‘Our Wedding’: Crass’ subversive prank on the teen romance industry
From the moment they dropped their 1979 debut album, The Feeding of the 5000, Essex’s Crass established a new and seriously informed intellectual and political rigour within the punk scene, truly living the anarchism they espoused in their tatty hardcore and ultra-DIY shows in and around London. Inspired by the political waves made by The Clash, band founders Steve Ignorant and Penny Rimbaud moved away from their avant-garde performances but retained the art collective subversion that lay underneath Crass’ fierce multimedia attack on the class forces of oppression and unshakeable advocacy for direct action.
For 1981’s Penis Envy, Ignorant takes a back seat and is credited ‘CRASS Member not on this recording’ on the third LP’s notes for singers Eve Libertine and Joy De Vivre to handle vocal duties, focusing on feminist critique and an excoriating dissection against patriarchal repression. Among bruising assaults against objectification and rape culture, such as the album’s opener ‘Bata Motel’ and ‘What the Fuck’, it’s the originally unlisted ‘secret’ track ‘Our Wedding’ that still stands as Crass‘ most subversive moment.
Originally conceived as a parody of Connie Francis’ ‘Lipstick on Your Collar’, Crass deliberately wrote a saccharine and cloyingly patronising novelty song ostensibly celebrating every little girl’s future ‘special day’, lurking behind its corny MOR lying an acerbic lyrical bite expressing the unhealthy trappings of the institute of marriage: “Never look at anyone/Anyone but me/Never look at anyone/I must be all you see.” Keen to plant their pop sting among the era’s many young romance publications, Crass opted for the girls’ magazine Loving as the target of their sly satirical skirmish.
Calling Loving‘s IPC office as the backronymed Creative Recordings and Sound Services, the band offered their single as a free-flexi disc for an upcoming bridal issue special. They jumped at the chance, offering the songs as a freebie available to those who wrote in, advertising ‘Our Wedding’ as “your wedding day just that bit extra special…. Joy De Vivre has captured all the happiness and romance of that all-important big day—your wedding—so make sure you send off your copy in time for the grand occasion—it’s a must for all true romantics.”
“They’d bought it hook, line and stinker, but the lyrics were frightful, banal shit about the social fantasy of marriage, you know, things like never looking at other girls or guys once you’ve fallen for it,” Rimbaud told Vice in 2005. “It was total rubbish, but they happily gave it away with their magazine. Now, what kind of loving is that?” Allegedly, an associate of the band who worked on Fleet Street actively let slip the ruse with Crass’ blessing, the tabloid Daily Star splashing the exposé with the headline “Band of Hate’s Loving Message”, triggering much mirth within the band.
Naturally, Loving was not happy, and its editor, Pam Lyons, told NME, “It was just a pathetic ploy by Crass to get publicity.” She wasn’t wrong, but that was the point. Planting a schmaltzy romance song with such uncomfortably sinister lyrics, it looked right at home with the rest of the idealised rigid shaping of young girls’ minds, keenly propagating the idea that marriage was a woman’s only aspiration and purpose. “I think there were a few sackings at Loving magazine,” Rimbaud quipped wryly.
While Crass’ prank had technically broken no laws, Penis Envy was subject to a heavy-handed and draconian crackdown by the Greater Manchester Police headed by chief constable James Anderton, seizing all copies and other Crass releases from Eastern Bloc record shop and charged under the Obscene Publications Act. Winning on appeal except for ‘Bata Motel’s lyrics, the financial drain of the legal proceedings accelerated Crass’ demise shortly after.
A publishing trick which stands as one of Crass’ most memorable stunts amid an output filled with insurrectionary art-punk activism, a leaflet handed out around the time of ‘Our Wedding’s patriarchal prank gave an insight into their joke’s polemical underpinning: “What an insult this is, do they really take women as such empty-headed fools? Do they really take men for such malicious lords of our bodies? These obscene romance magazines would have us think so.”
Concluding, “They’re glueing her together for the happiest day of her life or reminding her that she has that memory contained in her waning mind or stifled in her glossy albums.”
