Ay up....it's only the Scottish Crass innit? Just like the Skids were the Scottish Sex Pistols,but were in fact, very good indeed,whereas Alternative are an alternative to nothing at all. Yes they sound exactly like,look like, Crass but without useful Essex boy on shouty vocals. And, oooh look, they didn't like Thatcher,who liberated more working class than any posh Anarchist ever did. Maggie gave us a national wage long before it was ever mooted in the political mainstream in the form of paid mass unemployment,liberated swathes of Yorkshiremen (The very same Tetley Bittermen that Seething Wells used to go on about) from underground slavery,and gave away houses to the lower stratum of society. Three very Anarchist policies. Without Mrs T your scribe would have been stuck in a factory for the last forty years,and now on a zero hours slave contract in an Amazon warehouse,alongside the grandchildren of those Tetly Bittermen who'd preferred them to have been stuck down a coal mine instead. Unlike Penny Rimbaud and mates I won't be entitled to a pension after i'm 67 (correct at the time of writing!)...I've gotta work until I die,mainly thanks to the new anti-Thatcherite conservatives that the very same liberated working class idiots in the north of England who voted for Johnson and his government of lying Cunts!?...can you fucking believe IT!? Lying is something that Thatcher never did....she told you what she was gonna do and did it. 'Big Sister is watching You' it says....turns out she wasn't,but they fucking are Now!
One plus point ,however ,is that Alternative are certainly NOT Posh. So, as usual, they had the joy of the Posher members of Crass inflicting themselves on these useful working class black clad proles,bring in their own drummer (Rimbaud), guitarist (Peter Wright) and ex-finishing school for young ladies screecher Annie Anxiety.Producing it for them...not that they asked! Trevor Horn did the same for Frankie Goes to Hollywood I believe.
I think it was Rimbaud's stealthy way of continuing Crass after they had split up...which was a lie it seems.Find some star-struck Crass worshipping anarcho-punk clones from 'oop norf',then take-over.....life after death Anarcho-Punk style.
And you just know that they are 100% certain they are 'Right',or in football language 120%.Its an effect of the British Public School 'System System System', just like Oswald Moseley,super Posh, and Super fascist, knew he was irrevocably corrrrrect. How wrong could they be?
I do however, have a soft spot for most of this Anarcho-Punk stuff however,in the same way that i get a nostalgic glow for my lost innocence when i watch Childrens TV from my own childhood. There is something so unerringly charming about the pointless adolescence of this toytown utopia that these kids,plus Penny Rimbaud,had built for themselves in their own minds.All they had to do was ask Thatcher to give them a council estate and they could have made it real. Reality is something quite frightening when your dreams are transported into bricks and mortar......but,there's always a 'but' isn't there? Crass didn't want to live in the sewers they sang about,they bought a big house in the Essex countryside far away from the underclass's who would have kicked their collective backsides back to their Trustafarian country retreats.
Where are YOUR Hiroshimas eh?
Mine are in someones else's dystopia, not mine.
Tracklist:
A1 Another Subversive Peace Song
A2 Seen Through Tear Filled Eyes
A3 Mannequin
A4 Now I Realize
A5 How Many Times Sold?
A6 Love And Life
B1 If You've Got It......Don't
B2 Till Death Do You Part
B3 Death Isn't So Sweet
B4 Caroline's Carnival
B5 Suffer In Silence
B6 Struggling Through The Darkness
B7 Ireland
B8 Where Are Your Hiroshimas?
DOWNLOAD if they treat you like shit act like Crass HERE!
