"That whole 'castro is evil' thread kind of reminded me of why I can no longer listen to Crass -- it's mindless and self-righteous sloganeering. I can't believe I used to like that band."
Chris,
Mindless and self-righteous sloganeering is what a lot of left or liberal rallies also devolve into, unfortunately.
There could be similar complaints about a lot of the US labor folk tradition. "Which side are you on?", "Solidarity forever," etc. (I like the IWW little red songbook, though!)
Also, after going through a period of hating Crass, I've revisited them again and, yeah, they have their sloganeering aspects, but there's also a lot of lyrical and conceptual brilliance in what they did, as well. Artist Gee Vaucher's aesthetic for the band, for one, so ubiquitously copied it's easy to forget Crass really did it first; and the intensity of their lyrics, some of the most extreme stuff of the period. They also aren't given a lot of credit for their works in the industrial genre ("Smash the Mac") or dark ambient ("Reality Asylum," 1978!) as they ought to be. Maybe more importantly than their music, though, is how they almost single handedly created an entirely new, somewhat self-supporting scene in England, and are one of those bands like the Dead Kennedys and MDC that gave punk it's harder edged, anti-right wing political aspects, putting pressure on bands that said they believed in DIY/grassroots stuff to actually follow through on their words.
Roy Wallace's DVD of the book _The Day the Country Died: Anarcho-Punk 1980-1984_ goes into Crass's role quite a bit. The DVD isn't as well-made as American Hardcore at all, but in retrospect it's astonishing how many things Crass had their hands in (Bjork's first band, setting up anarchist infoshops in England, doing benefits for striking workers, doing the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament stuff, anti-vivisection foundations, funding the start-up EPs and LPs of all sorts of other bands, even The Damned's Capt. Sensible, etc.) Their feminist LP, "Penis Envy," is also an important proto-riot grrl document, imo - all female vox, addressing patriarchy, etc.
On a purely musical level I also think they are way more experimental than folks realize. It's not just 3 chord punk -- they fucked around with the genre a lot.
-B.