Insight according to Steve Sutherland, Melody Maker, June 20, 1981, page 30.

"Keep off the Crass"

CRASS
100 Club, London
CRASS by name, even worse by nature, like it or not, they just won't go away . . . And, what's more, judging by the sold-out signs, the disappointed puddle of punters locked out on the pavement, and the sweaty spikeys, quiffs, crops and pony-tails crammed into the black hole of the 100 Club, there's plenty out there who're glad they're around.

That their sound was uniformly abysmal, that they played (at times, excruciatingly) badly,even that individual functions within the fluctuating line-up were often blurred in chaos and doubt, are totally irrelevant.

What mattered was that Crass played, the crowd saw Crass play and, most importantly, the crowd were seen to see Crass play.

In other words, Crass are a phenomenon; the trendy cult to catch, our very own perfect little institutionalised anti-institution - a success beyond most straight bands' wildest dreams solely on the strength of their image and attitude, and nothing to do with the erratic quality or quantity of their output. The best thing, indeed the only thing, to be said in their favour is that what Crass do, they do it their way.

Top-selling independent records; cheap and free gigs (this one was three bands for a quid); and enviable empathy with their fanatical following, a name - more than any other - emblazoned on the back of a million leathers; the sordid wasteland where mutant punks and hippies meet; an anarchists' elephants' graveyard; a flexi-disc conned past the careful pages of Loving magazine; a new album called "Penis Envy"; symbol of subversion; a circle with an "A" inside. Crass are all these things. . . the distempered dog-end of rock n' roll's once bright and vibrant rebellion.

That they're so unattractive, unoriginal and badly unbalanced in an uncompromising and humourless extremist sort of way, simply adds to the diseased attraction of their naively black and white world where words are a series of shock slogans and mindless token tantrums to tout around your tribe and toss at passers-by.

That a band like this should be so popular is about as disturbing and disheartening as the fact that Genesis stil have hits. Both exist with the cosy, time- warped cocoons of their own obsessive bullshit faniasies and both are deadly boring.

Good ol' Crass; our make-believe secret society, our lets-pretend passport to perversity. They're nothing but a caricature and a joke clinging to crummy outlaw conventions.

The shame of it is, they will surely last forever. - STEVE SUTHERLAND.

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