http://suchbeautifulgardens.blogspot.com/

On a more serious note, if you get a chance to see the Pink Monkey Birds in or near your town, or anywhere at all, take it. If you knew what you were missing, you’d never forgive yourself for it. And if you didn’t know what you were missing, you wouldn’t forgive yourself for that, either.

Your Humble Blogger has a brush with greatness.

The newly-remastered edition of Lux and Ivy’s Favorites volume 12 is now available at Kogar’s Jungle Juice. I cannot recommend this collection highly enough, and since it is free, you have no goddamn excuse not to get it. Go HERE:

http://kogarsjunglejuice.blogspot.com/

Earlier volumes of this great series can be had HERE:

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2009/02/lux-and-ivys-favorites-mp3s.html

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lux and Ivy’s Favorites!!!

by Kogar the Swinging Ape

Ok, I got kind of sick of repeating this story 1000 times. So figured I’d include this in the latest volume. I’m the guy who compiles the Lux and Ivy’s Favorites Compilations.

It started as a way to keep track of some of the songs Lux, and or Ivy, mentioned in THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE MUSIC BOOK. It was never really intended as anything but a way for a friend of mine and me to have 2 really kick ass compilations.

So we went about the arduous process

of finding all the songs mentioned in that interview. It took a loooong time. We used the file sharing program, Napster, as well as our own personal collections. So, one thing lead to another and when word got around that these compilations were out there, they started being traded from fan to fan to fan. So, at some point I decided to put them up on Napster and let anyone who wanted them have them. As the years went buy, more interviews with Lux and Ivy kept popping up, and the list of songs they mentioned got longer and longer. This resulted in new volumes.

People have asked why songs from THE PURPLE KNIF SHOW have appeared, or why a song or two have appeared that are on the SONGS THE CRAMPS TAUGHT US 3 cd set. Well its simple. The songs that are on TPKS are in less than stellar quality, and some are not featured in their entirety. So, I figured I’d feature them as part of LAIF. Volume one and two of LAIF “came out” or were compiled before STCTU appeared on the scene.

Other people have asked why these haven’t appeared as proper releases. The answer to that is easy. I’m not in this to make any money. Like I said above, I just wanted to make compilations for myself with some of the most amazing music ever put to tape. If other people enjoy them, great, but don’t expect to see these in stores or on ebay (unless somebody starts bootlegging them, but there is no need since they are easily available thru Soulseek and other file sharing programs).

When the series started I was working mostly from downloads. It was only really meant for a friend of mine and me. This was started in the mid nineties and I wasn’t very computer savvy at all. Over the years many of the originals have been acquired, either on vinyl or cd. It has always been my intention to go back and “re-mix” some of these tracks because the quality isn’t all that spectacular. Some volumes are better than others. Either way the intent was there, I hope some of the audio flaws aren’t too annoying.

Without further ado, here we go!

One of the last things Lux Interior did before he departed for That undiscover’d country from whose bourne No motherfucker ever returns (unless you believe the PR of a certain carpenter), was to provide the voice for an animated Mexican wrestler superhero called “Rayo X.” This character appeared in the English-language version of the film Los Campeones De La Lucha Libre, which appears to be cool as fuck and I need to get me a copy of it.
Anyhow, Lux’s superheroic turn is great news for all of us. Because, as any comic book fan knows, superheroes never stay dead. Superman, the Flash, half of the X-Men, Captain America, etc., have all kicked the bucket at least once, and they never fail to return in some surprising and/or downright stupid way. So it only remains to be seen how Lux will be resurrected. (Generally speaking, your best bets are time travel, magic, or not having really been in whatever it was everyone thought you were in when it blew up.)

It has been a year now since Lux Interior went to wherever a creature like that goes when the world becomes too small to contain him. The good part is, he left behind a lot of cool stuff for us to play with. We are sad that Lux has gone someplace where we can’t see or hear him, but just imagine what it would have been like had we never had him at all. It was, indeed, a wonderful life. Lux reveled in it and gave it freely to us. He showed us how it could and should be done, and repeatedly proved the impossible.
Who would have thought he’d ever reach 60? And, once he did, who would have thought he could ever die?
Lux, wherever you are right now, I know you aren’t resting in peace, for that was not your way. I hope you are someplace loud and sweaty, with an eternal stage for you to bleed on and an endless supply of microphones to swallow. May you stay sick, get fucked up , and blow up your mind forever in some beautiful garden where the natives are always restless. I wonder what new kind of kick you have found behind that green door.
So, no RIP for you, my friend. Rather, I will just say “well done,” and thanks for letting us share it. with you.

–Chuck

KOGAR THE SWINGING APE has announced that there will be a Lux Interior tribute radio show on Thursday, Feb 4th from 11pm to 1am. It will air on WRIR-LP 97.3 FM, Richmond Independent Radio, with Slickee Boys drummer, Dacoit Dan.

Kogar says, “You can listen live on the net, or download the show later when its available on their website…Dan was kind enough to let me pick most of the songs for the show. It’ll be a mix of Cramps tunes and Lux and Ivy favorites with interview bits, and movie trailers, and more.”

Here’s Dan’s page at the WRIR website:

http://suchbeautifulgardens.blogspot.com/

In response to thousands of requests, from my own subconscious (at least I HOPE that’s where they’re coming from; if not, I have a tribe of pygmy robot headhunters living in my refrigerator), I bring you another great Basil Wolverton tale, guaranteed to blow whatever is left of your mind straight into the twelfth goddamn dimension, from whence you will NEVER retrieve it again. But it’s worth it. God, is it ever! And I’m even giving you, absolutely free, a soundtrack! Can’t ax for more than that, eh fear fans???? (Click pages to enlarge, if you are so inclined.)

Cramps bio

from Allmusic.com

http://suchbeautifulgardens.blogspot.com/

http://www.p0ps.com/
www.flickr.com/photos/p0ps/3257362553/in/set-721576153366…

1977

1978
Four Flew Into the Cuckoo’s Nest
A legendary punk artifact: The Cramps, pioneers of the sleaze-rock sound, play a free 1978 concert for the patients at a California mental institution. The patients get into the act, hopping onstage and dancing to punk classics such as “Human Fly,” “TV Set” and “The Way I Walk.” The footage is technically raw, and so is the sound quality. But it’s still a scream — by the end of the show, you can’t tell the patients from the band, and that’s the whole point.

ROB SHEFFIELD
(January 29, 2004)
http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/

“this is the craziest movie ive ever seen ,i mean who approached who for this gig & how much did they get paid ,its like fellini meets manson ,but one thing i will say when the cramps show up they bring it baby,i probably seen a 1000 rock shows,gigs club band things from the stones to bob marley,bowie zep all that is punk & the cramp show i went i rank as one of the best 3 shows i ever went to”

–Anonymous individual on some message board

1979

“In the spring of 1976, The CRAMPS began to fester in a NYC apartment. Without fresh air or natural light, the group developed its uniquely mutant strain of rock’n’roll aided only by the sickly blue rays of late night TV. While the jackhammer rhythms of punk were proliferating in NYC, The CRAMPS dove into the deepest recesses of the rock’n’roll psyche for the most primal of all rhythmic impulses — rockabilly — the sound of southern culture falling apart in a blaze of shudders and hiccups. As late night sci-fi reruns colored the room, The CRAMPS also picked and chose amongst the psychotic debris of previous rock eras – instrumental rock, surf, psychedelia, and sixties punk. And then they added the junkiest element of all — themselves.”

— J. H. Sasfy, Professor of Rockology, from the liner notes of The Cramps 1979 release Gravest Hits

1980/1981

The Cramps’ performance in the 1980-81 movie “Urgh! A Music War” has got to be the most hypercharged, controversial, culturally devastating bit of film since Abraham Zapruder took his lunch hour to go see the President’s motorcade. This is raw as FUCK! The first time I saw it, I had no idea what to make of it. It was the first time I had ever seen or heard the Cramps. I didn’t know if I loved it or hated it. Before long, I figured out that it was the former. As you may recall, Urgh! is stuffed to bursting with stilted, awkward, self-conscious performances by various “new wave” bands. That was the kind of thing I liked then, or so I thought. And right in the middle of all that, the Cramps just EXPLODE. After a while, I realized that THIS was what I really loved. I just didn’t know it because nobody had ever done it before. –Chuck

1983
Smell of Female
Record Review
Ned Raggett

One gets the feeling from the title and cover art alone that if the Cramps could have released this live document in Glorious Smell-o-rama they would have jumped at the chance. Even without it one can almost sense the whiffs of perspiration and energy the group was cooking up; recorded at New York’s Peppermint Lounge with Powers on guitar, the quartet slams out a then mostly entirely new set of songs with, as expected, appropriate covers as needed. The wonderfully profane take on Hasil Adkins’ “She Said” surfaces here, with Interior sounding like he’s about to die more than once. The Count Five’s “Psychotic Reaction” and the perfectly appropriate “Faster Pussycat,” taken from the legendary Russ Meyer film of the same name, also give the band more than a little something to chew on. As for the originals, the usual mess of swampy rockabilly and industrial strength noise comes together in just the right way from the start. “Thee Most Exalted Potentate of Love” gives Interior the chance to do his undead but still wired loveman thang right from the start, while Ivy and Powers hit the twang hard and Knox keeps everything going just right. “Call of the Wighat” is another highpoint, with Knox showing that he’s up to more involved pounding and percussion when the need arises. A studio cut, “Surfin’ Dead,” surfaces as a ringer at the end; if not quite the Cramps go Beach Boys, it arguably forecasts the Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Kill Surf City” just enough.

1984
1985
In 1985, The Cramps were able to perform one original song for Dan O’Bannon’s classic horror-comedy zombie flick The Return of the Living Dead– “Surfin’ Dead”

“Stay Sick? I can do that!”

1986

1987

“In 1987, the group finally found a simpatico bassist in the form of tough gal Candy Del Mar, whom Lux and Ivy met in the parking lot of a liquor store. Del Mar made her recorded debut on the live album Rockin n Reelin in Aukland New Zealand, and she was still on board when the Cramps finally signed a U.S. record deal with Enigma Records and recorded the fine and full-bodied Stay Sick! in 1990.”
– Some fucking review on some fucking website

(Note: I know the year 1987 is a typo, but that’s the way it was originally posted by whoever the fuck wrote it. I just left in like that because I already have something under 1986, and couldn’t find much else for 1987.– Revisionist Historian Chuck)

(ABOVE: Candy ass, in a good way.)

1990
Interview

Circa 1992
Rock Out Censorship
(c) 1997-2003, Rock Out Censorship. All rights reserved.
http://www.theroc.org/roc-mag/textarch/roc-09/roc09-4b.htm

By: Mike Heck

I recently had an interesting chat with Lux and Ivy of the Cramps, to find out the method to their madness and maybe bring out a few different sides too:

ROC: Can you tell us about some of the problems the band has faced with the record companies?

LUX: We run out of energy waiting for somebody to quit bullshitting us and have a good album contract and people behind us, but now we seem like we have a lot of things going for us these days than we did before, although we’re still not signed to anyone.

ROC: You’re not signed to Restless Records?

IVY: Oh, just for this album (Look Mom No Head).

LUX: …No Club, Lone Wolf!

ROC: The Cramps are such a legendary band, it’s hard to understand why you would have problems with record labels.

LUX: It’s always been hard for us to understand too. They don’t know what category to put us into. It seemed to me what we’re doing, is the same thing everybody was doing in 1962, but for some reason they don’t seem to know what we’re doing. I guess we don’t sing about some of the same things that people sang about in 1962 and the music is not the same, exactly, but it’s in that spirit.

ROC: R.O.C. is dedicated to the fight against censorship. Can you tell us about some of the censorship problems you’ve had since forming in ’76?

LUX: Well more power to you, there can’t be enough people working hard enough to stop this crap going on, and I think one of the main things that keeps us from getting hit too hard is that people still don’t know enough about us yet and also our lyrics have several syllables in some of the words and we don’t sing ‘Satan’ in songs so, they don’t know.

IVY: I think our lyrics are too Jive-Ass for them to even read through.

ROC: That’s like with Elvis or Little Richard in the late 50′s early 60′s, censors couldn’t read through their lingo.

IVY: Yeah, they don’t know what it is, they don’t know what anything is. They only know mostly about heavy metal ideals…SATAN…I worship Satan, they understand that!

LUX: We get accused of being sexist but I think there are other bands that are sexist but I don’t think they should be censored.

ROC: People actually accuse The Cramps of being sexist with you in the band, Ivy?

IVY: Oh, yeah!

LUX: All the time, they don’t mention her.

IVY: They’ll say we’re sexist but, they won’t acknowledge that I’m doing anything.

ROC: That’s so hypocritical!

IVY: Yeah, I know…it’s just stupid people saying that. It’s mostly in England because in England they’re really repressed, they’re just so uptight about everything and everybody’s got their heads up their asses. The critics there just drive things into the ground.

ROC: In a lot of people’s eyes you’re living legends.

LUX: Well…I thank you…well we don’t want to be a cult band, we feel like everyone should like our music, I’ll put it that way. We’re not trying to be outrageous so a little tiny fraction of people can like us or something. We would like to ‘change’ other people over…but, this is just a dream we have.

ROC: Some people have accused The Cramps as being “trash,” how do you feel about this?

IVY: Yeah, the only way that I could say that we’re involved with “trash” is that if “trash” is what other people throw away because they didn’t know how valuable it was. I mean the people saying that it would seem they suddenly like us because they think this stuff is trash, just like some people think Elvis is trash. People get hung up on some superficial human aspect…

(Lux interjects)

LUX: …A lot of people look for the negative in everything these days. People laughed at Elvis because he got fat or something and forgot that he completely changed the world with some weird thing he did, but it was his own original idea and…was very powerful, equally as powerful as the Sex Pistols or the Beatles or anybody else…(long pause)…Johnny Rotten may get fat yet.

IVY: He is!

LUX: He’s a great guy.

ROC: P.I.L.’s newest LP is dedicated to the fight against censorship.

LUX: Every album he’s been on has been against censorship, in a way.

ROC: Before John Lennon was killed he ultimately wanted to reform The Beatles. The government was afraid of the power they possessed…

LUX: …well I can see why the government would be afraid of it. That’s what Rock & Roll is all about, making the government afraid….They’re (the government) really kind of dumb though, so it’s really not a contest, you can sneak up on them over the years, it takes years for them to catch up on it and realize what’s happening. I just can’t take it seriously, this thing about being censored, I mean like, like…this is competition for us or something, you know. I think censorship is serious but, people say: ‘don’t you worry about these people,’ those people are dumb, they can’t understand our lyrics, they don’t know what we’re singing about. If we say: ‘FUCK ME, MAMMA,’ they think we’re talking about our mother.

ROC: They miss the lingo, but at the same time if they try to attack you on that, and you can’t release the records, what do you do?

LUX: I’m ready for an attack, let ‘em attack, I feel ten times strong, they’re dumb!, put us on the David Letterman show, I’ll debate on the David Letterman show, Paul can play, I don’t care!

ROC: How has the economy affected attendance on The Cramps tour and other tours?

LUX: It’s terrible, it’s terrible.

IVY: A lot of promoters are going bankrupt, there’s less venues for us to play. People can’t afford to go to shows, they can’t afford to buy records, but it really hasn’t hurt the attendance that much yet.

ROC: In Ohio, the Governor passed a bill that allows you General Assistance benefits for six months out of a twelve month period. In Michigan, it don’t exist anymore…

LUX: It’s so unbelievable, I saw that Governor of Michigan on TV and he’s saying, “Welfare, it’s no problem-we just won’t have it!” No problem for us. It’s that easy-we just won’t have it anymore. We just sweep ‘em into the gutter and they’ll rot eventually. I don’t know, people say wait till the next election but boy, there’s got to be a better idea than that. Politicians are the worst thing since religion.

1994
French TV Show

Circa 1995
Cramps Artist Biography
by Carol Brennan
http://www.musicianguide.com/biographies/1608001577/Cramps-The.html

The Cramps have been a fixture on the fringes of the punk-alternative scene for almost two decades, and the band has long been heralded for their blend of rockabilly-style guitar noise and screwball humor. The Cramps formed in the New York City area around 1976 with original members Lux Interior on vocals and Poison Ivy Rorschach and Bryan Gregory on guitar; behind the drum kit sat Miriam Linna. Interior and Rorschach were natives of Cleveland, Ohio, and later married. Of the lack of a bassist, Rorschach explained years later to New York Newsday writer Ira Robbins, “We weren’t trying to do anything radical. None of us wanted to play bass. We collect a lot of old records, and if they have bass on ‘em I can’t hear it. It didn’t seem essential.” The combination of the two females, Rorschach and Linna, already made the Cramps unique in the testosterone-fueled Greenwich Village punk scene. But their particular brand of campy theatrical excess and undress combined with ear-splitting sonics gave them an edge the more cerebral bands couldn’t muster.

Gravest Hits helped usher in the Cramps’ cult following among music aficionados. The band was invited to open for the Police during their 1979 U.K. tour, with Linna replaced on drums by Nick Knox. In a 1979 profile for Melody Maker, writer Penny Kiley called them “America’s rockabilly solution to the New Wave.”

By this time the Cramps were known for outrageous onstage theatrics and a retro-outre look that seemed to combine the punk ethos with trash-culture tack. References to B-movies and a slightly sadomasochistic air infiltrated both lyrics and performance–an inevitability, so Rorschach explained in Melody Maker: “You can’t separate music and other cultural things; what we do isn’t just music. Everything I ever saw on TV, everything I ever ate, everything I heard on the radio is an influence. We’re celebrating pop culture.” In the same spirit, the band was one of the earliest to exploit the then-new medium of video to fully bring their unique vision to fans, filming a four-minute takeoff on the classic ’50s-era horror film as promotional material back in the late ’70s.

In 1984 IRS issued Bad Music for Bad People, a collection of previously released material from Gravest Hits and Songs the Lord Taught Us added to other tracks that had only been available as British imports. MTV news personality Kurt Loder–still writing record reviews for Rolling Stone at the time–was a big fan of the Cramps during this era. Critiquing Bad Music for Bad People, Loder declared, “This is rock & roll the way it never really was on the radio, but the way you always dreamed it could be.”

Such dreams never translated into financial success, however. For many years much of the vinyl output by the band was self-financed; Interior and Ivy would then try to sell the finished product to record labels. A Date with Elvis was the Cramps’ fifth release and third full-length album. The creative inspiration behind the 1986 work was the media madness over what would have been Elvis Presley’s fiftieth birthday the year before. As Ivy explained to Kiley in Melody Maker, “It’s our tribute album to Elvis…. Elvis has always been on our mind but he was especially on our mind last year because it was just like national Elvis year or something.”

A Date with Elvis met with some criticism for its uninhibited lyrics in songs like “Hot Pool of Womanhood” and “Cornfed Dames.” Simon Reynolds reviewed it for Melody Maker and found “few surprises here, none of the little touches of musical radicalism” that surfaced on the Cramps’ earlier releases, and lampooned the more misogynist tracks as displaying “a relentlessly crude, stunted view of sex.” Ivy, whose stage garb of bustiers and other provocative apparel belied her creative and decision-making status in the quartet, dismissed charges of sexism. “I think it’s an unbelievable joke people saying we’re sexist…. I create this music. I co-write these songs, how can I be sexist? Sexism to me is when you’re blinded to seeing certain people and the accomplishments of certain people because you’ve got them tuned out. Paying attention to a girl isn’t sexist at all, that’s just animal.”

During the late 1980s the Cramps took a hiatus from releasing new material, although imports and compilations appeared intermittently. Soured deals and lawsuits provided additional distractions. For 1990′s Stay Sick!, the band–now joined by bass replacement Candy Del Mar–kept up their own unique blend of covers of obscure rockabilly tunes and female-worshipping originals like “Bikini Girls with Machine Guns” and “Journey to the Center of a Girl.”

More lineup changes followed the release of Stay Sick!. Del Mar left, replaced by Slim Chance; longtime drummer Nick Knox also exited and Harry Drumdini took over. Both new members played on the Cramps’ 1994 release FlameJob, their major-label debut after signing with the Medicine label, a division of Warner Bros. The band seemed at ease at their new corporate home. “Some labels in the past said, ‘We don’t have a pigeonhole for you’ or ‘You should be doing a rave record’ or ‘You should give your multitrack to a DJ and let him make a new mix out of it’–all these horrible ideas,” Interior told Boston Globe writer Jim Sullivan. “We had to spend a lot of time in the past saying, ‘No, no, no, no…’ feeling like we were from Mars because of it.”

FlameJob boasted the usual psychobilly vortex of the Cramps with tracks like “Swing the Big Eyed Rabbit,” “Sado County Auto Show,” and “Ultra Twist.” Rolling Stone reviewer Paul Evans noted that this psychobilly twang and the Cramps’ original trash-culture ethos had become familiar musical territory for several other contemporary acts, like White Zombie.

A refusal to capitulate, despite the many obstacles encountered over the years in a notoriously fickle industry, may also have played a part in the Cramps’ success; in the 1994 interview with Sullivan for the Boston Globe, Interior offered a reason why he and Ivy never decided to call it quits: “Probably we would have if we knew something else to do that was as fun.”

by Carol Brennan

1997
Silver anniversary sleaze
by RUPERT BOTTENBERG
Montreal Mirror
http://www.montrealmirror.com/ARCHIVES/1997/111397/music3.html

(This is a shitty article, but for the sake of historical completeness, here it is.– Chuck)

A moment of silence for Ghoulardi, please. Known as the Cool Ghoul, he was the Baltimore-based beatnik fiend host of endless late-night TV monster movie marathons in the ’60s. The Cramps’ latest album, Big Beat From Badsville, carries a solemn dedication to the recently departed weirdo. But, as I inform the band’s guitar goddess Poison Ivy on the horn from Texas, his spirit carries on. You see, Ghoulardi’s son is none other than Paul Thomas Anderson, the lad responsible for the cockumentary Boogie Nights. In the wake of that film, Screwed and Larry Flynt, it seems only appropriate that The Cramps’ twisted twosome, Poison Ivy and singer Lux Interior, should have their own biographical epic fouling up cinema screens. After all, it’s a full quarter-century since Lux picked up a hitchiking Ivy on a desolate stretch of highway in ’72. That chance encounter spawned a relationship that would give life to a shambling rock ‘n’ roll monstrosity that lives to this day (chewing up rhythm sections as it goes). Of course, the perverted perpetrator of Polyester, John Waters, would have to direct the film.

He’d have a field day with the band’s early years, grafting fetid chunks of rockabilly, surf, psychedelia and punk together in a New York City basement in 1976. Throw in some superstitious hoodoo and a whole lotta bumpin’, grindin’ inuendo and you’ve about got a fix on The Cramps. In those poverty stricken days, Lux and Ivy turned to unsavoury and even outright criminal conduct to make ends meet. “We didn’t hurt anybody, unless they wanted it,” protests onetime professional dominatrix Ivy. Fast-forward to the dawn of the ’90s (memo to Wardrobe Dept.: stock up on plaid flannel!) and we find our heroes facing censorship by MTV. The clips in question were the tunes “Creature From the Black Leather Lagoon” and “Bikini Girls With Machine Guns.”

“Well, ‘Bikini Girls,’ I didn’t understand,” says Ivy, “I thought it was such a quaint thing. There’s a scene where I’m shooting the machine gun, and the vibration makes my panties fall down.” The camera showed nothing but the panties around her ankles, but that was enough to make MTV’s top brass spit their Perrier out on their Gucci loafers. Doing the only honourable thing, The Cramps proceeded to make an even more offensive video. “For some reason, our boss at Enigma Records just said put in everything they wouldn’t want. We thought, ‘Well, he’s paying for it, okay.’” Inspired by the teen riot that opens shlockmeister H. G. Lewis’ film Just for the Hell of It, the band found an empty house, filled it with thrift-shop junk and then promptly trashed it. “There’s stuff in there, like Lux huffing glue from a paper bag, or me sitting on his face. But I think what got them was smashing the TV with a sledgehammer.” Here we are in 1997 and Ivy and Lux show no sign of slowing down. In fact, signing on to Epitaph, as of this new album, should be fresh wind in their sails. Which means the movie will have to wait… at least, until they have a Jayne Mansfield-style double-(be)header car crash. Or a church falls on them. Or some such thing. I guess in the meantime I’ll stick to pitching my Seka biopic. I wonder if Drew Barrymore is available?

1998

3 1/2 THE CRAMPS Oak Canyon Ranch

Review & Photos By:
-Monica Monique

All photographs belong to TotallyLA unless otherwise noted.
If you use a picture please ask us or provide a link back to us to give us credit. Thank you.

http://www.totallyla.com/ConcertReviews/Cramps/

Psychobilly band The Cramps turned Hootenanny into a trip away from home. Why? Well I can assure you it was more then stage antics. That which included but was not limited to:

1. A viewing of Lux Interior’s EXTERIOR (after a tearing of his clothing), to which most men would be jealous.
2. Lux’s mike swallowing to which most porn stars would be jealous. (see picture below)
3. Lux’s mike stand throwing, to which most contortionist would be jealous.

It was a show of emotion rarely seen in a music today. Vibrating through a version of surfing bird that made my heart race, The Cramps seemed more then musical, more than surreal, more than sane on this trip. I’m just glad they chose to take us with them.

Click for Hootenanny Review.

Review & Photos By:
-Monica Monique

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If you use a picture please ask us or provide a link back to us to give us credit. Thank you.

OCNow.com on October 12, 1998
http://www.michaelalarcon.com/ocnow_Cramps.htm

It would be almost impossible to have never heard of The Cramps. Their 22 year history as a band has been the stuff of legend. Punk’s greatest living rockabilly zombies may have had a fittingly up and down time for a while but after inventing and perfecting leering psychobilly rock, New York’s Cramps — Ohio born vocalist Lux Interior, native California guitarist Poison Ivy and assorted cohorts that have come and gone — have yet to show any signs of fading away.

The Cramps are a world apart from the everyday sounds of grunge and the canned beats of techno. They have truly lived hard, real lives that have made them what they are — three-dimensional rock and roll heroes. Unlike many current “rockabilly” thug poseurs, The Cramps are the real deal. Lux has done real jail time for selling “dangerous drugs” and Ivy has actually made a living as a dominatrix in New York City. It’s no wonder why these two love birds have been together for over 25 years.

In phone interview, Lux and Ivy talk about old times, what’s happening now and why they always seem to show up around Halloween.

There are times where fans wondered what have happened to The Cramps, especially in the early 90′s. Why were there such long gaps between albums?

Interior: I guess it comes down to things going in cycles. When [1991's] Look Ma No Head! was released, grunge hit big and we were ignored and I thought, `Jeez, is this the end of the Cramps?’ All anyone wanted to know about was grunge this and grunge that. People were saying stuff like, `What are you guys still doing around? We were called retro, and grunge bands were just a re-hash of the worst rock ever got – the early ’70s. That was the reason punk rock happened in the first place. But all that never seems to really effect us, anyway. Now, were gaining popularity again, actually not popularity, I just think the general masses are discovering us again.

How did you two meet? You both seem like a perfect match. Ivy: When I met Lux, we were living in Sacramento. The radio up there played Lynyrd Skynyrd and Boz Scaggs like there was nothing else at all happening on the planet. Other places were playing things like David Bowie, Lou Reed and T-Rex, but you’d never hear any of that on Sacramento radio. All you heard was 100% natural, granola rock. We were looking for something more exciting. It was like we were the only people in that town that’ve ever heard of that music so I guess it was only natural that we gravitated to each other.

And then the two of you moved to New York to start up The Cramps. Did you ever think you’d still be in The Cramps making music?

Interior: Well the first time we stepped onstage at CBGBs we thought we were gonna do it once. We never thought about a second time, we were just thinking, `Let’s see if we get beat up or what happens.’ And ever since that night it’s been a million laughs. We still get up there and we get to play really loud, there’s all these people screaming at you, there’s flashing lights in your face…I can’t think of any other way to make a living. It’s all we know now.

Why do you think there’s a sudden resurgence in The Cramps’ popularity all of a sudden?

Ivy: Who knows? We’ve never felt like our music’s for everybody. It’s for those who can identify with being a hoodlum, a misfit. No one else should be expected to like it but maybe it’s a sign of the times (laughs devilishly).

It seems like The Cramps have been invading Orange County this time of year lately. Any special connections with O.C. and Halloween?

Interior: We were just talking about that the other day (laughing). It’s scary, isn’t it? Maybe the devil is makin’ us do it.

2000/2001
By Judy B.
Go-Go Magazine
Volume 2, Issue 27
December 21, 2000 – January 3, 2001

From their home in Los Angeles, guitarist Poison Ivy and vocalist Lux Interior talk about their 25-year career in the music industry. “First of all, we are the worst to talk to about the music business because we have done our own thing since the beginning,” Ivy said. “We’ve isolated ourselves on purpose so we could continue doing what we love to do� we love to rock.”

The Cramps represent a bizarre mix of pop culture iconography and rock-n-roll wickedness. Their inspiration draws from living hard and playing hard, earning them a cult-like status among dedicated fans. After self-describing their early sound as “psychobilly,” The Cramps rocked the way no else had, and probably the way no one else will. “People love us because of the way we do what we do,” Ivy said. “I think it’s the way we flip our hips, the way we come out and are completely unique. We love playing, and we love rock and roll. We have an attitude that you don’t see anymore, and we are true to who we are.”

On stage, Ivy is the ultimate bad girl vixen, but it’s not just an act to make the audience happy. “When we started this band,” Lux explained, “we just wanted to meet the cool people in town [NYC] and play some rock and roll. Punk bands in the ’70s were passionate. That’s what you needed. We never thought we’d actually get gigs!

“Lux and I have always been reckless and sought out thrills, taken risks, probably blown our minds in certain pursuits,” Ivy continued. “It’s only from living this way that we come up with this stuff.”

This won’t be the first time The Cramps take the stage for New Year’s Eve in Denver. They have fond memories of a show here two years ago, and remember the enthusiastic and colorful crowd. Denver’s punk scene keeps gaining momentum. Local musicians are fortunate because they get paid to play their own music. Lux and Ivy see that as pretty exceptional. “I know bands out here [LA] who don’t get paid, get stiffed, or even have to pay to play,” Lux said. “The Denver scene is good. The closer you get to the music industry, the more screwed you are. We don’t even feel like we’ve been in the ‘music business. ‘ We don’t know anybody, we’ve stayed on our own, and we’ve made every mistake in the book, but we’re good at what we do and nobody tells us what to do.”

Ivy is quick to point out: “My advice is not to listen to anyone’s advice.”

Twenty-five years is a lot of time to do anything, let alone lead your band through the complex and ever-fickle gauge of the record industry. The Cramps have worked on two coasts, spawned an entire B-culture phenomenon, and will push and shove punk music into the new decade. The current dismal state of popular music has no effect on this fringe-dwelling crew. Even the sad state of current pop fluffiness only seems to prove The Cramps philosophy all the more.

“The business of this will never change,” Lux said. “If you try to do what the music industry tells you to do, you end up with some quirky crap that sounds terrible. We write songs about fucking. Nobody does that anymore. Everybody’s so busy trying to think of a new shtick instead of just playing their music. If you are strange and unique and new and alarming, people will get it and line up to see it. That’s all you can do.”

–Judy B.

2003

SlimGil DeLuxe has sent us some photos from a memorable Cramps show back in 2003, featuring some posters and artwork he created for the occasion. Thanks!

This is an interview with The Cramps I did a while ago for DREUN, a Belgian e-zine.
By Guy Peters
http://www.guypetersreviews.com/crampsinterview.php

http://suchbeautifulgardens.blogspot.com/

Until quite recently, I knew very little about the personal lives of Lux, Ivy, and various other Cramps. After Lux died, bits of intriguing information started coming to my attention. I had always known that Erick Purkhiser was born in Akron, Ohio, as was I. Earlier this year I found out that his family lived in Stowe, Ohio, which was right next to my hometown of Cuyahoga Falls. Over the weekend, courtesy of a controversial ebay auction, I learned that Lux and his family actually lived in Cuyahoga Falls at the same time I did, just a little over a mile from my house. Also, he had a son, and it is almost certain that the boy attended the same elementary school I did (since they lived even closer to it) at the same time I did. He’ a few years younger than I am, so it would only have been for a year or two, and we’d have been at opposite ends of the building. But it got me thinking. If Lux– or Erick– ever attended any of our school plays or pageants, then HE would have seen ME on stage decades before I would see him. Interesting thought, that.

If this keeps up, I’ll eventually find out he lived in my basement at some point.

–Chuck

Remembering the Cramps’ Lux Interior: Matchmaker, Symbol, Expert Driver

By Camille Dodero
Friday, Feb. 6 2009
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/archives/2009/02/remembering_the_1.php

I met one of my best friends seeing the Cramps live. This is probably one of the highest compliments you can pay a musician of any age, genre, or scale, aside from having actually conceived a child to a band’s record–and frankly that involves premeditation, and if doesn’t, it likely involves misjudgment or Massive Attack, and in any case, if you’re making babies to the Cramps, you are a couple of sick fucks. But meeting a best friend at a band’s show and ending the night with a rare understanding between complete strangers–We Need to Be Friends Immediately–seems to reflect on the performer, in retrospect, because it involves serendipity and miracles, artists as sublime conduits and unsuspecting heroes. In this instance, the spindly, psycho-sexy, leather-pants-wearing Lux Interior as Wesley Autry. Without Lux on October 16, 2004, I wouldn’t know K, or eventually met J and S, or ended up here, and I most certainly would’ve gotten run over by that train.

Actually, that night in Boston, the Cramps played the old classic “Drug Train,” a two-minute-plus “Johnny B. Goode”-styled hootenanny in which Lux plays conductor, woo-woos like a steam trumpet, and tries to wrangle innocent bystanders on board by bragging about the VIP section: “I’ve seen Elvis with your Mother/On the drug train.” This is exactly what I came to love about the Cramps: ludicrous, debased, Presley-obsessed, and totally inappropriate. Right now, the track “Can Your Pussy Do the Dog?” is the most popular Cramps ringtone on iTunes. And their other song titles also shriek volumes: “Eyeball in My Martini,” “Don’t Eat Stuff Off the Sidewalk,” and “Dr. Fucker M.D. (Musical Deviant).” So brilliant, so stupid. And let us consider “Bend Over, I’ll Drive” from 1991′s Look Mom, No Head, in which our hero Lux repeatedly demands his beloved lean over so he can take the controls. It’s very romantic, especially since Lux’s pillow talk stinks of necro fetishism: “Bend over, I’ll drive/Is this the way Grace Kelly died?” This is wax-museum foreplay, werewolf flirtation, the sound of filthy hitchhiker seduction.

According to Cramps lore, picking up a hitchhiker is exactly how Lux Interior met his spikey-heeled sidekick, wife, and guitarist Poison Ivy Rorschach. She also supposedly funded the Cramps’ first record with money she’d made as a dominatrix. But far-and-away the greatest footnote in the Cramps legend is their 1978 live show at the Napa State Mental Hospital. Before Pitchfork TV, and Girl Talk on a rollercoaster with a camera, and all those supposedly innovative scripted scenes of bands playing rooftops, lofts, and dog parks (guilty), the Cramps booked a show in a California asylum. Someone there from a punk collective Target Video had a camera, and the grainy black-and-white footage is unbelievable. Lux is open-shirted and electric, the room is a mixture of patients and covert fans. It’s tough to discern who’s who, mostly because there is no fourth wall: audience members wander the stage listlessly, hug-assault Lux, grab him for mid-song solo dances. “We drove 300 miles to play for you people,” Lux tells them. The immediate response, “FUCKKKK YOOO!” He continues, “Somebody told me you people are crazy, but I’m not sure about that. You seem to be alright with me.” Inmates running the asylum, as it goes, I once watched this entire performance on a date.

The date, the best friend, the asylum video–all this means is that I liked the Cramps more than I ever probably would have, left to my own devices. I’m fully aware, they more or less wrote the same three songs over and over and over. And that, with all that thonged-out lady ass and horrorcore iconography, they really should have been metal. And that some of their schtick was just plain gross. But Lux Interior sang about being a teenage fly, drank beer out of a sneaker, performed in his skivvies, and enticed his wife by telling her to bend over so he could drive. Genius. Especially since it was the way Lux Interior died.

http://suchbeautifulgardens.blogspot.com/

Bryan Gregory (Gregory Beckerleg, February 20, 1954 – January 10, 2001) was an American rock musician, and founding member of and guitarist for The Cramps. Gregory met Cramps member Lux Interior at a mutual job they shared at a record store in NYC. He shared his birthday with fellow member Poison Ivy. Bryan took up second guitar in April 1976 and was a distinctive sight in the early incarnation of the Cramps, along with his sister Pam Balaam (Pam Beckerleg) on drums. He was known for his oozing guitar sound, wild stage antics, long hair with a skunk stripe over his eye, and acne scarred face. He appeared on The Cramps first two albums Gravest Hits and Songs The Lord Taught Us. He left the band in 1980 with most of the equipment and was later replaced by Kid Congo Powers from the Gun Club. After the Cramps, Gregory went on to play in Beast from 1980-1984, moving to Cleveland, Ohio and marrying Robin Hunt. After moving to Florida, Gregory moved to Los Angeles, forming the The Dials from 1992-1995 and a band called Shiver.

After years of playing in bands, and influencing hordes of Japanese rockabillies, Gregory was rushed to at Anaheim Memorial Medical Center, Anaheim, California, suddenly and unexpectedly felled from multiple organ failure.

Gregory’s ashes are buried at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, CA. (Wikipedia)
Bryan Gregory obituary
By Pierre Perrone
Thursday, 25 January 2001
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/bryan-gregory-728741.html

Bryan Gregory, guitarist and songwriter: born Detroit 1954; married Robyn Hunt (one daughter; marriage dissolved); died Anaheim, California 10 January 2001.

With his ghoulish physique – emaciated torso, pale, gaunt face, black hair with a lock of white hanging over his right eye, bones dangling from his neck, voodoo-style – and fuzzy guitar sound, Bryan Gregory was an integral part of the original line-up of the American psychobilly group the Cramps. A founder member of the group, he played on all their early releases from the EP Gravest Hits to the single “Drug Train” via their debut album Songs the Lord Taught Us (1980). In the five years Gregory spent with the band, they went from playing New York dives to headlining major venues all over Europe.

Born in Detroit in 1955, Bryan Gregory drifted to New York in his late teens. By February 1976, he was working in a record shop where Erick Lee Purkhiser (a.k.a. Lux Interior) got a job. When Gregory came in carrying an electric guitar with “The Cramps” stencilled on the body, Lux Interior, who had already met kindred spirit “Poison Ivy” Rorschach (nee Kristy Wallace) four years beforehand, decided to form a group with his co-worker.

Ivy also played guitar and Gregory should have switched to bass but neither Lux Interior nor his companion dared to force his hand, especially as Bryan’s sister Pam “Balam” had joined on drums. Indeed, the two guitars, by turn twangy and swampy, contributed greatly to the group’s minimalist, yet distinctive, psychotic style.

After a few rehearsals in the basement of the record store, Pam returned to Detroit and was replaced by Miriam Linna. In November, this line-up supported Suicide at CBGB’s, the legendary New York venue where the Ramones, Television and Talking Heads had made their name. The director Amos Poe subsequently hired the Cramps to play a bunch of thugs who assault the hero in his film The Foreigner (released in 1978).

In 1977, they demoed several tracks and headlined at CBGB’s in July but things really began to gel when Nick Knox (Nick Stephanoff) joined on drums the following month. The Cramps met Alex Chilton, formerly of the Boxtops and Big Star, who pronounced them “the greatest rock’n'roll group in the world”.

In October, they were down at Ardent Studios in Memphis with Chilton, producing deranged covers of Jack Scott’s “The Way I Walk”, Roy Orbison’s “Domino” and the Trashmen’s “Surfin‘ Bird” alongside their own composition “Human Fly”. Ork Records, which had released singles by Television and Richard Hell, couldn’t quite get the financing right and the Cramps eventually issued these four tracks on two separate singles on their own label, Vengeance, in 1978. The Cramps’ logo, inspired by the Tales from the Crypt comic, helped them gain further attention.

Touring as far afield as Canada and the West Coast of America, the group’s live show created quite a buzz and the Police manager Miles Copeland snapped up the rights to the singles for European release as the EP Gravest Hits on his Illegal label in July 1979. He also brought the band over to Europe to support the Police on tour.

After an unsuccessful attempt at recording an album in New York, with the British guitarist Chris Spedding producing, the Cramps went back to Memphis and Alex Chilton, this time also using Sam Phillips Recording Studio (formerly Sun) as well as Ardent. The resulting sessions became Songs the Lord Taught Us, one of the best debut albums of all time. Once again combining their own compositions, drawing on trash culture in general and B-movies in particular (“Zombie Dance”, “I Was a Teenage Werewolf”) and inspired versions of Johnny Burnette’s “Tear It Up”, Link Wray’s “Sunglasses After Dark” and Little Willie John’s “Fever”, The Cramps caught the post-punk mood brilliantly when the album was released alongside the single “Garbageman” in March 1980. Britain’s own psychobilly scene of the early Eighties, with groups like the Meteors, King Kurt and Demented Are Go!, drew its inspiration wholesale from the Cramps.

However, after cutting the equally impressive EP Drug Train that July, Bryan Gregory left the group, who replaced him with Kid Congo Powers from Gun Club. Lux Interior and Poison Ivy carry on with the Cramps to this day, having scored unlikely hit singles with the sleazy “Can Your Pussy Do the Dog?” (1985) and “Bikini Girls With Machine Guns” (1990) and having eventually signed to Creation Records, but they have never quite recaptured the magic of the line-up which featured Gregory.

Gregory soldiered on with various bands, called Beast (which released three singles between 1980 and 1984), the Dials (1992-95) and, more recently, Shiver. In between, he dabbled in the occult, worked as a tattoo artist in Florida, tried to become an actor and ran a sex-shop in California. “He is pretty burnt,” Ivy would tell journalists who enquired about the former Cramps guitarist.

Indeed, ill-health had forced Bryan Gregory to curtail his musical activities, and he suffered a heart attack at the end of last year.

http://suchbeautifulgardens.blogspot.com/

If you have any favorite Cramps images, drawings, collages, etc., done either by you or by someone else (and those are pretty much the only choices there are), and don’t care if they appear on such a disreputable blog, send them to me at:

drsivana99@gmail.com

Here are some more of the images I have collected over the years. I’ve included credits and info where possible, but with many of them, I have no clue.

(Above) By kingpopgun

(Above) All three of these are by Jennifer Steffey.
http://www.jennifersteffey.blogspot.com/

(Above) From Emily Hughes:

I was quite moved by the passing of Lux Interior this year, not even 2 miles from my home in Echo Park. You see, he taught me to dance, I was 13 when I first heard The Cramps, combat boots and a mohawk, I just started twisting my hips and all the boys smiled. He made it so easy, to be sleazy.
Anyhow, in my mourning, I came across this photo of Lux, god he was hot, and it eerily reminded me of this oil painting of a dead sailer, titled “peace after the storm”, by Ferdinand Schauss, 1896. I hope Lux found some of that.
Man, I would give my left arm for an oil painting of a writhing Lux Interior asphyxiating on a mic cord on stage in the stink of a 1970’s New York- … Heaven. Then I’d give my right arm to be in Greece with Anna and Bart… armless in Greece.

http://www.annasheffield.com/blog/category/blog/muse-blog/emily-hughes/

//

I’m not clear on who actually did the above two, but I found them here:

http://brainsteakbikini.blogspot.com/2009/09/things-cramps-taught-us.html

Pretty wiggy! You can see more such at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/terriblyodd/

Jack’s Stomach was a cartoon single

BASIC, a French illustrated song book (front)

(… and back!)

Ad for Songs the Lord Taught Us by Druillet

Thrills was a magazine based in Rouen

www.peshkepia.com/PORTRAITS.htm

(Above) By Steve Harlow
http://www.p0ps.com/PunkRockPictures/ClubShows/Drawing_Lux.html

(Above) By Rose-Marie Salmon, embroidery and paint on canvas.
http://www.coca.org.nz/artists/38/

More Cramps art, photos, magazine covers, posters, winding shrouds, torture devices, and other bits of intimate apparel.
My question is this: Is the Legion of the Cramped totally defunct? And if it is, could it be revived? And if it can, can WE do it, here and now? I’m up for it.
Let me know what you think, what you know, and what you think you know.

–Chuck
drsivana99@gmail.com

The Cramps
Illustration für die Band von Titus Ackermann

Fur Dixon and Steve Werner
Hailing from Van Nuys, California, but equally at home anywhere under the western sky, well-traveled California folk favorites Fur and Steve will take you on a rollicking musical joyride through the back roads and highways of the American West.
Known for their dazzling two-part harmonies, their spectacular yodeling, awesome guitar picking, wise-cracking humor all serve to compliment their old and new-timey traveling songs.

Steve Werner – Vocals, Travis and flat pick style guitar, songwriter. Previous bands: the Mentones-1983 This Train-1987 the Avengers-1989 Steve Werner and the Sleepwalkers-1991 Throughout the 90′s: bandleader and rockabilly guitarist for Glen Glenn, Johnny Legend, Tony “Wildman” Conn, Ray Campi, Sonny Burgess, Jimmy Angel, Tommy Sands and Jewel Akins. 2001 released album “Biker Campfire” acoustic biker folk songs, available on CD Baby and I-Tunes.