Crass performing at Acklam Hall, Ladbroke Grove March 1979 ‘Free All Prisoners Now’ benefit gig – photograph taken by Tony Barber c/o Terry Smith archive.
Crass poster – Acklam Hall, Ladbroke Grove March 1979 ‘Free All Prisoners Now’ benefit gig – Toby Mott archive
It’s official!
News of the release of the re-mastered Crass material is now available on the Southern website HERE.
The Feeding Of The Five Thousand tracks plus a heap of bonus material on CD yours for £12…
AL Puppy
Southern Studio notes below:
The Crassical Collection is finally here, and the first release is the newly remastered “The Feeding Of The Five Thousand”. After many years of being out of print, this legendary album has been been restored from the original analogue studio tapes, repackaged and bolstered by rare and unreleased tracks, and stunning new artwork from Gee Vaucher, who has lovingly created what could only be considered a real artefact. Included in this package is a 64-page booklet featuring all lyrics along with extensive liner notes from band members Penny Rimbaud and Steve Ignorant, which shed light on the making of the record. Also included is CD-sized recreation of the iconic original fold-out poster sleeve.
‘Five thousand’s a crowd (four thousand nine hundred and ninety nine more than I imagined were going to buy the record), but two’s company (I knew for certain that my Mum would want one), so it was on the plate, ready to serve, The Feeding of the Five Thousand’.
‘We were setting out as purists: hard, uncompromising and utterly bemused’
‘On one thing we were very clear, in bringing a prosecution of Criminal Blasphemy against us the authorities would have been giving us the kind of publicity which overnight would have made us a household name. They were aware of this, and so were we. It was a situation that allowed us carte blanche to say pretty much whatever we wanted without any real fear of incrimination, a situation which over the next seven years we exploited to the hilt’.
‘Easy listening? You ain’t heard nothing yet’.
First released in 1978 on Small Wonder Records, and later rereleased on the band’s own Crass Records, “The Feeding Of The Five Thousand” showed Crass as an anti-establishment and highly uncompromising act, and one that would influence countless other bands to follow. This signals the first in a series of remastered versions of each of Crass’ now legendary albums, each one including bonus tracks and brand new artwork.
Crass flyer Colombo Street Community Centre Waterloo July 1979 – Terry Smith archive.
AL Puppy • Post Author •
April 5, 2011 at 8:20 amThe site http://www.crassunofficial.com/ gives a link to 169 pages of Pete Wright’s correspondence with various people and their replies regarding the re-issue of Crass album’s on CD as ‘The Crassical Collection’.
So in case anyone was not aware of Pete’s side of the story and was unaware that the re-issue divided the Crass collective – now you can find out.
Checking on the Crass Southern forum, the material was published by a person unknown without permission and is only a partial account.
Dan
April 10, 2011 at 5:14 pmI recently posted a link to http://www.crassunofficial.com/ , on Southern’s weblog page, just so people could see the other side of the coin to Penny, Gee, & Alison’s (Southern) account of events.
My post was deleted, after a week or so!
“The Sound of Free Speech”, eh…..? 😉
luggy
April 10, 2011 at 9:16 pmTo be fair, you probably wouldn’t want the world to read your private emails. Was never too keen on Crass back in the day so haven’t bothered to read all the stuff on Anarcho-punk wikileaks. Shame that they still bear grudges against each other after all this time.
AL Puppy • Post Author •
April 10, 2011 at 9:51 pmAt the least the ex-Beatles were a bit more creative with their bitching when they fell out- McCartney wrote ‘Too Many People’ about Lennon on his Ram album http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcN_po80sKU
and then Lennon wrote ‘ How do you sleep’ about McCartney on his Imagine album. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcN_po80sKU
jock
April 11, 2011 at 10:01 amif they do air their dirty linen in public will it all be black?
i dont get all this bitchy shit,steve seems a decent guy,lot of hate still out there regarding crass,even tho they finished half a lifetime ago.oh what a shame………..
CLiNT FLiCK
June 9, 2011 at 10:58 pmHire a life some of you, cos you obviously can’t afford a whole one, alternatively, get a twelve pack down the 7/11.
Such passive bullshit, what is with some people?
Were you there?
Where are you now?
Who the fuck are you?
How have you lived?
I can’t believe that i’m reading/hearing/being subjected to the same subjective crap all these years/decades later!
Crass, decanted the whole can of worms & oh so many people missed the point & disappeared up their own existence trying to pull them apart.
Get ya’ own phuckin’ art out then, qunts!
The name of the band tells you everything you need to know about it’s detractors.
Pfffttt!
APF
…T.V.BaBiES!..(copyright control)
x
AL Puppy • Post Author •
June 10, 2011 at 7:46 am@ Clint Flick – but was it a fresh can of worms that Crass opened ?
Or did they recycle a stale can of worms – rehearsing the rhetoric of 1969, which was ancient past not recent history for the 1979 generation?
Supporting evidence- ‘We can be together’ by Jefferson Airplane.
We are all outlaws in the eyes of america
In order to survive we steal cheat lie forge fred hide and deal
We are obscene lawless hideous dangerous dirty violent and young
But we should be together
Come on all you people standing around
Our life’s too fine to let it die and
We can be together
All your private property is
Target for your enemy
And your enemy is
We
We are forces of chaos and anarchy
Everything they say we are we are
And we are very
Proud of ourselves
Up against the wall
Up against the wall fred (motherfucker)
Tear down the walls
Tear down the walls
AL Puppy • Post Author •
June 10, 2011 at 8:01 pmCome on Clint. I am getting bored waiting for a decent argument.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnTmBjk-M0c
AL Puppy • Post Author •
June 11, 2011 at 12:26 amOk, quick bit of deconstruction before bed.
Clint said :
Such passive bullshit, what is with some people?
Were you there?
Where are you now?
Who the fuck are you?
How have you lived?
I can’t believe that i’m reading/hearing/being subjected to the same subjective crap all these years/decades later!
Crass, decanted the whole can of worms & oh so many people missed the point & disappeared up their own existence trying to pull them apart.
Get ya’ own phuckin’ art out then, qunts!
The name of the band tells you everything you need to know about it’s detractors.
Which I read as saying “Crass were an important and influential group who put a lot of effort into their work. It is really annoying that they still get criticised by people who never made the same efforts and are generally negative rather than positive.”
But where does that leave the ‘myth’ of Crass? By this I mean the lazy assumption that Crass = anarcho-punk so ‘anarcho-punk’ just means ’Crass fan’ ? So you can get an academic like George McKay writing a history of ’cultural resistance since the sixties’ [in his book Senseless Acts of Beauty Fair, published in 1996] saying that Crass alone out of the punk/post-punk groups avoided recuperation and maintained their political and artistic autonomy… but when I questioned him about the statement , he admitted he was unaware of Rubella Ballet, Zounds, The Mob, The Apostles etc., of the Centro Iberico and the various post-Wapping anarchy centres.
Crass had a high enough media profile to register outside the anarcho-punk scene and so get included in such sociology as political history studies. The complex, dynamic and confusing reality – as illustrated by the sheer diversity of musics available here on KYPP – gets lost and only Crass remain and all the other voices get drowned out.
Maybe what you are hearing as ‘passive bullshit‘ and ‘the same subjective crap‘ are just some of those other voices saying different things, having points of view and perspectives different to Crass. Maybe Crass themselves were just one voice among many, one version of anarchy and punk.
Graham Burnett
June 17, 2011 at 8:02 pmThe Stripey Zebras never got recuperated either!
AL Puppy • Post Author •
June 18, 2011 at 8:04 pmWalking home at 2 am… is a classic Graham. Definitely the Stripey’s are/were unrecuperable.
Graham Burnett
June 21, 2011 at 2:17 amCheers Al – when we inevitably started to become musically competent after a few months of gigging and rehearsing we did the decent thing and split up…
Graham Burnett
June 21, 2011 at 2:21 amWe did reform for one gig in December 1981, when we played on the same bill as The Apostles, Cold War, What Is Oil? and some local Southend bands at The Spread Eagle in Southend. Theres talk of reforming for a couple of gigs some time just for the fun of it, maybe at the 12 Bar Club in Denmark Street where our old guitarist has some connections I believe…