Penny Rimbaud Q&A: Tales of the life and times of Small Wonder
As part of the Small Wonder exhibition and Punk Waltham Forest programme, Penny Rimbaud will be heading to Walthamstow from Dial House in Epping for a question-and-answer session about the label that unleashed Crass onto the unsuspecting public.
Penny Lapsang Rimbaud, poet, writer, philosopher, painter, and musician, co-founded the anarchist punk band CRASS with Steve Ignorant in 1977.
“Crass took the idealism of punk seriously, breathing life back into the then moribund peace and anarchist movements. They birthed a huge underground network of do-it-yourself activism, fanzines, record labels, activist action groups, and concert halls“.
Their debut, The Feeding of the Five Thousand, was released by Small Wonder in late 1978. The band were forced to remove the track ‘Asylum’ after pressing plants refused to manufacture the EP and threats of prosecution and a visit from the vice squad followed.
The Small Wonder exhibition itself closes on Sunday the 25th of September. Visit our Facebook page for more updates.
INFORMATION:
Location: The Small Wonder Record exhibition, Unit 3, Central Parade, Hoe Street, E17 4RT Walthamstow – It’s opposite Grillstock which is located in the new ‘Scene’ development on Hoe Street at the top of the market.
When: Friday 23rd September @ 18:30
Tickets: £4 (+£1 booking fee) from Ticketweb or buy then from the exhibition without the booking fee.
This will sell out though so if you want to come I’d advise buying in advance.
Here’s ‘White Punks On Hope’ from Stations of the Crass which questions Rock Against Racism and was originally supposed to come out on Small Wonder.
They said that we were trash,
Well the name is Crass, not Clash.
They can stuff their punk credentials
Cause it’s them that take the cash.
They won’t change nothing with their fashionable talk,
All their RAR badges and their protest walk,
Thousands of white men standing in a park,
Objecting to racism’s like a candle in the dark.”
and ‘Banned from the Roxy’ from the Small Wonder EP ‘Feeding of the 500’.
“Banned from the Roxy… O.K.
I never much liked playing there anyway.
They said they only wanted well behaved boys,
Do they think guitars and microphones are just fucking toys?”