Crass at Trinity Hall with unexpected guests

An excerpt from - NOT JUST BITS OF PAPER

By GREGORY BULL and MICKEY PENGUIN

TENTH YEAR ANNIVERSARY - FULL COLOUR HARDBACK EDITION

From: Unexpected Guests – Crass, Trinity Hall, Bristol, 15th December 1983.

…It’s a sea of punks here tonight. Some dressed all in black wearing raggedy clothes an old cardigans, black shirts, Shiny waxed black jeans, patchwork clothes. there are donkey jackets, leather jackets adorned with studs bands names and symbols that have been hand painted on them. German paratrooper boots, motorcycle boots, pumps, mohicans, dreadlocks, shaved. Hair all the colours of the rainbow, pink, green, peroxide. all styles of hair and clothing coexisting here, not necessarily in harmony, but here nonetheless. punks of all sorts and from all tribes.

I think I can see Steve ignorance head go back in a laugh, he's chatting with members of the crowd, mingling. That's why we love Crass. they are like us just people prepared to have a chat and a laugh and respond to all of our stupid questions that they have been asked a hundred times before.

the mood is curious although definitely filled with excitement. it's hard to judge looking back. the church is splitting at the seams and heaving with humanity. to move anywhere takes an age of pushing gently to move people out of the way. it's half dark and it's hard to see where you're putting your feet. we're all crushed in together, like sardines in a tin, body to body.

I realise I need a piss really quite badly so I ask where the toilets are and start making my way there. I give up after five minutes of non-moving. The toilet I decide is a no go area. There are just too many bodies in the way. There is just no point. So I make it outside and there is a wall that all the lads are pissing up together. I stand and join them self-consciously. They chat to each other casually and I listen without hearing. There is a part of me which hates crowds so I stand outside in the cold night air for a while smoking a cigarette and contemplating. There are lots of us milling around plenty of movement. We picked up the walls of the church and it seems irreverent.

And then the word goes around that crass are coming on and we all rush inside, a collective mass of anticipation. from that point it becomes blurred. I have waited two years for this moment. Although I am not a fanatical Crass fan, I am an appreciator of Crass, and an appreciator of the message that Crass offered. I can't see much at first over the heads of the crowd as the band takes their places on the stage. instruments and voices ready cress RIP into their set and it's tight fast and well played. Is obviously well rehearsed and technically very competent. Steve Ignorant leans and spits out his words and I'm entrance by the backdrops, the movement in the crowd, and the dancing.

Fight war not wars’, the crass symbol of the anarchist manifesto made flesh in those banners hanging behind the band. I am drawn to the symbolism and the graphic design. My eyes flick from the band members up to the backdrops and then back down again taking it all in. I was feeling it more than understanding it. The sound was gut wrenching, in a good way. The drums beat out heavy, militaristic and monotonous rhythms and drive the songs forward.

Steve Ignorant stares out at us looking like he is speeding, or just the adrenaline of being a performer, an actor on the stage, and he leans forward over the crowd and looks down at us menacingly. he shouts and he screams and we join in at times, sing along a Crass style.

Some of the punks dance oblivious to their surroundings fuelled on speed glue and cider and homebrewed concoctions. There are countless pairs of boots clumping and I even witnessed a pair of Wellington boots stomping. Some stand at the side of the stage watching others at the back of the church. People everywhere I find it hard to take my eyes off Steve Ignorant as the set progress is. He has the power and the charisma to hold a crowd in the palm of his hand. He knows he has the power. The crowd bays out in response to the Clarion call. Heads Bob up and down in time to the beat of the drums.

And then mild chaos ensues and the fighting starts. Not so much as a fight but an assault by what seems to be gang of skinheads and psycho-billie's who race into the church and start indiscriminately punching and kicking any of the punks they can get their hands on

This is the moment emblazoned on my memory. I watch as Steve Ignorant turns to look at Penny, as the fighting gets more serious. Steve turns with a desperate look on his face, his mind no doubt filled with a sense of deja vu. I can't see his eyes from that angle, as his face is in silhouette, but I did get that distinct impression. The music stops as Steve seems momentarily unsure of what to do or how to proceed. The moment lasted for less than two or three seconds, but in that time I was shown a world of contradictions, to me it looked as if Steve was asking the question of Penny, looking to me as though he wanted to jump off the stage, wade in and sort this problem out, maybe crack some heads. Maybe just pull the fighters apart. We will never know.

The default response is Crass start chanting, “Fight war, not wars” over and over again. Steve is looking more aggressive now. Almost goading the troublemakers to come and take him on. Fight or flight. Steve is expectant, ready and willing. Spitting the mantra at the trouble makers in the crowd. He might be pointing a finger at them, using barbed words.

It’s hard to tell what’s going on. Hard to tell who is fighting and who isn’t. There are shouts and swearing. Fists rise and fall. The crowd seems to stand firm, and the assailants are driven out to catch their collective breath. The crowd seem happy in this small victory won, and the Crass performance resumes.

There is another sortie from outside and more fighting and more pointless bloodshed. There are bottles flying boots kicking. The aggression in the fighting moves closer to where I am standing and I feel scared. There's a tap on my shoulder and I look up to see Polly from Antisect and Aaron Paul standing on a table and Polly helps me and my girlfriend up onto it away from the trouble. Polly face is beaming as they helps us up. Sometimes we kick out a Skinhead to keep them away or to help them on their way out.

Steve Ignorant is still chanting, ‘Fight war, not wars’, and the rest of Crass join him. The scuffles and fights carry on for a while. The members of Crass did protect where they could, and I saw young punks getting pulled up onto the stage away from the trouble. I don't know if anyone was seriously hurt. I don't know why the violence had started. I just assumed it was mainly skinheads and psycho-billie's who wanted to wear a badge of honour, made out of blood, screams and confusion…

This is the special tenth anniversary HARDBACK version of 'Not Just Bits Of Paper', with three extra chapters and over 50 extra pages.

Not Just Bits Of Paper is a portal into a world now diminished, a world where the importance of specific bits of paper cannot be overstated. Not that these bits of paper had any intrinsic purpose beyond the sole reason they were produced for - that being to advertise and publicise events - though paradoxically, without it ever being stated or even considered they also represented nothing less than a vision. 

The bits of paper we're talking about here are the flyers and posters created to announce upcoming concerts of the more 'earthy' punk rock type prevalent throughout much of the 1980s. Black-and- white, made with scissors, glue, pens, Letraset and found images. Utilising the 'cut'n'paste' method rather than desk-top publishing, then photocopied, fly-posted, stuck up in record shops, given out by hand and sent out by post enclosed with fanzines and cassette tapes purchased from various mail- order lists. 

This was the way we communicated before the advent of the Internet and social media. Slow, time-consuming, sometimes wearisome but effective.

Co-edited by Greg Bull and Mickey 'Penguin', Not Just Bits Of Paper collates a wide selection of flyers, posters and handouts from the anarcho-punk era of the 1980s and for posterity lays them out and presents them in all their ragged, torn and tattered glory. As to be expected, Crass are heavily represented alongside The Mob, Flux Of Pink Indians, Antisect, Conflict, Poison Girls, Chumbawamba plus many more others.