Turning punk anarchy into playful tunes
AUSTIN, Texas - Jeffrey Lewis, an underground comic book artist and anti-folk singer-songwriter, recently released "12 Crass Songs" - pretty, playful versions of radical socio-political screeds originally spewed by '70s punk anarchists Crass. Lewis performed some of the songs at the South by Southwest festival last week and sat down to chat about super heroes, surprising covers, and angry fans. He opens for the Cribs tonight at the Paradise.
Q: Which came first: comic books or music?
A: I didn't start doing music until I went to college, but I was always drawing. We never had a television in the house, and comics and books in general were my main form of entertainment. Somebody just pointed out to me that most of the comics all took place in Manhat tan, where I grew up: Daredevil was in Hell's Kitchen and Doctor Strange was in Greenwich Village and Avenger's mansion was on Fifth Avenue. At SUNY Purchase, I was trapped with a bunch of bored creative types on a low-budget campus with nothing to do, and a lot of people who played at open mikes together - Regina Spektor, Dan Deacon, Langhorne Slim - went on to be musically successful in recent years.
Q: Why did you want to record an album of songs by Crass?
A: I love the idea of doing surprising covers and covers that people wouldn't even think are possible. We used to do "The Murder Mystery" by the Velvet Underground, which has a gazillion words all sung at once. Crass just seemed up for grabs. I couldn't believe someone hadn't done it already.
Q: You took significant liberties, altering both the lyrics and song structures. Did you need to get permission, or at least a blessing, from the Crass camp?A: Legally, I could have done it without their permission, but with a band that has so much integrity, you just don't. They've all been very positive and supportive of the project, and they like the fact that the songs have been passed down in this new way instead of just a straight cover.
Q: I'm guessing you must be sympathetic to Crass' radical politics.A: I don't agree with 100 percent of what Crass says. Maybe 80 percent. My parents are both socialists and my grandparents were Jewish Brooklyn communists. Activism is a given in my family, and I do so much less than generations past, and I always have this sense of guilt. A huge amount of people have never heard of Crass, and here is an opportunity to get a few thousand more people into the band and into those ideas.
Q: Have you heard from Crass' fans?
A: I haven't heard personally, although there's been a lot of trashing of the project on punk message boards and in various reviews. Crass is so important to its fans that anyone messing with it runs the risk of angering people to whom Crass means the world. As a Crass fan myself, I don't know if I might not think it was a stupid thing if somebody else did it.
