The Cramps founders Lux Interior-sexually ambiguous crowd-teasing front man & his partner in crime Poison Ivy-super-hot psychobilly guitar goddess set out to conquer the New York music scene with their ultra hip brand of leather & mayhem poured out in psychedelia, surf, rockabilly and punk (they recruited drummer Nick Knox in 1977), but in the process they subsequently resurrected western swing and ’60s pop with their own cover-brand of fuzz-box mutant rock’n'roll. thing is, they covered songs no one had ever heard of and they did it with a flair for the dramatic-clad in black leather spandex, red velvet gloves & big hollow-body gold glittering guitars. this was the kind of music your parents warned you about and it sure as hell didn’t make sense in the ’70s disco era. The Cramps were scary cool…surf became punk, punk became rockabilly…and the next thing you knew, they became the poster children for campy horror movie surf-punk…..
Song titles like Black Leather Lagoon and Bikini Girls With Machine Guns need no explanation, they sound how they sound, but when The Cramps did their own menacing pop punk screamo versions of The Sonics’ “Strychnine,” Hasil Adkin’s “She Said,” and even Jimmie Rodger’s “Mule Skinner Blues,” they forever sealed their underground cult status as one of the greatest show-and-tell bands to ever take the stage. no, they never were a band of serious music theory perfectionists but they never claimed to be and yet….their music legacy spanned more than twenty years of swamp rock anthems:
2008 Off the Bone
2004 How to Make a Monster
2003 Fiends Of Dope Island
2001 A Date With Elvis
1998 Greatest Hits
1997 Big Beat from Badsville
1994 Flamejob
1991 Look Mom No Head
1990 Stay Sick
1990 Creature from the Black Leather Lagoon
1987 Rockinnreelininaucklandnewzealand
1984 Bad Music For Bad People
1983 Smell of Female
1981 Psychedelic Jungle/Gravest Hits
1980 Songs The Lord Taught Us
They even did a live show at the Napa Valley State Mental Hospital
Lux-”We drove 3,000 miles to play for you people. And somebody told me you people are crazy.” (just imagine a band trying to pull this off today.)
Sadly, the heyday of The Cramps suddenly came to an end on February 4.
In a statement released by the band’s publicist:
“Punk-rock icon Lux Interior, who was the wild frontman of psychobilly pioneers the Cramps, passed away due to an existing heart condition at Glendale Memorial Hospital in Glendale, California at 4:30 AM PST on Febriary 4, 2009…
Interior, born Erick Lee Purkhiser, was 62 and is survived by his wife of 37 years, Cramps guitarist Kristy “Poison Ivy Rorschach” Wallace…
The family requests that you respect their privacy during this difficult time.”
Rest-In-Peace Lux, you will be sadly missed.
