{"id":1854,"date":"2015-06-05T19:17:43","date_gmt":"2015-06-05T18:17:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eyeplug.net\/magazine\/?p=1854"},"modified":"2011-06-09T14:47:37","modified_gmt":"2011-06-09T14:47:37","slug":"the-crassical-collection-penis-envy-%e2%80%93-crass-southern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/the-crassical-collection-penis-envy-%e2%80%93-crass-southern\/","title":{"rendered":"The Crassical Collection: Penis Envy \u2013 Crass (Southern)"},"content":{"rendered":"
This entry is part 2 of 5 in the series Anarchive<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>

WHAT DO LITTLE GIRLS LIKE TO DO?<\/strong><\/p>\n

You don\u2019t want person \u2013 You just want woman<\/em><\/p>\n

Eve Libertine, \u2018Dry Weather\u2019 1981<\/p>\n

Throughout 1980, Crass consolidated their position as the pre-eminent forum for genuine dissent within the punk milieu. Although no album was released, the group had become a fully fledged record label, issuing the Poison Girls\u2019 Chappaquiddick Bridge <\/em>album, the first volume of the Bullshit Detector <\/em>series (compiled from tapes sent to the group from the likes of the Amebix, Alternative and the Snipers \u2013 all of whom would go on to have singles issued on Crass Records), as well as singles by the Poison Girls and Zounds, the latter topping the independent chart. As Margaret Thatcher inflicted the first full year of her increasingly oppressive regime on the British populace, Crass restricted their own output to the split \u2018Bloody Revolutions\/ Persons Unknown\u2019 seven-inch, which they shared with Vi Subversia and her band.<\/p>\n

Despite the paucity of new Crass music emerging from Dial House, the group\u2019s profile continued to grow as their gigging schedule increased exponentially \u2013 almost all of these shows being benefits with the band relying upon the kindness of strangers to put them up in spare rooms, or any available floor space. Stations of the Crass<\/em> continued to sell in significant numbers, as did a re-release of Feeding of the 5000 <\/em>\u2013 which emerged in early 1981, with \u2018Asylum\u2019 restored. The group continued to eschew the mainstream music press in favour of granting interviews to fanzines, and grass roots support for the band also continued to grow, with gigs being typified by the sight of scores of black clad followers chanting along, word-for-word, with Steve Ignorant.<\/p>\n

The downside of all this is that it could viewed as a bit of a \u2018boy\u2019s club\u2019 \u2013 like most punk bands, Crass\u2019 audience was predominantly male and the aggressively confrontational nature of the bulk of their set gave rise to what Eve Libertine described as a \u2018boot boy image\u2019. To a degree, this had already been offset by the release of \u2018Nagasaki Nightmare\u2019 in February 1981. The song was an evocation of the aftermath of a nuclear strike, that at times resembled gamelan far more than anything remotely related to rock\u2019n\u2019roll. Featuring deeply affecting vocals from Eve Libertine, the track (backed by the tour de force<\/em> rebuttal of church and state, \u2018Big A, Little A\u2019, took up residency at the top of the independent charts and stayed there.<\/p>\n

Eve\u2019s suggestion of recording an album using only female vocals struck a chord with Penny Rimbaud who felt it would challenge the group\u2019s audience and play a role in reclaiming feminism from \u2018a whole generation of women [who] had taken to power-dressing rather than power-thinking.\u2019 The decision to record such a set was wholly indicative of Crass\u2019 aversion toward developing anything resembling a \u2018career\u2019 \u2013 the group were absolutely aware that the new material was likely to turn off far greater numbers of existing listeners than would be potentially engaged. However, that wasn\u2019t the point of Crass and although it\u2019s fair to say that Steve Ignorant was initially less than overjoyed to be sidelined for an album, the group collectively committed to the project.<\/p>\n

In addition to being an apposite response to Thatcher\u2019s aggressive masculinity, an album of songs from a feminine perspective brought technical challenges to set alongside those of an ideological nature. \u2018Compared to our previous two albums, the material brought to the studio contained a far greater sense of poetry and lyricism \u2013 which, coupled with the softer tones of women\u2019s voices, required a much more open approach than we had hitherto had to make,\u2019 explained Penny.<\/p>\n

Titled Penis Envy<\/em>, in, what Rimbaud describes as, \u2018acknowledgement of one of many absurd concepts born of Freud\u2019s barely disguised vagina craving\u2019, there was a certain incongruity in Crass releasing an album of less bombastic material just as inner city rioting erupted across England in response to Thatcher\u2019s ongoing clampdown. In truth, the album represents one half of a collision of radical ideologies \u2013 Crass\u2019 libertarian inclusiveness set against the solipsistic capitalism of the incumbent Tory junta.<\/p>\n

Whereas Penis Envy<\/em>\u2019s upfront feminism and often savage lyrics led to parallels being drawn with the largely unlistenable and painfully worthy Raincoats, the album\u2019s subject matter aligns it most closely with the Au Pairs excellent debut, Playing With A Different Sex<\/em>, which was released around the same time. The main difference being that Crass weren\u2019t concerned with making anyone dance, while the inclusion of final track, \u2018Our Wedding\u2019 provides a welcome shot of the humour that Crass\u2019 detractors so often accused the group of lacking. Indeed, Penny Rimbaud\u2019s sleeve notes recount the full story of how the archly saccharine number was conceived as part of an artful hoax perpetrated against the gormless Loving<\/em> magazine, who were persuaded to include the song as a giveaway flexi disc as part of an issue promoting the concept of matrimonial servitude. Credited to Creative Recording And Sound Services (geddit?) \u2018Our Wedding\u2019 is a miasma of clich\u00e9 and interlocking synth lines, guaranteed to induce a hypoglycaemic episode in anyone bar the most witless listener.<\/p>\n

The greater degree of musical subtlety within Penis Envy<\/em> has certainly allowed it to benefit far more apparently from the remixing process than has been the case with the two earlier albums issued as part of the ongoing Crassical Collection<\/em>. Although songs such as \u2018Bata Motel\u2019, \u2018Systematic Death\u2019 and \u2018Where Next Columbus\u2019 conform to some extent to the band\u2019s existing martial template, \u2018Poison In A Pretty Pill\u2019 and \u2018What The Fuck?\u2019 (in particular) couldn\u2019t be much further removed from any type of orthodoxy. These songs contain delicate, sometimes ethereal elements that have been brought to the fore by the remixing. Similarly, the greater clarity afforded the otherworldly \u2018Berkertex Bribe\u2019 enables Eve\u2019s expressive vocal and accomplished pacing to be more fully appreciated than was the case on the original LP.<\/p>\n

Although the repackaged album follows an identical format to its two predecessors, the additional extras are fairly meagre this time around \u2013 just three tracks. The tangential \u2018Yorkie Talk\u2019 could arguably be included on any of the remastered series, and bears more relation to Rimbaud\u2019s post-Crass material than anything the band produced collectively. \u2018Yes Folks\u2019 is similarly indicative of the drummer\/lyricist\u2019s fascination with sound collage, although it is notable for a delightfully cheesy faux<\/em> advert for the \u2018Our Wedding\u2019 flexi. The CD\u2019s final song, \u2018The Unelected President\u2019 is an updating of \u2018Major General Despair\u2019 that straddles the gap between the original song and Eve\/Penny\u2019s more recent works. The track is particularly interesting as it offers a tantalising glimpse of what a contemporary Crass might be like, and we could certainly use something of that ilk in the current climate.<\/p>\n

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

This entry is part 2 of 5 in the series Anarchive<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>

Despite the paucity of new Crass music emerging from Dial House, the group\u2019s profile continued to grow as their gigging schedule increased exponentially \u2013 almost all of these shows being benefits with the band relying upon the kindness of strangers to put them up in spare rooms, or any available floor space. Stations of the Crass continued to sell in significant numbers, as did a re-release of Feeding of the 5000 \u2013 which emerged in early 1981, with \u2018Asylum\u2019 restored. The group continued to eschew the mainstream music press in favour of granting interviews to fanzines, and grass roots support for the band also continued to grow, with gigs being typified by the sight of scores of black clad followers chanting along, word-for-word, with Steve Ignorant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,74],"tags":[216,151,121],"series":[158],"class_list":["post-1854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-punk","category-reviews","tag-crass","tag-dick-porter","tag-eyeplug","series-anarchive-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1854","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=1854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1854"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=1854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}