After the last time I had to sell my records, and so definitively ended my record-collecting days, I hung on to a few…for reasons I don’t recall precisely enough. One is a 45-inch single by Crass; it’s the “Big A, Little A” single. There were no videos made back then, but here’s one fan’s collage:

I remember getting “Feeding of the 5000” as my first Crass record. It was a 12-inch, and so I played it at 33 rpm, not realizing that it was an EP. There were so many tracks on it that it was easy to think it an LP. It grabbed me right away, from the very first track:

I am no feeble Christ. Not me. He hangs in glib delight upon his cross, above my body. … You sigh alone in your cock fear. You lie alone in your cunt fear. You cry alone in your woman fear. You die alone in your man fear. Alone Jesu, alone. In your cock fear, cunt fear, woman fear, man fear, alone in your fear, alone in your fear. Your fear. Your fear. Warfare. Warfare. Jesus died for his own sins, not mine.

It took me two weeks to realize that it was supposed to be played faster, at 45 rpm! In subsequent years, I played it intermittently at 45 and 33, and it sounded right either way.