Penny Rimbaud
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Jeremy John Ratter (born 8 June 1943, Northwood, Middlesex, England), better known under his pseudonym of Penny Rimbaud, is a drummer, writer, poet, former member of performance art group EXIT and co-founder of the anarchist punk band Crass with Steve Ignorant in 1977.
Rimbaud (so named as a tribute to poet Arthur Rimbaud) set up the anarchist/pacifist Dial House community in 1967 with Gee Vaucher, and, together with his friend Phil Russell (aka Wally Hope), helped to instigate the free festival movement at Windsor and later Stonehenge during the early 1970s. As documented in Rimbaud's essay Last of the Hippies [1] (http://www.southern.com/southern/label/CRC/text/09438.html) and his autobiography Shibboleth, Russell was arrested and incarcerated in a mental institution after having been found in possession of a small amount of LSD. He was later released, but appeared to have been seriously mentally damaged by his experiences, especially the side effects of prescription drugs that he had been administered, and subsequently committed suicide. Rimbaud has claimed that it was his anger over unanswered questions surrounding his friend's death that fueled and inspired him to form Crass.
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Although Crass disbanded in 1984, Rimbaud continued to write and perform both as a solo artist and as a part of the Crass Collective alongside other ex members of the band as well as other artists and musicians. His works include the originally self-published Reality Asylum [2] (http://www.southern.com/southern/label/CRC/09400.html), a vitriolic attack on the myths behind Christianity which has appeared as a 2 minute track on Crass' 1978 debut album The Feeding of the 5000 (although initially the track was removed due to workers at the Irish pressing plant where the record was manufactured threatening to strike due to its allegedly 'blasphemous' content), as a longer single [3] (http://www.southern.com/southern/label/CRC/09401.html) and as a 45 minute spoken word monologue; Rocky Eyed, an extended poem attacking then prime minister Margaret Thatcher and her government following the 1982 Falklands War which was recorded as the Crass album Yes Sir, I Will [4] (http://www.southern.com/southern/label/CRC/07010a.html); The Death of Imagination (a 'musical drama in 4 parts'); The Diamond Signature (published by AK Press) and Oh America, a response to the events of September 11 2001 and America's subsequent War on Terror which includes the line Give us justice which is not the searing spite of revenge, peace which is not the product of war nor dependent upon it [5] (http://www.liberation-mag.org.uk/humanrights.htm).
Since 2003 he has worked as part of Crass Agenda, performing live and releasing material including Savage Utopia, a collaboration with Coldcut's Matt Black and other jazz musicians, and How?, a reworking of Allen Ginsberg's beat poem Howl.
External links
- Rimbaud's website (http://www.southern.com/southern/band/PENNY/)
- Interview with Penny Rimbaud (http://www.furious.com/perfect/pennyrimbaud.html)
- The Pig's Head Controversy (http://airy.phy.ulaval.ca/~pystl/Crass/Pighead.htm)
- Extract from Fierce dancing by C.J.Stone, Rimbaud talking about Wally Hope (http://www.cjstone.co.uk/pgs/fd05ch6.htm)