of Socialist Workers' Party placards.
Stop the city had kids in colorful rags, breaking off
from the main group on their own initiative to affect
their own actions. Graffiti, street theater, free food bank, locks,
glued patriot flags, burned leaf litting anti apartheid actions against
(43:32):
Barkley's Bank, many arrests. By the virtue of about fifteen
hundred leaderless young punks and a few older ones, the
anarcho punk movement had arrived. It was no longer simply
a bunch of kids who bought the same records. It
was and is a people's culture, and so I like that.
The thing that makes them real is like when they
(43:55):
start doing stuff outside of just subcultural spheres. You know,
a ton of people were arrested. Two hundred people caught
charges at the first one. Between the first one and
the second one, a thousand people were arrested, and the
financial district was like all chewed up. They did a
ton of financial damage, like by stopping the ability for
(44:15):
business as usual to continue. And so they did it
again the next year. But something even bigger happened the
next year. And these are the like, this is the
real coalition shit, this is the like I'm going to
eventually be doing a lot of episodes about this shit.
Have you heard about the miners strikes in the UK
in nineteen eighty four. It's okay if you haven't, but
(44:35):
I'm just curious.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
No I have, I'm not fully informed, but yeah, yeah, no, it.
It was gigantic.
Speaker 1 (44:44):
Yeah, in nineteen eighty four, Thatcher had decided in March
nineteen eighty four, Thatcher had decided to break the working
class and unions for good. About twenty thousand miners were
going to be laid off and so all of the
miners went on strike. And this became a battle for
the whole of the English working class because it was
fairly heavily socialist and Thatcher wanted to shatter that wanted
(45:06):
to just destroy class unity, you know, among the working class.
And this was a massive showdown kind of beyond what's
easy to imagine for an American. I think it was
almost a civil war between the right, Thatcher and the left,
which was working class miners and their supporters. And the
reason is so hard is that like the US has
(45:27):
had a strong ever since the Red Scare has had
a pretty strong hold, the right wing has had a
pretty stronghold on like rural culture, you know.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
Totally but not complete. But you know, you.
Speaker 3 (45:40):
Read your Robin DG.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
Kelly, and there was so much socialism coming from the
ground up all throughout this rural South.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Yeah, no, absolutely, like, and we have this idea that
somehow rural poor people have always been right winging that
this is a completely untrue, including in America, Like it
just socialism, leftism and anarchism and communism were just so
completely memory hold in the US, like starting in the
nineteen forties and fifties, and when this minor strike happened,
(46:13):
punks came out in droves to support the miners despite
this massive cultural divide between the urban weirdo queer punks
and the like normy you know, the miners who are
much more culturally conservative. And one day I'm going to
cover the strike in more detail because i want to
talk about this group called lesbians and gay support the miners.
But if you ever want to cry, watch the movie Pride.
(46:37):
It was about this.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Yeah cool, it's English movie.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
Yeah, it's an English movie about lesbians and gay support
the miners. And it's about learning to find solidarity between
these like urban gay punks and like weirdos showing up
in these like you know, small towns of culturally conservative
people and being like, well, we're here to support you
and people you know, like reminds me a lot of
(47:03):
like I've done a it's been a while, but I
used to do a lot of like role organizing with
like environmental campaign stuff, you know, and like queer punks
and trans people would be like showing up and hanging
out with people and like watching people like be like, well,
all right, what's this pronoun thing? You know? And like
and then like vice versa, like there's all kinds of
(47:24):
shit that we have to learn too, and like it's
just like, literally, this is what makes my heart move
forward on a day to day basis is like solidarity.
Speaker 2 (47:34):
Yeah, I love that scene in mate Wan where where
they're all playing music together, all the different all the
different factions of that the I'm.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
Getting teary eyed, I know.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
Yeah, like all the the bosses are trying to you know,
divide everybody and.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
Yeah, white versus Italian versus black, Yeah, I think.
Speaker 2 (47:59):
Was that one and then they just all like end
up playing music together.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
I got to see Will Oldham play the other night
here in Los Angeles. My partner used to be in
his band, and uh he he plays the child's preacher
in mate Wan.
Speaker 1 (48:19):
Oh shit, Oh cool.
Speaker 3 (48:21):
Oh you didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (48:23):
Yeah, that's that's a baby Will Oldham. Fuck.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (48:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
So during this strike in the UK, everything became very serious,
like it was just a really dire time spoiler alert them. Well, no,
I'll get to it. The miners are gonna lose. But meanwhile,
Crass started like, in order to get through police checkpoints
and play benefit shows, they would dress not as cops
(48:50):
but like cops and then drive the same kind of
car that cops drove. But like not, it wasn't like
they were like, hello, officer, I am officer. You know,
they were like they did it like legally. They just
wore the same outfits and shit, I think it's really clever.
And they hung a huge banner over the Thames, which
is the river that goes through England that if you
(49:10):
ever see something in writing and you're like the Fames,
well it's the Thames. And they hung this banner where
Parliament could see it. And this is probably my favorite
slogan I've ever seen from Krass. It read you picked
the scabs, Now the wounds will fester.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
Oh yeah, that's come on. There are such gorgeous lyricists.
I'm so moved by their writing.
Speaker 1 (49:37):
Yeah, and I think a lot of them because it
wasn't just like oh, it wasn't like Penny wrote it
or Steve wrote it, or Eve wrote it. You know,
it was like they all I don't know if I
think they each wrote different songs, but like they clearly
were challenging each other to write poetically and well, you know.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Yeah, I love I love that. Just yeah, seeing people
that all keep each other on their toes.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
Yeah. Crass played their final show in nineteen eighty four,
in July nineteen eighty four, and it was a benefit
for Welsh miners. And then basically it was nineteen eighty
four and they sort of promised to break up in
nineteen eighty four and then they started to Andy Palmer
went first. They were all just kind of burned out.
(50:18):
In nineteen eighty five, the miners called off the strike
Thatcher one she was fighting the enemy within and soon
she attacked the Stonehenge Festival and other like leftist and
free culture and whatever stuff. After the band broke up,
a song on their old album Penis Envy was banned
for obscenity, and slowly folks started drifting away from the
(50:40):
band and from the well from Dialhouse. After Crass, Steve
Ignorant said, quote, the bands that came after Crass outcrassed
Crass by being even more scruffy and dirty and being
even more square and even more miserable than we were
meant to be. They became even more politically correct, which
is to say Steve Ignorant was not a fan of
(51:02):
the or a copunk culture that Krass created. He didn't
like that people called him comrade. Oh yeah, and to
be fair, a lot of people don't like when you
call him comrade.
Speaker 3 (51:12):
No, it's cosplaying a bit.
Speaker 2 (51:14):
Yeah yeah. Also, politically correct started out as a leftist joke,
and then the right, oh yeah, and then the right
used it against the left. I'll just I'll take this
moment to say one of the I learned this phrase
(51:36):
from Eduardo Galiano's he was quoting Argentinian organizers at the time.
Power they say is like a violin. You grab it
with the left and you play it with the right.
Speaker 1 (51:58):
Fuck. Fuck that is I mean that's what Mussolini did right, like,
but I.
Speaker 2 (52:03):
Mean that's what Biden did, like recently, with like just
taking all the like George Floyd energy and then turning
it into whatever the hell he was doing.
Speaker 1 (52:18):
Yeah. The By the end of nineteen eighty nine, everyone
from Krass who was still at Dial House had a
big blow up fight if you listen to more critical
takes about Crass. Basically all the puritanical arguing about what
was the right political line like came to a head
without the band to keep them focused. I think their
(52:39):
like last fight that they had was about whether or
not like smoking was politically correct or whatever, you know,
And you know, they would argue about like can you
have milk in your tea? Like everyone in Crass's vegetarian
is to my understanding, but like people used to use
the word vegetarian where we might use were vegan now
and they were like a little bit more interchangeable and
you know whatever, people'd argu about that shit. After the
(53:02):
band broke up, Steve Ignorant started playing with the narco
punk band Conflict, who was one of the main bands
in the scene, and they were a little bit less
than the passifist tip and more on the animal rights tip.
Steve also became a puppeteer, doing punch and judy shows
for kids, and Penny and Eve and g started doing
free jazz and poetry as we all knew they would
do without Crass.
Speaker 2 (53:24):
I love I love seeing the end of bands, like
where everyone goes off and does their own thing and
everyone shows their colors, like like the one guy from
the Velvet Underground who like became a steamboat operator and
oh shit really yeah, and like I think like got
(53:46):
some kind of amazing degree and something very obscure, like.
Speaker 3 (53:50):
It's just it's it's it's sweet.
Speaker 2 (53:53):
People are yeah, yeah, okay, all right, I love this
part of the story.
Speaker 1 (53:57):
Yeah, like and then it actually as a happy ending
on some ways too. The land Dial houses on was
sold to basically become a golf course, but Dial House
sued and won, and so the landlords were like, fine,
when we're selling the house then, and they sold it
at auction. So all the friends of Dial House showed
up at the auction and bought it.
Speaker 3 (54:19):
Is it?
Speaker 2 (54:20):
Is it like one of the Is it like cob
or something like When I think of an old old
English house, I think like that ancient construction, you know.
Speaker 1 (54:29):
So I've looked at pictures of it. It's it was
first built in like the fourteen hundreds or the oldest
houses from the fourteen hundreds, and it's been added on
to room after room over time, and so I but
I couldn't tell you exactly the types of construction. Whenever
I leave the US I'm always like, wow, everything's built
different with like plaster and stuff, you know. But I
but I couldn't tell you it's cute. You can, there's
(54:50):
plenty of pictures of it, and so dial House, as
far as I can tell, still there. And I think, well,
I don't want to docks. I think that the people
still just live there, you know, and are still doing
their thing. Like fifty years later and along the way,
Krass sold about two million records in the seven years
(55:11):
that they were around, the population of the UK was
only fifty six million people at the time, and I
know it wasn't like one record for every you know,
couple being whatever. I can't do math in my head,
but like, selling two million records at any time is
a big deal, but selling it in a smallish country.
(55:35):
As for what they accomplished, At one point, an interviewer
was talking to Steve Ignorant about how he and others
had basically destroyed the legacy of Margaret Thatcher that when
she died in twenty thirteen, it couldn't be said that
like people had a harder time whitewashing Margaret Thatcher, right,
because history also remembers that people fucking hated her too,
(55:58):
and Steve said, in response to the interviewer, that's my
proudest thing that a spotty little oike from Dagenham actually
stood up knees trembling as he avoided the ash trays
being thrown at him and still fucking did it. And like, yeah,
here's the standing up knees trembling, dodging ash trays and
(56:18):
fucking doing it.
Speaker 3 (56:20):
You're making me cry again.
Speaker 1 (56:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (56:25):
Yeah, I love their immediacy.
Speaker 2 (56:27):
I love their you know, talking shit to power at
every turn.
Speaker 1 (56:33):
Yeah. It's interesting because the main critique that comes up
over and over again is about like PC culture, uh,
kind of creating a puritanical space where like we figure
out more and more things that are bad without figuring
out more and more like ways of being good.
Speaker 2 (56:50):
You know. Well, yeah, but people are we're such intelligent
animals and uh, you know, people are just complicated and
we were we're so dogged to grab another animal metaphor
and we just we just go for stuff. And it's
like that was part of their you know, their artistic
(57:14):
vision is that they were being critical and that they
were empowering people to be critical. So yeah, they yeah, sure,
of course they overdid it. They're they're people.
Speaker 1 (57:25):
Yeah, no, totally, and it it was necessary to to
break a lot of things by saying like, no, we're
just gonna do this shit. And I fucking love that.
It came from the combination of avant garden punk, which
are like actually go together me if you listen Acrass,
they go together very well, right, But like you wouldn't
(57:46):
know it thinking about it. You know, you wouldn't when
you're like thinking about, like, oh, would this work really
well to create this thing? And but they both like
were just like, oh no, fuck the rules, you know.
Speaker 2 (57:55):
Right, if you don't know any avant garde people, you
might you might be able to kind of fool yourself
into seeing those things as separate worlds. But in my experience,
they are all the same people.
Speaker 1 (58:12):
Yeah, totally, especially the ones who like take music seriously,
you know, yeah, like the people making the music.
Speaker 2 (58:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (58:20):
I was like trying to explain at some point when
I was like, you know, ten fifteen years ago or something,
I was like talking to someone, I was like, oh no,
like when I say punk now, like you know, I
was like walking somewhere with like my friend who like
wears clean clothes, and color, and I'm like, oh yeah, no,
like us punk's right, and it was just like it
was a much broader word and concept and like and
(58:40):
when I think about like not just like folk punk
as a genre, but literally like the fact that punk
culture also makes pop music, makes noise music, makes country music,
makes folk music, like you know, it's like it's all
gotten beautifully complicated instead of getting more and more obsessive
about I mean, sometimes people get more and more obsessive
(59:01):
about niche subgenres and that's actually fine, but like instead
just this like big mess of I don't know, just
because sometimes people are like, oh my, my ethos is
punk and it's not. It's not SLC punk, you know,
it's not the like cartoonish punk. I don't know where
I'm going with this.
Speaker 2 (59:20):
Well, genre genre is I'm I don't have a strong
relationship with genre and.
Speaker 1 (59:30):
Personally the singer songwriter, right.
Speaker 2 (59:33):
Because I you know, when I put up my last record,
Haunted Mountain, there's a dance song on it. Because I
don't know, I would assume partly because of the misogyny
inherent in the culture, but you know, maybe that has
to do with like pigeonholing me. I'm just like it
(59:57):
was so funny se all these reviewers look at this
dance track and the whole record and try to say
that it was folk. I really don't know what they're
talking about.
Speaker 3 (01:00:11):
I mean, especially listening to.
Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
Do They Owe Us a Living for the first time
a few days ago, was like this is oh yeah,
this is definitively punk. This is like this is classic punk.
And I remember like coming up in scenes where all
these Americans, all these Houstonians had British accents, like like
(01:00:41):
they needed all of it, you know, they took they
took the entire palette of of that that expression of
the genre of punk.
Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
Yeah, I like punk. I is that My closing thought
is I like punk. I was even like a punk
as a teenager is a weird goth kid, but like
once it became a squadron traveler and really kind of
fell in with the punks and the more political punks
and just it just felt it felt like home in
a way that like nothing ever had even if it,
you know, I would listen to Crass sometimes, but it
(01:01:16):
wasn't like it's not the thing I put on. I
would actually actually the same scene listen to a lot
of Julie Holland.
Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
So that makes me feel so good.
Speaker 3 (01:01:25):
That's lovely.
Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
Yeah. Well, if you're listening to this, if you want
to know more about an archo punk. Almost a sequel
to this is an episode about the the anarchist punk
band Trumba Wamba with that I did with the guy
from Eve six is the main way that you might
know him. Also, you can start a band, you can
(01:01:48):
make music, you can do whatever. You can start a podcast.
You can do these things and you should because why
not you only live once? Or whatever makes me want
to start a band, You just start a band. Yeah,
like another band, like two other bands. Oh, I'd have
to get better at electric guitar if I wanted to
(01:02:09):
play in a punk.
Speaker 3 (01:02:10):
Band, or learn as you go.
Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
That's true, that is the more classic way to do it. Well,
that's the end of this, And thank you Jolie for
coming on. And people should check out your music everywhere
that music is music.
Speaker 2 (01:02:26):
And yeah, Margaret, thank you so very much for having me.
Everyone should check out your podcast wherever podcasts are podcasted,
and read your books and listen to your audio books
and just enjoy your music.
Speaker 1 (01:02:44):
Oh thanks, Oh I guess I should say I probably
do talk about a fair amount. My music is. I
have a bunch of bands on band camp. If you
want to hear a black metal band that actually is
kind of avant garde, it's called Femino's School and that's
I also have a dark, gothy pop music project called
the medic War Machine that used to be more noisy.
(01:03:06):
And I have a one woman do metal EP but
I put it out but I never did follow up
called Vulgarite. But if you're like, I want to listen
to a one woman do metal band that is themed
after the works of William Blake, you can listen to Vulgarite.
And my newest album is years old and it's called
The Lathe and it is post punk and is with
one of my friends is an amazing songwriter, and that's
(01:03:27):
also on band camp. There that's my weird music shout
outs before podcasting consume my life.
Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
Is Yeah, well it's you know, it's good to figure
out how to get paid.
Speaker 1 (01:03:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
I you know when I was when I just started
listening to Krass a few days ago, I felt that
they were Blakian.
Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
Yeah, I could totally see that.
Speaker 2 (01:03:51):
Yeah, it's like they're so English, and they're like, hey,
what if this was a better place?
Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
And they even like come from graphic design, like William
Blake was a did etchings for a living.
Speaker 2 (01:04:04):
That's incredible exactly. And then they and also like they
have their own idiosyncratic theology theology exactly.
Speaker 1 (01:04:15):
Yeah, Well we had ended there and I'll talk to
you soon and all you listeners, I'll talk to you
next week.
Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
Adios.
Speaker 1 (01:04:29):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (01:04:33):
More podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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