Popular Culture Review Vol. 26, No. 1, Winter 2015 | Page 87

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. 83