Crass: The Sound Of Free Speech (2023) – Film Review

Crass: The Sound Of Free Speech (2023)

Director: Brandon Spivey

Class and Culture Films

Various cinemas

There’s been quite a resurgence of interest in the legendary anarcho-pacifist punk band and agit-prop arts collective Crass in recent years. Earlier this month there was the launch for the definitive, decades in the making, book Crass: A Pictorial History, and only a few days later the London premiere screening of the documentary The Sound of Free Speech. The film’s title is taken from the silent segment of empty vinyl that opened the band’s incendiary Feeding of The 5,000 debut on Small Wonder Records, an album which remains unique  for its introduction of elements of chant, drone, silence, spoken word and sound collage into anarcho punk’s sonic arsenal.

This two minutes, seven seconds of silence, in addition to acknowledging John Cage and others in Crass’s avant-garde roots, was a reference to the refusal of the pressing plant assigned to manufacture the record if it included the blasphemous opener, Reality Asylum. The band later re-recorded the track as a 7” single which was duly restored to the re-issue of the 12” on their own imprint, Crass Records. This documentary complements previous Crass film There Is No Authority But Yourself by adding further background to the story of the band’s formation provided by extensive interviews with founding members Penny Rimbaud and Steve Ignorant. They describe a number of the occasions the band received unwelcome attention from the authorities, such as The Obscene Publications Squad’s absurd visit to Crass’s home, Dial House near Essex Forest to question the band members under caution for a potential Blasphemy prosecution shortly after the release of Reality Asylum as a single.

These accounts and anecdotes will always be fascinating for any Crass fan, so it may simply be that there is so much to cover that, at times, the wider political and cultural issues raised by the controversies and conflicts the track provoked see it fall short of its narrative objective.  Neither Penny, Steve nor the other figures associated with Crass film-maker Mick Duffield, whose cut up visuals accompanied the band’s live performances, and poets Annie Anxiety and Andy T, whose savage spoken word performances provided live support on Crass’s tours, really address the narrative premise I had expected from the film’s title and explain just why their ‘free speech’ was silenced. Or if indeed it ever was.

This aspect to the Story Of Crass is, in itself, contentious from the outset. Reality Asylum being omitted from the original Small Wonder edition of Feeding Of The 5,000 was never really an issue of censorship and free speech, but more one of collective action and free choice. Whatever one may think of their religious beliefs (and I’m every bit as scathing of religion today as I was as a Crass-following anarcho-punk in the ‘80s), the working class, Catholic workforce of the pressing plant that found the track offensive and refused to manufacture the record with it included were far removed from “the violent majority” at that time in Ireland. For right or wrong, they simply exercised their free choice, as I have no doubt Southern Distribution would have exercised had a Skrewdriver record been submitted to them for sale. Indeed, Crass themselves exercised similar ‘choice’ in their refusal to print the vivisectors’ addresses on a Conflict sleeve and Poison Girls’ Offending Article on another release. To view the actions of the workforce in the pressing plant as ‘censorship’ is a disingenuous application of the term.

The institutional abuse allegations personalised by the courageous contributions to the film by Tom Rhattigan, aka Boy 26, provided a chilling adjunct to musical focus exploring the concept of religious hypocrisy and its use as moral control within society, leaving one to ponder whether the devout former workers at the pressing plant have now changed their attitudes towards the Catholic Church following the children’s home scandals in recent years, and exposure of those who use religion as a cover for the vilest abuse and exploitation.

I was also expecting more of the film would be devoted to the creative process behind the Reality Asylum cover, and also the musical backing itself. I’m sure the version of Asylum which soundtracked the accompanying images was the 7″ version, not the more vicious, drone-infused cut that appeared on Feeding: The Second Sitting, which presumably was the original that had so outraged the pressing plant workers? I know Crass did re-record the track, so stand corrected if the re-recording was the version that appeared on the reissued 12”. It would also have been interesting to discuss the themes and metaphors redolent in the single’s B-side, Shaved Women, to which Annie Anxiety wrote the lyrics; allegories I’m not aware of ever being fully explained by Crass and which still appear conflicted and ambiguous.

The greatest revelation of the film’s discourse, and possibly the only truly revolutionary aspect to Reality Asylum as a finished work identified in its duration, was Penny’s admission that Reality Asylum includes ‘samples’ of recordings by John Lennon. What samples? What John Lennon songs? I would imagine they’re from his excellent experimental collaborations with Ono, Unfinished Music Music Vols. 1 & 2, but where do they feature in the sound art collage that comprises the musical backing to Eve’s recitation of Penny’s text? This would have been simple to have identified using any modern audio production software but was left as a tortuous enigma, unexplored and unexplained. A cavernous omission as this would have identified specific instances of where Penny’s defining Lennon influence and, whether conscious or not, what one can discern from half a century of his work, the aspiration to be “The Lennon who never sold out and retained his integrity” – the true ‘man of peace’ he portrayed himself could be first identified within Crass’s body of work. An influence made most explicit in Crass’s Beatles homaging  magnum opus: Bloody Revolutions.

Despite these small criticisms – and what was more central to Crass’s ethos than to ‘question everything’? – The Sound of Free Speech is essential and thought-provoking viewing for those with an interest in the ideas behind Crass’s work which, along with Gee’s stunning artwork, remains for many the most engaging aspect of the band, more-so even than their music; the two sides of the Reality Asylum 7” being a notable exception to this in that they expanded the palette of what could be defined as ‘punk’ at a time when, as a music form, punk was becoming formulaic and the antithesis of the boundary breaking sonic revolution it originally was. The movement for change Crass took up the torch to carry, and still inspire others to do nearly half a century on.

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All words by Chris Low. This is Chris’s first review for Louder Than War. 

Chris is a former anarchopunk drummer and fanzine publisher and his book on the early ‘80s Anarcho-Punk scene, Best B4 1984, can be ordered direct from his Instagram here.