The September 1987 issue of Maximum Rock And Roll featured a two page story on the New Jersey straight-edge band Crucial Youth. This spawned a small, but nonetheless hilarious controversy on the topic of what it really meant to be straight. The band claimed that in addition to refraining from the usual smoking, drinking, drugs and promiscuous sex, true straight edgers never used curse words or watched R rated movies and always ate a balanced diet and rewound their video tapes. Since the band appeared to be serious the next few issues were bombarded with letters of praise for the moral values of the band as well as hate mail for what seemed to be an extremely elitist attitude. Turns out it was all a joke (a rather funny one if you ask me).
If there was ever a clue that Crucial Youth has a strong sense of humor its this EP. "Christmas Time (For The Skins)" is a clever re-working of the Iron Cross song turned Agnostic Front anthem "Crucified". In addition to the two holiday songs there's a cover of Jonathan Richman's "I'm Straight" on the b-side. The hilarious cover artwork depicts edgers enjoying mugs of [non-alcoholic] egg-nog and avoiding encounters under the mistletoe. A punk is shown drinking a beer and dumping out a stocking full of coal.
1988 on Faith Records (on green vinyl)
CRUCIAL YOUTH - SANTA CLAUS IS COMING (AND YOU'RE ON HIS LIST)
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