History Music / Crass

''I am me, and she is she, but you're the only you!"''\\
--'''"Big A, Little A"'''

* ADateWithRosiePalms: Appears in ''Yes Sir, I Will'' as a TakeThat to people who adopted the superficial trappings of the punk movement while DramaticallyMissingThePoint of the movement itself:
-->How many times must we hear rehashed versions of ''Feeding of the 5000''
-->By jerks whose only fuck off to the system has been one off the wrist?
-->It's the feeding of the Five Knuckle Shuffle.
::The following movement, a parody of the hardcore bands they were mocking here, was entitled "The Five Knuckle Shuffle" on the 2011 remaster (all movements were untitled on previous versions; note, however, that the movements are mistitled on the first disc of the remaster, referring to the indices of the original CD issue rather than the indices of the remaster. The titles are mostly correct on the second disc, with the exception of "Burying the Hatchet" being unlisted).

Crass would also go on to release several singles and give away a series of flexi discs until 1982, when they released "Penis Envy", an album with more complicated musical arrangements and female vocals addressing feminist issues, attacking marriage and sexual repression; Steve Ignorant was credited as [[SirNotAppearingInThisTrailer "not on this recording"]]. The album again attracted controversy among the general public thanks to Crass tricking the staff and readers of Loving (a teen romance magazine) into offering a flexi disc of the last track on "Penis Envy" ("Our Wedding") -- a parody of an MOR love song, credited under "Creative Recording And Sound Services" with the ad telling readers that the free Crass flexi would make "your wedding day just that bit extra special". Naturally, this didn't go over well once the hoax was discovered. The album was banned by the retailer HMV, and in 1984 copies of the album were seized from the Eastern Bloc record shop by Greater Manchester Police; the shop owners were charged with displaying "obscene articles for publication for gain". The judge ruled against Crass in the ensuing court case, although the decision was overturned by the Court of Appeal.

In 1982, Crass released ''Christ - The Album'', which took a year to record, produce, and mix. Normally, this wouldn't be too huge of an issue, however in the duration of that 365 day period, the Falklands War broke out and ended, causing the political Crass to question their speed and efficiency at making an album, since a good chunk of the songs on the album were about imminent war. As a result, Crass went back to the basics, subverting whatever they could (including slipping copies of their singles into other albums at the pressing plant they were working with), including causing a political scandal in the United States and the United Kingdom.

* ActualPacifism: A rather large part of the band's core philosophy, both out of pragmatism (violence would discredit their cause) and out of idealism (violence is fundamentally antithetical to their vision of anarchism). Some conflicts would later occur when some band members began to take issue with this.

* LyricalDissonance: Between the violence of the band's music and the ActualPacifism of their message. Vocalist Gee Vaucher [[DiscussedTrope discussed]] this in an interview about ''Yes Sir, I Will'':

-->''And you'll never change the system by bombing number ten''