{"id":1849,"date":"2015-06-05T19:17:43","date_gmt":"2015-06-05T18:17:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eyeplug.net\/magazine\/?p=1849"},"modified":"2011-06-09T14:49:14","modified_gmt":"2011-06-09T14:49:14","slug":"the-crassical-collection-stations-of-the-crass-%e2%80%93-crass-southern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/the-crassical-collection-stations-of-the-crass-%e2%80%93-crass-southern\/","title":{"rendered":"The Crassical Collection: Stations of the Crass \u2013 Crass (Southern)"},"content":{"rendered":"
This entry is part 3 of 5 in the series Anarchive<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>

FUN GOING ON<\/strong><\/p>\n

The bomb dropped on Hiroshima killed 200,000 people \u2013 that\u2019s what I call obscene.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018Shaved Women\u2019 introduction, March 1979<\/p>\n

By the time Crass released Stations<\/em> in late 1979, the mainstream music press had recovered from the initial shock provided by Feeding of the 5000<\/em> and adopted extreme polarised positions based on individual reactions to <\/em>the debut 12\u201d and subsequent single \u2018Reality Asylum\/Shaved Women\u2019. On one hand, the likes of Tony Parsons and Garry Bushell continued to express their vehement dislike of the band (Parsons in particular penning an alarmingly hysterical piece in which he built himself up to a fine Daily Telegraph<\/em> style froth before exhaling, \u2018Good old Crass, our make believe secret society, our let\u2019s pretend passport to perversity. They\u2019re nothing but a caricature and a joke.\u2019) Similarly, Sounds<\/em>\u2019 Dave McCullough warmed up for his shot at canonising Ian Curtis by describing what he termed \u2018The Crass Phenomenon\u2019 by attacking the group for being in his view, \u2018All-Holy\u2019 and \u2018witless\u2019. Conversely, the likes of Jon Savage, Paul DuNoyer and Paul Morley were far more positive, while, perhaps surprisingly, Tommy Vance described them as \u2018the only true underground band.\u2019<\/p>\n

None of which mattered very much to Crass. At the root of Bushell and Parsons\u2019 opposition was their assumption that the group were looking to forge a career in the music business in the same way that they were. Despite consistent and undeniable evidence to the contrary, neither journalist seemed able to believe that Crass did not share their interest in making money or furthering personal agendas. For his part, Penny Rimbaud was keenly aware of divisive media practices, \u2018Through \u201cgossip columns\u201d and carefully edited \u201cinterviews\u201d, they fabricate differences and animosities between bands that in reality may well not exist. In their capacities as servants to the music business, they separate and divide bands who without their intrusions would probably be able to work together. Bands are often totally unaware of the aggressive and dishonest tactics used to promote sales and hype charts by the record labels to which they have signed. As the labels get richer the bands invariably remain penniless; hyped by the business and lied about in the press, they slowly sink into a helpless position where the honesty with which they might have started their band is lost in the compromises that are forced on them by others.\u2019<\/p>\n

Rather than become mired in the national music press\u2019s web of hyperbole and self-aggrandisement, Crass would give the overwhelming bulk of interviews to underground fanzines \u2013 trusting the motives of hobbyists far more than those who were subject to commercial pressures. Their most evident response to the pouting from Bushell (who had initially liked Crass, but opted to spit the dummy after receiving a series of corrections from Rimbaud subsequent to an early piece on the group), Parsons and their ilk, was to record \u2018Hurry Up Garry (The Parson\u2019s Farted)\u2019. Written by Penny, the vicious-yet-funny rebuttal of their detractors\u2019 standards and morals can be viewed as a rare own goal on the basis that you should never give an egotist publicity. \u2018It gives them too much fame, really,\u2019 observed Steve Ignorant.<\/p>\n

There were two main reasons why reactions by the music press were largely irrelevant to Crass. Firstly, they had little wish to engage with corporate backed mass media publications \u2013 their ethos was all about reaching out to the individual. Furthermore, they had bigger issues to occupy them \u2013 the state, the church and the very real threat of nuclear conflict being slightly more pressing than Tony Parsons\u2019 assertion that punk had become a lame duck the minute he lost interest in it, or Garry Bushell\u2019s enthusiasm for Minder<\/em>.<\/p>\n

On 3 May 1979, Margaret Thatcher was elected as prime minister, ushering in a shitstorm of oppression that would gather faecal velocity throughout the remainder of the group\u2019s existence. \u2018The New World Order was about to rise like a tsunami to drown us all,\u2019 Rimbaud recalled. \u2018Up until then, we\u2019d been riding our own wave.\u2019 For Crass, this was the moment that iconoclastic pot-shotting became a genuine fight. Beginning with \u2018Contaminational Power\u2019, much of the band\u2019s future output would be determined by the actions of the incumbent Tory government as Thatcher set about implementing her own particular brand of radical class war. Recorded in August 1979, Stations of the Crass<\/em> is a soundtrack to battle lines being drawn.<\/p>\n

It could be argued that Thatcher\u2019s most effective ploy was the manner in which she redefined the roles of the police, army and media to advance her ambitions. Just as the police were politicised by their role in the miners\u2019 strike, and the armed forces used as tools to keep her apparently moribund government in office through their actions in the Falkland Islands, Thatcher used the press and television as a means of dissemination \u2013 often progressing policies that had not been agreed by her cabinet by announcing them on air. Fittingly then, Stations <\/em>opens with the blistering \u2018Mother Earth\u2019 \u2013 a devastating assault on the media\u2019s vicarious moralising, with specific reference to the way in which the neophyte Daily Star<\/em> had run a \u2018should Myra Hindley be executed\u2019 feature as a means to help establish the flagging tabloid on newsstands. The song features one of Ignorant\u2019s finest vocal performances, he spits his distaste with palpable venom and provides anguished squeals that emphasize the fact that underneath the press posturing lay dead children.<\/p>\n

In this new edition, \u2018Mother Earth\u2019 is one of several songs that benefit from the remastering process, which amplifies the subtle layers of sound from their slightly tinny state on the original disc. The enhanced bottom end gives added crunch to rhythm guitar and Pete Wright\u2019s propellant bass is again (as on Feeding<\/em>) afforded a liquidity, while the maelstrom of fuzz and squall on tracks such as \u2018Big Hands\u2019, \u2018Chairman of the Bored\u2019, and \u2018Darling\u2019 are given added resonance by the production team of Rimbaud and Harvey Birrell. The reissue also serves to bring female voices to the fore, as Joy DeVivre\u2019s \u2018Desire\u2019 emerges crystalline, deliquescing from the white noise and radio static to emerge as its own form of twisted disco. \u2018Shaved Women\u2019 is among five bonus tracks from a March 1979 Peel Session that are included on the re-issue and this uncluttered version of the song showcases Eve Libertine\u2019s remarkable delivery of Annie Anxiety\u2019s lyrics in an affecting and resonant manner. Almost a companion piece to \u2018Asylum\u2019, \u2018Demoncrats\u2019 is similarly given extra depth and displays Eve\u2019s striking spoken word skills to great effect. Pete Wright\u2019s bravura vocal performance on \u2018Tired\u2019 tops what is possibly the disc\u2019s strongest remix, as his blast furnace delivery strips the covers from the tired circus of vapid rock\u2019n\u2019roll. The only evident fault in the remastering process is the failure to eliminate some vocal bleed on \u2018Time Out\u2019, Gee Vaucher\u2019s powerful dissection of family and class.<\/p>\n

Despite the gathering gloom spread by Thatcher\u2019s rise to power, there\u2019s enough lyrical wit and vibrancy evident to dispel the media depiction of Crass as lemon sucking puritans. Steve Ignorant\u2019s booklet notes recall the sense of fun that permeated the recording sessions and Penny\u2019s recountment of the group\u2019s encounter with archetypical BBC boffins during their Peel Session recording is laugh-out-loud funny, as are his recollections of the half-assed attempts to prosecute the band on the highly questionable grounds of obscenity. The bonus tracks feature Peel being caught out by the group\u2019s sudden endings and decision to count in at the end of a song, leaving the unfortunate disc jockey \u2018covered in confusion and yoghurt\u2019.<\/p>\n

This Crassical Collection<\/em> edition features the Peel Session tracks in place of the live performance included with the original LP, which will be made available as a free download from crassarkive.com<\/em>. Stations of the Crass<\/em> can be viewed as the album that established the group as the heralds of a movement that would graft social and political awareness to punk rock in a genuinely significant sense. It is simultaneously a document of its time and a warning for the present.<\/p>\n

To order the remastered album from Southern Records: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0www.southern.net\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This entry is part 3 of 5 in the series Anarchive<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>

There were two main reasons why reactions by the music press were largely irrelevant to Crass. Firstly, they had little wish to engage with corporate backed mass media publications \u2013 their ethos was all about reaching out to the individual. Furthermore, they had bigger issues to occupy them \u2013 the state, the church and the very real threat of nuclear conflict being slightly more pressing than Tony Parsons\u2019 assertion that punk had become a lame duck the minute he lost interest in it, or Garry Bushell\u2019s enthusiasm for Minder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,74],"tags":[216,151,121,338],"series":[158],"class_list":["post-1849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-punk","category-reviews","tag-crass","tag-dick-porter","tag-eyeplug","tag-stations-of-the-crass","series-anarchive-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1849"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=1849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}