12. Jeffrey Lewis12 Crass Songs
Crass were maybe a bit too late for me or maybe John Peel didn’t play it, because that was the only place I ever heard things, so I was aware of them and I remember seeing the records in the shops but never really listened to them. And then it was by chance that I heard this record, because Jeffrey Lewis is on Rough Trade and I was in the Rough Trade office, and it was being played downstairs. I went down and asked ‘what’s this?’ We mentioned Bill Callahan earlier, and Jeffrey Lewis is another modern lyricist who’s really great, but of course on this record none of the words are his, they are cover versions of songs by the group Crass. But with all the songs that are on here, I’ve never even heard the originals so I don’t know what the relationship is like. My favourite is ‘I Ain’t Thick, It’s Just A Trick’, but unfortunately I didn’t get to play in on the Sunday Service because it’s got swearwords in it, but I have occasionally when I’ve been DJing if it’s the right kind of place. It’s great that song. There’s something about the way he… I guess it’s a little bit similar to what we were talking about with Stallion and the Pink Floyd thing, it’s taking something and… I never would have thought of listening to Crass, I had an idea of what they were and what they were about, and thought they were crusties and squat punks and that wasn’t what I wanted in my life, but the way he frames those lyrics in more accessible, slightly folky arrangements, really throws them into relief. In our current political predicament those words from 40 years ago really ring true again and you hear them in a different way – the art of the cover version is to bring the song alive in a different way.
