CRASS WASN'T JUST A BAND. It was a social, political and artistic movement.

And it scared the crap out of people.

The British anarcho-pacifist collective existed from 1977 to 1984, rallying against Thatcherites and celebrity punks, nuclear war and every -ism known to man. Their records were DIY affairs, from the rough-hewn music, which ranged from spooky sound collage to three-chord rants, to the stencil-heavy cut-and-paste graphics that adorned the LP covers and the booklets and posters that were stuffed within the sleeves.

Crass was a movement born of the times, when punk and conservatism smashed through the U.K. like cars in a demolition derby. And the group didn't write songs so much as make public service announcements with guitars.

So it seemed like an odd marriage when New York City indie-folk singer and comic-book artist Jeffrey Lewis proposed "12 Crass Songs" (Rough Trade), a CD of covers performed without the demonstrative rage — or informed by the cultural context — that infused the originals with meaning.

But Lewis — who along with his band, The Jitters, is the opening act at the Black Cat on Wednesday — manages to take these Crass anti-anthems and filter them through his own very specific aesthetic, which includes run-on sentences delivered in a vocal drone set atop clattering indie-folk music.

And it works, not least as an art project that shines a riot-police spotlight on the whirlwind that was Crass.

While Lewis' musical approach couldn't be more removed from that of his inspiration, he makes the whole "12 Crass Songs" package — including his comic-book liner notes explaining his discovery of and ongoing fandom for the band — into a similar sort of immersive, thematic experience that helped define some of Crass' most focused works, such as the "Christ: The Album" box set.

Express spoke to Lewis about how he came to visit so many stations of the Crass.

» EXPRESS: When I was a new wave teenager in the nuclear-crazed Reagan '80s, Crass' raw music, dark sound collages and anti-Jesus rants would actually induce anxiety in me.
» LEWIS: They were pretty intense and completely uncompromising.

» EXPRESS: In the CD's comic book, you document the first time you heard Crass, which is when you were in college. And you, as a New York City native, seem to have an almost studious fascination with Crass, whereas when I first heard Crass — as a teen in rural Michigan — I had nothing to compare them to, which is part of the reason they were so frightening.
» LEWIS: I come from a very radical, socialist, activist, atheist background; I was never raised religious. I have a Jewish-atheist-Brooklynite background — in that tradition — so the anti-Christian, anti-Christ stuff doesn't freak me out as much as it might somebody who was raised Catholic.

» EXPRESS: I wasn't raised religious at all; I just had never heard someone attack religion like Crass did.
» LEWIS: Yeah, it's pretty breathtaking — even now, all these years later, when you think we've been exposed to all manner of extreme art and extreme music. ... But Crass will still make people's jaws drop. It's not just for the sense of shocking people in the perverse sense. It's just an extremely uncompromising view of morals and humanity and ways in which we can be better as people. So it's the best possible kind of punk rock: You get the total visceral thrills of the extreme intensity of it, but at the same time it's perfectly moral and perfectly reasonable.

» EXPRESS: Intensity was such a large part of the Crass package. But your delivery is so much different: you apply your low-key, almost childlike delivery to these angry screeds. Did you ever try to do super-intense versions of Crass songs?
» LEWIS: There's no way you can replicate the original, so it has to just be you doing your version of it — whether it's radically altered or it's a straight version, just coming from you. ... You look sort of foolish if you try to be something you're not. That's always been part of what made my music and my comics [have] anything of any value anyway: For all of my shortcomings as a musician, vocalist, whatever else, I feel what I'm really good at is being myself — and everybody can be really good at that, and everybody has something to offer.

My versions of Crass' songs certainly aren't like Crass' versions, although playing them live — like "Walls," in particular — has developed into a sonically aggressive song, much more so than Crass' studio version of it, which is one of the more subdued Crass songs that exists. Also, "Big A, Little A" — the Crass version goes into an almost dub reggae thing, where our version is more of a Stooges-style, guitar-rock assault. ... [But] in live performances, "Big A, Little A" has been one of the quieter ones because I've been doing it as a fingerpicked guitar and keyboard thing.

» EXPRESS: Crass songs don't easily lend themselves to pop structures; they were more about energy and ideas than harmonic ingenuity. Which Crass songs presented the most difficult challenge to arrange?
» LEWIS: I recorded a few other [songs] that didn't end up on my final album; they just didn't feel like I was bringing enough to them to make them worth finishing, though I might at some point. "Walls" was a bit of a difficult one — well, not difficult, but it's one of the ones that I felt like I changed it the least from the original Crass version; I pretty much kept the structure and the melody and the tempo. "Do They Owe Us a Living?" I didn't really change the structure much at all; I just sort of did it fingerpicked instead of aggressively strummed — and some lyrical changes, but not that much.

Some of the songs I left off, it felt like there wasn't as much exploration, or revelation for me — or the listener — in hearing those versions as opposed to some of the other ones that shine a new light on the songs.

» EXPRESS: Was "Sheep Farming in the Falklands" one of the songs left on the cutting-room floor? Along with "Big A, Little A," that's one of my favorites to sing — especially during rush hour.
» LEWIS: No, that one I didn't try. A lot of the stuff, and that one in particular, is so rooted in a particular place and time, it seemed like it would have less relevance today. Some of the other lyrics — places where they mentioned Ireland or the Falklands — I just swapped in Iraq or [made] some other slight lyrical tweak. "Sheep Farming in the Falklands" would have been slightly more difficult to make a relevant, modern song — though it's still a great song as it is.

» EXPRESS: On "Demoncrats," you mixed news broadcasts into the music. Is that homage to the musique concrete and tape-loop techniques Crass used to employ?
» LEWIS: Actually, my recording of that song was sort of my tribute to Tom Rapp['s] Pearls Before Swine, which is a '60s psychedelic folk band that's been a really big influence on me since I started writing songs about 10 years ago. I really love those Pearl Before Swine records, and there's something so eerie and evocative about the sound of those; that was what I was ripping off in my production of "Demoncrats." I dedicated the song to Tom Rapp in the liner notes; I figured I should give him a shout-out for so blatantly ripping off his musical style.

» EXPRESS: A couple of reviews have suggested this album is something of a practical joke. Because you've written some humorous songs in the past, they seem to think that you doing a Crass album is an elaborate ruse on your part.
» LEWIS: Well, in a certain way, more power to 'em. It got a four-star review in Rolling Stone magazine and was seemingly interpreted as a kind of nutty, comedy concept album. Sometimes you read the bad reviews and their descriptions make a lot more sense than the rave good reviews, where I read the description and I feel like they didn't even hear the album. But that's always the way with music and art in general: You have no control over people's interpretations.

In one of the comics I did for the packaging of the album, the whole album has somewhat of a Trojan horse theme to it. So I really don't care how people interpret it, as long as these songs are getting out there. If this album manages to slip some of these ideas into people's consciousness, even if they take it purely ironically or as a joke — or who knows what they take it as — any chance of these songs seeping out into the public's consciousness a bit more is going to have a beneficial effect. ... That's part of the idea of the album as a Trojan horse, slipping these songs through.

There's obviously something ironic and something comedic about me covering Crass that's just left field, but that's what attracted me to the idea anyway.

» EXPRESS: Is that why "End Result" opens the album, since it has the lyrics, "I'm a product / I'm a symbol"? As in, the point of "12 Crass Songs" isn't the physical item you hold in your hands but rather the philosophies that helped create it?
» LEWIS: That one lead off because in the comic book there's this time-bomb element to this Trojan horse or Trojan tiger in the sleeve comic, which has this clock on it. ... And the CD itself is a clock face, with the 12 hours being the 12 Crass songs, and you sort of pluck the CD off the packaging and see [a drawing of] the gears behind [the clock]. And you put this clock into your CD player and the first thing you hear is this ticking.

I just tried to pack the whole packaging and the album with as many layers of content as I could manage. And whether anybody is ever gonna care or pick up on it, who knows, but I've always liked things that are very content rich, and that the more you return to them, the more you can find in them — like Crass' music and packaging.

» Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW; with The Cribs and Ra Ra Riot, Wed., 8 p.m. $15; 800-551-7328. (U St.-Cardozo)