message board

[DrNick]

So, I saw Jeff last night and I've been watching footage of the Crass songs on YouTube and I've been thinking about the lyrics.

Obviously, they're meant to be provocative, at which they succeed. And I'm sure that they are intended to offer an oblique comment on George Bush and the 'War on Terror' and the lies about WMDs and Iraq and Afghanistan and all the other stuff that's going on in the world right now. There's a really good point about hegemony (control and indoctrination through culture, the media, etc.) And I think to introduce these ideas to people is an important and powerful thing to do.

There's a few things that worry me though. Firstly, there's a real confusion of ideas in the songs - scattershot attacks on the establishment, religion etc. There's a real confusion between different ideologies - an attempt to fuse Marxism and anarchism, which have an intellectual crossover but are different. But then I guess the songs are about protest and not about offering a programme or a coherent set of ideas. And that's fine. I like it. Politically I'm very much on the left, I've read my Marx, and I do believe in a lot of the same things (though I'm not an anarchist, I believe in the role of the state and organised labour to change the world). Also, songs like 'Systematic Death' seem to be about sneering at the normal people who live their little boring lives without the insights and knowledge the narrator of the song appears to be claiming (this is what always struck me as problematic about the Marxist idea of false consciousness).

Anyway, some of the lyrics, stripped of the bile and anger and shock of the original, seem to come across as even more offensive, especially these lines from 'The Gasman Cometh':

"To ashes at Auschwitz it's just a small leap / From coshes at Southall, life is cheap'.

Southall is an area of London with big Indian and Pakistani communities. In the 1980s, when the song was written, there were a lot of riots in British cities. The song seems to be saying that police brutality towards non-white people in Britain is comparable to the Holocaust, or at least could be a first stop towards something similar. This is a shocking and hugely provocative statement, and I think potentially quite offensive to a lot of people.

All of which makes me a little bit uncomfortable about the whole thing. But then I think that the fact that I'm considering these things I guess is the point. I mean, I might think about left-wing politics a lot because that's who I am, but I've never posted about it on here before. I think that's a good sign.
_________________
http://www.myspace.com/arhythmicnick

[hamlet]

Good to see you thinking seriously about these things. I wonder how much of the audience grasps the lyrics, even with Jeff's soft-core presentation. I think anarchism is the message, any kind of "ology" or 'ism' that results in a government eventually results in tyranny of some kind and loss of personal freedom. I wonder if audiences want to hear this or just want to rock and roll. I'll keep posting more on YouTube.[/i]

[quercus]

[DrNick]

Thanks, that's really interesting. I did know about Blair Peach but hadn't connected it to the song. I was thinking of it in the context of the Brixton and Toxteth riots, but actually they were a little bit later (1981 I think). I was born in 1979 so it's a period I don't know about first hand, but I think the politics of that time have had a huge effect on me.

I still think using Auschwitz as a comparison is a bit much though.
_________________
http://www.myspace.com/arhythmicnick

[quercus]