Punk 50, is AB’s celebration of fifty years of chaos, freedom and bold expression. We honour the rich past, the vibrant present and the future of punk with exhibitions, films, talks, a ‘zine market and a hard-hitting line-up of international icons, Belgian legends and the new generation of punk musicians.

According to The Guardian they were “musically, artistically and politically the most extreme band to emerge from the initial wave of punk”. They derived their name from the song Ziggy Stardust in which David Bowie sang: “The kids were just crass”.

Crass didn’t only shout that they were DIY, they also acted on it. They had their own community (Dial House in Essex, VK), ran their own record label (Crass Records) and designed their own, now iconic, record covers. Their song Punk Is Dead sneered at the Sex Pistols and The Clash, who soon sold their souls to major record labels.

Their classics The Feeding of the 5000 (1978) and Stations of the Crass (1979) still sound insolent and highly topical. What’s more, the spirit of Crass lives on in bands like Sleaford Mods. Björk holds them in high regard too, if only because Crass released the first two albums by her band Kükl on Crass Records. The Guardian: “The legacy of the band is undoubtedly all around, be it in the existence of a vegetarian food selection at your local supermarket or the stencilled artwork of Banksy.”

Especially for AB, Crass-frontman Steve Ignorant revisits their now classic debut The Feeding of the 5000. The album – containing many Crass classics, such as Do They Owe Us A Living?, Banned From The Roxy and Punk Is Dead - was controversial even before it was released. The opening track Asylum – with its nod to Patti Smith’s Gloria through the line “Jesus died for his own sins / Not mine” – was considered blasphemous at the time by employees of the record pressing plant, who refused to press the album.

The album title was a nod to the famous tale from the New Testament, in which Jezus fed five thousand people with two fish and five loaves of bread. Crass-drummer and founder Penny Rimbaud had their own version: "We named the album The Feeding of The Five Thousand because 5,000 was the minimum number that we could get pressed, some 4900 more than we thought we'd sell.”

Seeing as the album – consisting of eighteen tracks with an average duration of less than two minutes – clocks in at 32 minutes, Crass-frontman Steve Ignorant will expand the set with songs from the rich Crass oeuvre.

Taqbir (MA)

AB was so impressed by the 2021 release of debut EP Victory Belongs To Those Who Fight For A Right Cause by Moroccan punk band Taqbir, they were invited to perform every day of our three-day BRDCST festival in 2023. Their live energy was most accurately described by The Wire as “a blast of compressed rage” or as a divisive musical agent to be situated between Cocaine Piss, The Slits, X-Ray Spex and Haram.

Taqbir doesn’t hold back: “By pushing their anger towards the sexism, homophobia and racism that lingers like a dark, poisonous fog around Moroccan culture, Taqbir play a very dangerous game. They are putting themselves on the frontline, risking potential imprisonment, death threats and more, just to escape the cultural prison they’ve grown up in”, according to The Quietus.

Frontwoman Nao and her band used to perform veiled to conceal their identities. After going on tour with their New York soulmates from Haram – singer Nader Habibi also sings in Arabic – she threw off that yoke (at least partially).

Taqbir has since played at prestigious festivals like Le Guess Who? (NL), Roskilde (DK) and Supersonic (UK). Sharing the line-up with Crass means a great deal to them. Nao: ''I remember the first time I heard Reality Asylum by Crass - it woke something inside me. I thought, “Hell yeah, they don’t give a damn, so why should I?” Playing with them at AB - the venue we’ve played at the most - feels like reconnecting with that feeling again. Not to sound pretentious, but I honestly think we’re the perfect match.''

Club Brat (UK)

Steve Ignorant describes Club Brat – a fivesome with one foot in Bristol and one in London - as “inspiring, entrancing and unstoppable”. The fact that they teamed up with Fugazi producer Don Zientara and collaborated with Bob Weston (Shellac), are what we certainly call convincing credentials. The band itself cites Fugazi, IDLES, Pixies and drum ’n’ bass (!) as their influences.

Another fine quote we read on the worldwide web: “Club Brat is a high-intensity punk band fusing jagged guitars, bass-heavy dissonance, and volatile rhythmic urgency. What defines them is their urgency: raw and confrontational.”