Now that the Crassical Collection has released The Feeding of the Five Thousand on CD, there have been a lot of questions about when the rest of the CDs will be released, what about vinyl etc etc. So I thought I’d share our current “strategy” with you. Although “strategy” seems like a word which is far too organised to apply to us.
Crassical Collection future releases
These release dates are for the UK only. Other countries are being confirmed by our distributors now. Hopefully it will all get synchronised as we go on!
- The Feeding of The Five Thousand CD – August 2010
- Stations of the Crass CD – October 2010
- Penis Envy CD – November 2010
- Christ the Album CD – February 2011
- Yes Sir, I Will CD – March 2011
- Ten Notes on a Summer’s Day CD – April 2011
We do not plan to do the Crassical Collection series on vinyl. These editions are intended as updates to the 1990 versions of the CDs, which were mastered using new technology and were packaged without much imagination or love into plastic jewel cases. We felt we could do much better and so here they are. As far as vinyl goes… well there’s not much improving on those originals, is there?
Some of you have noticed that there is part of a Crass symbol on the front of Feeding. It’s actually a photograph of an original bass drum head, with the logo stencilled onto it. When you put all six of the new CD covers together, you will see the whole symbol.
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Crass Vinyl
Crass VinylThe following albums will be repressed from new DMM metalwork created from the original vinyl master tapes, in the original poster sleeves (well, nearly original… we took the “pay no more than” off about 10 years ago) with a download card (which entitles you to mp3 versions of the vinyl masters). These should be available from late September.
- The Feeding of the Five Thousand
- Stations of the Crass
- Penis Envy
- Christ the Album
What’s missing is Yes Sir I Will – turns out our old US distributor still had a few hundred of the last pressing in their warehouse so we’re getting those back and will sell them first. And Ten Notes… we haven’t decided if we should make vinyl of that again or not. As Penny recently said, it “was never popular with anyone but myself”.
Downloads
The original 1990 CD masters have been available from early 2009 as MP3 downloads from Southern (where you can also get them as full-audio flac files), Amazon, iTunes, Boomkat… and a few others.
We also plan to make the Crassical Collection available as downloads at some point soon, we are just debating what to do about the artwork.
Other Bits
We would also like to do an expanded version of Best Before 1984… one which collects all of the missing bits that haven’t been available before, like Merry Crassmas, Whodunnit, and a few other dog-ends. And we’d like to get all the Bullshit Detectors together into one set. And maybe all the singles by other bands…. oh, who knows… we’d like to do it all but finding the time and the money is another thing!
Exitstencil
Very important … we are helping Gee and Penny relaunch Exitstencil, which is something that existed before Crass, and has occasionally raised its head since. Exitstencil will be an imprint for projects by Gee and Penny and various collaborators. As well as new books, CDs and films, we’ll be reissuing a few things too… Acts Of Love, which was the first post-Crass project that Penny, Eve Libertine and Gee did. And Exit, the mythical pre-Crass performance art/band that Gee, Penny and John Loder worked together on. And Reality Asylum, which Penny was typing out many years ago when a young lad called Steve (later: Ignorant) walked up the path.
I think that covers it, or at least should answer most of the questions.
Thanks.
