Sound Within Sound - Kate Molleson

SOUND WITHIN SOUND -

A HISTORY OF RADICAL TWENTIETH CENTURY COMPOSERS -

KATE MOLLESON

Take a look at the photo on the cover. It's of a woman by the name of Annea Lockwood, taken on Chelsea Embankment in 1968 showing her standing in front of a burning piano. Inside the piano are microphones wrapped in asbestos so they might withstand the flames. The microphones are wired-up to a reel-to-reel tape machine that's recording the sounds of the piano burning. Strings twanging, wood creaking, glues and varnishes melting. Elsewhere in that same year, Keith Moon was exploding his drum kit and Jimi Hendrix was burning his guitar but that was essentially performance art, with the accent on the visual. In the burning of the piano, Annea Lockwood's focus - and the whole point of the exercise - was on the sound created.

Another sonic sculpture she created that involved pianos was a piece called 'Southern Exposure' where she placed a piano on a beach at the high tide line and left it there for the sea to lap against its legs, the process creating notes from the piano as if played by the sea itself. It conjures up images, of course, of Jane Campion's 'The Piano' film when Holly Hunter's piano is left behind on the beach when she arrives in New Zealand.

Another connection to The Piano is that Michael Nyman who scored the soundtrack was an early admirer of Lockwood's work, particularly her 'glass concerts' held at Middle Earth, the hippy haven in London where Pink Floyd would often play. These 'glass concerts' involved the nightclub being plunged into darkness whilst onstage Lockwood smashed panes of glass. 

Another piano piece she did, going by the name 'Piano Garden', involved her placing (or 'planting') three pianos in a garden in a village in Essex and leaving them to the elements, the flowers and the creepers. The sounds from the pianos weren't recorded but the intention was that the pianos would 'play' forever. Interestingly, this was the same village where Penny Rimbaud and Gee Vaucher of Crass were living (and still to this day do, at Dial House). Lockwood also took part along with various other artists such as Rimbaud and Vaucher in the legendary ICES 72 Festival held at The Roundhouse in 1972.

Annea Lockwood is just one of ten composers featured in Kate Molleson's book, Sound Within Sound - A History Of Radical Twentieth Century Composers. It's a potted history, of sorts, of radical composers who have been barely mentioned when it comes to the mainstream history of music. Ten names that I've never heard of before, for sure, and so subsequently have never heard their music. Nowadays, however, we have YouTube, so there's really no excuse. 

We have a choice: stick to what we know or what is promoted by the music industry and its algorithms, or venture out beyond our safety zones and into the wilds. And I'll tell you right now, some of the stuff mentioned by Molleson is totally out in the wilds. For example, 'Poem For Tables, Chairs Benches' by La Monte Young. It's there on YouTube. Take a listen, I dare you. In comparison, Lou Reed's 'Metal Machine Music' is but a lullaby.

Kate Molleson is a journalist and broadcaster, and a leading commentator on contemporary classical music, and it's this classical music area that she's coming from. Pop music isn't her forte but there are crossovers everywhere, like an aural Venn diagram. Pop music can cross into classical, classical into pop music, and both can enter the avant-garde and experimental - out on the perimeter. 

Or as Molleson puts it when writing about Mexican composer Julian Carrillo: 'Sonido 13 (Carrillo's most well-known composition) works like a gateway, a filmic warp screen, a portal to a place where senses become less presumptive and more receptive'. Or as mentioned when writing about French composer Eliane Radigue when she's commissioned to make a sound 'like the silence of the stars'. Which is all very much like as Jim Morrison once intoned: 'Out here on the perimeter there are no stars. Out here we is stoned. Immaculate.'

If you're interested in music then you should probably read Kate Molleson's book and by that I don't mean if you just happen to like a bit of Lady Gaga, or if you think classical music starts with Vivaldi and ends with Nigel Kennedy. I mean if you're interested in sound or even more so, if you're interested in sound within sound. If you're interested in experimentalism and the avant-garde. If you're interested in the beyond. The metaphysical. The transcendent. If you're interested in - as John Coltrane put it - a love supreme. Yes, read this book. The key, I might add, being to read it whilst armed with YouTube so you may at the same time listen to what Molleson is writing about. And I guarantee you, your mind will be opened as well as your ears.

John Serpico

Not Just Bits Of Paper - co-edited by Greg Bull and Mickey 'Penguin'

NOT JUST BITS OF PAPER -

CO-EDITED BY GREG BULL AND MICKEY 'PENGUIN'

Some might find it hard to believe and others impossible to comprehend but there was a time when the Internet didn't exist. A time when there was no Facebook, no X, Instagram or even MySpace. 'But how did you message anyone?' all the children ask in wide-eyed wonderment 'Or did you not message anyone ever and just sit instead around the piano of an evening singing songs?'

'Well, we had landline telephones and there were these things called 'pens' that you could write a letter with and send to people by something called 'post'. Have you heard of it?'

But by this time the attention of all the children has wandered so you instead open up your copy of Not Just Bits Of Paper and cast your mind back to slightly more interesting times when communication required effort and was a means to an end rather than an end in itself.

Not Just Bits Of Paper is a portal into a world now diminished, a world where the importance of specific bits of paper cannot be overstated. Not that these bits of paper had any intrinsic purpose beyond the sole reason they were produced for - that being to advertise and publicise events - though paradoxically, without it ever being stated or even considered they also represented nothing less than a vision.

The bits of paper we're talking about here are the flyers and posters created to announce upcoming concerts of the more 'earthy' punk rock type prevalent throughout much of the 1980s. Black-and-white, made with scissors, glue, pens, Letraset and found images. Utilising the 'cut'n'paste' method rather than desk-top publishing, then photocopied, fly-posted, stuck up in record shops, given out by hand and sent out by post enclosed with fanzines and cassette tapes purchased from various mail-order lists.

This was the way we communicated before the advent of the Internet and social media. Slow, time-consuming, sometimes wearisome but effective.

Many of these flyers and posters could be really basic in design and layout whilst others could be veritable mini-works of art. All, however, whatever the quality of them were meant to be throwaway. Ephemeral. To serve their one purpose then binned, which is what most people tended to do with them once the publicised event had passed. Very few people thought of saving them and those who did so saved them essentially for the sake of it. Not for having an eye on one day them being collectible or of any possible future monetary value to anyone. They saved them without thinking and for no reason but saved them - thankfully - they did.

Unlike nowadays, back then hardly anyone took photographs at concerts so the flyers and posters advertising these events are the only physical evidence of a lot of them ever happening. For sure, they're held in memories but memories tend to fade so the flyers and posters compensate, prod and serve to remind. Just as importantly if not more so, however, these flyers and posters - these bits of paper - acted at the time as seeds blown on the wind, as conduits for messages. Weaving gossamer-thin threads between not only friends and neighbours living in the same city, town or even village but between strangers and people of like-mind living in cities throughout the whole country.

It was subliminal. Unspoken. Like tiny beacons being lit on top of hills or flares being shot up into the night sky. These bits of paper acted as signals announcing an alternative to mainstream entertainment, mainstream news and even mainstream values. Announcing a vision. They were the corpuscles in the bloodstream of an underground punk culture that sought legitimacy not through commercial success but through the instigation of consciousness raising, further creativity and political action. Just as fanzines and concerts themselves were deemed to be, these bits of paper were the very life-blood of that punk culture.

Co-edited by Greg Bull and Mickey 'Penguin', Not Just Bits Of Paper collates a wide selection of flyers, posters and handouts from the anarcho punk era of the 1980s and for posterity lays them out and presents them in all their ragged, torn and tattered glory. As to be expected, Crass are heavily represented alongside The Mob, Flux Of Pink Indians, Antisect, Conflict, Poison Girls, Chumbawamba plus many more others. Thoughts are collected also in essays of various length and size written by some of those who were there at the time. Noticeably and interestingly they're all written from the audience point of view rather than from any band members and in doing so adds a whole other dimension to the book. Quality-wise these essays differ and again that's only to be expected but in among them are some very well-written pieces indeed, most noticeably from Ted Curtis, Rich Cross, Tristan 'Stringy' Carter and in particular one by Tim Voss.

Not Just Bits Of Paper documents a period in time that is unlikely to be ever repeated again. A period in time that impacted mightily upon a significant number of people to such an extent that their lives were inexorably altered - some say 'ruined' - for the better. A period in time that though now long gone still resonates, and that under the noise and technology-driven haste of modern day living still echoes.

John Serpico

Gee Vaucher - Beyond Punk, Feminism And The Avant-Garde - Rebecca Binns

GEE VAUCHER -

BEYOND PUNK, FEMINISM AND THE AVANT-GARDE -

REBECCA BINNS

Art and culture is thrust upon us though it's never of our making and always defined by others. Culture is a commodity and so too is art and we are sold it with a nod, a wink, and a proviso that this kind of culture and this kind of art is for us and that any other is either pretentious, above our station, or just plain weird. There is high art and there is low art and never the twain doth meet and if by some fluke it ever does then it's quickly recuperated, contained, accommodated  and packaged into something else to be bought and sold, ensuring the market always wins out.

Gee Vaucher was the visual artist for Crass and was responsible for all the record sleeves, the posters, the graphics for the International Anthem newspaper, the banners hung at gigs. Everything, essentially, apart from the actual Crass logo that was designed by a friend of Penny Rimbaud called Dave King.

Crass were a band who were never 'sold'. They were never hyped, they were never packaged, they were never advertised via adverts in the music press. Instead, they just suddenly appeared one day over in the corner making a lot of noise, with much swearing and talking about things that everyone knew and thought and felt but had never before expressed. 

Crass were the punk rock equivalent of the little boy pointing out that the king wasn't actually wearing any clothes. They were the punk rock equivalent of the mirror that Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex in their song Identity asked if when we look into it do we smash it quick? 

Integral and essential to the music Crass created and the concerts at which they performed was Vaucher's graphics and imagery that combined photomontage, pop art and collage that was often not collage at all, but 'intricately painted, photorealistic depictions of a skewed reality masquerading as collage'.

Interestingly, up until 2005 political photomontage artist Peter Kennard when teaching at the Royal College of Art was presenting Vaucher's art to his students as fine examples of photomontage and it was only when Vaucher showed him the originals that he realised they were actually paintings.

Interestingly too, Vaucher's art and graphics for Crass had always been presented in black-and-white and this very quickly became part of the Crass image although the originals were often in colour, and it was only because it was too expensive to reproduce  everything in colour that it ended up as black-and-white. This means that but for a lack of money in their early days that Crass could have been a lot more colourful if not outright dayglo? And whilst on the subject, the same goes for their clothes. Apparently, Crass only dressed in black because it made for mixing their clothes in the washing machine that much easier. According to Penny Rimbaud, that is.

If Crass were a band who were never 'sold', the same too applied to Vaucher's art. It was just 'there', as part of the whole Crass package and no more important than the words or the thrashing, fuzzed-out guitar at the heart of the music. It didn't presume anything and it was neither subtle or in your face but simply taking its place as part of the whole. The whole when fully combined, however, creating a near unstoppable battering ram unlike anything that had gone before, full of anger in the extreme, intricacies, bludgeoning passion and love. Yes, love. Paradoxically, Vaucher's art was stuffed full of subtleties and so in your face that it had you near pinned against the wall.

Vaucher's art has been showcased in book form in the past, in her self-produced and self-published book Crass Art And Other Pre Post-Modernist Monsters. Rebecca Binns' book, however, entitled Gee Vaucher - Beyond Punk, Feminism And The Avant-Garde, is the first serious study of Vaucher's work that has ever been written, which for an artist of Gee Vaucher's status and reputation is pretty mad though not altogether surprising given the art world's accent nowadays upon media profile, collectability and monetary and investment value. All things, of course, that Vaucher has very little interest in. 

You may not have noticed but none of Vaucher's artwork is ever signed. Given the propensity for Crass members to take on pseudonyms, is Gee Vaucher even her real name? It turns out that her birth name is actually Carole, and it's the kind of detail that's interesting due to the fact that very few people would know this and inadvertently this says a lot about her. In comparison, most people who know anything about Banksy (who is a friend and long-time admirer of Vaucher) would know his real name even though there's this big mystery about who he is. When Banksy first started out, all he ever seemed to do was to paint up his name 'Banksy' all around Bristol. His name was his 'tag' and subsequently his name became his brand even after he began diversifying into stencils of rats and monkeys.

Vaucher has no such thing as a 'brand' nor even such a thing as a particular style. She is mostly known for her work with Crass, of course, and the stark black-and-white imagery of the band but this was but a period of her whole life as an artist and as mentioned, the limited palette was down to budgetary demands not artistic choice.

For most people, their first contact with Vaucher's art came with the cover of The Feeding Of The 5000 EP, the seminal first record by Crass, released on the Small Wonder label. It's an unusual piece and in hindsight a somewhat strange choice for a cover. There's a lot going on in it. It's very busy. There's no name of the band on the cover and no title - it's on the back cover instead. A much more obvious choice for the front cover would indeed have been the image used on the back, of the flag bearer on the horizon of the churned mud landscape, and it's almost as if there has been some terrible mix-up at the pressing plant.

The Feeding Of The 5000 cover is a cover that's pretty confusing and makes you look twice, which in a way was what Crass were all about. Which means Vaucher's art was the perfect match for the whole Crass ethos. Or should that be the words and music of Crass was the perfect match for Gee Vaucher's ethos?

Rebecca Binns in her book drills down into Vaucher's art and discusses various pieces in detail, revealing meanings, subtext, context and subtle touches that make you look again and to even see them in a whole new light. That Bloody Revolutions record by Crass featuring the Pistols transposed into the Queen, the Pope, the statue of Justice, and Thatcher that you've looked at a thousand times before? You'll be looking at it again. 

So too Binns puts Vaucher's life into some form of context, touching upon her childhood, her time at art school in the Sixties, and her pre-Crass days in both America and the UK. There is a lot of joining of dots as well, such as her being fully aware of such things as so-called 'anarchist' ideas well before the formation of Crass due to various anarchist magazines in circulation among her associates. This being in contrast to Penny Rimbaud's assertion that pre-Crass he thought Bakunin was just a type of vodka.

There's mention of her time pre-Crass and pre-Dial House when she was living at another commune-type place in Essex called Stanford Rivers Hall with Eve Libertine, where she was a member of the seminal and much influential music collective Stanford Rivers Quartet. Pre-Crass as well, there's also her time with the avant-garde performance group EXIT, featuring among its many members Penny Rimbaud, Dave King and Steve Ignorant's elder brother.

Importantly, Binns covers the movements and the people that have all been influences upon Vaucher and her work as well as herself as a person, one of the most interesting being not an artist or a musician or a writer but radical psychiatrist R D Laing.

Rebecca Binns' book was eight years in the making and it shows. It's incredibly well researched and is probably the only book I've read involving the story of Crass that doesn't contain glaring mistakes or is full of revisionism. As much as it might ever be possible to do, the best book on Crass is still yet to be written but then Binns' book is not about Crass, it's about Gee Vaucher and in that sense it's the best book we're ever likely to get about her. In that sense, and due to Vaucher's genuinely deep impact upon a generation, Rebecca Binns' book is an important one.

John Serpico

The Last Of The Hippies - An Hysterical Romance - Penny Rimbaud

 THE LAST OF THE HIPPIES - PENNY RIMBAUD

Originally published as part of a 28-page booklet entitled A Series Of Shock Slogans And Mindless Token Tantrums that came enclosed with the 1982 Crass album 'Christ - The Album', The Last Of The Hippies - An Hysterical Romance is the tale of Phil Russell, alias Wally Hope, personal friend of Penny Rimbaud and founder of the Stonehenge Free Festival whose arrest for possession of drugs propelled him into the depths of a State-sanctioned nightmare leading directly to his death.

Phil Russell was an enthusiastic, shamanistic, hippy visionary keenly exploring the counterculture world of the late Sixties/early Seventies. Inspired by free festivals such as the Windsor Free and Phun City, it was Phil's idea to reclaim Stonehenge and organise a free festival there. Enlisting the aid of Rimbaud and his fellow housemates of that time, the idea was put into action and the first Stonehenge Free Festival took place in the summer of 1974. It was whilst working and preparing for the second festival the following year that Phil was arrested for possession of some tabs of LSD.

From the start, Phil was refused bail and put into prison on remand where through being denied the use of a phone or even pen and paper was isolated from any contact with the outside world. Following an altercation regarding the wearing of prison uniform, Phil was sent to the prison doctor who diagnosed him as being schizophrenic. The drug Largactil (more commonly referred to in those days as 'liquid cosh') was prescribed to him, rendering Phil incapable of dealing with much of anything at all, least of all a defence in a court case.

At court, Phil was sectioned under the Mental Health Act and committed to a mental hospital where the drug Modecate was administered to him. By the time of his release a month later (and coincidentally just after the second Stonehenge festival had taken place), Phil had been reduced (in the words of Rimbaud) to 'an incurable cabbage', unable to even walk properly. After an examination by a private doctor, his condition was diagnosed as 'chronic dyskinesia', a disease caused by overdosing on Modecate and other related drugs.

A few weeks later, Phil overdosed on sleeping pills and choked to death on his own vomit.

By anyone's standards this is a woefully tragic tale open to a variety of interpretations, one being - and the one favoured by Rimbaud - that Phil Russell was murdered. Murdered not by the wilful action of any one individual but by the wilful actions and collusion of a number of individuals collectively representing 'the system'. According to Rimbaud, Phil Russell was murdered by the State.

Following an inquest into Phil's death a verdict of suicide was passed with no real reference to the treatment meted out to him by the police, the prison and the hospital authorities - the treatment that had directly led to his suicide. Being rightfully appalled by the outcome of the coroner's court, Rimbaud launched his own investigation into what had happened from the time of Phil's initial arrest through to his incarceration, his sudden release and up to his untimely death.

Though not one usually given to seeking out conspiracy theories, a conspiracy was indeed what Rimbaud found along with endless lies, deceit, corruption, fear and tales of cruelty. Perhaps what shattered Rimbaud the most, however, was the conspiracy of silence and the refusal of those in a position of being able to help and advise to do anything but. According to Rimbaud, this silence was the voice of fascism: 'The voices of silence, at times, made my investigations almost impossible. The respectable majority were too concerned about their own security to want to risk upsetting the authorities by telling me what they knew. They did know and I knew that they knew, but it made no difference - they remained silent.'

Unwittingly he had come face to face with what he termed the silent, violent majority: 'Against all the evidence, against all that they know, they remain silent because convention decrees that they should. Silence, security, compliance and convention - the roots of fascism. Their passive silence is their active part in the violence. A huge and powerful, silent voice of approval - the voice of fascism.'

For some years previously, Rimbaud had been running his rented home in the Essex countryside as a commune, or 'open house'. A place where people could not so much 'drop out' but 'drop in' to; where 'given their own time and space they could create their own purposes and reasons and, most importantly, their own lives.' A place where 'people could get together to work and live in a creative atmosphere rather than the stifling, inward looking family environments in which we had all been brought up.'

Though blatantly already living the hippy dream, the arrival of Phil Russell at the house introduced Rimbaud fully to 'real' hippy culture and the concept of free festivals. Phil's arrival was to set him on a course of no return: 'Wally had come along at a time when I was beginning to question the value of what I was doing. Was it enough? My experience both before and after his death showed me that it wasn't.'

Phil Russell's instigation of the Stonehenge free festival was a stroke of genius, lighting up a bright, burning beacon of hope that would forever be visible to anyone caring to look as a signpost to a brilliant future and a way to how life could be. Rimbaud's participation in making that dream come true (though he would probably refute the idea) is something to always be proud of. Phil's suicide/murder, however, was the counter-balance to it, casting a shadow over Rimbaud's personal life that he would never be able to cast off. Though even from this tragedy, hope/Hope would be born. Or re-born: 'Desire for change had to be coupled with the desire to work for it. If it was worth opposing the system, it was worth opposing it totally. It was no longer good enough to take what we wanted and to reject the rest, it was time to get back into the streets and attack, to get back and share our experiences and learn from the experiences of others.'

With the release of the Sex Pistols' Anarchy In The UK the transmogrification of the zeitgeist was set fully in motion, the harsh radiance of it touching and penetrating all corners of society from council estates, suburbs, inner cities and even hippy communes tucked away in the Essex countryside: 'A year after Wally's death, the Sex Pistols released Anarchy In The UK. Maybe they didn't really mean it ma'am, but to me it was a battle cry. When Rotten proclaimed that there was 'no future', I saw it as a challenge to my creativity. I knew that there was a future if I were prepared to work for it. It is our world, it is ours and it has been stolen from us. I set out to demand it back, only this time round they didn't call me a dirty hippie, they called me a filthy punk.'

So this was where Crass were from? An explanation of sorts as to their origin? From experimenting with communal living, the arrival of Phil Russell/Wally Hope and his subsequent death, hippy culture, Stonehenge, mental health, silence as consent, and 'the system'. All formulative experiences paving the way to what would be one of the most important bands ever.

Critics have always chided Crass for being hippies (in Punk clothing) and here Penny Rimbaud is putting his hands up and saying 'Yes', some of them were from that era and 'Yes', some had once believed in the hippy dream. The difference between Crass and most other groups, however, was in the fact that Rimbaud et al were coming from hippydom via an ideological perspective rather than a musical one.

In an effort to wipe out the past with Punk Year Zero revisionism it was actually far easier to hide record collections and old photographs than to hide ethics. As Joe Strummer pointed out: "The day I joined The Clash it was very much back to square one, back to Year Zero. We were almost Stalinist in our approach, all in a frenzied attempt to create something new - which isn't easy at the best of times." One of the memories Joe was shedding was his appearance with his pre-Clash, R&B squat band, The 101'ers at the 1975 Stonehenge festival...

In one of the Sex Pistols' first interviews, Johnny Rotten declared: "I hate hippies and all they stand for." though a year later he was playing some of his favourite records on Capital Radio, which included Neil Young, Peter Hamill and Captain Beefheart - hippy stalwarts all...

Music journalist and first division Punk inner circle member Caroline Coon rebuked Rotten for the tabloid journalism manner in which he was denigrating hippy idealism and warned him that "the gutter press did to hippies what they're going to do to you." She was right. And so too was Penny Rimbaud: "This time round they didn't call us 'hippies', they called us 'Punks'."

Like all other Punk groups, from the start Crass were readily rejecting the now redundant and useless aspects of hippy culture but unlike so many others they weren't denying it as their heritage. Woven into the story of Phil Russell in The Last Of The Hippies a direct lineage between different generations and events through the decades is plotted out; from the dawn of consumerism after the Second World War to the birth of CND, rock'n'roll, hippy and Punk. Taking in along the way acid guru Timothy Leary, psycho warlord Charles Manson, Yippy leader Jerry Rubin, the Kent State University shootings, 1960s protest movements, free festivals, anarchism, pacifism, Marxism, Sid Vicious, Garry Bushell, and even Adam Ant.

The implication is clear: Everything is connected and nothing stands alone unto itself. Lines in the sand can be drawn and anything presented in a new light but at the end of the day everything is but a continuation of something else.

All of this contained within The Last Of The Hippies, however, is really but a vehicle to relay the thoughts and ideas of Crass, particularly concerning the problems of the world and their perceived solutions to those problems. Those solutions being anarchism and pacifism. In all but name, The Last Of The Hippies is as close to a manifesto that Crass would ever get:

'We are born free, but almost immediately we are subjected to conditioning in preparation for a life of slavery within the system. We are moulded by our parents, teachers, bosses, etc to conform to what 'they' want from us rather than to our own natural and unique desires. Anarchists believe that those natural desires for peaceful and cooperative lives are denied us because they do not serve the requirements of the ruling classes. Life could and should be a wonderful and exciting experience. Despite what the politicians say, the world is big enough for us all if we could only learn to share it and to respect each other within it. Millions of people are governed by very few; millions of lives of grey slavery simply so those few can enjoy the privileges that are the birthright of us all. Surely, by sheer weight of numbers, we have the strength to take back what is rightfully ours? '

Armed revolution and violence, particularly as advocated by the extreme Left, are condemned as nothing more than acts of destructive revenge serving only to strengthen the vicious circle of violence that rolls endlessly on. Right-wing violence is claimed to be generally non-political and a reaction against inhuman conditions, whilst Left-wing violence is cited as often being organised and calculated, led usually by educated and privileged people. All States, however, both Left and Right are said to use violence to maintain power.

Pacifism was the rejection of all violence, and anarchy was rejection of State control. Pacifism and anarchism went hand in hand, for if anarchists believed they had the right to live their own life then violence shouldn't be used to to deny others theirs. Being pacifist didn't mean being passive. Violence could be opposed. Being pacifist didn't mean being unwilling to defend oneself or others from attack although when this happened it shouldn't be done from a sense of aggression or revenge but from a sense of love. Love being the natural instinct of all people, it was only the circle of violence that distorted and perverted people's basic kindness and goodness. By refusing to be used as tools to other people's desires, strength of love could be demonstrated and the oppression and violence of everyday life be overcome. Although unwilling to exactly advocate direct action as a form of protest, the need for it is suggested though only when success is certain and only by those who feel ready and confident.

'We must learn to live with our own weakness, hatred, prejudice, and to reject theirs. We must learn to live with our own fears, doubts, inadequacies, and to reject theirs. We must learn to live with our own love, passion, desire, and to reject theirs. We must learn to live with our own conscience, awareness, certainty, and to reject theirs. We must learn to live with our own moralities, values and standards, and to reject theirs. We must learn to live with our own principles, ethics, philosophies, and to reject theirs.

Above all we must learn to live with our own strength and learn how to use it against them, as they have used it against us. Throughout history, it is our strength that they have used against us to maintain their privileged positions. It is up to me alone, and you alone, to bite the hand that bleeds us. THERE IS NO FUTURE BUT OUR OWN. YOU AND I, WHO LOVE THIS PLANET EARTH, ARE ITS RIGHTFUL INHERITORS. THERE IS NO AUTHORITY BUT OUR OWN. IT IS TIME TO STAKE OUR CLAIM.'

The Last Of The Hippies is an excellently written and extremely well-composed piece of polemic. In hindsight, of course, and with the benefit of age and experience there are aspects of it, however, that are - if not politically conservative - very liberal, ill-advised and wishy-washy. But that's okay and it doesn't take away none from it's importance in opening up the mere question of the possibility that the world is not alright and that it can be changed for the better.

During their time, Crass successfully circumnavigated the entire music business; from the music press, the promoters, and the major record companies and without any hype or big sell successfully carved out their own space. As an example of what can be achieved with a bit of determination, integrity and mutual support, within the world of music culture there is probably none better. It's unclear what purpose The Last Of The Hippies serves nowadays but at the time of when it was first published it was an important stepping stone and even gateway drug to much wider possibilities and if for no other reason than this it's probably a good thing that's it's still available in book form.

John Serpico

Crass Reflections - Alastair Gordon

CRASS REFLECTIONS – ALASTAIR GORDON

The interesting thing about Crass is that to this day they still continue to generate interest. It's not unusual, of course, for bands to maintain and gain fans over the decades – take the Rolling Stones for an obvious example – this being all down to the quality of the songs and the music. Whilst the same could be applied to Crass there was also, however, something 'other' about them, something apart from the songs and the music that continues to carry them 40 years after they split up. It's that 'other' – that certain 'otherness' – that separates Crass from most other bands though trying to define it is no easy task, many having tried but then many having also failed.

Crass Reflections, written by Alastair Gordon is a revised, revamped and republished version in book form of the thesis he wrote for a University degree in 1994 which he subsequently published as a very limited edition fanzine two years later under the title Throwing The Baby Out With The Dirty Bath Water: Crass And Punk Rock, A Critical Appraisal. Alastair's thesis was the first serious academic analysis of the Crass phenomenon ever written and in that sense was absolutely ground-breaking.

If any band deserved and might stand up to such a weighty and involved study then it would be Crass due to the themes, concepts and ideas they were promoting and tussling with over the seven years of their existence. 'Anarchy, peace and freedom' were the three totems they had stuck their name to and though it might be hard to imagine now, the impact it had upon a generation was incalculable. It's important to bear in mind, however, that this was during the early 1980s when the UK was in political and social turmoil. Whether Crass would have the same impact today if they were to appear is debatable especially now that we have the Internet – though it's a point, of course, that is purely... academic.

When reading Crass Reflections, the fact that whilst the Internet had come into being at the time of first writing the thesis though there was very little concerning Crass and Anarcho Punk on there is, however, an important point and one that Alastair himself highlights. The research he conducted and the information gleaned therefore was gathered primarily from records, fanzines, and the popular music press at that time.

Now that there is much more information about Crass freely available online means the lens through which they can now be viewed is very much wider, subsequently dispelling a lot of the mystique that had always surrounded them. With knowledge comes power, as they say, but so too with age and experience.

In an interview with Jake Black of Alabama 3 some years ago, Jake said that he once visited Crass at Dial House but that looking back on it he thought they were extremely conservative in their politics. 'They were saying the most ridiculous things and I was just a kid so they were things I didn't have arguments against then. Things like 'Capitalism doesn't necessarily have to be corrupt.' It was a complete load of bunk'.

Whilst I wouldn't go so far as dismissing everything Crass spoke about as being 'bunk', in hindsight the totems of anarchy, peace and freedom as promoted by them are somewhat problematic. The espousal of anarchy is all well and good though the Crass version lacked a class analysis and in fact Crass would always dismiss 'class' as being irrelevant. Like it or not there is, however, a bit of a difference between middle class anarchism and working class anarchism.

The promotion of peace is absolutely fine though Crass entangling it with pacifism led only to what Crass bassist Pete Wright later described as 'a sharp cut-off point to what we were prepared to do. Pacifism was a convenience, a safe, assured parking bay'.

And as for freedom as put forward by Crass, this included freedom for fascists to spout their evil under the banner of free speech, which was troublesome to say the least.

Via the numerous interviews with Penny Rimbaud on the Internet nowadays as well, it would appear that he's a bit of a revisionist when it comes to the subject of Crass, which begs the question: Has Penny always been a revisionist? If so, then does this mean the essay that came with the Best Before 1984 album where 'Crass voluntarily blow their own' – and from which Alastair sources some of his information – should be taken with a pinch of salt?

The same goes for Colin Jerwood of Conflict who after the Feeding Of The 5000 gig/riot at the Brixton Academy in 1987 suggested that Conflict had been banned from playing anywhere in the country. Was that really the case, I wonder? Is it a reliable and sound enough fact to cite in an academic dissertation?

I'm sure that Alastair Gordon is fully aware of these flaws and knows that his thesis/book is very much of its time – just like Crass were. The sands have since shifted. The kaleidoscope shaken. Though this doesn't distract none, it should be said, from the fact that Crass Reflections is still a very good book if not one of the best about Crass that has been written.

It was Tony Drayton of Kill Your Pet Puppy fanzine who first wrote about how glad he was when he originally came upon Crass back in 1979 that someone was at last taking punk seriously. The same goes for Crass Reflections and Alastair Gordon's original thesis where at last someone within academia was taking Crass seriously and applying serious consideration to what they had been talking about.

When Crass disbanded in 1984, everything they had ever said became cast in stone but Crass were in actual fact a work in progress. Crass were an organic project. There never was any grand Ten Point Program and to suggest otherwise is absurd. Crass did not have all the answers and actually were on a learning curve themselves. As Penny Rimbaud even once said: 'I knew nothing about traditional anarchism. I thought Bakunin was a type of vodka'. Or was that just further revisionism on his part?

The reason for the failure of the Crass vision is due in some part to the misinterpretation and reinterpretation of the many statements they made. The way that their records sell for such high prices nowadays is testament to that same failure, as is (as much as it's painful to say) the commodification of the Crass legacy by almost everyone, including ex-lead vocalist Steve Ignorant.

Nowadays, all that is really left of the Crass legacy are the unspoken aspects of Crass. The ethics that were not laid down as black and white statements. The core values. The engines that drove them. The very simple and really very innocent things such as the act of sharing with others, making the personal political and vice versa.

During the Queen Elizabeth Hall anti-Iraq war Crass 'reformation' event in 2002, members of Crass handed out bottles of beer at the end - presumably from their rider - to the audience, once again as they had done during their heyday sharing with others everything – and what little – they had. Giving. Sharing. Not taking or selling or wanting something in return. Just sharing and giving, giving and sharing. 18 years after they had last appeared on stage together, this one very small and at first glance fairly insignificant act was the absolute heart of the Crass message. Admittedly, it's not a noisy, angry nor even particularly sexy message but it's the key nonetheless to a better world.

It's really as simple as that but sadly very few people have picked up on it let alone taken it on, perhaps because it's in complete contradiction to everything laissez-faire capitalism is about? In complete contradiction to the way the world is and always has been presented to us? In complete contradiction to how we're told human nature is? Who knows? Not me, for sure, and possibly not even Crass themselves?

John Serpico

To Sir With Love - ER Braithwaite

TO SIR WITH LOVE - ER BRAITHWAITE

I read this on the recommendation of Steve Ignorant, ex-vocalist of Crass who, in George Berger's book The Story Of Crass is quoted as saying the following: 'One day we were all talking about books around the table. Penny Rimbaud was talking about Tolstoy and I chipped in with To Sir With Love, and was met with roars of laughter, it was quite a joke. When there was the yearly clear-out of books, out it went. But the Maigrets stayed. That book To Sir With Love is about one of the first black men to go into the East End of London and teach unruly white kids how to respect themselves and other people as human beings. Which I thought was the basis of anarchism, wasn't it?'

The story is essentially just as Steve describes but its main theme is the subject of prejudice and racism as experienced by a black man in late 1940s Britain and how he translates that experience to the kids he teaches so they might learn to respect not only other people but also themselves. The school he teaches at is in the East End of London so as might be expected, they're all from very poor families. He's somewhat shocked at first by the general conduct and crude language of his pupils but come the end he loves them all dearly as they come to love him.

All in all it's a very nice story but is not without flaws. In his descriptions of some of the women - both fellow teachers and 15 year-old pupils alike - there's a fair few mentions of 'large breasts' which doesn't really sit well coming from a teacher who's on a mission to instigate respect. There's also one incident where he refers to a sanitary towel as a 'disgusting object' and the conduct of the girls in his class as 'sluttish behaviour'. ER Braithwaite wrote the book in 1959, however, and it's set in 1949 so at a stretch this attitude toward women may be forgiven because the past is, as they say, a different country. It's hard to ignore it though.

What's possibly more significant - in my eyes, at least - is what the teacher is aiming for in his bid to educate the kids in the ways of civility. They might all be unruly when he at first encounters them but at least they're street-wise and at least they're nobody's fools - and is there anything wrong in being unruly? The teacher seems to want them to be model citizens; obedient to the law, saying 'yes sir, no sir' and never causing a fuss. He wants them to be like him.

He knows, however, that British society can be conservative as hell with all its ingrained codes of crap morality and 'acceptable' racism and prejudice. He's experienced it himself and he soon comes to see that these working class children of parents he describes as looking and acting like peasants from a Steinbeck book are prejudiced against also. Not for the colour of their skin but for their class and their poverty.

He goes out on a date with a fellow teacher to a well-to-do restaurant in Chelsea and the sight of a black man with a pretty white woman immediately instigates racist behaviour and attitude from the waiter. To him it's nothing out of the ordinary but his date storms out of the restaurant in outrage and then vents her spleen upon him. In as much as she's disgusted by the racism she's just as outraged by his willingness to just sit there and take it:

"What was I supposed to do, hit him? Did you want a scene in that place?" he asks.

"Yes, I wanted a scene. I wanted a big, bloody awful scene." she replies.

"What good would that have done?"

"I don't know and I don't care. I wanted you to hit him, to beat him down, down..."

"It wouldn't help, it never helps."

"Why not? Just who do you think you are, Jesus Christ? Sitting there all good and patient. Or were you afraid? Is that it?"

"You're being hysterical, beating people up never solves anything."

"Doesn't it? Well, you tell me what does. You've been taking it and taking it, don't you think it's time you showed a little spirit?"

This particular exchange is interesting for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it reveals the extent of the teacher's vision as in how he sees the model citizen should behave. His passiveness and his unwillingness to cause a fuss is essentially allowing what's unacceptable to remain unchallenged and his silence is ultimately condoning racism and prejudice. By not causing 'a big, bloody awful scene' he's allowing the situation to continue and subsequently remaining in a position of being a victim.

So is this how he wants the kids in his class to be? To not speak up, to not challenge, to not object, refuse, reject, abuse? However much he may wish to educate his pupils and teach them good manners, are they forever meant to accept their position in society and subsequently accept the more 'fortunate' positions of others?

For anyone who knows anything about Crass, this is similar to the same impasse that they came up against in their bid to do nothing less than change the world. They were very happy to make a big, bloody awful scene but ultimately were only willing to go so far. They showed spirit, yes, but when it came to the point and the question of 'beating people up' as the teacher puts it, they capitulated and their advocacy of pacifism became a burden that led to being a major factor in them falling apart.

It's interesting that Steve Ignorant recalls his mentioning of To Sir With Love led to roars of laughter around the kitchen table from his fellow Crass members because in actual fact the book contained some pertinent messages if not a significant warning to them. Had any of them actually read it, I wonder?

Apparently the film version of the book, released in 1967 (and set in the Sixties) starring Sidney Poitier and Lulu was a huge box office success and the theme song as sung by Lulu was number One in America for five weeks. Viewed nowadays it's quaint and charming, held together by Poitier's performance. Steve also cites the film version as being an influence upon him along with A Taste Of Honey and Kes. Whilst not being on quite the same par as A Taste Of Honey and Kes (and other black and white, kitchen sink Sixties movies) it's still (in a way) part of that same oeuvre and so is an enjoyable watch if only for Poitier's performance and the often hilarious depiction of 'the wildest set of rebels London ever produced' by rather well-spoken young actors and actresses fresh from stage school.

John Serpico