The Crass Agenda

Music documentaries tend to be fans only affairs because music at its best is not a casual art. You can’t consume it like a good film or a trendy novel and get the whole story.  You must live in it. Shows, t-shirts, flyers on your wall, a haunting strain which helps you sleep at night and makes the morning worth waking up for. It is philosophy delivered whole — sound & image, the record sleeve & the melody which tells its story, yes, but also instruction on how you should live your life when that story is done.

This short excerpt from a British documentary on Crass does a good job of not only delivering the band’s rage, but sharing the context that made them a necessary relief. Most explications of Crass focus on their means (piles of bodies, quasi-military graphics, provocation) and not their intent (a kind of anarchist counterpoint to the oppressions of life under capitalism, the creation of a free space). Whoot here it is:

PS – I’ve always wanted to believe John Lydon wasn’t a total tool. Wait for his appearance toward this end of this video. What can I say; I was wrong.

Posted by Alec Hanley Bemis  

Tags: British, Crass, Ethics, Video

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