They’re stuck if they don’t know who you are.
“Don’t Get Caught”
“Don't Get Caught” details how when an individual stands up for something, they are stopped,
“people with courage dumped and stranded.” However, when someone rejects their personal
identity, they can challenge the system without personal consequence, “if you fuck up the
state, don’t be a star. They’re stuck if they don’t know who you are.”
Eventually, these core principles of Punk’s initial success began to fracture. The primary
meaning of Punk ceased to be internalized by its audiences (Clark 5). Instead, the audience
regurgitated bands’ lines about independence at the shows and went about their corporate
lives afterwards. Punk simply became popular. It was another way for people to feed the
contented nature of their lives. Comfort was now their primary concern. They shifted from
being utilitarian idealists to being self-occupied pragmatists.
In 1984 (Berger 254), Crass became a victim of this shift when they played their last
official show. The reason for the break was two-fold. First, the band’s message was being
distorted. The people who were coming to their shows were seeing them as entertainment
rather than activism. Their message was not being internalized. Rather, it was adding to the
machine of complacency and apathy in the society.
The second reason they broke up was because of individual differences within the
group members. The band was struggling with an identity crisis and a thirst for individuation.
The members themselves were failing to grasp the purpose of their efforts. As the band’s
founder Penny Rimbaud states, “The differences were manifesting in what we saw as activism,
consumerism . . . " (Berger 255). Members wanted to be individuals again. The gravity of being
Crass was weighing down on them. It was difficult to live up to an ideal that asked for its
members to always follow a specific ideology. As Pete Wright explains “you can’t wear boots
because they’re not vegetarian. You can’t look at girls because it’s sexist. Can’t indulge in
holiday in the sun because It’s bourgeois” (Shibboleth: My Revolting Life 258). The
expectations of the band were becoming too great to satisfy. The definition of the band was
negating its members’ rights, which was paradoxical to the band’s overall message of
individual authority. They wanted to restore their personal happiness at the expense of societal
actualization.
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