March 04, 2008

Jeffrey Lewis -- FREE INSTORE

Jeffrey Lewis Free In-store Performance
Thursday, March 6th, 7:00pm
(call for guest list)

Greenwich Village is a historic Rock and Roll landscape, especially Rock and Roll with a Folk soul; think Dylan, Baez, Peter, Paul & Mary, Donavon, and too many others to mention, but you should be getting the idea. Well, somewhere between the heyday and the half-price historical tours, a lot of the artists working in the Village found not only amplification, but punk rock and an anti-music biz DIY esthetic, and the anti-folk scene was born... still acoustic, still literate, yet much less idealistic and literary - but loaded with passion, politics, and perspiration. Of those bringing this new sound from the Village to the streets, Jeffrey Lewis and the Moldy Peaches, who Mr. Lewis has and worked and toured with, are the best known. Jeffrey's newest CD is titled 12 Crass Songs, and rather than write a dozen really rude tunes, Jeffrey dug into his record collection and came up with the kings of 80s anarcho/peace punk bands, which he then filtered through his system and claimed as his own. The songs are still political and still intense, but with a new view and a few updates, they are undeniably Greenwich Village not Leeds.

Jeffrey is playing March 4th & 5th with the Mountain Goats at the Troubadour and right after his fingerprints in-store with Mount Eerie at "Irvine U" (I'm guessing it's somewhere on the campus?)

Here's some recent press about 12 Crass Songs:

"Jeffrey Lewis' talents appear without end... (on 12 Crass Songs he) magically makes the anarcho-rockers' anti-establishment savagery his own, by wrapping their barbed sentiments in his trademark mottled tea-towel warmth, autumnal aura and breathless, barren drawl"
     - NME

"(Jeffrey Lewis) offers this quite brilliant reconfiguration of music long since erroneously dismissed as no-mark primitivism. Lewis' jaunty bijour chamber-pop arrangements demonstrate the Crass essentially dealt in folk songs"
     - Mojo

"Jeffrey Lewis is possibly the only musician on the planet to devote a whole album to the oeuvre of... Crass. It's no mean feat to transform such abrasive harangues into lush, tuneful folk... without diffusing their righteous anger"
     - The Guardian

"What could be sacrilege is actually a small epiphany: the gorgeous instrumentation weaving acoustic guitar, gentle piano - proves a deft counterpoint to the lyrical rage. The Man probably said it would never work but The Man was wrong"
     - Uncut

Check out a couple of songs here (I recommend "Big A Little a")

Click here to sample/buy 12 Crass Songs