It's been 40 years today that Crass played their last gig on 11th July 1984 at the Coliseum in Aberdare at a miners' benefit.
You will find more photos in the book 'CRASS: A Pictorial History' by Exitstencil Press and in my latest book 'Doing It Our Way'. On page 88 I write briefly about the gig as I went back to Aberdare in 2022 to perform Crass songs with the Steve Ignorant Band.
Check out this special recording of the last Crass gig. It is a high quality FREE download.
Gee:
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.
“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 to 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
Penny:
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
credits
released July 11, 1984
Audio Restored by Paul PDub Walton
Thank you to Tony D and Mickey Penguin at KYPP, and also to Graham Burnett
@crasswords @onelittleindependent
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