Crass Divide

Back in the summer of 2005 (look at me framing the period as if it were as far back as the Summer of Love or something), as Mellie and I were beginning our relationship, we attended the annual Cornerstone Festival. Surrounded by traveling kids and crust punks (of whom Mellie was friends with a good portion having lived with several of them at the JPUSA community the previous year), I came to admire their idealism and their lack of materialism (when you're train hopping, you don't want five suit cases of possessions bogging you down). After the festival ended, we made our way back to New York where we were hanging out with friends from the Underground Church (a then active, but now defunct and heading towards being active again punk rock church out of Brooklyn). As many of our friends on the road with us were also heavy with the crustie leanings, my infatuation with the subculture stayed near constant until once I was back in Lancaster, PA where I was living for the summer, I began to liquidate portions of my record collection to friends while also getting rid of the bright blue denims and more every day clothing I had been wearing at that point.

While I was attempting to downsize my possessions, I also quickly fell into the trap of crust punk fashion (an irony in itself as the subculture is predicated on creating a non-image, further proof that for most - myself included - punk rock can be just a uniform if not done with the heart in the right place). My showering habits quickly tapered off in the name of nomadic minimalism (despite my name being on an apartment lease), my clothing began to take on a brown, dusty tint from being unwashed and my sewing skills witnessed rapid improvement due to my mending the same pair of black jeans over and over again (I remedied the issue of rips with layers upon layers of - surprise! - punk band patches). I also became known about town for the meticulously put together vest I constantly wore with its perfectly sewn on patches (another misstep - what real member of the subculture cares about perfect stitching!?) as well as the filthy bandanna constantly wrapped around my neck (keep in mind that this notoreity wasn't from any semblance of being unique - in a town overrun by scenesters all putting together bands solely for the purpose of securing contracts with the likes of Solid State Records, they were all most likely snickering at this wet behind the ears crusty who never changed his clothes).

The Radicts in Tompkins Square Park - after the show was cut short, Austin of UGC began yelling choruses from a Foreskins song at the top of his lungs.

As the summer of 2005 lagged on and even the Amish of Lancaster County began questioning their own clothing decisions in the face of unrelenting heat, I found my world quickly changing around me. My part time job at the local mall (in a store of dubious cred) had fallen through because I was never home due to my constant traversing back and forth to New Jersey and NYC and when I was around, my roommates were busy spraying me with aerosol based deodorants in my sleep. Before I knew it, I had awoken in the middle of Manhattan without two nickels to rub together and my best chances at food ran the gamut between samples from street vendors and the soups UGC were giving the homeless on their weekly ministry runs. Whether I liked it or not, I had become the crust punk without a home - my possessions had already been placed into storage upon the loss of the apartment I was staying in in Lancaster (being a nomad and having a lease don't work in tandem - one has to give in to the other at some point) and even as I was standing in the middle of Gramercy Park in the middle of the scorching late summer heat as folks shuffled around me from Avenue A on their way 32nd Street, I wasn't sure what had happened.

Eventually, my friends in UGC chartered me a Greyhound ticket to Chicago at my request (and most likely to avoid having another punk rock poser's mouth to feed) and I was off to the JPUSA community where the next chapter in my life would begin. Looking back at those times, there were a ton of great experience, but I can see without any doubt why things in Lancaster fell through and ended with my temporarily transience. For me, my ascent into the crusty life style was (atleast as I would have liked to have seen it at the time - certainly I then as now like(d) to embellish things to make it seem like I was better off than I really was) on par with some superficial bid comparable to Buddhism. I genuinely loved the idealism of the whole thing and in many ways I still do - anyone who grows up in small town America having NBC sitcoms and Wal-Marts on every corner shoved down their throats is bound to yearn for some form of rebellion at some point or another. True, some try the outfit of counter culture on for a few minutes and spend the rest of their lives working at Discount Auto Parts while others end up standing on a street corner in the middle of Manhattan figuring out what turn in their life led them to such a Kerouac-esque point. Some wear the uniform for decades but never mature past the first day they sew their first Aus Rotten patch onto the seat of their pants.

Proof that even if you spend 30 years in the game, you'll still be a poser if you aren't doing it for the right reasons.

The crust punk thing for me was an open door way towards re-invention. Many who are only exposed to the surface nihilism of punk assume the culture is set on anarchy while in reality, most view anarchy as a way towards an idealized utopia - a peaceful society where folks get along and are accountable only to themselves without governmental bodies butting in (a wonderful idea if the mechanics of it didn't have more holes than a piece of Swiss). For me, this path to peace meant avoiding smack talk and back biting while attempting to don a more peaceful attitude (a hard thing for me as anyone whose been around Kriss Stress for more than five minutes knows why my adopted last name is what it is) - the downside to this attitude unfortunately came in the form of self righteousness and entitlement that while subtle at first began to grow larger and larger as the months passed with the end result being a guy who was more concerned with avoiding conflict in the name of 'peace' while really coming off as an avoidant and non-commital prick who couldn't get anything solved or sorted out. I didn't quite grasp that patience isn't really patience unless it's tested nor that loving your neighbor meant loving them through the bad times too as opposed to only the good.

As time went on, showers became more frequent, I got less choosy with the holding of my tongue and I eventually reverted back towards being that same jerk of a guy I've always been (but hopefully won't be forever). I don't regret those times because they taught me a lot about responsibility (and the consequences that are tied to both the acceptance and denial of it) and showed me that I can be an even tempered guy with the ability to demonstrate some semblance of patience (if only I could figure out how to wade the waters of conflict without shirking them altogether - that's the trick) if I try hard enough.

When I listen to bands like Crass, my mind often goes back to that period of my life. While I don't agree with some of their more aggressively worded views (while I agree with their dissension towards organized religion and the church in particular, I'm not in agreement on their condemnation of the figure of Jesus Himself), I feel that same sense of admiration in relation to their ideals about upholding the prospect of a more peaceful society. Certainly their views on a plant based diet were one of the catalysts towards my switch over to veganism several years ago.

Musically, their sound is miles ahead of the majority of their ilk (most of the street and crust bands stayed hard edged and never broadened their sound and to this day, many of them sound as if they had been flash frozen in the late 70's for preservation as they still perform even now without having made any progression - though for many, the music is just the vehicle for the message so perhaps the notes are second place to the word content being delivered) with their first record "The Feeding of The 5,000" square in the camp of intentionally underproduced and snotty punk rock taken from the likes of the first Clash record (while making sure to declare to all who would listen that they're The Crass, not The Clash - not "in it for the cash"). As the years would pass and governmental bodies began to close in on them due to their antics, their sound also progressed - by the time of their third LP, the aptly titled "Penis Envy", vocalist Eve Libertine had taken over the vocal duties from fellow dissenter Steve Ignorant and while the music still kept its razor sharp hardness, the melodies were pushed out into the forefront and the songs began to

exceed past the double digit mark of 99 seconds or less.

By the end of Crass's tenure, their efforts were night and day sonically from their '77 beginnings. 1983's "Yes Sir, I Will" featured more organic flourishes of acoustic instrumentation while in the following year where the paranoia of Orwell saw its peak, "Acts of Love" saw drummer Penny Rimbaud reciting poetry in the tradition of his adopted name sake over arrangements of classical music. An elaborate prank of supposedly taped phone calls linking to Margaret Thatcher led to a closer eye on the Crass collective and as the climax of the Falklands War reached its height (with Thatcher herself now quite aware of the band due to their antics), the group faded from the public eye.

Members of the collective continued on under different guises and for the most part, the majority of the group continue to carry out their ideals (albeit, with much more subtle nuances so as to avoid a second round of scrutiny by way of what had come to publicly be dubbed as their 'Thatchergate Tapes".) and to this day, many of them still play the music of their most well known era in various fractured (and occasionally unified) forms.

What can we take away from the example a band such as Crass set before us? Staunchly opposed to playing music for profit and very much in the camp of music as platform and ideology, one wonders how many folks walking around nowadays who consider themselves members of the crust culture are worrying themselves with such concerns. Certainly not many of them held the Dada-esque sense of humor so treasured by their heroes. In truth, my short and ill advised foray into the subculture showed me a lot about myself and also gave me a keener eye towards authenticity. Being around the real deal long enough in the form of folks who actively participate in Food Not Bombs and do more than sitting on the corners of the Six Points down in Wicker Park begging, it's easy to see how the movement can be appealing to someone looking for personal empowerment. A large portion of that empowerment comes from Steve Ignorant, Eve Libertine, Penny Rimbaud and the rest of their motley ilk. For the last sixty years, music has been one of the largest mobilizers among youth in the incitement of change and the exchange and passing down of often revolutionary ideas.

While I personally didn't uphold the ideology of that particular movement (instead falling in line as more of a filth tinged fashion punk) to every end, I did wind up curtailing many of those tenants into my current vocation as a vegan based chef. Revolution happens everywhere from the government down to how a person rules their own life. In truth, veganism may be one of the few ideals held by the folks in Crass that has stuck with me permanently and for that at least, I'm thankful (that suspect device of a vest I mentioned earlier though is stuck in permanent storage unit purgatory and will never see the light of day - or a washing machine for that matter!) While revolution through consumption and to a larger extent, the continued exposure of unethical practices in the food industry (factory farming, genetically modified cultivating methods, etc, etc, et al) remains my personal M.O., I'm confident that many of the more extreme political tenants of Crass and their ilk are still in full motion by those faithful enough to understand that the culture is more than filthy clothing and hatefully leering at stroller moms on the street. I'm pretty thankful for that too.