CRASS BY NAME

I have done it. I have collected all six of the marvellously controversial boxed sets in the 'Crassical Collection' by a band who, despite the fact that a lot of their output was a Godawful noise, still remain one of whom I think with fondness.

The other night I listened to their final record Ten Notes on a Summer's Day for the first time, and found myself - much to my surprise - enjoying it massively.



Corinna, it has to be said, hated it. She is not a fan of ineptly played atonal noise, but I found myself liking it a hell of a lot more than I thought that I would. The accepted wisdom about the six Crass albums is that:

FEEDING OF THE 5,000 is a badly recorded Tourette's masterpiece
STATIONS OF THE CRASS is the better recorded collection of their most diverse songs
PENIS ENVY is their surprisingly musical feminist album

but that from there they go downhill.

CHRIST THE ALBUM is a surprisingly unsatisfactory album in which the music is overshadowed by the packaging
YES SIR I WILL is basically unlistenable except for the 3 minute piano song that sounds like Genesis
and that
TEN NOTES ON A SUMMER'S DAY is even worse.

But its not so. I basically agree with the judgements on the first five albums, but TEN NOTES is surprisingly touching. It has a warmth and humanity that is usually missing from avant-noise experimentation. John Lennon himself said that "Avant Garde is French for Bullshit", but he never heard TEN NOTES.

My darling wife is right. It is a dreadful row, but it is a brave and heartfelt dreadful row, that I shall probably be listening to more than any other of the final three of the band's reissued albums.

After all, CRASS were probably more influential upon the way my adult life has turned out than any of the bands that I usually listen to, or indeed that I write about every day. To Penny, Steve, Eve, Gee, Pete, Phil, Joy and Andy (Andy being the one I knew best, and I hardly knew him at all)... Thank you guys. You have done more for me, and for all the arcane things to which I have dedicated my life, than you will ever know.

Slainte