Part of an irregular series of bite-sized posts about 7″ singles I own – shameless nostalgia from the days of vinyl. (Search ‘Backtracking’ to collect the set!)
CRASS – Reality Asylum / Shaved Women” (CRASS1, 7″, 1979)
“There are no words for my contempt” is a very ironic line in the context of Eve Libertine’s venomous rant entitled Reality Asylum.
She hardly comes across as a woman lost for words. The track is an uncompromising tirade of venom which she justifies in the sleeve note dated 28/5/79: ” I need to exorcise myself of these things which have bound me in that powerful stranglehold of reverence for so long …… Can I really believe in this God of Masculinity, first in a long line of hideous male structures, (the church, the crown, the state, the family), and where do I stand in this order of power?”
Against a white noise backing, she accuses Jesus of (among other things) arrogance, violence, rape, self-righteousness, cowardice , warmongering and genocide.
It has to be said that she brings plenty of her own baggage to this topic. Dumping ALL the blame on Jesus strikes me as a bit harsh as he isn’t the misogynistic monster she portrays him as. She makes the mistake of branding him as guilty because so much oppression and so many atrocities have been carried out in his name. Her target is really religious (and all other) institutions but she seems to take on JC on the basis that the buck must stop somewhere. In the end she borrows a line from Patti Smith’s Gloria: “Jesus died for his own sins not mine”.
It’s po-faced and extreme but I find the piece riveting because it is so fierce and fearless. There is something thrilling about hearing such articulate and unbridled rage, especially when levelled at a figure who is normally considered so untouchable.The relentless catalogue of profanities are delivered as vengeful anarcha-feminist poetry.
The track, originally called simply Asylum, was meant to be on their debut album for Small Wonder Records – The Feeding of The 5000. Not surprisingly, the blasphemous content provoked a strong reaction.
Workers at the Irish pressing plant contracted to manufacture the record refused to handle it if it included this track. The album was eventually released without Asylum and was replaced by two minutes of silence, pointedly retitled “The Sound of Free Speech”.
The censorship prompted Crass to set up their own record label in order to retain full editorial control over their material. A reissue subtitled The Second Sitting released on Crass records in 1980 restored the missing track.
The Reality Asylum/Shaved Women single became the inaugural release for their label at an affordable price. (pay no more than 45 p).
It features an extended version of the track, now called Reality Asylum, which had been recorded live at Southern Studios Ink in London on 22nd April 1979. The menacing sounding drone backing can largely be attributed to Penny Rimbaud on “radio/tape”; others on the track are Gem Stone (backing voice), N.A.Palmer (guitar) and Pete Wright (bass).
After the single came out, police from Scotland Yard began raiding record stores and confiscating the record on the trumped up charge of “criminal blasphemy”. In a further measure to show the establishment were not amused, published music charts showed a blank space where the name of the track should have been .
In the unlikely event that Crass’ loathing for religion in general and Christ in particular was in doubt, the single’s artwork makes their position plain, The sleeve folds out to a poster sized black and white print showing Christ on the cross. Below him stands a mean looking young man holding a rifle, a wooden church in ruins, a young girl in a white gown displaying the symbol of the stigmata and on the ground lie dead bodies. The artwork is listed as being by G.Design/Production by Crass at Exitstencil Press.
The B-side (Shaved Women) is a more traditional punk song, also by Eve Libertine, but is an equally outspoken polemic directed at Jewish women collaborating with the Nazis and with more in your face lyrics: “shaved women /collaborators/ shaved women / are they traitors / dead bodies all around” followed by the repeated chant of the words ” screaming babies” and the clicking sound of trains on tracks (on the way to concentration camps?).
Subtlety was not a strong point of the band and I tend to agree with critic Dorian Lynskey who, in his book about protest songs (33 Revolutions) wrote that “Crass’ influence was not primarily musical”. What was more important about this Anarchist collective was that their uncompromisingly independent stance paved the way for countless other DIY punk and indie bands.
Needless to say, few of these have released anything as aggressively counter-cultural as Reality Asylum.
Related links:
Penny Rimbaud of Crass: ‘I try to expose myself as nakedly as I can’ (Guardian interview November 2010)
KFTH – Crass page
