Daily Archive for October 16th, 2008

When­ever peo­ple want to talk Punk Rock, I always want to talk about Crass, and their related projects with Crass Records and Dial House. A lot of the time, I get a lot of dis­agree­ing, but it doesn’t mean much to me because I still feel Crass was the best. And one of the most impor­tant. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not dis­re­gard­ing any­thing that other bands did. I real­ize there were a lot of other great groups out there who stirred up some shit. Who put punk on the map. Who made a huge dif­fer­ence. But noth­ing as note-worthy in my book, that’s for sure. Crass just has this spark to it, and once you under­stand it — you under­stand it. I feel that for a band that did so much, Crass is also a group that has been over­looked incred­i­bly by many.

Well anyway…last night, I joined my friend Bryan in Oak­land for a screen­ing of the doc­u­men­tary Crass: There Is No Author­ity But Your­self, a film about them, over at an Anar­chist infos­hop, The Long Haul, in Berke­ley. After the film, I left feel­ing more excited about a band I’ve been fol­low­ing since I was in the 7th grade. It feels like the older I get, the more I am able to really appre­ci­ate what they had cre­ated. The film — ruled. It was filled with great rare pieces of live footage, old pho­tos, and inter­views with Gee Vaucher, Steve Igno­rant, and Penny Rim­baud. It even gave a tour of the Dial House! So sweeeeet.

If you’re famil­iar with Crass, watch it. If you’re not, watch it. I think what they were doing thirty-plus years ago has def­i­nitely impacted a lot of us, many with­out even real­iz­ing it. I still hold this band as one of the best, and most impor­tant groups of all time (in addi­tion to being one of the great­est things I’ve ever come across — their influ­ence is price­less), and def­i­nitely one of the most impor­tant things to hap­pen to Punk Rock, let alone Rock n’ Roll.

The Google video above is the same one they screened at The Long Haul.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Word.

Oh, and today is my one week anniver­sary of being a San Fran­cisco res­i­dent. Holla! I mean, hella!