“On July 11th, 1984 at Aberdare Coliseum, Crass would perform for the last time. Today marks the 40th anniversary of this event, a benefit show for the miner’s strike. A bootleg recording of this show has been restored and made available to download for free”. Today being 11th July 2024 and seeing as it comes from One Little Independent (who in turn have the ‘ump with us ’cause we very much have the same with them and their taking for granted of everything, seems they are no longer talking to us), so it is as official as these things ever are, but then this is Crass, does it need ot be official?

No, I don’t imagine we are going to listen to this that much although I do find myself listen to Crass more than I ever did, I do find them actually enjoyable these days, and what did I know? All those invisible hands held and paint that needed to be throwing. These are great recordings, you kind of wonder what might have come next, well besides all that did as they all went their own ways…

Download the recording for free or pay what you want via Bandcamp, one day you’ll thank us, or maybe you won’t? You probably won’t. The story of the recording, blatantly cut and pasted with a stick of Pritt is down there…

“This was to be the last Crass gig. Next day Andy said he wanted to stop and get back to painting. As each member of the band was a vital component, without Andy none of us wanted to continue. The decision was easy to make, we were all feeling we had done our best to share something we felt was important. The rest would be repeats, plus, we had become too much of a figure head. So, the countdown to 1984, proved to be right and we all set out on various individual journeys.” – Gee Vaucher

“BLOODY REVOLUTIONS 2
Aberdare. July 12. 1984.

“It’s July 1984 and it’s raining in the valleys, a very Welsh rain, a kind of mist, very grey and very damp. There are people huddled in doorways smoking soggy cigarettes and whispering consolations, ‘nid yn awr, gadewch i ni aros’. But wait for what? The clouds to clear? The political climate to change? ‘Dim siawns’, flicking crumpled dogends into the swirling river of what might once have been Aberdare High Street.

Inside the Coliseum (watch out for the mohawk gladiators), the crowd is gathering. Punks, who’d travelled from far and wide, all soaked through, edgy, self-conscious and somewhat intimidated by the locals who’d travelled nowhere; surly, burly, striking miners lining the walls (women and children in the balcony). Two worlds, one purpose; ‘smash the system’. A poster on a noticeboard declares that ‘BIG MOTHER IS WATCHING YOU’ beneath a headshot of Margaret Thatcher with her eyes gouged out.

Crass play fast and furious to a teeth-gritting crowd wildly pogoing or slipping off for a quicky in the alley. Pumping out a stream of contradictions, the band plays on. ‘Yes, that’s right, punk is dead’, but by now pretty much everyone has seen too much to be taken in by platitudes, even their own. ‘Just another cheap product…’ The miners, still lining the walls, look on with tired bemusement. Yeah, ‘power to the workers’, when all the while the workers are being ruthlessly crushed beneath the Iron Lady’s bother boots and those of the not so Old Bill (squaddies too). ‘Do they owe us a living?’ Sure as hell, but just at this moment I simply don’t know.

It’s as if we’ve all had enough, the players and the played; ‘seen it all before, revolution at my…’. Well, as far as I can see just now, this revolution is over good and proper (despite it never having really started). Oppression is becoming the name of the game (what’s new?), and don’t we all know it. From behind the protective shield of the drumkit, I watch a miner stubbing out a cigarette on one of Thatcher’s gouged out eyes.

After the show, Andy gets presented with a miner’s lamp by a Union dignitary and is jokingly told to keep his eyes on the birdies (it took a couple of years to realise that this wasn’t a sexist remark. No, he’d meant the canaries, but who’s laughing now?). For all its ills, it was a great gig, but on the journey home, we all know it’s over. Andy is the first to mute it. ‘I think, think I…’ A raging storm is thundering down in torrents on the rooftop of the van. ‘I think I want…’ It’s deafening. ‘What?’ ‘I think I want…’, but I’m no lip-reader. ‘Yeah, well let’s talk it over in the morning.’ We never did because we all knew there was no point. It was over. We never played as a full band again

Yup, ‘you can talk about your revolution, well that’s fine, but what are you gonna be doing come the time?’

(footnote) The miners’ strike (1984-1985) was an attempt by the miners and unions to prevent the closure of 20 collieries across the UK. The local colliery’s closure (including the mine and all additional buildings or offices) meant almost certain death for the mining communities built up around them. As these towns and villages were often built solely around employment in the mine, closures meant mass redundancy in an area with little-to-no other employment opportunities”.

Penny Rimbaud. July 2024 

Previous Crass coverage on these fractured Organ pages before OLI got the hump over our coverage of USA Nails, coverage that always seemed trather positive to us…

Actually, seeing as they did split 40 years ago today, it could be kind of wrong to assume everyone knows who they were…

“Crass were an Anarcho-punk band formed in 1977. They popularised the anarcho-punk movement, and were advocates for such matters as direct action, animal rights, anti-facism, feminism, and environmentalism. From the word go, their career’s ending was set to be 1984, and they lived up to this intention, splitting up following a miners’ benefit gig in Wales in July that year”.