Crass

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them down,” squealed NME in delight.“Crass leave Loving at the altar.” Marriage, and even monogamy, were not sacred cows in communes. Everything was up for question and everything was up for grabs but if that was the reality in the alternative society, ‘straight’ society was plumbing new depths in the exploitation of teenage angst and loneliness. Cosmopolitan magazine may have started in an age of wild and often brave experimentation, but it also opened up a space eagerly filled by those who sought not to explore but to exploit.There was an abundance of teenage magazines aimed at cashing in on the problems of being a teenager in love, and selling false dreams of a ‘happy ever after’ fairytale. Loving was one such magazine. NME reported:“Flicking past ‘Dreamy Wedding dresses And Magical Make-Up’, past ‘How Revealing Is Your Underwear – What Does Your Choice Tell About Your Character?’ . . . your eyes might have alighted at last on Loving’s ‘fabulous record offer’ – a free seven inch flexi called ‘Our Wedding,’ sung ‘for you’ by one Joy De Vivre.” As part of the recording process for their new album Penis Envy, Crass had recorded a jokey version of Eve singing the old American 50s song ‘Lipstick On Your Collar’, renaming it ‘Lipstick On Your Penis’. Penny Rimbaud: “It’s such a shame we never kept outtakes because Eve’s performance of it was absolutely killing. A fabulous performance. We were rocking with laughter – we must have done about eight takes . . . none of them we could use because every time we were just cracking up.” Eventually the band decided to ditch the idea, calculating that the inevitable lawsuit wasn’t worth the trouble for what was little more than a schoolboy joke. But having got this far, with a painstakingly arranged backing track, the band didn’t want to waste what they’d got. Penny Rimbaud:“We thought let’s see if what we can’t salvage it. So Phil & Joy offered to go off and write a banal lyric, still with the idea of it just being the final track on Penis Envy. They came back with this infantile piece of crap, a nice little commentary on the banality of weddings and the social bullshit that surrounds them. By then Eve was incapacitated to perform so Joy did it.Very fortuitously because Joy’s got this very sweet girly voice, so it suited very well. As we were recording it, I

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