Annie Anxiety – Corpus Christi / ONU Sound Records – 1984

Posted on June 3, 2008July 17, 2008 by Penguin

Closet Love / Third Gear / Turkey Girl / Burnt Offerings

To Know Evil / Sad Shadows / Viet Not Mine, El Salvador Yours / Waiting For The Fun

Annie Anxiety originally part of New York punk band The Asexuals comes over to England for a two week break in 1980 and stays for over ten years.

During her time in England she started seeing Steve Ignorant and the rest of Crass regularly and begun to perform with Crass at a heap of gigs around the country. Crass Records released the ‘Barbed Wire Halo’ EP in 1981, and followed it up in 1984 with this debut LP on Corpus Christie (Crass Records sister label) jointly payed for by Adrian Sherwood’s ONU Sound Records.

This record is liberally sprinkled with various members of both camps; in the Crass camp we have Penny Rimbaud, Eve Libertine, Paul Ellis, G Sus, Jaimez and Pete Wright. Slogging it out for ONU the members were; Prisioner, Bonjo I, Martin Federix, Kishi (Adrian’s then wife) and Doug Vasey. In the middle of both camps Derek Birkett from Flux, and later head honcho of One Little Indian Records. All engineered by John Loder, produced by Adrian Sherwood and recorded at Southern Studios in the middle of 1983.

Picture above from Andy T’s ‘Weary Of The Flesh’ 7″ on Crass Records showing Steve Iggs, Phil Free, and Annie Anxiety amongst the blood and guts.

15 comments

John Eden
June 3, 2008 at 2:42 pm

Ah that’s interesting – didn’t know there was an overt link between Crass and On-U that early on – I knew that Flux’s “Uncarved Block” was produced by Adrian Sherwood, but that was later…

Will give this a listen later!
Jaimez
June 3, 2008 at 4:28 pm

I think I would have been more in the Crass camp than the On-U sound one. I worked with Annie on some very early versions of some of the tracks on this album. At the time I had left the band “Toxic,” (on Bullshit Detector, vol. 2) members of which went on to become “No Defences.”
Graham Burnett
June 3, 2008 at 4:40 pm

I always found that picture from the Andy T record really disturbing (which I guess it was meant to be, but so many other ‘shock horror’ graphics from punk records were actually just ho hum…)

Whatever became of No Defences? Saw them a couple of times and used to have a demo of Igs’ follow up band Bold As Love, I always thought they were really interesting, sort of anarcho-prog rather than anarcho-punk. It would be a treat to see their aborted album for Crass Records uploaded here!
Penguin • Post Author •
June 3, 2008 at 4:49 pm

Amended Jaimez, soz…
Graham Burnett
June 3, 2008 at 7:24 pm

I once bumped into Annie Anxiety in the Assembly Rooms near Kentish Town Station.

A few weeks later I saw Penny Rimbaud and mentioned this to him, he replied, “Well, if you must go drinking in Kentish Town you’ve only got yourself to blame!”
johng
June 4, 2008 at 9:48 am

never got to see annie anxiety perform a full set,i think she lasted less than ten minutes at a gig supporting crass,poisons and zounds here in manchester,it looked like from where i was stood near the side at of the stage like some ‘big man’ made a grab or more like grope for her and she threw down the mic and ran off the stage in tears,the start of a truelly awful night of violence,josef porter writes about it on his site in part ten,which i think youve posted links to on here previousley.
spent many nights in a basement flat in islington painted all black with the lights out listening to this,still sounds great.
John Eden
June 4, 2008 at 11:37 am

Now I come to think of it I saw her live in the 90s as part of an On-U night at the Town and Country Club. She was ace. She also did vocals for one of Coil’s tunes on their ‘Loves Secret Domain’ album:

“John Balance: But we’ve known Annie since Crass days… It was just interesting for us to use a female vocalist. We told her the ideas, about this shell-shocked Nicaraguan woman or something and she played off that, improvising in the studio.”
Chris
June 4, 2008 at 12:47 pm

It’s weird – and unfortunate – that she has kind of been ‘written out’ of the history of electronic/industrial music when she was producing music that basically sounded very similar to what so many supposedly ‘seminal’ acts such as NWW, Coil etc did a good few years later.

I always thought her performances were very powerful the times I saw her supporting Crass, and very admirable considering the torrent of beer, gob and V-signs I saw her face.
Val
June 4, 2008 at 6:32 pm

Annie is still making good music – see her myspace page – Little Annie. She had one of her songs used for a Levi’s advert last year.
Trunt
June 6, 2008 at 11:57 am

I seen Annie A supporting Crass at Cleator Moor 1980, Where some of the local punks/Skins thought it still cool! to gob on bands, (not that it was ever cool) poor Annie at the end of her set was covered in a jacket of phlem, though I must say she stood her ground. I suppose looking back I had never heard anything like Annie’s screams and wails, and wanted more to jump around to Crass. To tell the truth the whole gig was an eye opener for a fresh faced 16 year old. Hasn’t Gordon Wilkins released something by Annie recently.
johng
May 9, 2012 at 12:40 pm

lost all my music on my old pc,so looking for stuff to put back,this being one of them.
tried to find ‘soul possesion’ but impossible,lots of ‘file removed due to…..’
shame really wanted that one,anyone got a working link plz?
Penguin • Post Author •
May 9, 2012 at 1:10 pm

Both these links for this LP work fine John.
dan i
May 10, 2012 at 10:58 pm

Seen Annie perform at various anarcho and On-U gigs over the years. Always admired her bottle and increasingly grew to like her music. The Bless Those 10″ on On-U Sound is especially awesome. Very pleased she is still making varied and challenging music today.
Marcus Carcass
June 12, 2012 at 11:30 pm

I saw Annie support Marc Almond last year (or maybe the year before) in Edinburgh, it was kind of torch singing stuff she was doing with accompaniment on piano and accordion from Baby Dee, a transexual former tree surgeon – no really (not that it matters anyway).

I must say that I wasn’t too impressed with the material, particularly a version of Tina Turners “Private Dancer” but her voice was awesome.
David Jones
June 26, 2012 at 12:55 pm

gee up, music lovers seen annie play at the 100 club with crass she stood firm and has this amazing glare when she locks eyes on you whilst preforming is slightly unnerving as her voice is. man her artwork is phenominal plus her growing catalouge of music is EXCITINGLY fresh as allways. Cant beat the JACKOMO lp bongonyhabinghi’s bongo sounds on the lp works really well love it. keep on moving annie come and play in brighton some time, you will be a crowd puller me knows it. love and rockets. david jones.