The Cramps "Big Beat From Badsville" 1997***

By no means my favorite Cramps album, but I couldn't resist posting it once I saw the Bad Girl video clip: Absurd, dirty and fetishistic - if that's what Lux and Ivy cooked up for MTV, I wonder what their home movies look like? Well, there's different kinds of people and different kinds of love in this world, but with this couple you know it's true love: After 25 years of living together, not many can honestly sing to their partner as lustfully as Lux does "I love your ass/ for bad or worse/I love your nasty way you curse/When you sit down, it's wild how you sit/Grind your heel in the ground, the groovy way you spit/Ooh, you look good, ooh, you smell good/Ooh, you taste good, like a bad girl should". But here is a rare case in show-biz: a couple that remained inseparable for 37 years, from meeting in college (in the Arts and Shamanism class) to Lux's death in 2009. They never got married or had any children - I guess you could say The Cramps were their lovechild, and they gave everything they had to the band, living the rock'n'roll lifestyle to the max: world tours, crazy unhinged performances, sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. They originated the whole psychobilly music scene, by deriving their inspiration from horror movies, vintage porn, exotica, obscure 50's rockabilly and 60's surf and garage and filtering it all through punk's DIY aesthetic. Poison Ivy is probably the most underrated guitarist ever, delivering her inexhaustible stock of surf/rockabilly licks with silent cool while Lux wailed, gurgled, screamed and sang like a madman in the throes of an epileptic crisis. 

By the 90's their sound hadn't changed much from the days of psychobilly landmarks Songs The Lord Taught Us and Psychedelic Jungle, despite exchanging the 2nd guitarist for a full-time bassist. But inspiration didn't come knocking as often as before. Live they were as wild as ever, a force of nature actually as I've described before, but their albums contained more and more filler. "Big Beat From Badsville" was their 7th (and penultimate) full length LP, written and produced exclusively by Lux and Ivy. It's distributed by the indie punk label Epitaph, which may explain why it sounds a bit rawer than its predecessors. It opens with "Cramp Stomp", a song bearing all marks of the band: jungle beat, wild guitar and deranged vocals. "God Monster" is a messy psychedelic horror piece, "It Thing Hard-On" is raging garage punk and "Like a Bad Girl Should" a rhythmic rocker with a dirty riff, nasty lyrics and lusty vocals. Mid-tempo boogie "Sheena's in a Goth Gang" and "Queen of Pain" introduce us to a couple of memorable female characters whom no sane man would want to meet. "Monkey With Your Tail" revisits their favorite jungle theme while "Devil Behind That Bush" and "Super Goo" take their cue from 50's R&B. "Burn She-Devil, Burn" and "Haulass Hyena" are sped-up rockabilly and "Badass Bug" and "Wet Nightmare" are wigged-out surfin bird-style psychopunk. The latter introduces a novelty in the guise of an out-of-control theremin sounding like a malfunctioning UFO driven by an intoxicated alien. In the end, despite being a simple re-hash of The Cramps' familiar formula, "Big Beat From Badsville" is still great fun and puts all other psychobilly acts in their shade. Lux's death deprived us of an one-off rock'n'roll original - we're not about to see his position as psycho-sleazy king of trash rock'n'roll challenged any time soon...

***** for Like a Bad Girl Should

**** for Cramp Stomp, Queen of Pain

*** for It Thing Hard-On, Sheena's in a Goth Gang, Hypno Sex Ray, Monkey With Your Tail, Devil Behind That Bush, Burn She-Devil Burn, Wet Nightmare

** for God Monster, Super Goo, Badass Bug, Haulass Hyena

Various Artists "URGH! A Music War The Album" 1981****

URGH! A MUSIC WAR is a music documentary, consisting of live performances in various places around 1980. It presented the multi-faceted post-punk musical reality and its soundtrack constantly leaps from one genre to the next. Let's look at the tracks one by one:

1.The Police – "Driven to Tears"*** Proof that, in his pre-millionnaire days, Sting led a tight rock band

2.Wall of Voodoo – "Back in Flesh"*** The Fall meet Captain Beefheart? Or America's answer to John Lydon's P.I.L? In any case, not likely to win many fans. After the song, the singer declares that "Show business is my life". Maybe he should try his hand at prestidigitation.

3.Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – "Enola Gay"***** The opening synths of this song is The Sound of New Wave to me. A perfect single and a great live performance.

4.Oingo Boingo – "Ain't This the Life"*** Danny Elfman's ska/jazz/punk alma matter. Always a weird one, he was bound to end up collaborating with Tim Burton! This one could have been in Corpse Bride, I can't help but picture dancing skeletons when I listen to it...

5.XTC – "Respectable Street"** New Wave with funk overtones. Not impressed with the live performance, though. C'mon XTC, you can do better than that...

6.Go Go's – "We Got the Beat"***. Never mind that popster Belinda Carlisle began her career here. The Go-Gos were a great girl group in the best 60's tradition

7.Klaus Nomi – "Total Eclipse"***** The voice! The wardrobe! The haircut! The make-up! Nomi certainly was one of a kind, with his operatic vocals, Kraftwerk synths and electric guitars. And this song is his zenith, recorded shortly before he regrettably became the first celebrity to die of AIDS...

8.Jools Holland – "Foolish I Know"*** Jazzy piano from former Squeeze pianist, soon to become a successful TV show host. 

9.Steel Pulse – "Ku Klux Klan"**** Top-Class Roots Reggae and antifa message from these Birmingham based Jamaicans

10.Devo – "Uncontrollable Urge"**** Better than expected - an energetic punk rock performance!

11.Echo and the Bunnymen – "The Puppet"**** A rough, full of angst performance by Ian McCullough - different than his usual croon. Interesting!

12.The Cramps – "Tear It Up"**** Inventors of psychobilly in all their psychotic majesty

13.Joan Jett & The Blackhearts – "Bad Reputation"*** Although already a rock veteran with the Runaways, Jett was still young enough to identify with punk's rebellion against the "hippy generation" of rock. This one sounds like a mix of the Beach Boys, Ramones and...Cyndi Lauper.

14.Pere Ubu – "Birdies"** These Art-Punks from Ohio were never big crowd pleasers, yet they receive an enthusiastic reception

15.Gary Numan – "Down in the Park"*** Kraftwerk-like synths and Joy Division detachment from an emblematic figure of New Wave.

16.The Fleshtones – "Shadow Line"*** Garage Soul party rockers, still going strong today.

17.Gang of Four – "He'd Send in the Army"*** Angular guitars, funky bass, socially conscious lyrics - that's what Go4 were always about, that's also what they deliver here.

18.999 – "Homicide"*** By 1980, the music press had officially declared Punk is Dead. 999 sang "I believe in Homicide" and proved it's alive and aggressive as ever. If you see them coming your way, better change sidewalk...

19.X – "Beyond and Back"**** LA's finest punks, whose  records were produced by the most un-punk-like Ray Manzarek. With Siouxsie lookalike Exene Cervenka on vocals and fiery rockabilly guitar licks courtesy of Billy Zoom.

20.Magazine – "Model Worker"** A stellar New Wave band, but I think they underperform here.

21.Skafish – "Sign of the Cross"*** The only band I hadn't heard before. Based on their name I would have guessed they played ska music, but they surprised me with their hardcore punk, almost metal, attack and anti-religious lyrics. They obviously weren't trying to make any friends. Gotta respect them for that!

All in all, URGH! is a perfect snapshot of the scattered musical landscape after the punk attack on the musical industry, catching the fleeting moment of free music expression before the industry took the upper hand again, limiting artistic liberties with "professional" productions, lifeless digital sound and made-for-MTV videos. The film offers more goodies not included in the soundtrack, such as performances by Dead Kennedys, UB40, Surf Punks, Members, Alleycats, Au Pairs etc. Watch it on the big screen or low-resolution VHS, for the full period effect...

The Cramps "Off The Bone" 1983(comp)*****

Something must be wrong - how can it be Friday the 13th, again? Is that how 2015 will play out? It all seems to have started when Tsipras won the election in Greece - Is he the Antichrist? Some people seem to think so and try to kill his government while it's still young. Have those fools learned nothing from watching The Omen trilogy? 

On last month's Friday the 13th I presented The Fuzztones' "Salt for Zombies". This time I chose another band that perfectly exemplifies the spirit of that day - just look at that cover! The Cramps were a real band of misfits from Midtown, America (actually Akron, Ohio) who in 1975 came to New York to join the nascent punk scene with Patti Smith, Ramones, Blondie etc. Their small town origin was one of the reasons they did not fit in with this crowd, either. Plus, the Cramps were not weird/artistic. They were weird, period. They harbored an unhealthy fascination with 50's rockabilly, horror movies and kinky sex. The core of the group was real-life couple Lux Interior and Poison Ivy. Ivy is the group's guitarist, silent and menacing and oh-so-sexy in her 60's stripper outfits, prancing up and down the stage dispensing deadly rockabilly/surf licks from her vintage guitar. Lux is the most extreme performer I have ever seen. I will never forget the Cramps concert at the Rodon Club, in 1991. He came dressed in a red latex suit and high heels and proceeded to jump and down the stage, pants lowered down to his knees, unhuman guttural sounds emerging from the microphone which he had somehow shoved inside his throat, climbing on the huge speaker, swinging Tarzan-like from the curtain and performing a somersault, landing perfectly on his high heels. In the end, he kept beating the stage's wooden parquet with the microphone stand until he broke it and ripped out the flooring, plank by plank. I have had the vinyl version of "Off The Bone" since my teens and it remains one of my favorite records, ever. It's a European compilation bringing together their debut "Gravest Hits" EP and cuts from their first 2 LP's "Songs the Lord Taught Us" and "Psychedelic Jungle", covering the 1979-1983 period. Apart from Ivy, two more guitarists are featured: Brian Gregory and his replacement Kid Congo Powers. Kid Congo is a Mexican-American who was also in Gun Club and Nick Cave's Bad Seeds, thus 3 of the best bands ever! Gregory's disappearance from the music scene saw him shrouded in mystery. Wild rumors of satanism and necrophilia abound - almost certainly false. What we do know for sure is that he played a zombie in Day of the Dead, ran a pornographic bookstore and died (possibly of AIDS) at the age of 49. The music style of the album is psychobilly. More than that, The Cramps are actually the inventors of this musical style, with elements of Rockabilly, Punk, Surf, Garage Rock, Blues and Psychedelia played in a trashy, lo-fi manner, with explicitly sexual and horror-themed lyrics. The album opens with their all-time favorite composition "Human Fly", inspired from the classic horror movie "The Fly". Ivy plays a killer surf riff and Lux sings "Buzzz buzzz buzzz". This is a song to define the entire genre! Next up is a 50's cover, Jack Scott's "The Way I Walk" with Lux doing his psycho Elvis impersonation. Here you can see the Cramps play it at the very start of their career (for the residents of a Mental Asylum in '78) and compare with this clip of one of their very last performances (open air festival in 2006). They sure still had it! Plus, does Ivy basically look the same after 30 years? Is this the result of daily consumption of embalming fluid? Or of some occult voodoo practice? "Domino" is a Roy Orbison rockabilly classic given the psycho treatment, followed by a crazy fucked-up cover of the Trashmen's "Surfin' Bird" (already a pretty wigged-out number to begin with). Ricky Nelson's ballad "Lonesome Town" is the last song from their debut EP (Recorded in 1977 by Big Star legend Alex Chilton). "Garbage Man" and "Drug Train" are great psychobilly originals and Peggy Lee's "Fever" a peculiarly mainstream cover, while Charlie Feathers' "I Can't Hardly Stand It" and Ronnie Cook's "Goo Goo Muck" find their ideal performers in The Cramps. The latter's lyrics refer, according to the urban dictionary, either to blood sucking or eating pussy: "when the sun goes down and the moon comes up/ i turn into a teenage goo goo muck/ i cruise through the city and i roam the street/ looking for something that is nice to eat". More wild covers of obscure garage (The Nova's "The Crusher") and rockabilly (Hasil Adkins' "She Said, "Mel Robbins' "Save It", Warren Smith's "Uranium Rock") follow. "New Kind of Kick" is a paean to the continuous search for new highs - drugs or sex? probably both! sample lyric "Like baby needs mom/Like suzie needs dick/This baby needs some new kind of kick". The CD closes with a track from their live album "Smell Of Female". It's called "(You Got) Good Taste". Another reference to cunnilingus? Now where did I possibly get that idea?

***** for Human Fly, The Way I Walk, Goo Goo Muck 

**** for Domino, Surfin' Bird, Garbage Man, Fever, Drug Train, Love Me, I Can't Hardly Stand It, The Crusher, Save It, New Kind of Kick, Good Taste

*** for Lonesome Town, She Said, Uranium Rock