Yeah, I remember this now. It’s clearly shocking news to the undergrads who run Buzzfeed.
I really don’t see what the big deal is; note the “almost” and stuff.
Nothing of positive substance was accomplished by this prank, although in all fairness, CRASS itself notes that that wasn’t their intention. The tape was just a pointless goof.
But: intentional mischief in the service of something substantial — that would be worth doing, and writing about.
It makes me a bit worried about governments because if they could be fooled by something so ridiculous… well, someone told us that there was an MI5 dossier on us but we didn’t take it that seriously.
I’m quite stunned [the recording] went that far.
[Bass player Pete Wright] just vanished upstairs one day with a load of little cassette tapes and – with a razor blade and sellotape – was slicing together stuff that he’d recorded off a black and white portable TV that we couldn’t tune in properly.
Just as a joke he had it sent to Europe and sent back to various newspapers from Belgium. We didn’t think for a second people would take it seriously. But obviously people did.
