An institution is the lengthened shadow of one person

Ain't that the truth? Pictured here is the amazing artwork from Crass's Christ - The Album package, something I've - quite unaccountably - been completely (Steve) ignorant of until today. (Thanks to workmate RC for the kind lend of these holy artefacts). Looking back, I think the first three Crass LPs sort of burnt out my fragile teenage mind and at around the time this came out (1982) I veered away from their stuff after being quite steeped in it. In fact, I remember being faintly embarrassed that I had a tiny collection of records that was dominated by Crass and Crass label affiliates. I'm pretty sure I even consciously bought a Theatre Of Hate record in 1982 to deliberately get something "more musical".

He shall rise again after unpacking the boxset: Christ - The Album

Hmm, how wrong I was. Listening again now with my (very) elderly ears to Christ - The Album reveals how complex Crass records often were: yes there's Ignorant's splenetic vocals (sometimes actually quite pointed and "refined", sometimes cleverly morphing into rabble-rousing "ruffian"), plenty of white-noise guitar and the band's trademark clipped militaristic drumming, but there's also all sorts of other things. Each track on Christ is bookended by a sound collage of TV/radio clips and queasy ads for meat or female beauty products, bits from political broadcasts (snippets of John Pilger, Margaret Thatcher), everyday racists talking about not liking "coloureds", snatches of documentaries about nuclear war and so on. Meanwhile, the music keeps pausing and swerving around, slowing down or gathering pace. There's dubbed guitar, bits of violin, spooked sounds, a spectral segment of John Lennon's Working Class Hero. It's effectively anarcho-punk's answer to free jazz. So yes, Crass's cruelly ignored (by me) fourth album is, I reckon, a bit of a masterpiece. If an institution is the lengthened shadow of one person, perhaps Christ - The Album is the musical institution that throws a long shadow from my teenage years down to my (ahem) mid-fifties. And now Christ's shadow has finally reached me ...