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kids and for a while we had a van with the logo painted on it – cos that’s what you did. Then someone spray-painted the logo on the public toilets down on the beach, and my mum was horrified!” Joy:“They’ll think you’ve done it!” Phil: “I used to shave my head for reasons that are fairly apparent [baldness] because there wasn’t a great deal I could do. I remember when the old man died, my mum asking me if I could grow my hair for the funeral. So there you are, you’ve got five days to get your hair going!” Mick Duffield: “As an atheist, and seeing organised religion as being an integral part of the con trick of the establishment, ‘Reality Asylum’ was a great challenge to Christian hypocrisy. I thought it was great.” Ironically, in all this, Crass still seem to have an invisible but eminently apparent vein of spirituality running through their output and attitudes. “I think it’s just humanitarian,” says Eve.“Possibly Jesus was a great guy, a lot of what he preaches about is great, as are virtually all the prophets. Looking beyond the materialistic way of life, being decent to other people.You could say that that’s Christian, but it goes beyond that: the sexuality, the crucifixion, sin . . . I don’t think you have to bring in religion, I think you can just be a human being and relate to other human beings.” ‘Shaved Women’ on the flipside, was an Annie Anxiety poem set to music, the main driving force of which was the sound of trains on a track, meant to signify the cattle trucks on their way to Auschwitz.The opening scream from Eve Libertine on vocals:“Shaved Women collaboratoooooooooors!” was ugly in a never heard, almost beautiful way.You could call that a feminist statement in itself, it was certainly a liberating moment. Eve simply sounded like a bag lady on speed having the mother of all tantrums and hurtling towards the sanatorium. It required a remarkable lack of vanity and artistic honesty, given that women singers usually consider their voices second only to their looks when it comes to vanity. With its proud instruction ‘Pay No More Than 45p’ on the sleeve, Crass proved to any doubters that the cap on the pricing of the Five Thousand record was no publicity stunt.This time it really was for real. It
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