De Republiek

There is no Authority but Yourself schetst een portret van een aantal oud-leden van Crass, zoals de voormalige drummer Penny Rimbaud en zanger Steve Ignorant die hun idealen nooit hebben losgelaten in een maatschappij, gericht op conformisme, consumptie en geld.

Check Hollanddoc voor een mooie documentaire over Crass , vast wel bekend in punkkringen. There is no authority but yourself. De vraag die je moet stellen is: zijn we 25 jaar eigenlijk veel verder of juist achteruit gerend? En wordt het dan niet eens tijd om tegen de stroom in te roeien?

They’ll try to sell their system
Like it’s some kind od age-old wisdom,
But we’ve been had like that before,
It’s just the rich exploiting the poor.
Well here’s an honest confession,
We think it’s time they learnt a lesson.
They’ve tried to hold the people down,
But we’ve simply gone underground,
Moving in the darkness looking for the light,
Looking for a future and ready to fight.
Looking for the freedom that’s been denied,
Fast to attack and fast to hide.
In a world where the people can’t make it,
They’ve simply got to learn to break it,
And if the wealthy aren’t prepared to shake it…
O.K., we’ll simply have to take it…

You’re already dead, You’re already dead

En nog een derde quote om het af te leren:

As the monstrous steel and glass edifices of commerce cast their ever-darkening shadows over whole communities, the crude lottery of day-to-day existence becomes an ever more complex battle. Just who on earth benefits from the raging bull of globalisation? How are we to exist if we are to be treated as no more than cyphers chained to the production line of the corporate circus? What future is there for our culture if art, poetry and music are seen only as commodities? Just as Tin Pan Alley will never produce a Miles Davis, so Charles Saatchi will never produce a Francis Bacon. If Marx didn’t say that commerce was the antithesis of true creativity, he should have done.