Class of '92 (2013)

What do you call an addendum to an addendum? Feeding A Print Run Of 5000

"Victoria, if the Spice Girls ever do reform, any chance of you lot doing a cover version of the Crass song, 'I Ain't Thick, It's Just a Trick'? I mean, I've got the T shirt and everything."

"Sorry David, I've set my heart on us doing a cover version of the Poison Girls's 'Cry No More' for the comeback album. Ask All Saints."

Christ, nothing like stumbling across a draft post hidden away in your dashboard to hit home the fact that you are and always will be a one-trick blogger.

The struck out title, the snatch of imagined dialogue above with the (wrong) accompanying picture - see previous post for elucidation - and the italicised text below dates from the 1st of December of last year.

Sod it, I'm posting it anyway. It's one post closer to one thousand published posts that I'm hurtling towards with increasing banality, and hopefully I'll catch some extra stray search engine traffic via the mention of Posh and Becks.

. . . Oh, and the Spice Girls have now reformed for a reunion tour; the New Statesman have seen the archive access light, so I can now link to Ian Aitch's book reviews direct; and the B52s track 'Housework' has just come on iTunes. I love a happy ending.

Hidden in draft, and dating from 12/1/06 1:42am

No idea if the New Statesman continues to have the annoying habit of charging for archive material, so I'm falling back on the good service provided by someone on the Leftist Trainspotters List who has cut and pasted a review from the October 2nd 2006 issue of the magazine on

Ian Aitch's review of "The Story of Crass" by George Berger and "The Day the Country Died" by Ian Glasper is no great shakes, but I liked this nugget from the review.

"On one occasion during the Falklands conflict, the band heard a rumour that a battleship, HMS Sheffield, had been willingly sacrificed by the British government in order to protect HMS Invincible, on which Prince Andrew was then serving. In response, Crass created a fake taped telephone conversation between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher discussing the matter. This recording was sent out anonymously to newspapers, and before long it surfaced in the US state department, which denounced it as the work of the Kremlin. The KGB was so impressed by the stunt that it, too, tried to recruit the band members. But they simply drank the free vodka and played dumb."

Drank "the free vodaka and played dumb.? Even back then they were 15 years ahead of Chumbawamba.

Addendum to Anarcho-Celebrity: Feeding the #987

For the short-sighted amongst you, I meant to mention that the last post - Anarcho-Celebrity - had an oldish picture of Posh and Becks accompanying the text because of Beckham's choice of T shirt in the picture.

If you look closely enough, you can see that he is wearing a Crass T shirt. Fashion statement or political statement, it doesn't matter: LA Galaxy's season is over, Beckhamania Stateside jumped the shark about two months ago - though we will always have that balmy night in New Jersey in mid-August - and political/football statements by overpaid footballers begins and ends with the iconic image reproduced above from ten years back.

For that action alone, I'll always cut Fowler and Steve McManaman a line lot of slack. (Now's not the time for Bolivian marching powder on the Anfield touchline jokes.)

I hunted high and low for the pic of Beckham in the Crass T shirt, 'cos I'd heard about it through the grapevine down the years, but I'd never ever seen a picture of him anywhere wearing the T shirt - even originally mistaking this T shirt for it in the last post (since amended) - until I stumbled across this post which has the grainy shot of Becks doing his best impersonation of the 'Man From The WSA' . I'm just glad that I finally located the Beckham Crass pic in what is the week of the ACA* back in Blighty.

Both Beckham pics are mentioned in this funny pop-culture page, which is entitled 'Trendy t-shirts and clueless celebrities: Ignorance on parade, purists go mental', and does exactly what is says on the tin.

Going on past form on the blog, the obvious thing to do at this point would be to have a short snarl at pop muppets wearing Sex Pistols or Ramones T shirts, and to throw in for good measure some obscure hipster reference about how I'd have a coronary if I spotted Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Sherri Shepherd twinning up by wearing Fatima Mansions 'Keep Music Evil' T shirts on The View. But have you ever seen Rock 'n' Roll High School? It would have taken more than the E Channellers turning up in punk T shirts to faze The Ramones. (It was in fact Green Day citing them as an influence that pushed 3/4 of the band over the edge.)

In fact, I think the two pics below of Kirstin Dunst wearing a Smiths T shirt and Jennifer Aniston wearing an MC5 T shirt are cool, and I'm looking forward to the day when The Office's Dwight Schrute is discovered to be wearing some vintage FGTH boxer shorts under his polyester suit.

*ACA: the Annual Commodification of Anarchism aka The London Anarchist Bookfair.

Anarcho-Celebrity

Nice wee personal reminiscence post from Another Green World, which takes in Ian Bone, early eighties Anarchism in London and the anarcho-punk DIY scene of Crass and the Poison Girls.

The post also pointed me in the direction of this recent article from the Guardian which details the radical reworking of *cough* Crass classics and a storm in a tea stained cup over Crass's legacy that is going on between Penny Rimbaud and Steve Ignorant.

Crass were never my cup of tea - stained or otherwise - so I was more interested in the fact that Derek Wall namechecked The Poison Girls in passing in the post.

Now's not the time and place for me to detail at length why I think that the Poison Girls were a better band than Crass. For two reasons: 1) I know that Crass were more important, influential, seminal and all that hippy-punk-avant/garde jazz but; 2) Vi Subversa and the rest of the band had the tunes. And tunes win out for me everytime.

It's the same reason why I'll take Captain and Tennille over Captain Beefheart any day. Take your seminal and shove it up your jacksie. I'll grab with both hands a catchy tune that creeps in your earhole and takes up squatting rights for the next six months every time.

Anyway, enough self-immolation, you can check out the Poison Girls for yourself:

Poison Girls - 'Perfect Crime' mp3

Poison Girls - 'Real Woman' mp3

Both tracks date from the latter part of their career (82-85), and are both on the Statement boxset, a retrospective of the Poison Girls career that documents their recordings from '77 to '89. The boxset is available from Active Distribution last time I heard.

Maybe it's only me who can see it but Vi Subversa reminds me of the late Ian Dury in both vocal stylings and in lyrical archness combined with a sly wit. He's considered a national treasure, Vi's a hidden treasure.

Further Reading:

Derek Wall interviewed over at the Socialist Unity Blog

Doug Henwood's radio interview with Ian Bone that dates from March 15th of this year.

Ian Walker's 1979 New Society, 'Anarchy in the UK'

Socialist Standard's review of Derek Wall's 'Babylon and Beyond: the Economics of Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Globalist and Radical Green Movements'