This is Penny Rimbaud - Part Two

2026-01-19

This is the second part of a conversation with the poet, musician and thinker Penny Rimbaud, co-founder, with Steve Ignorant, of the anarcho-punk band and activist art collective Crass Crass emerged as a band in 1977, but quickly became something more complex, rejecting rock stardom, record industry norms, releasing records on their own label and using their platform to challenge war, nationalism, consumerism, sexism, and state violence. In this second part of the interview, we about the events that led to...

This is the second part of a conversation with the poet, musician and thinker Penny Rimbaud, co-founder, with Steve Ignorant, of the anarcho-punk band and activist art collective Crass

Crass emerged as a band in 1977, but quickly became something more complex, rejecting rock stardom, record industry norms, releasing records on their own label and using their platform to challenge war, nationalism, consumerism, sexism, and state violence.

In this second part of the interview, we about the events that led to Crass and hear more about Dial House, an old rambling farmhouse in rural Essex, a long-running experiment in collective life — part commune, part refuge, part creative hub. It was here, where he still lives, that Penny's music, philosophy, artwork, debate, and daily survival are entangled.

And we hear about the founding of the Stonehenge Free Festival and the death of Wally Hope, cultural terrorism, Penny's work since Crass, and his thoughts on art, spirituality and the self.

Music played:

Futility and The Soldier’s Dream (The War Poems of Wilfred Owen)
So What (Crass)
The Song of Self (With Louise Elliot)

You Brave Od Land (With Youth)

For more on Penny and his work

#counterculture #crass #pennyrimbaud #anarchism #capitalism #dialhouse #artschool #wallyhope #stonehengefreefestival

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