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Often credited with (or blamed for) the entire anarcho-punk movement, Crass came onto the scene in 1977, dressed in black and espousing a (relative to much of the rest of the punk scene) puritanical agenda of anarchism, pacifism and animal rights. Taking a leaf or several from the Situationists' book, Crass operated as a collective, including artists and writers as well as shouty blokes and noise-makers. Never ones to underestimate the power of images and slogans, they forged a unique image, the fold-out album sleeves to this day adorning the walls of a huge amount of squats and student lodgings- you've certainly seen the “Your Country Needs You” one, with the severed hand hanging from the barbed wire, and even very recently it was practically compulsory among certain circles to own a Crass logo t-shirt with the legend “Jesus died for his own sins- not mine”.
In retrospect, a lot of their stuff now seems a fairly... difficult listen, with stuff like the extended diatribes of “Yes Sir, I Will” verging on the hectoring. Fascinated with the avant-garde, they were never content with merely using the military drums and scratchy guitars of punk, when they could leaven the tone with lengthy tape-looped pieces backing anti-religious poetry (“Reality Asylum”). Indeed, both Crass and Flux of Pink Indians briefly collaborated with Current 93, then still experimenting with tape-looped soundscapes (“Dog's Blood Rising” features contributions from, among others, Steve Ignorant, delivering an anti-war rant over helicopter noises). As a friend of mine once put it, “yes, they were an experimental band, but they weren't above getting in the guy that shouts BOLLOCKS!!! every now and then to keep things going”.
But that said, in my opinion “Bloody Revolutions” was their finest six minutes, blending all that was best about Crass into one defining piece of music. Released as a split 7” with Poison Girls' “Persons Unknown”, “Bloody Revolutions” was the closest they ever got to a mainstream pop hit.
And it goes a little something like this...
You talk about your revolution, well, that's fine
But what are you going to be doing come the time?
Are you going to be the big man with the tommy-gun?
Will you talk of freedom when the blood begins to run?
Well, freedom has no value if violence is the price
Don't want your revolution, I want anarchy and peace
You talk of overthrowing power with violence as your tool
You speak of liberation and when the people rule
Well ain't it people rule right now, what difference would there be?
Just another set of bigots with their rifle-sights on me
But what about those people who don't want your new restrictions?
Those that disagree with you and have their own convictions?
You say they've got it wrong because they don't agree with you
So when the revolution comes you'll have to run them through
You say that revolution will bring freedom for us all
Well freedom just ain't freedom when your back's against the wall
You talk of overthrowing power with violence as your tool
You speak of liberation and when the people rule
Well ain't it people rule right now, what difference would there be?
Just another set of bigots with their rifle-sights on me
Will you indoctrinate the masses to serve your new regime?
And simply do away with those whose views are too extreme?
Transportation details could be left to British Rail
Where Zyklon B succeeded, North Sea Gas will fail
It's just the same old story of man destroying man
We've got to look for other answers to the problems of this land
You talk of overthrowing power with violence as your tool
You speak of liberation and when the people rule
Well ain't it people rule right now, what difference would there be?
Just another set of bigots with their rifle-sights on me
Vive la revolution, people of the world unite
Stand up men of courage, it's your job to fight
It all seems very easy, this revolution game
But when you start to really play things won't be quite the same
Your intellectual theories on how it's going to be
Don't seem to take into account the true reality
Cos the truth of what you're saying, as you sit there sipping beer
Is pain and death and suffering, but of course you wouldn't care
You're far too much of a man for that, if Mao did it so can you
What's the freedom of us all against the suffering of the few?
That's the kind of self-deception that killed ten million jews
Just the same false logic that all power-mongers use
So don't think you can fool me with your political tricks
Political right, political left, you can keep your politics
Government is government and all government is force
Left or right, right or left, it takes the same old course
Oppression and restriction, regulation, rule and law
The seizure of that power is all your revolution's for
You romanticise your heroes, quote from Marx and Mao
Well their ideas of freedom are just oppression now
Nothing changed for all the death, that their ideas created
It's just the same fascistic games, but the rules aren't clearly stated
Nothing's really different cos all government's the same
They can call it freedom, but slavery is the game
Nothing changed for all the death, that their ideas created
It's just the same fascistic games, but the rules aren't clearly stated
Nothing's really different cos all government's the same
They can call it freedom, but slavery is the game
There's nothing that you offer but a dream of last years hero
The truth of revolution, brother................... is year zero.
Opening with a snatch of the “Internationale” followed by the line “You talk about revolution, well that's fine”, the song instantly eschews the bludgeoning simplicity of much punk and agit-pop by simultaneously referencing both the French Revolution and the Beatles. When I first heard this song I must have been about fifteen (and several years too late), but just from that opening I knew something interesting was coming. Ignorant continues in this vein, slating the idea of the violent revolutionary as merely the power-crazed fantasy of those with a lust for power themselves. Ambitious and utopian (even Leaptopian) it may have been, and naïve it may now seem, but what Crass wanted was a total abolition of the power structures they saw as responsible for oppression, after which, so they believed, the human being would revert to its natural state of peaceful co-existence with both itself and its fellow species on the planet. “Freedom has no value if violence is your price”, continues Ignorant, “Don't want your revolution, I want anarchy and peace”, and a million school-bags suddenly found themselves confronted with the Black Marker Pens Of (self-) Righteousness.
So far, so four/four punk rock, for the first few verses at least. Then it starts to get interesting with Eve Libertine's “Vive La Revolution! People of the world unite! Stand up, men of courage, it's your job to fight”- the reference to “men”, of course, is also highly significant, gender relations and the oppression of women (by violence, porn and, indeed, marriage) being another of Crass's preoccupations. Ignorant suddenly becomes EVEN MORE ANGRY, and the song spirals towards its conclusion at breakneck speed in a welter of male/female (dis)harmonies and back-and-forth arguing the point. “So don't think that you can fool me with your political tricks/Political right, political left, you can keep your politics... you romanticise your heroes, quote from Marx and Mao/Well their ideas of freedom are just oppression now”. Dynamically, this is a wonderful piece of music, spending its first half sounding like it's reached its comfortable tempo, before chucking everything over the barricades and hurtling into the unknown- what at first seems like a conventional bridge in fact leads, not between two halves of the same piece, but into an entirely different movement. Compare this with much other punk, where the minimal is prized above all, and it's practically prog rock.
And, ever helpful, having reached their conclusion, “Nothing changed for all the death that their ideas created/It's just the same fascistic games, but the rules aren't clearly stated/Nothing's really different, cos all government's the same/They can call it freedom, but slavery's the game”, they kindly repeat it for us, but more clearly, so we can actually focus on what's being said, before ending with the coda, which I always find strangely chilling, even as a cynical 34-year-old- “There's nothing that you offer but a dream of last year's hero/The truth of revolution, brother... is Year Zero”. Especially bearing in mind that at the time of release, Pot's Year Zero was very much current affairs.
I would personally count this as not only Crass' best song, but one of the best punk songs ever recorded. Listening to “Bloody Revolutions” to this day inspires similar feelings in me to those engendered by going on a protest rally, or Reclaiming The Streets, or taking part in direct action, or listening to a great speaker, or going to a great anarchist gig, or yes, of fucking VOTING- afterwards its seems quite easy to take a much more jaded view of things, but for its duration, it really, really feels RIGHT, and feels like all is not lost, and we CAN change the world. How, of course, is another question entirely... |
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