After a live debut at a squatters' free festival (of course), Crass secured a record deal in January 1979 with Small Wonder Records to release Feeding The 5000, a 12-inch EP with an unlikely 17 tracks! In fact, this EP was actually released with only 16 tracks, as no pressing plant would agree to manufacture it because of objections to the opening track Asylum. In the end, in order to release there record, the band agreed to delete the offending article and instead replaced that track with a two-minute silence which they aptly dubbed Free Speech.
Obviously disenchanted with their brushing encounter with institutions in the real world, the group retreated to their commune and launched their own Crass label, on which the remainder of their releases appeared. Crass Records were characterized by do-it-yourself artwork, photocopied sleeves which doubled as anarchist propaganda, and a unique cataloguing system which involved a coundown to 1984, a year of clear symbolic significance because of its Orwellian origins. In fact, the group had originally planned to break up during that year, something which they did accomplish, although perhaps not exactly in the way they had originally envisioned.
Over the next three years, the band released a number of strongly political singles (Do They Owe Us A Living, Reality Asylum, Bloody Revolution, Yes Sir I Will, Nagasaki Nightmare, How Does it Feel to be the Mother of 1000 Dead?) as well as three albums, all of which performed extremely well in the indie charts. The first, Stations of the Crass came out in 1979. This was followed in 1981 by Penis Envy, in which Eve and Joy took over full vocal responsibility and embraced the feminism cause: the entire album tears, apart society's ill treatment of women.
1982 saw the release of Christ the Album, a boxed two-album set (the companion record was the live Well Forked But not dead), complete with a color booklet -- a bit upscale in comparison to their previous releases, perhaps, But no one could ever accuse Crass of selling out. Needless to say, all titles ensured that these records were rarely, if ever, stocked my mainstream record stores!
Crass's perceived sincerity to their cause and their adamant refusal to compromise earned them a solid following (although the music itself certainly didn't hurt). But rather unfortunately, the ultimate demise of Crass -- both the band and the label -- came about as an indirect result of the group's own philosophy and ideology: by wanting to sell their products at rock-bottom prices and thus making their merchandise more accessible to everyone, the commune had overlooked the requirement to charge VAT (Value Added Tax, just like our own beloved GST here at home!)...and found themselves saddled with a huge bill that they couldn't possibly repay. Capitalism triumphed over communism once again.
