THE CRYPT OF THE CRAMPS

LUX interview from GRAVYZINE

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck Miller) — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 23:08:00 +0000

http://www.gravyzine.com/LuxInteriorInterview.html

LUX INTERIOR, the ultra slithery frontman of the legendary CRAMPS engages Sal of Electric Frankenstein in this sinful interview........

I noticed your last album was dedicated to Goulardi…He just past away, right?

Lux: Yup.

Out here Zacherly is pretty much THE Horror Host. Can you explain to our readers the difference between the two, I don’t think most people are too familiar with the horror hosts and that whole phenomenon.

Lux: They were different people, Zacharly and Goulardi. To say they were just Horror Hosts, they were much more than that, they were somewhere between a horror host and Hitler. Goulardi, he was just way out of control, always causing trouble, always in trouble but he was so powerful that he could get away with it. Kind of like Elvis Presley shaking his hips on television, he was so powerful he could get away with it, everyone was upset about it but they couldn’t do anything about it because it was bringing in too much money. When Goulardi was on TV in the 60’s crime just plummeted because no one was out, they were all watching Goulardi. He was just a totally rebellious character. A good model for young people and was one of the forerunners of what later became youth counterculture type thing.

They had a lot of audiences based on television more than let’s say the movies themselves.

Lux: Yeah,oh yeah. The movies were, of course those movies were great and everything and that’s part of it, but the part where they played music it was like a party, just the chance to go nuts, the music like Goulardi played "Poppa Ooh Mao Mao" by the Revingtons, wild great rock’n’roll records that he played during the time that he was on. He would blow up things. He was just a role model.

Have you seen any tapes of Zacharly’s show that he had in the 60’s with the house and the Standells and the Young Lions, they always used to play. I used to live near there when I was little.

Lux: Yeah, I’ve never seen Zacharly, I’ve seen the video tape of Zacherly introducing trailers and stuff which is great. I never saw his show but I’m always a big fan of Zacherly in the monster magazines. He was just an amazing. I think that Goulardi and Zacherly were probably really the best ones. I’ve always loved Goulardi and as a matter of fact we often play his hit single.

Our band did "Coolest little monster" with Zacherly on the B side of one of our singles. He got a new record deal so he redid that song. He originally was going to sing it with us but he couldn’t do it because of his contract, he was still signing by contract so he let us take from the original record the intro and the middle so on our record it’s him doing the intro….We see him all the time. Have you ever gone to the Chiller Theatre conventions.

Lux: No, We’ve always been too busy. I really would have loved to go to the Chiller conventions. It sounds great. I’ve seen photos of him there and he looks great.

We used to help around the convention with, Kevin Clement is the guy. If you ever want to be a guest just let me know, we can set it up.

Lux: Oh we’ll probably do that sometime, it’s just a bad timing thing. That’s ‘cause we’re always doing something right at that time so far.

I don’t know if you collect. Obviously by what you’re interested in musically you can see that you’re interested in obscure records and horror toys, I’m sure. Have you ever on tour found really good finds in any thrift shops?

Lux: Oh, all the time. We’re always out looking for stuff. It’s great because we go to a lot of weird places, we’ll stop on the bus, in-between here and there we’ll find amazing things. Fairly often, you know, the farther away you get from the 60s the harder it is to find things. Somebody just gave us two albums by the Jaguars in Montreal, amazing instrumental albums. Fans give us stuff sometimes and that’s really great. Right before we left we found a box with a bunch of jelly jars on top of it in a junk store and I piled all this stuff and looked in this box and something just made me want to see what’s in that box and I found just a stack of amazing 78s of all 50s, the real wild, obscure, crazy rock’n’roll stuff. Like Blues, R’n’B stuff, that was the latest thing that we found. But we find stuff all the time.

One thing I want to know about. Your lyrics are interesting and definitely entertaining, not exactly what draws your inspiration but what books or movies you particularly find that you can pull from that inspires them.

Lux: Well, all of them. Mainly horror movies and exploitation movies and a lot of stuff comes from those press books from those old movies. Lines out of old movies, comic books that we collect, all the old horror comics of the 50s, probably about the only comics that we collect are obscure horror comics, the real sick ones from the 50s. Some stuff comes from there but mainly just old records, old rockabilly records and that stuff, singles mainly, 45s.

50s comics have the greatest cover, those colors.

Lux: Oh yeah.

And the artists. It seems as though the artist who didn’t know how to draw made the coolest monsters.

Lux: Yeah, real archaic looking.

Our record covers, we try to make each one look like an old, crazy comic book covers. Have you got a hold some old, obscure horror film lately on tape that might be real interesting. I’m sure you got stacks.

Lux: Well the ones that I really like a lot are that I think will become more popular. At one time no one ever knew who Betty Page was and we really loved Betty Page and I can’t believe that now she’s as well known as Marilyn Monroe or somebody. I think that the next thing that might become popular are these West German horror movies from the early 60s. They’re just packed with cool stuff. They have all these weird camera angles, they go take a drink and it’ll show them looking at the bottom of the glass. And some girl stripping on the other side of a nightclub. They all take place in nightclubs or stripclubs. Just weird camera angles. Some of them look like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari where some of the angles are so weird and stuff. And they all have sexy girls in them and really weird stories. Titles like "The Head", "Phantom of Soho", "In on the River", just a lot of them early 60s West German horror movies. Klaus Kenski’s in some of them, Edgar Wallace. If you want to get one just to see what I’m talking about, "Phantom of Soho’s a good one".

I heard of a lot of these. The French and Spanish are easy to come by nowadays, and Italian ones, of course.

Lux: Yeah, you got to find a good rental place that gets good Sinister cinema stuff. The Something Weird Video stuff.

Yeah, those are always at the convention. They’re easy to get. Something Weird come out here all the time, they have a big huge table.

Lux: Yeah we’re real good friends with Mike Rainey!

Yeah, Mike’s real nice. We talk to him a bunch of times and we try and get clips from Kiss me Quick and other ones that have Frankenstein, those nudie cutie ones with Monsters and nudies in them. Those are pretty cool. We use some of those stills for our record covers.

Another question I wanted to ask. Your stage clothing, do you get them tailored or are they something you find in thrift shops.

Lux: Oh, half and half. If we find something that’s cool and sometimes we get things made. Works both ways.

Ivy’s outfit in NYC, everyone’s asking where she got it.

Lux: The one that she just wore. That was given to us by Margaret, the guitar player of the Doll Rods. She wasn’t wearing that when the tour started and she pulled it out and said, "Hey, look at this She-Elvis outfit" and Ivy said "Ooh yeah" and she put that on and she looked good in it.

Lately, as far as listening, has anything been on the record player for awhile? I guess being on tour is kinda hard.

Lux: Oh all kinds of stuff. We listen to stuff all the time. We bring a CD player, 2 big boxes of cassettes and stuff, compilations I’ve made out of singles. That stuff we always take with us. Just a lot of Rockabilly stuff is kinda what we are listening to, it’s really our favorite thing. We did that interview in Incredibly Strange music talking about Bachelor Pad Music, that’s what they’re calling that these days, we listen to that sometimes, that’s sometimes a fun thing to listen to but our real passion is Rockabilly and 60s.

There seems to be lots of Rockabilly coming out. I mean I remember the first time in the 70s Rockabilly resurgence but now there’s so many, even more things coming out of the vaults. It’s like a time machine, people cranking them out.

Lux: There seems to be a lot of bands that seems to treat it too reverently. You know, they sing about boppin’ in the soda shop and all this kinda stuff and that ain’t what rockabilly is supposed to be about. It’s really supposed to be about sex. And I like Reverend Horton Heat, they do something new with it, and there are a few other bands that do. I wish that somebody would take Rockabilly a step further, and Psychobilly that’s not sexual enough, it’s too fast and not sexual enough most of the time. It’s kind of like Rockabilly mixed with punk. It seems it’s not as sexy as it should be.

Yeah it doesn’t really seem to be concerned with that. It seems to be concerned with the hair-do’s and basically how fast they can play. It’s not tribal enough or sensuous.

Lux: Yeah, I mean if Elvis was concerned about what came 30 years before him, he’d be doing the Charleston. It makes no sense.

It didn’t seem like they want to be rule breakers, like Elvis was more into breaking the rules, so was Jerry Lee Lewis and all the original people.

Lux: Yeah and I think that’s what Rock’n’Roll is really all about whether it’s R’n’B, Rockabilly, whatever it is. I think the Stooges were a great band. They did something brand new when they started, they were about breaking rules and every once in a while something like that happens. But I don’t see much happening since punk rock hit the 70s, you know the Sex Pistols and the Clash and the American bands like the Ramones, when that happened and when we started out, I think that was culture changing and people are still copying that, fashion is copying that and since than Grunge was just a copy of early 70s progressive rock. The thing that punk rock rebelled against – and retro - that’s just disco for the fifth time over again. I’d like to see a bunch of 16 year old kids do something exciting and new with R’n’R. That’d be great.

Yeah it seems like just now, maybe since MTV has stopped being a big focal point for people the young kids I’ve noticed in our audience, the people under 20 seem to be into rock’n’roll again.

Lux: Uh Huh, I noticed that too. Our audiences are mostly very young, kids under 20. They get the point right away. They understand.

Yeah, because they do it by feeling

Lux: It’s all the ones that are 30 years old or something that are trying to make some kind of big philosophy to understand what it is.

It seems like these young kids when I talk to them, they’re rebeling against the generation before them which was Hardcore and Rap and what they’re working on is music that has melody and lyrics that you can remember. That’s what’s good about The Cramps because always their songs were memorable.

Lux: Yeah that’s a good thing and besides that teenagers are always going to be into sex, so if anything good happens that’s probably the age group where it’s going to come from.

Your record covers went through different themes, an S&M clothes faze for awhile but now it seem slike you’re going towards more eclectic, right?

Lux: Well I don’t know, we haven’t had very many record covers so they were just some picture we took at the time. We have always been kind of interested in the same thing so I have no idea what our next record cover would be.

I was over at Epitaph when they were putting your record cover together – the new one – and then told me you guys are going to be coming out through them. Has it made any difference to you being on Epitaph? Sometimes labels are a little controversial with some people.

Lux: Well, that’s OK with me. They sell to the right stores, they sell vinyl and they sell CDs to the stores where a lot of people would go buy a Cramps record and that’s that’s good and they know what they are doing in regards to a lot of things. I just like the people there. The record company we were with before that was a label distributed by Warner Bros. And that was a real horrifying experience. Warner Bros. Was the only real major label that we dealt with so it’s really refreshing to be with Epitaph who are actual real people.

Yeah, I remember that you guys were having a lot of problems with IRS records. It’s hard to find a label to really care about what you’re doing and back you up. But with the Cramps all the fans I know of, myself included, were real concerned that you find someone who would really help you and back you up in a positive way.

Lux: Yeah, it really is because everybody sees something different in the cramps and there’s been times in the past where the record label would say, "Oh, you’re a freak show!", "You’re weirdos!" "We really got to push that freaky thing!", and that’s a part of it. Yeah, it’s a freak show to some guy in a polo shirt but who cares about them. It’s much better to have a record company who says we know who you are, we know who your fans are and this should be something sincere to everybody involved and honest and that’s the best thing to do.

Distribution is really important and things like that and they probably have a good distribution network.

Lux: Yeah they do.

I’ve seen you over the past dozen years and how the shows have changed live, sometimes it’s more elaborate. Like one time I saw you play at "Privates" in NYC and you had the spiders coming out and cobwebs all over the stage and everything. Is there a difference between how you set up the shows year by year, is it planned out how you wanna do it.

Lux: It’s not too planned out. I think some of it is just what we’re into at the moment. We try to have as few rules as possible and we try to leave it open to being unpredictable. So we don’t like having a lot of props around too much but sometimes we’ll we’ll do something because we think it’s fun or somebody gives us something, just like that outfit that Ivy wore. We didn’t plan it out and draw it on drawing boards…

Well I don’t mean it being planned out on paper but as far as wanting to express a certain thing during a certain period.

Lux: Yeah, it’s kinda just what we’re interested in at the time. It’s always different too, sometimes we have no time and we just have to throw something together and other times we have more time to plan something. It’s always different, it seems like we’re always busy. It’s hard when you are in a Rock’n’Roll band, as you know, it’s hard to just keep it above water.

Just the mail drives you crazy, when you get stacks of letters it gets to be very difficult, and you start to worry about the things people write you about. Do you get to play smaller clubs anymore?

Lux: Oh yeah, we play small clubs. It’s really fun. We just played in Montreal in a club that holds 650 people. It’s like two floors and the floor’s just like 10 feet from the stage, the bottom floor is right at the edge of the stage, and it goes all around the stage so I mean nobody was farther away than 20 or 30 feet. And there’s like 650 people crammed in there and that was just chaos. It’s like when you see in movies in the peevles?, it’s like the minute you step on stage, like cshhhhhhhhh. You could hardly hear the music it was just the shrieking going on. That was a ball. Like that showshow we did in NY, the first row of people was like 10 feet from the stage, or at least it seemed like it with all those lights shining, I couldn’t even see the audience half the time..And that’s fun too but the more intimate it is the more fun it is, the more unusual.

The lighting was great though, there in NYC, it was really dramatic.

Lux: Yeah, we only use red and white lights, we try to keep it as simple as possible and you can do a lot of things with that. We don’t have lights that look like disneyland, the color of the rainbow just going off for no reason.

Oh yeah it drives you crazy. You’re trying to play and lights turn green, purple, orange. And you can’t see the fretboard. And the strobe lights too, you do it tastefully, you don’t have it running through every song. When it does come on, everybody really savors those moments, it gets pretty cool. When you’ve been playing, basically the original days when I saw you at the CBGB’s theatre way back on the Bowery, did you ever think that you would still be playing from then till now?

Lux: Well, we didn’t give it that much thought I don’t think. I still can’t imagine not doing the Cramps at this point I still can’t imagine not doing it so I don’t even know what’s going to happen. We’ll just do what seems like the right thing to do. Back then I really don’t think we thought how long are we going to do this. The first time we played CBGB’s, the first time we auditioned I think we were thinking that we’d go out and nobody would like us that much and we’d only play once.

Yeah everybody thinks that the first time. The guitar that Ivy got when she played Human Fly, that Dan Electro was that a vintage one.

Lux: That is completely made, made out of a piece of wood. That was made by a guy in Washington DC, Steve Metts. He makes guitars for people, he makes guitars for ZZ Top, and when we were playing in Washingoton DC he called up Ivy in the hotel room and said, "Hey I made you a guitar I want to give it to you.", and she said "Oh, OK." It’s pretty amazing when you see it close up it has mother of pearl inlay in the fretboard, It has the Cramps logo and on both sides it has those trucker but flap girls. It’s really beautiful.

Yeah you could see it’s got a purple shine from where I was in the audience. I thought it was a Dan Electro the way it was shaped.

Lux: Well it’s a copy of a long horn, the same size and everything but it was completely made from scratch.

What do you think of, I noticed Guitar Wolf opened for you, that whole resurgence in Japan of that whole wild rock’n’roll.

Lux: Well I like a lot of those bands, of course we got Guitar Wolf, we sought them out to get them on the bill and it was difficult. It was difficult communicating with people in Japan most of the time. But I really like the 5678’s, they’re really one of our favorite bands. Have you ever heard their stuff?

Yeah I met them a few times, they’ve played down in NY.

Lux: Yeah and there’s some other bands from over there that are really good. The Cedrics? Yeah there’s a pretty crazy scene over there.

Have you been to any countries besides the usual ones.You've played in Japan and England and all that but have you played even further east? Asian countries at all like Thailand?

Lux: Yeah we haven't been to Thailand but we will probably do that soon.

North Vietnam is having bands come there now.

Lux: Oh Yeah? I didn't know that. I heard that China and Thailand are having bands in there now and we plan to do that but I hadn't heard Vietnam.

Yeah you can go in to North Vietnam through Sweden and get in there and somebody told me that 10,000 people will come to a show, even old villagers because there's nothing else. But they've been buying American Punk records through the mail now.

Lux: That would be really great.

I got a letter once and I sold bunches of singles, not just of my band but all different ones to people of North Vietnam. I talked to someone from North Vietnam and they're telling me all these Swedish bands come, and how other bands come through there now that it's a little bit more relaxed. It might be cool to go there.

Lux: If the Cramps played there they probably wouldn't forget it for a while!

Yeah I read that in Thailand when they show Laverne and Shirley, at the beginning they say "Please do not copy these women - they are escaped from a mental institution and are not like how nice normal American girls act." I wonder if you come out to North Vietnam everybody will start emulating a Cramps look.

Lux: That would be pretty funny.

THE END

Happy Howl-O-Ween!

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck Miller) — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 07:39:00 +0000

KOGAR THE SWINGING APE presents Lux and Ivy's Favorites Volume Fifteen!

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck Miller) — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 00:06:00 +0000

Posted by Kogar the Swinging Ape
at WFMU's Rock -n- Soul Ichiban
http://wfmuichiban.blogspot.com/2010/10/lux-and-ivys-favorites-volume-fifteen.html

Here is Lux and Ivy's Favorites Volume Fifteen!

This volume is a mix of left over songs from that magical tape that came into my possession earlier this year and some other hold over songs that I've been waiting to throw on the series.

A HUGE thank you goes out to Haunted George for doing the cover for this volume. For those unfamiliar with his work, I highly recommend checking out his Myspace or Facebook pages (the URL's are part of the artwork when you download the volume). Be sure to check out his stuff. It's some of the more interesting/different music being produced today in a landscape filled with the usual garbagegarage (tm).

CLICK HERE FOR DOWNLOAD LINK

A few notes on the songs.

The intro/instrumental was reassembled from the original tape using the best sources I could find. You can read the whole story about "instrumental" on my blog. It shouldn't be too hard to find the track title if you really want to know. I kept it a mystery for the hell of it. The actual intro will be familiar with most everyone (i hope!). It was on the tape I was given and I had to laugh when I heard it. You could tell it was recorded using a cheap microphone that was more than likely held up to a television so it could be put on the tape.

Ruth Wallis - Ubangi. Wow, here is a song that i've looked for for years! In an old interview with the Cramps, Lux had attributed this song to someone named Ruth Fallen, and described the song in pretty good detail. I could never find this song anywhere. He called it YOU BANGI ME, I BANGI YOU (or something like that).

Then, as a result of that interview I gave to Dig It magazine, someone contacted me (thanks Colin!) suggesting that it was Ruth WALLIS! I tracked down the song, listened to it, and decided it HAD to be the song Lux was referring to. My guess is that the interviewer mis-heard Lux when he said the name of the artist. FALL-IN, WALL-IS, it could have been careless notes, or a bad transcription of a tape the interviewer had made.

Finding a good copy of the song was nearly impossible. It originally appeared on 78. I found a CD compilation of Wallis's songs with Ubangi on it. Great, right? A version taken from CD has to be good quality, right? Wouldn't you know it? The CD has a glitch on that particular song! Any mp3 rips of it sounded like shit. Besides the glitch it had an amazing amount of background noise.

After a while I found that it had been issued on a LP as well and through some further searching found a sealed copy for sale on ebay. This is the version on this compilation. And even then, it doesn't sound that great. I think it was mastered from the original 78 and not a master tape. The song even gets louder and softer, so I guess no one cared because it was for stag parties anyway!

Then I found a few more holdover songs from the original INCREDIBLY STRANGE MUSIC interview.

Red Hewitt and the Buccaneers - D.J. Blues; Lux never mentioned the artist, just talked about the song, and the lyric "music right out of the swirling all!" The first few seconds of this track remind me of a cramps song. So happy to have found this track. Red Hewitt was from New Zealand and released a few 45's on the Audion label (see scan on tracklisting).

Sheri Lee Douglas - Chime Bells; Never thought I'd find this one. Lux and Ivy swear this is KAY MARTIN singing, and I have to agree with them. It sounds exactly like her. The b-side of this 45 will be on the next LAIF volume.

Let's see, what else? There are a few more tracks from Forbidden City Dog Food as well as a bit from the Purple Knif Show. After listening to it again recently I heard a few seconds of something that never registered with me before. As the show ends, there is a few seconds of the deadly ones song, the mad drummer! It is such a great song, it HAD to be included on this volume.

Enjoy this volume, it might be awhile before the next one, but you never know!

My plans for remastered versions of the earlier volumes are still going according to plan. Volume 6 will be next, then volume's one, two, three and five.

Huge thanks go out to: Debbie D for doing a little sound voodoo on a bunch of the mp3's to make them sound better, Howie Pyro for the secret track, Bruce Milne, Colin Duff, Olaf Jens for helping me with a few songs, Steve Pallow, and Adam Fitch for his amazing graphics.

BLACK CENTIPEDE CREEPING DAWN
The first Black Centipede novel, Creeping Dawn, will be creeping your way in ...

LUX AFTERBIRTHDAY SUPERPIXAPALOOZA!

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck Miller) — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 05:42:00 +0000

What can I say about Lux Interior? What kind of a eulogy can I give him on what would have been his 63rd birthday? How can I explain why the Cramps meant so much to me and still do? Frankly, I do not know. That is to say, I can't quantify it, I can't give you a formula. What follows has been assembled from a couple of earlier posts, and a few other things I've written on the subject. Looking back, I think I did a fairly good job of saying what I wanted to say, so I thought it might be appropriate to bring it out again. I've put it together and filled in some of the cracks with more or less fresh insights. I hope it says something to you.

My painting in honour of Lux's Birthday
Respect,
SlimGil DeLuxe

I'M CRAMPED
by Chuck Miller

I was born in Akron, like Lux, and I lived in Cuyahoga Falls, no more than a few miles from the Purkheiser residence in Stowe. It is entirely possible that child-me and young adult Lux passed one another on the street now and then, neither of us aware of what destiny had in store. Erick Purkheiser may have glanced at that dopey-looking little redheaded kid bouncing along and never dreamed that his future activities would affect that child's life in ways both subtle and noisy; profoundly rewarding and profoundly dangerous.

Of course, it ain't about geography. Lux and Ivy could have come from Idaho or Wisconsin or the moon or Planet X, and the result would have been the same. And in fact they WERE from all those places, and quite a few more. They pulled together such a diverse array of inspirations and influences that they were from everywhere.

It is perhaps easier to say what the Cramps were NOT than to try to define what they were. They were not punk rock or psychobilly or any of that. They were unique in a way that very few things ever are, and there was never a pigeonhole built that could hold them. They were sui generis. What kind of music did they play? Cramps music. What kind of a band were they? They were the Cramps kind. Where can I find their records? Under "Sacred Music" of course.

The first time I actually SAW the Cramps in action was in the movie "Urgh! A Music War." As you know, they contributed a blistering rendition of "Tear it Up," which not only eclipses every other performance in the movie, it eclipses every other performance in the fucking history of the fucking world. At the time, though, I did not quite see it that way. It was frightening. I was a bit stunned. What is this I am seeing? Is this man having a nervous breakdown on stage? Is this like one of those clips of Elvis when he was too fucked up to remember his lyrics? And look at that poor guitarist! She must hate this guy. I mean, if looks could kill...

Obviously I knew nothing at that point. I was staring directly into the sun and trying to make sense of what I saw, but I lacked the vocabulary for it. However, instead of blinding me, this sun began to pull my eyes open. It would take me a while longer to complete enough of a paradigm shift to accommodate the Cramps, but once I did, there was no going back. The interesting thing is, it was not so much a process of discovery as it was of recognition. The Cramps spoke to something that was already in me, dormant and undernourished. The change was not instantaneous. Nothing worthwhile ever is. And when it had been accomplished, I could finally answer the question posed by Lux in "Garbageman."

Yeah, I DO understand!!!
And what's more, I have understood for a long time, though I didn't know it because I had never had it shoved into my face and shaken like that. I knew that this was the purest form of what it was, and what it was was what I wanted.

I, like Lux, ended up playing in a band that was a de facto homage to my inspirations-- mainly, in my case, the Cramps themselves. I did not come up with a stage name, but I had a person in me that only came out on a stage in a club late at night, and it's a damn good thing. This person would do or say absolutely anything. He wasn't me, and yet he was. Possibly he was more me than the one who walked by day.

And I did not consciously invent him. More like I discovered him living down in my basement, so to speak. Which makes sense, when you consider the fact that most of us spend about 90 percent of our time refraining from doing whatever it is we REALLY want to do.

Many observers took Lux's stage persona at once too seriously and not seriously enough, without really understanding just what they were seeing, and they got it hopelessly confused with the man behind it. Which it both was and was not. In many ways, I suppose it was the purest distillation of what Erick Lee Purkhiser really was. As with all great fiction, it was closer to the truth than mere reality; it was authentic on a level the "real world" seldom reaches.
To say that Lux was my favorite singer would be like a Christian saying Jesus was their favorite guy that got nailed up on a cross. Technically true, but missing almost all of the emotional subtext.

We mourn his passing, and rightly so, for he was a rare bird whose like will never be seen again.

But leave us always remember and never forget: What Lux was to a set of vocal chords, Ivy was/is to an electric guitar.

The Cramps without Lux Interior would be like Elvis Presley without Elvis Presley. However, as Lux himself knew full well, there is no "I" in Cramps but if there were, it would stand for "Ivy." That doesn't make much sense, but sense is not what I'm shooting for. I'm trying, in the most roundabout way possible, to say that the Cramps were, essentially, a duo. Drummers and bassists and second guitarists could come and go-- and there were some great ones-- but in order to have the Cramps, you have to have Lux AND Ivy.

Now, we only have Ivy. And we must continue to cherish her. The Cramps are no more and will never be again. But we still have a kick-ass nasty red-headed guitar heroine by the name of Poison Ivy Rorschach.

Back in about 1990, I had the very great good fortune to interview Poison Ivy for a little entertainment paper I worked for at the time. When I say "little," I mean just that. It was extremely local, given away for free at libraries, laundromats, college campuses, etc., in Mobile Alabama. Not exactly Vanity Fair, it was almost as prestigious as the Thrifty Nickel. Most of the writing was as boring and crappy as the small, parochial "music scene" it covered. (I also played guitar in a band called the Church of the Chainsaw, which might just as well have been a Cramps tribute band.)

So, I had a grandiose idea. I was going to try and get an interview with someone who was actually famous. I selected a few artists I really liked and wrote to their record companies or publicists. The Cramps, of course, were on the list. The very top, in fact. Some time went by and I heard nothing from anyone, which I had more or less expected. I had almost forgotten the whole business when one day, while I was at work, the phone rang. I answered, a female voice asked to speak to Chuck Miller, I admitted I was him. The caller said, "This is Poison Ivy of the Cramps."

Since reaching adulthood, I have never once shit in my pants. But if I had, that would have been it. I knew It wasn't a joke because any of my friends would know that they'd be signing their own death warrant with such a stunt. I got my shit together, got a tape recorder, and we talked for more than an hour. It was the highlight of my journalistic career, if not my whole fucking life. I wish I still had that tape.

Another thing I've never done is have a religious experience, but, again, that came very close.

I have interviewed a few more celebrities since then, but that was the only time I ever came away from it feeling that I had just talked with someone who genuinely appreciated my interest and who thought I was just as important as she was.

Years later, I got to meet both Lux and Ivy face-to-face, for all of about 15 seconds, at a club in New Orleans while they were making their way to the stage. I seriously doubt she actually remembered me, but she very sweetly pretended that she did. I shook hands with Lux and stammered out some incoherent but sincere expression of my admiration and devotion. To which he replied, "Thank you." Those were the only two words ever spoken directly to me by Lux Interior, and I have no doubt that he meant them as much as I mean it now when I say, rather belatedly, "You're welcome, Lux. And thank YOU."

I always had the impression that Ivy was the brains of the outfit. But not in a creepy Colonel Tom kind of way. More like an "I know that what we are doing is some incredibly great and unique shit, and I intend to take good care of it" way. She built and maintained the framework that allowed Lux to be the magnificent beast that he was. She was his foundation. Had there not been an Ivy, right now there might be only a handful of people mourning the death of that weird old Mister Purkhiser who ran that used record store out by the airport. Would young Eric ever have found the freedom to gleefully bounce around nearly naked on a stage in a pair of high heels? Maybe, maybe not. And had he not, how much poorer our lives would have been.

Now, I am not seriously suggesting that anyone here is likely to forget or even discount her. But with everything that has been written about Lux, a lot of it by me, I want to take the opportunity, now that some time has passed, to express my gratitude, admiration and appreciation to the Cramps' other half.

I have a friend in California with three daughters, all under the age of 15. They are lucky kids indeed because they all got to see the Cramps in 2006. The youngest was less than a year old. The two older girls were enthralled with Ivy. She touched something deep inside them. There is still a lot more sexism in the music world than anyone wants to admit. There are a few basic molds into which most female performers squeeze themselves. There are way more Pussycat Dolls than there are Girlschools or Runaways, more Brittneys and Jessicas than Candy Del Mars. Where can a young girl look to find a guitar heroine of her own? Not many places. But one of those places was the stage before which those girls stood on that day. And they will carry that with them for the rest of their lives.

They saw a little glimpse of freedom, a hint of their own potential, just like I did so many years before. Someone telling them, without words, that they could do this too, if they want. I don't talk too much about the trappings, you'll notice. The cheap horror movie sensibility, the kitsch, the camp, the fashion. It happens that I love most of these things myself, but the truth is, they are just details. Not all that important. It could have been anything. They could have dressed as giant lobsters and played polka, and they still would have been the Cramps.

The Cramps demonstrated that it is possible to live a life untainted by compromise or surrender, that it is possible to be, not so much what you think you want to be, as what you really ARE at your core, no matter what that is, in a world that encourages anything but. It is a lesson that few will ever grasp and even fewer will ever live. But, thanks to the Cramps, some of us poor suckers will at least have a chance.

Oh, and perhaps the most import thing-- I never eat stuff off the sidewalk. No matter how good it looks.

-- Chuck Miller

The photos above, sent in by SlimGil DeLuxe, show Our Founder Mister Interior in the studio, giving voice to "Rayo X," a super-wrestler in the animated film Los Campeones de la Lucha Libre, the English-language version of which was released earlier this year.
Los Campeones de la Lucha Libre is described by the American Cinematheque’s website as “A feature-length animated action-comedy” in which “Masked mayhem ensues when a team of wrestling heroes is caught in the middle of a struggle between a gang of barbarians right out of Mad Max and a legion of monsters inspired by the golden age of Mexican horror films.” There’s a bit on the animation company’s blog about Lux Interior’s role:

We needed a creepy, unearthly yet endearing voice for Rayo X, and after testing many actors, it was apparent that the role was made for Lux. Working with him was both a blast and an honor…Tomorrow night will be a sadder experience hearing his voice ring out at The Egyptian, and a little unnerving when Rayo utters Lux’s favorite line in the movie ‘Ah, the heady stench of death‘.

Some of you may not be familiar with SlimGil's great Crampcentric artwork. Below you will find a few examples. You can see more on his MySpace page:
http://www.myspace.com/slimgildeluxe

Erick Lee Purkhiser (October 21, 1946 – February 4, 2009), better known as Lux Interior, was an American singer and a founding member of the legendary garage punk band The Cramps from 1976 until his sudden death in February 2009 aged 62.

Born in Akron, Ohio, he grew up in its nearby suburb of Stow and graduated from Stow High School.He met his wife Kristy Wallace, better known as Poison Ivy, a.k.a. Ivy Rorschach, in Sacramento in 1972, when he and a friend picked her up when she was hitchhiking. The couple founded the band and moved from California to Ohio in 1973 and then to New York in 1975 where they became part of the flourishing punk scene.

Lux Interior's name came "from an old car commercial", having previously flirted with the names Vip Vop and Raven Beauty, while his wife's name change was inspired by "a vision she received in a dream". The couple called their musical style psychobilly, originally claiming it to have been inspired by a Johnny Cash song, (One Piece at a Time), and later saying that they were just using the phrase as "carny terms to drum up business."

Interior was also a visual artist, in particular he was a 3D camera collector and enthusiast with which he created artworks and collages.

The Cramps gave their last show in November 2006. When asked why he continued to play live well into his middle age, he told the LA Times:

"It's a little bit like asking a junkie how he's been able to keep on dope all these years, It's just so much fun. You pull in to one town and people scream, 'I love you, I love you, I love you.' And you go to a bar and have a great rock 'n' roll show and go to the next town and people scream, 'I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you.' It's hard to walk away from all that."

In 2002 Lux Interior performed the voice of a character on SpongeBob SquarePants - the lead singer of an all-bird rock band called the Bird Brains. SpongeBob voice Tom Kenny attended his memorial ceremony.

Lux Interior died at 4:30 a.m. on February 4, 2009, in Glendale, California. The cause of death was aortic dissection. He is survived by his wife Ivy and two brothers, Michael Purkhiser and Ronald "Skip" Purkhiser. The memorial service for Lux was held on February 21st at the Windmill Chapel of the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine. This was a very private ceremony but a report of it, agreed to by Ivy, was posted for fans by long time friend Jonny Whiteside on the blog of LA Weekly and later in the print edition. Lux's brother, Mike, also provided insight into his relationship with Lux in a newspaper article.

http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Cramps-Biography/249A0742775FEB0248256D92000D2D06

The Cramps roots can be traced back to 1976 when, according to legend, Erick Purkhiser picked up hitchiker Kristy Wallace in Ohio. They discovered a mutual love of old-time rock'n'roll and classic SciFi B-movie matinee fare... The rest, as they say, is history.

They soon decided to form a band. Akron Ohio was not the place for a band like The Cramps to "happen" so the couple packed on up and moved to New York City, drawn by the lure of what they read and heard was happening at a club called CBGBs... Erick took the stage name "Lux Interior" from an ad he saw describing an automobile ("Lux" as in the advertising abbrv for "Deluxe") and Kristy took the name "Poison Ivy Rorschach", from a dream she had (of course, everyone knows that a Rorschach Test is the ink blot quiz a shrink gives folks). Lux would be the singer, Ivy the guitarist. The band was soon rounded out by Bryan Gregory on guitar and Bryan's sister Pam "Balam" on drums. Pam quickly dropped out and was replaced by Miriam Linna. After recording one demo and playing a few gigs, Miriam left to join Nervous Rex. Her replacement was Electric Eels drummer Nick Knox (Nicholas Stephanoff).

Their "minimalist sound" may take some getting used to, but this is pure raw rock'n'roll. Two guitars (they only recently submitted to having a bassist) and a basic trap drum set (Bass drum, Snare and cymbal) were the only instruments. Ivy played lead guitar while Bryan (and his subsequent replacements) played highly fuzzed and distorted guitar riffs, more than making up for the lack of a bass. In New York they became cult favorites and, with Alex Chilton (of Panther Burns fame) they recorded a couple independent singles which caught the ear of Miles Copeland, who signed them to his fledgling I.R.S. Records. Those first singles and a fifth song, were released as GRAVEST HITS. The Cramps toured briefly then headed back to the studio with Alex Chilton to begin work on their first full-length LP, SONGS THE LORD TAUGHT US

Shortly after the LP SONGS THE LORD TAUGHT US was released, Bryan Gregory left the band, taking their van and most of their equipment with him. It's rumored he didn't like the direction the band was going and wanted a more modern sound and thought the lyrics should be meaningful, like The Clash. Obviously Bryan had no idea what it meant to be "Cramped." He surfaced a while later in a band called Beast, releasing three singles. They soon Dumped Gregory, moved to the UK and became Veil, vanishing after a one shot gothic LP. Gregory later worked as either a satanic minister or a porn shop vendor, depending on who you believe. (Bryan Gregory died of heart failure in January, 2001. See the IRS Memorial Page for more details). Gregory was replaced by Julien Greinsnatch, whose time with The Cramps, while limited, was forever recorded on film in URGH! A MUSIC WAR.

Gun Club's Kid Congo Powers, a longtime fan, picked up the guitar duties and the band went into the studio to record PSYCHEDELIC JUNGLE. It was during this time that The Cramps started having problems with Miles Copeland and I.R.S. Records. Royalties, unapproved cover art, and lack of promised support on tour were the reputed sources of the dispute. Ultimately the case was settled out of court, but not without having a severe impact on the band. During the period of litigation they could not record (technically they were still contracted with I.R.S.) so touring became their only source of income. Because desperate fans hungered for new material, fear of bootlegging kept The Cramps from doing new material at these concerts.

Once the case was settled, The Cramps recorded a live set at New York's Peppermint Lounge which was released (on the late great Enigma Records) as the "tastefully entitled" SMELL OF FEMALE. Kid Congo then left the band (amicably) to return to Gun Club. I.R.S., either to fulfill a term of the settlement or as a final kiss-off released the psuedo-greatest hits collection BAD MUSIC FOR BAD PEOPLE.

Then a period of rotating second guitarist/bassist and rotating labels began. Guitarists/bassists who came and went included Click Mort, Ike Knox (Nick's brother), Mike Metoff (formerly of The Pagans and Nick's cousin), Fur and finally Candy Del Mar who stuck around for a while. After she left a fellow named Slim Chance assumed duties on the bass.

Nick Knox, stalwart drummer, had long suffered from vision troubles and after eye surgery left him blind in one eye, decided to leave the band and retire. He was replaced by Jim Sclavunos, and soon followed by Nicky Beat and then Harry Drumdini, arriving at the current line up of Lux, Ivy, Slim and Harry.

In 1989 The Cramps seemed to have smoothed over some of their problems with Miles and I.R.S., as they assisted in the preparation of their I.R.S. catalog for CD release. This apparent reconciliation may have only been for the sake of making sure "it was done right" for The Cramps continued to work independent of any "major label" influence. The Cramps continue to record and perform and have released many albums since leaving IRS. While this site is devoted to IRS Records exclusively, all of The Cramps recordings are worthwhile and, in humble webmaster Mr. Bill's opinion, worth seeking out and owning... Look for the aforementiond SMELL OF FEMALE, A DATE WITH ELVIS, STAY SICK, LOOK MOM NO HEAD, ROCKINNREELININAUKLANDNEWZEALND (a live concert recording), and FLAMEJOB.

In 2001, Lux and Ivy revived their Vengeance Records label and regained most of their non-I.R.S. catalog for reissue. And not only on CD -- they're also available on cool colored vinyl (which makes Mr. Bill have flashbacks to the glorious 80s)!

Peter Gunn

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck Miller) — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 02:31:00 +0000

BCP Song of the Day: Poison Ivy Rorschach- "Peter Gunn!"

http://drsivana99.tumblr.com/post/1259433100/poison-ivy-the-cramps-peter-gunn

COMING FROM BLACK CENTIPEDE PRESS black centipede creeping dawn

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck Miller) — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 07:20:00 +0000

http://theblackcentipede.blogspot.com/

LAIF LAMF

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck Miller) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 08:25:00 +0000

LUX AND IVY'S FAVORITES is a series of great music compilations assembled by KOGAR THE SWINGING APE

http://kogarsjunglejuice.blogspot.com/

Patrick Bainée recently spoke with Kogar about the series for DIG IT. All you ever wanted to know about LUX AND IVY’S FAVORITES
The best compilations ever made, a must have for fans
of The Cramps or anyone (or apes) with ears.

Interview by Patrick Bainée

Kogar's Top Ten of the Lux and Ivy's Faves

1. The Musical Linn Twins - Rockin out the Blues

2. The Symbols - Do the Zombie

3. Jan Davis - Watusi Zombie

4. The Original Starfires - Fender Bender

5. Link Wray - Genecide

6. The Electro-Tones - Ghost Train

7. Link Wray - The Fuzz

8. Bob Taylor - Thunder

9. The Saxons - Camel Walk

10. Davie Allen and the Arrows - Theme from the Unknown aka U.F.O.

If you only know 4 or 5 from this list, don't cry, it's normal. Then read this and go dig into those fabulous Lux & Ivy's faves: they're for free, thanks Kogar.

Patrick : Kogar, you’ve heard that question a lot of times.

So let me explain that the idea of your Lux & Ivy’s favorites compilations emerge after you read this book « Incredibly Strange Music », from 1993 (on Re-Search), featuring (among others) a long interview of Lux & Ivy speaking about their favorite records.

Even if there are no songs by the Cramps on your LAIF, those compilations celebrate the tastes of Lux & Ivy in music. What made you become a Cramps addict ?

Kogar : Well, I was a big fan of horror movies and comic books as a kid and when a friend introduced me to The Cramps in my early 20’s, I immediately fell in love with them and their sound. Since then, I’ve been a cramps fanatic…

P : Of course, LAIF can be considered as bootlegs, but on another hand, there should be a statue in your honour. I mean you brought to peoples’ ears music that they never have heard otherwise. Anyway, most of the labels of the records featuring on LAIF have disappeared. What’s your point of view about that ? (LAIF being a bootleg, rights …)

K :I really don’t consider the series a "bootleg" series, but a fan made compilation. There is a difference. To me, bootlegs are just a way for someone to make money. I in no way want to make money off these, ever. In fact, I probably wouldn’t have done this interview at all if it weren't for my relationship with you. I have always done this for the love of the music and for Lux and Ivy, and not for any notoriety or money.

P : The first two volumes of LAIF were cool comps you made only for your own ears. What gives you the idea of making other volumes (a total of 13 so far!) ?

K: Well, originally it was, as you mentioned, from that RE/search book, but soon, other sources popped up and it went from there. I always have a list of songs that i am looking for, etc. Every time i read an interview where they mentioned a song, i would add it to the list. The list would get longer and longer.

P : Can you explain the exact concept / philosophy of LAIF to us …

K: Well, the only real philosophy is that i try and be true to the theme. I really try and include songs they mentioned or played before shows, or put on a tape. People try and suggest things all the time, but usually i don’t include anything like that, because they are just guesses.

P: Volume 1 was mostly 50’s oriented when volume2 was a mix of 50-60’s era, right ?

K : It just happened to work out that way, because of the book’s concentration on exotica, and music from that time period…

P : Most of the other volumes are more eclectic. Is there always a major idea in the construction of the other LAIF ?

K : There usually isn’t a theme of any sort, except volume 12 because it happened right after Lux’s death, otherwise i just keep a list of songs and when i see that i am nearing 30 or so songs, i get to work on sequencing them, etc. I do take some time to sequence the songs so they flow together in what i think are a good way.

P : Since this book "Incredibly Strrange Music", what are your other sources of reseach :
Interviews, songs played before Cramps shows, what else ?

K : Mostly interviews with lux and ivy, tapes that they have made etc. I even went so far as to try and memorize songs they played before there live sets !

P : Did you identify songs mentioned by Lux that in fact never existed (Nasa & the Sputniks …)

K : Well, let me explain that a bit. I believe Lux started making some songs up and throwing them at interviewers just to mess with them! The DJ Mad Mike, from Pittsburgh used to do that all the time, make up song titles and bands that didn’t exist, just to confound his listeners.

I believe that nasa and the sputniks doesn’t exist, but if there’s anyone that’s reading this that can disprove this theory, contact me immediately! The same goes for “ubangi, me bangi too” by Stacey Bengal (another record mentioned by Lux that I can’t find mention of ANYWHERE). Was he referencing Mama Ubangi Bangi? I don’t know….

P : There are a lot of songs you got from those Vip Vop tapes that remain unidentify
I imagine it’s a lot of work / deduction to identify them ... ?

K :Yes, there are a bunch of songs that remain to be identified. But, believe it or not, its been kind of enjoyable identifying these songs over the years. The joy of hearing a song you’ve been looking for pop up on my ipod, or on an internet radio show, can be a religious experience !

P : Do you know the full story of those "Vip Vop Tapes" compilations made by Lux for friends ?

K : I really don’t know the full history; Apparently, Lux made a lot of tapes back in the day (Forbidden City Dog Food was originally booted from a tape of Lux’s). I stumbled across someone years ago who had 2 tapes called the “vip vop tapes”. Apparently they were made by Lux to be played at parties etc. The quality isn’t that great, and there were no track listings, so as I identify songs they are added to the LAIF series (there are still about a dozen that remain to be identified).

P : Also, for non 100 % bonafide Cramps fans, could you remind where the nickname Vip Vop comes from. There's also a song …

K : It’s from a Marvin and Johnny song (NDA : only available on an album by the Isley Brothers featuring Marvin & Johnny). Lux at one point had his name legally changed to Vip Vop back in the early 70’s.

P : Do you have any help from guys all over the world ?

K : Yes, i’ve had an amazing amount of help over the years. Rex Doane of wfmu’s FOOL’ S PARADISE, Howie Pyro from the INTOXICA podcast, Paul from the UK who was partly responsible for the wavy gravy/mello jello compilations. Dan from the slickee boys, Ben from Chicago Dirk ungawa, you, Rich and Mic from the Sickidz, and many more i can’t remember off the top of my head !

P : Do all the records from this list exist on vinyl ?

K :Pretty much, 45 ‘s 33’s and 78’s. But i’m guessing Lux and Ivy’s preffered format is the 45 rpm record. (NDA : in fact in Rock'n'Folk interview 2003, Ivy said that for her the best are 78 RPM 'cause the sound is rich, warm and alive).

P : Some must be very pricey …

K : That ‘s the thing ; some are, and some aren't. You could spend a few thousand dollars on some of these records, or you could find some of them in the dollar bin. Some are priceless, like "Stormy Weather" (NDA : by the Five Sharps – read the story about this record here : http://musicmasteroldies.blogspot.com/2009/09/stormy-weather.html), i think there’s only like 2 known copies or something…

P : 13 volumes of LAIF so far gives a total of almost 400 songs. About 80 % are from the 50-60’s, 10 % from an early era, and 10 % more recent (Gories, Guitar Wolf …). Most of the songs can be classified in the rock’n’roll, blues or garage category. But there’s also novelty tunes, exotica stuff … What else ?

K : One of my favorite catagories is vocal group or doo wop tunes. Some of the songs on the series really blew me away like "FLAMINGO" by the charades. I think people tend to think lux and ivy only listen to crazy rockabilly, but it’s much more than that, and i’m glad the series can show the wide range of music they dig.

P : What’s the craziest song from those LAIF ?

K : Well, crazy is in the ear of the beholder.

P : Considering your top ten, your tastes go for the 50’s / early 60’s period, right ?

K : Yes, i love 50’s and 60’s music, 70’s and early 80’s punk and the glorious times of the early to mid 90’ s garage scene…

P : Do you like all of the songs on LAIF ? Or are there some you don’t like that much, or even not at all ?

K : Yeah, there are a few that really aren’t up my alley. Like some of the "drop in" type novelty records.

P : Did you already skip songs that Lux & Ivy mentioned. I mean, I read once (Rock’n’Folk, 2003) that they were found of Michael Jackson’s "Thriller".

K : Well there is a difference between songs they’ve mentioned and songs they loved. I vaguely remember the "Thriller" reference. Did they mention a particular song ?

P : No, so let’s forget MJ.
To me all those "semi instrumentals" like "T-Bone" by Larry Collins, "Red Headed Flea" by the Caps or "Tarzan’s Monkey" by the Apes (a guy saying "me Jane, you Tarzan", and a girl answering "hihihi, no, you Tarzan, me Jane" for all lyrics) are timeless, you never get rid of that kind of stuff. Do you agree ?

K : Yeah, those are great timeless songs…

P : Also, I guess that it must be a real pleasure to find out that one of your personal long time fave is among Lux & Ivy’s ones too. Does it happen a lot ?

K : It does happen every once in a while. One of my favorite songs of all time is "WATUSI ZOMBIE" by Jan Davis. It popped up on one of the vip vop tapes and i was thrilled that lux had included that one because to me it’s on of the most perfect records of all time ! And being a fan of mad mike too, i was happy to find that Lux liked songs like CAMEL WALK etc.

P : Can you name a few songs that MUST be among Lux & Ivy’s faves but that you never saw mentioned anywhere ?

K : I really don’t like to guess at what their favorite songs might be. This is all about them, not me….

P : What would you think of a volume called "Songs Lux & Ivy Should have liked" or else.

K : I really don’t like that idea, because it’s every tom dick and harry could "come out" with something like that. To try and guess at a song that they might like is a futile exercise.

P : Do you see LAIF as a compliment of more or less official releases like (explain the comparison or differences, please) Born Bad (the only one issued before LAIF); Forbidden City Dog Food; Purple Knif Show; Songs The Cramps Taught Us …

K : I guess i would look at my series as a compliment to those mentioned above. Born Bad an d STCTU as mainly songs the cramps borrowed bits from to create their own songs. Over the years, i have included songs from the purple knif and FCDF because the quality on those bootlegs are not that great. As better quality versions are found, i throw them on the LAIF series. Especially if i’m trying to "fill" the edition and "release" it.

And let’s not forget none of those are official releases. They are outright bootlegs that people put together or make money off of the Cramps name. That’s why, i try to go out of my way to make these free for fans of the cramps or just fans of good music in general.

P : A lot of the songs on LAIF aren’t available on the ones mentioned above, or even on any other compilations. Do you know how many songs from original singles are ONLY available on LAIF ?

K : Not really sure. There are many songs that i’ve had to rip from 45’s because they aren’t available on any other compilations.

P : Is the name LAIF inspired by that video tape made by the Cramps in 1984ish ?

K : Nope, just came up with the name because it was the best way to describe the series.

P :Do you ever think of compiling Lux & Ivy favorites movies ?

K : I have thought of that, i just haven’t really been able to seriously take a look at it. I have started incorporating songs from the movies they like, like « the green slime » etc. On the upcoming LAIF 14, i will be including 5 minutes to live by Johnny Cash because that was listed somewhere as one of their favorite movies.

P : Do you feel those LAIF help to keep the flame of the Cramps alive ?
(I mean – there won’t be any new Cramps album - maybe "Gravest Gravy" DVD one day)

K : I don’t think anything I could do would keep their memory alive, Lux may be gone, but the Cramps music and legacy will live on forever.

I’ve always looked at the series as a companion piece to be enjoyed by cramps fans who wish to delve deeper into their mythos. Like if you like the cramps, you might really get even « more » out of them if you check out some of the things that influenced them.

P: Tell us about some of the songs on LAIF, anecdotes about the songs, or the bands, or … whatever you’d like to say

K : yeah, I could really think about something to say here, its all in the other parts of the interview

P : Some of the early volumes features downloaded / MP3 songs. Do you plan a "remixed" version of some of LAIF based on originals records that you found lately.

K : I have been making a concerted effort to find better quality versions of some of the songs, especially from the earlier volumes. Some of the early songs had the ends chopped off, because they were the only mp3 i could find. Plus those early volumes were only really meant to be heard by a few people. Quality wasn’t really high on my list. Just hearing these songs at all was pretty cool, who cares if they were in less than steller quality ? but over the years, its really started bugging me.

P : Have you heard about Lux and / or Ivy being aware of LAIF
They used to say that good music is for share, that people shouldn’t have to pay hundreds of $ to hear such or such great song, only available on 7’’.
So I think they took LAIF as a celebration of their (good) taste

K : I get the feeling that if they knew about them, they probably wouldn’t be too happy about them. But i would hope they would understand that its just a labor of love by a fan, and that originally, they were really only meant for me and my friends. Then, all of a sudden i’d run into people at parties and they’d mention the series (not knowing that I had made them) and say how cool they were. I usually would pretend i didn’t know about them and say i’d check them out !

What i didn’t know was that people had started making copies for other people and that they grew from there. Then i put them all up on soulseek for anyone to get…THEN after that, WFMU found out about them and with my consent put them up on their BEWARE OF THE BLOG page.

P: Apart from soulseek, where are those LAIF "available"?

K : All the remastered volumes will be available on my blog, all the existing volumes as they are available thru the WFMU BEWARE OF THE BLOG page.

P : Some volumes can be found on your blog (http://kogarsjunglejuice.blogspot.com)

K: This is where all the remixed volumes with covers will appear.

P : Do have an idea of how many people downloaded LAIF, or how they will sell if they were available in shops / the Net ?

K : I really have no idea. I do know that they have sort of a life of their own now. And again, i have no desire to have these available for purchase, etc. They are meant to be free and to be enjoyed by people who have the desire to find them on the ‘net.

P: Would you like to see some volumes issued on vinyl ?

K : Absolutely not. If they were to appear, you could well be sure i had nothing to do with it, and further more, you would probably never see another volume from me, or if you did, it would be in a way to dissuade bootleggers (like i would keep the titles off the mp3’s, etc)

P : As each volume of LAIF is a full CD, it’ll have be a concept, like an exotica one ?
Or a special compilation like "LAIF tearjerkers: sad songs for sad people", this one will be based on songs like "The Bells" by Billy Ward & the Dominos ?
I think someone has to issue that before other people rip off your concept, as it already happened recently.

K : Yes, someone issued a cd in the uk (NDA: it's called "Bad Music For Bad People, Songs The Cramps Taught Us"). If this keeps happening, get ready for a radically different edition of LAIF. Like each volume not having the tracks identified. Anyone paying for that cd is just being ripped off. Like why would someone buy something that is obviously a bootleg, when you can download the cd’s for free on the internet. It’s not like anyone is supporting the artists by buying that UK cd. I assume it has been put out by people that copied my compilations. To me that’s just incredibly opportunistic.

P :About LAIF covers : Joaquim Costa, the early Portuguese rocker who died a couple of years ago and with whom you were in contact, thought LAIF were so great that he planned to design covers. Can you tell us the story about this ?

K : I had been in contact with one of the guys who put together the PORTUGUESE NUGGETS lp’s and had heard these incredible recordings by Joaquim Costa that really blew me away. Afonso sent me the Joaquim 45 and was pretty close with Joaquim and he told Joaquim how much i loved the 45. He had also given Joaquim copies of the LAIF series and he flipped for them. Joaquim was the first rock and roller in Portugal (and i highly recommend his 45, though I can’t recall the label its on- NDA : it's on Groovie Records), and one of the things he liked to do was design record covers for records that he had. So say he bought a record and he didn’t like the cover. He would throw the offending artwork away and MAKE HIS OWN COVER !

Afonso told me he had wanted to make covers for all the LAIF volumes and had began the process (even going so far as to find the original 45’s and scan the labels), but he passed away before he could finish the project. I have no idea how far he got, or if he finished anything, but it was a real missed opportunity to have this amazing guy contribute to the series. I think Lux and Ivy would have approved. I think its safe to say, this guy was kind of like the Portoguese Hasil Adkins .

P : The two latest Vol - # 12 & 13, have great covers, with a returning frame : this "stay sick, turn blue" logo. Tell us about the origin of this logo.

K : This is called, for the lack of a better term, the memento mori frame. Memento Mori translated from latin means « remember you must die », which i think lux used to translate into « too bad you’re gonna die » which appeared in some old cramps flyers.
The actual skull and bones framework was taken from (i believe) a book that came out that published a list of the dead from the black plague. Somewhere along the line, Lux co-opted the design for their old flyers. So it was a no brainer on my part to incorporate that design into the covers for the LAIF series.

P : Will previous volumes get their own cover too. Who will be the designers ?

K : Yes, they will all have covers. Well, first and foremost the guy who actually puts them together is Adam Fitch, a friend of mine from college. He basically takes my ideas and makes them a reality. He does amazing work and I can’t thank him enough.

Slim Gil DeLuxe has done the art for volume one and two, which are still on the back burner for right now until i can get the mp3’s up to snuff.

Michael Deforge from canada has done a super space alien psychedelic cover from volume 6 that has to be seen to be believed ! It’s really amazing. Do a search for his artwork on the net under KING TRASH.

I’ve got some other stuff in the works, but nothing’s been finalized so i’d rather not talk about it right now….

P : What’s your fave volume of LAIF so far ?

K : Probably volume 12. It’s my aural tribute to Lux and the way it came together was sort of magical in a weird way. Things just seem to come into place.

P : Did you get material for a volume 14. If yes… when will it be issued ?

P : I’m working on it right now, and if certain things that i’ve been sort of waiting for come to pass, it should be a pretty cool volume. There’s no telling when it may be « out , maybe sometime this summer.

P : Do you ever think of someone writing a book based on your Lux & Ivy Favorites ?

K : No.

P : Well, I imagine it could be something like "Vinyl Junkies" with guys speaking of how they based the best part of their record collection with your help (personally, the Cramps made me re-discover the fabulous 50’s music, but without your help, thru your research to complete the LAIF serie, I would never have bought all those incredible original singles).

K : Well that’s nice of you to say. I really look at this stuff as a way to help people deepen their love of the cramps. You can listen to the cramps and totally love them, but to appreciate them on a deeper level, you should check out the people that influenced them. Like hearing a riff in a Link Wray song and making that connection to a cramps song is great. Listening to the cramps opened up this world of fantastic music to me. Now, it might have happened anyway at some point, but they are pretty much the reason i’m the music fanatic i am today.

P : Anyway, I can’t think of a concept being such an endless river of gold. So, go on Jim, we want more LAIF.

K : Thanks…

***********

P : You live near Boston, is it still a good place to find cool records

K : I live about an hour north of boston in New Hampshire (the hometown of Gene Maltais !). Boston still has a few great record haunts ; i highly recommend weirdo records, cheapo records, and In your ear records.

P : Tell us about your others compilations.

K : I’ve been making tape and cd compilations since the late 80’s. There is just something so cool about doing your own compilations. They are great snapshots in time. If you listened to my tapes back in the late 80’s early 90’s you would hear punk bands like FEAR and the DEAD KENNEDYS, but now you would hear rare 60’s instrumentals and crazy rock and roll from the same time period.

I’m also working on a 3rd volume of my vip vop tape tribute series called Kogar’s Big Thrill – 0 – Rama Trash Show that should debut sometime this year either on my blog or over at the WFMU ICHIBAN page. It is a series of compilations in the vein of the vip vop tapes (songs mixed and sequenced with horror movie radio spots in between the songs.

http://wfmuichiban.blogspot.com/

P : Is Kogar the Swinging ape name based on a song out of LAIF ?

K : No, my name was taken from the greatest film ever made !

P : You mean «RATPFINK A BOO BOO». And about your group, thee Monkey Butlers.

K : Not much to say….we played for about 5 or 6 years, played a bunch of shows, opened for Sky Saxon once and now are on a « prolonged » break !

(oh and if you really want to hear our music, you can download an EP we recorded back in 2004 thru the dirty water records link over at E-Music)

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck Miller) — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 11:54:00 +0000

You can take your "Twilight" and stick it where the sun don't shine. THIS is my all-time, hands-down favorite cinematic vampire ever.

FAB PIX HELL YEAH

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck Miller) — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 21:52:00 +0000

Spanish Drac

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck Miller) — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 02:28:00 +0000

(Chuck Note: In the Tod Browning version, Mina is played by Helen Chandler, who is very cute. In the Spanish version, the female lead is played by Lupita Tovar, who is fucking hot as fuck. I give her two thumbs-- and one other appendage-- up!)

Dracula (1931-- Spanish language version) **½

From 1000 Misspent Hours

http://www.1000misspenthours.com/reviews/reviewsa-d/dracula1931spanish.htm

A very strange thing happened on Universal Studios’ famous back lot over the course of 22 nights late in 1930. On each of those nights, after Tod Browning and his cast and crew went home from a hard day at work making Dracula, two other directors-- George Melford and Enrique Tova Avalos were their names-- would arrive on the set with a cast of Mexican actors to set about piecing together their own Dracula for the Spanish-speaking market. Melford and Avalos didn’t just use the same sets as Browning. They also employed the same basic script (right down to the terrible, out-of-place sight gag involving the big fat bug and the miniature coffin), along with the same props, the same matte paintings, and alternate takes of the same special effects sequences-- hell, even the same widow’s-peak hairpiece that Bela Lugosi wore during the daytime shooting! But in spite of all the elements it has in common with Browning’s more famous version, the Dracula made by Melford and Avalos is a strikingly different and altogether superior film.

The screenplay, as I said, was a fairly straight translation of that used by Browning. Renfield (Pablo Alvarez Rubio, who also appeared in a Spanish-language version of The Cat Creeps called La Voluntad del Muerto) travels to Transylvania to discuss with Count Dracula (El Diablo del Mar’s Carlos Villarias) his intentions to lease an abandoned abbey in London, and gets himself turned into an insane demi-vampire for his troubles. After sailing to England aboard a chartered ship (whose sailors all end up on the vampire’s menu before the journey’s end), Dracula takes an interest in two young women, Eva Seward (East of Borneo’s Lupita Tovar, playing the character called Mina in Browning’s version) and Lucia Weston (Carmen Guerrero). The undead count first kills Lucia, transforming her into a vampire like himself, and then turns his attention to Eva. However, in so doing, he attracts the notice of Eva’s psychiatrist father (Jose Soriano Viosca, from Cheri-Bibi, the Spanish-speaking counterpart to The Phantom of Paris) and her fiance, Juan Harker (Barry Norton, who played in both El Diablo del Mar and its English-language sister film, Devil Monster), the former of whom summons a colleague of his-- a Dutch scientist named Van Helsing (Eduardo Arozamena)-- to help him get to the bottom of the curious change that has come over the girl since she met the Transylvanian lord. Van Helsing, as always, is a self-made expert on the arcane lore of vampirism, and in short order, he figures out exactly what’s going on, and what must be done to stop it. With a little help from Renfield-- some of it intended, some not-- Van Helsing tracks first Lucia and then Dracula himself to their daytime hiding places and dispatches them with a stake through the heart, saving Eva from the eternal undeath to which the count had very nearly condemned her.

A quick comparison between the above synopsis (sketchy as it is) and my earlier one for Browning’s Dracula will reveal an intriguing point of divergence. In the familiar, English-language version of the movie, Lucy is scarcely heard from again after she is turned into a vampire; not only do her supposed friends barely seem to notice her death, nobody even bothers to stake her after she briefly returns as a child-killing vampire! Here, on the other hand, the filmmakers understood what an important plot point Lucia’s vampiric resurrection was, and understood equally well what dire consequences there would be for the film’s continuity if the subject were left hanging. This isn’t the only difference between the two versions of the script, but it’s by far the most obvious and the most important. It’s also the one that makes Tod Browning and company look like the biggest fools.

Of course, by the time it comes up, Melford and Avalos have been directing rings around the man for more than a hour. Browning’s technique in Dracula seems creaky under the best of circumstances. In comparison to the fluid camera-work of Melford and Avalos, it looks positively arthritic. While Browning seems to have thought he was filming a stage play, the men in charge of this production really understood the possibilities the camera offered, and had the good sense to take full advantage of them. It’s also clear that Melford saw-- and paid attention to-- Murnau’s Nosferatu. A couple of this movie’s classier shots were cribbed directly from the earlier film-- check out the scene where Renfield sees Dracula packing his “bags” for the trip to England. The most outstanding difference in style, though, is the one that best reflects the presumed taste of the special audience at which this version of Dracula was aimed. The one thing about Stoker’s original novel that no commentator ever neglects to mention is its “erotic charge.” (I’ve never noticed any such thing in the book, myself, but maybe I’m just not repressed enough...) The viewer who looks for any hint of sex in Browning’s Dracula looks in vain, however. Not so here. Even the Hammer Dracula films of the 50’s and 60’s-- flicks in which the actresses’ cleavage was a large part of the point-- have nothing on this movie. Lupita Tovar’s nightgowns wouldn’t seem out of place in an Italian giallo from the 70’s. When Mina Seward gets out of bed in the middle of the night to meet Dracula in the asylum garden in Browning’s version, the outfit she’s wearing makes her look like an enormous humanoid ruffle. In the corresponding scene from the Spanish-language version, not only does Tovar’s gown cling to her fantastic figure, her nipples are faintly visible through the translucent fabric of her bodice in the close-ups! (It never ceases to amaze me what people used to get away with in the days before the Hays Code…) Note also that when Renfield is brought under the sway of the vampires in the English-speaking version, it is Dracula himself who drinks his blood, whereas Melford and Avalos have the vampire’s brides do the honors, as the scene was originally written (though, of course, in the novel, Harker is the lucky recipient of their attentions). All told, the “hot-blooded Latin” approach does wonders for the film’s overall watchability.

The superiority of the direction in this version is matched, for the most part, by the superiority of the acting. Lupita Tovar has a screen presence that puts her counterpart, Helen Chandler, to shame. Not only that, Tovar has real chemistry with Barry Norton, making the relationship between Eva and Juan far more believable than the one between Mina and John. As Renfield, Pablo Alvarez Rubio has some problems with his vocal delivery, but his physical acting is top-notch. Early in the film, when Renfield confronts the strange goings-on in Dracula’s castle, the man really does look scared. But the biggest improvement over the English-speaking version in the acting department is Eduardo Arozamena as Dr. Van Helsing. In Browning’s version, even Bela Lugosi looks good next to Edward Van Sloan (the sap who plays Van Helsing there). Arozamena’s Van Helsing is nearly as good as Anthony Hopkins’s interpretation from 1992’s mostly risible Bram Stoker’s Dracula (though it doesn’t quite bear comparison to Peter Cushing’s take on the role).

The only thing that stops this Dracula from really shining is Carlos Villarias. Lugosi was a terrible actor (in English, at least), but the man undeniably had charisma. Villarias does not, and he compounds the problem by aping Lugosi’s dreadful performance. His walk, his gestures, his posture, his vocal cadence-- all are lifted from Lugosi. As ridiculous as the model for Villarias’s performance is, just imagine how much sillier the total effect is without the force of Lugosi’s personality to back it all up. And nothing shows how much Lugosi’s natural accent covered up his inadequacies like watching someone try exactly the same shtick without it. In the absence of a viable Count Dracula, the movie runs into serious trouble when it ought to be at its most effective-- in those scenes when the vampire is onscreen. As it is, the only moments Villarias really pulls off are those in which he keeps his mouth shut and lurks in the shadows.

Still, the Melford-Avalos Dracula is a big step up from the Browning version. Its substantially longer running time (more than 20 minutes in excess of the English version’s) allows for more and better character development, and provides the opportunity to plug up plot holes left gaping in its better-known counterpart. The directors’ firmer grasp of their medium shines through in every scene, resulting in a film that is livelier despite its greater length. The more competent cast rises to the occasion throughout, putting in performances with far greater depth of feeling than the English-speakers who played their roles on the same sets by day. With a more forceful actor in the all-important title role, this Dracula could really have been the classic Browning’s version is generally regarded to be.

Clipping File: Feb. 20, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck Miller) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 06:26:00 +0000

From expletive undeleted
http://undeleted.wordpress.com/2008/02/20/hip-replacement-off-the-bone-by-the-cramps-illegal-records/
Hip Replacement: Off The Bone by The Cramps (Illegal Records)
IT WAS a girl who got me into the Cramps, inevitably.

She was older, wiser, more glamorous, more fashionable – hell, she had easily the biggest mohawk in Scunthorpe pretty much through the whole of the first half of the 1980s, probably even the rest of the 1980s too.

These things mattered, somehow.

The council put a parquet dancefloor over the municipal Baths Hall swimming pool in winter and hosted brass band competitions, pigeon club dinner-dances and bands like Chumbawamba, Faith No More, the Cardiacs and the Guana Batz – until 1am! In the morning! Imagine!

Desperately unfunny comedian Jasper Carrott even built a routine around a gig at the venue in the Seventies (“Play Scunthorpe Baths for 50 quid? I’d drink Scunthorpe Baths for 50 quid ..”). How we laughed.

Everyone went to Steve Bird‘s alternative discos on Thursdays, when as far as Scunthorpe was concerned, the Baths was the social centre of the universe. I’d seen this girl shuffling around to Garbageman at the Baths ever since I‘d been going there.

I can see her now, mohican silhouetted by flashing disco lights, gliding around the dancefloor as Lux Interior sneers:

“Yeah, it’s just what you need when you’re down in the dumps, one half hillbilly and one half punk, big long legs and one big mouth, the hottest thing from the North to come out of the South. Do you understand? Do you understand? Whooooo! I can’t lose with the stuff I use, and you don’t choose no substitute, so stick out your can, cuz I’m the Garbageman.”

The girl had rhythm – at least, she had rhythm in the context of drunk dancing to some gruesome whacked-out psychobilly homage to bad drugs. Or bad sex. Or both. Whatever. I liked her moves. She was very, very sexy. But she hung around with an intimidating crowd.

They were very all fashionable, sophisticated and older, original ‘Scunny Punx’ and all that, but they were intimidating in a very real sense – one of her mates had actually stabbed a pal of mine when they’d been going out a few years earlier. Really. She turned out to be a lovely girl when you got to know her though. And this friend of mine aroused a violent streak in women on a fairly regular basis, come to think of it.

Anyway, I was content to admire this girl from afar. She was so far out of my league it wasn‘t even funny.

A while later, it’s Saturday afternoon down at Jensens (note lack of superfluous apostrophe), an ugly, dirty boozer down the arse-end of the precinct, jammed in between Debenham’s, the multi-storey car park and the glass-and-brick Dr Who ziggurat that is Scunthorpe Library.

Jensens was as rough as a badger’s arse, but they used to serve you even if you had, I dunno, a bone through your nose, and we’d head there after our preferred boozer the Furnace closed at 3pm (younger readers will no doubt chortle at the privations we endured in the olden days before the binge-drinking vom-bonanza that is 24-hour licensing) and carry on drinking until as late as five or six pm. These were heady times, obviously.

The clientele was made up of punks, bikers and hippies, rockers, skinheads and raincoated indie-kids, piss-heads, pot-heads, faded saloon bar harpies, mad old nicotine-stained and rheumy-eyed random pub geezers – plus the odd foolhardy shopper – all of whom soon dissolved into a blur of denim, leather, fishnet stockings and misspelled tattoos.

Imagine the Cantina scene in Star Wars shot in the working men‘s club in Kes and you‘d be heading in the right direction. The stink of patchouli oil, sour lager and a billion stubbed-out fags hung over the place like a mouldy leather jacket.

While the Eighties are often portrayed as the Loadsamoney decade, it was as grim as fuck up north a lot of the time. Industrial meltdown, longterm unemployment, dirty needles and nasty drugs, all that. It was a time when you were supposed to get on your bike to find work. If someone hadn’t nicked it first.

Like me, a lot of my mates were at sixth form, but the social lives of many people I hung around with in town revolved around the arrival of the jolly green Giro every two weeks. I was probably a bit better off, living with my parents, not paying any rent, so I don’t remember feeling particularly downtrodden.

From my perspective, everyone seemed to be, y’know, partying in the face of adversity. It wasn’t exactly the Wag Club but we were happy enough.

We’d hit the Furnace in town on Saturday afternoon, get leathered and then go down to Jensens when it shut. And only then. Like I say, Jensens was a shit-hole and definitely second-division compared to the glittering salon of polite yet thoroughly amusing discourse that was the Furnace. I’m joking of course. The Furnace was a shit-hole too.

But you could smoke dope pretty much openly at either of them so they became popular among a certain element of the town’s youth.

I was probably well away on a couple of pints – no hippy drugs for me, thank you – when I found this woman was sitting next to me. We got talking, one thing led to another and I’m sure you can guess the rest, although we didn’t actually do the dirty deed until I went down to spend the weekend with her in Lincoln, where she lived.

As regular readers have probably guessed by now, I got into the Cramps via a similar musical apres-shag scenario to that described in previous missives. I’ll spare you the details.

I ended up taking the piss at sixth form, spending more time doing stuff for my fanzine than going to classes. In an effort to impress her, I took this girl over to Doncaster – hey, I know how to treat a lady – when I went to interview Marcus Featherby who ran the Pax label and promoted gigs in South Yorkshire.

I think the high point came when I asked him if the riots in Paris in 1968 were “any good”.

We eventually got the train back to mine to find my mum had had a call from college that very day, asking why I wasn’t turning up for my classes – and then I arrive, drunk, with this be-mohawked sex siren who‘d they‘d never met, didn‘t even know existed, expecting her to stay the night. She had to get the last bus home, singularly unimpressed.

Funnily enough, it was soon afterwards that that she chucked me. I think part of the problem was that I really got on her nerves by constantly making a big deal about being a vegetarian while happily munching on any number of gelatine-based confectionary products. Lots of other stuff too, I‘d imagine. I may have been a bit of a twat, to be fair. And probably not a great shag either.

She used to hammer the Cramps’ Off The Bone album, which had just come out, and I bought it soon after we split up. Initially there may have been a little bit of moping about, listening to Lonesome Town and Human Fly (although perhaps without “96 tears in 96 eyes ..”), but I soon got over it. It wasn’t that big a deal.

And it’s a great album on its own merits.

A compilation of previously released singles put out by Miles (brother of Police drummer Stewart) Copeland’s Illegal Records as an ingenious yet despicable way of continuing to make money out of a band who were suing him for unpaid royalties, Off The Bone was a pretty neat package all the same.

Dead Jaw’s cover design was rendered as a stylish and strange green and black anaglyph that made your eyes ache if you looked at it for long enough. There were supposed to be some 3-D glasses included in the album packaging but I never got mine.

The cover image styled the band – guitarists Poison Ivy, Bryan Gregory and Kid Congo, drummer Nick Knox and Interior – as some kind of fucked-up Addams family amid blackened skulls and rats and dancing skeletons, but photographs of them weren’t so very different. If anything, they actually looked even more fucked when you could see them properly.

It wasn’t any wonder they had a slightly cadaverous appearance, given the sentiments of songs like Garbageman, Drug Train and New Kind Of Kick – where Interior sings “If I could only find, some new kind of kick, something I ain’t had, some new kind of buzz, I wanna go hog-mad ..” before proceeding to list an ever-depleting range of new options, including “Energeen .. Barcol .. Draino Hot-Shot .. Wack Attack .. Helium .. Nitrous Oxide .. Formaldehyde …”

Largely produced by Alex Chilton, Off The Bone showcases a sparse, dog-rough kind of punky rockabilly which was heavily influenced by people like Link Wray, the Sonics and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. It was dirty and ugly and a bit old fashioned and weird and it suited me down to the ground. I may even have bought a pair of crepes.

A mate of mine, John, whose family ran the post office in the village where we lived, has a surname which is similar (well, the first four letters are the same) to Garbageman, so obviously I felt the need to call him John Garbage or Garbageman. Even more hilariously, when she was in the shop one day, my mum was talking to his mum and actually called her Mrs Garbage.

It seemed funny at the time anyway.

Where the album went, I’ve no idea. I bought it again at HMV .. Who am I trying to kid? I got it at Vinyl Exchange, a couple of months back. Without the freaky anaglyph cover, unfortunately, but you can’t have everything.

I’m playing it a lot more than I thought I would.

As for the Cramps themselves, according to their official website, “after a quarter century of mayhem, they’re too far gone to even consider any other course ..”

Marvellous.

UPDATE 05/02/09

I always imagined that, post the Skynet-inspired nuclear holocaust, there’d just be the cockroaches, Keef, Iggy and Lux, looking to score. Apparently not.

I suggest you play Garbageman, loud.

Clipping File: Feb. 4, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck Miller) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 06:19:00 +0000

Lux Interior of the Cramps Passes Away at the Glendale Memorial Hospital

Randall Roberts

L.A. Weekly

http://blogs.laweekly.com/westcoastsound/news/lux-interior-of-the-cramps-pas/

For some of us, he was the embodiment of cool. The way he crawled, the way he climbed the speaker cabinets like a panther, the way that Poison Ivy, his wife and collaborator in the Cramps, looked at him with equal parts love and indifference. Lux Interior, born Erick Lee Purkhiser in 1948, was an icon, and his influence on American culture will only rise with his passing.

In 2004, LA Weekly's Jonny Whiteside wrote a great profile of his friends Poison and Lux, and captured the band's essence:

That exhilarating manifestation of deviant intent and skull-denting impact remains Lux and Ivy's exclusive domain. Where punk rock was a barrage of refutation that fomented rabid exultation, the Cramps reclaimed the hillbilly power long since flushed down the Mersey. Through a self-stated "disdain for the myth of musical progress," they melded their mutant propensities to emerge as a guiding voice in the wilderness, a commanding force that redefined the rock n roll spectrum while outgunning almost everyfuckingbody in the game.

The Cramps' New York publicist, Girlie Action, released the following statement:

For Immediate Release:
February 4, 2009

Lux Interior, lead singer of The Cramps, passed away this morning due to an existing heart condition at Glendale Memorial Hospital in Glendale, California at 4:30 AM PST today. Lux has been an inspiration and influence to millions of artists and fans around the world. He and wife Poison Ivy's contributions with The Cramps have had an immeasurable impact on modern music.

The Cramps emerged from the original New York punk scene of CBGB and Max's Kansas City, with a singular sound and iconography. Their distinct take on rockabilly and surf along with their midnight movie imagery reminded us all just how exciting, dangerous, vital and sexy rock and roll should be and has spawned entire subcultures. Lux was a fearless frontman who transformed every stage he stepped on into a place of passion, abandon, and true freedom. He is a rare icon who will be missed dearly.
(via The Daily Swarm)

CHUX LUX PIX

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck Miller) — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:14:00 +0000

Here are a few of my artistic (?) tributes to the greater than late Lux Interior and the immortal CRAMPS!

Kid Congo Interview 3/10/2010

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck Miller) — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 04:57:00 +0000

Earlier this year, Kid Congo was fortunate enough to meet blogger, super Cramps fan, and all-around genius Chuck Miller. The following interview was NOT conducted by Miller, but he put his own picture up here because he's the type that does shit like that. Photo by Susan Wallace.

Posted on Mar 10th 2010 11:58AM by Evan Minsker at Spinner.com:

http://www.spinner.com/2010/03/10/sxsw-2010-kid-congo-and-the-pink-monkey-birds/

Even if you haven't heard 'Dracula Boots,' the 2009 album by Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds, there's still a very good chance that you've heard Kid Congo Powers' music before. Powers, the former guitarist with the Cramps, the Gun Club and Nick Cave's Bad Seeds, is releasing five 7-inch singles in a subscription series called 'Ten Greasy Pieces' and is currently finishing his memoir. Kid Congo talked to Spinner about the voodoo in his rhythm and dancing the hoochie-coo.

How did the Pink Monkey Birds project start?

The Pink Monkey Birds has gone through many gestations through the past five or six years, maybe longer. But the current version came when I moved out of New York, because my partner got a job in Washington, D.C., where we live now. It was the end of an era sort of thing. But I had just put out a record on a label called New York Night Train, which is run by a friend of mine named Jonathan Toubin. He is from Austin, Texas, and he just kept saying, "Kid, you have to have a Texas rhythm section." So he recommended the bass player, Kiki [Solis]. Ron Miller, who's the drummer, he had just run into. That was probably 2007. The minute I played with the two of them, we all just kind of looked at each other and were like, "Oh, my God, we haven't even learned two songs and it's already incredible!"

How would you describe your sound?

We sound pretty good [laughs]. Just kidding! We get big points on 'American Bandstand' because it has a good beat and you can dance to it. I wanted to make music that was as simple as possible. When I was in The Cramps, what they were trying to get at and what I really understood about them, was they talked about rhythm being like voodoo. Something else takes over when you play it. One prime example is Bo Diddley. That's what all my favorite things are. So we're definitely trying to get some magic out of rhythm, and the idea is to create something simple that creates a new language.

Where did the name "Kid Congo Powers" come from?

That was my Cramps name. I didn't have it before I was in the Cramps. They were like, "You have to have a Cramps name," because it's kind of like a game. I had all these names and I had friends writing lists and Lux [Interior] and I were writing lists, and so we got together with all our lists. Originally, because Bryan Gregory was whose place I was taking, and my actual name is Brian, so I said, "Well maybe my name should be Bryan Gris Gris." But they didn't think that was so funny because they were really mad at him. But Lux had this candle on his mantle, and it was a Congo candle, and on it, it said, "When you light this candle, Congo Powers will be revealed to you." "Congo Powers, that's a great name!" So that was it. And on my list, I had a bunch of "Kids," because I thought it was like a boxer or a pirate.

You're working on a memoir. Could you share a story from the book?

I had my very first punk rock boyfriend in 1978 who lived in San Francisco. I was living in L.A., and I went up to San Francisco because the Sex Pistols were playing. So we went and that was all great and crazy, and then of course I had to stay there for a few days, and my relationship ended. The Sex Pistols broke up, my relationship ended -- it was terrible. I got in this car and there's a huge rainstorm going on. So we decided that we were going to drive back to Los Angeles one evening. The roads were all closed and it was flooded on the highway. So we said, "Oh, we know our way back through the hills." So we're driving the hills and it's raining and getting worse and worse. There was nowhere to stop, but someone said, "I have to piss." So we got out of this van and we just heard this complete rumble of sound, and we realized it was an avalanche. We jumped under the van and just heard the roar of the train going by. And then we heard it stop. We got up, we looked out, and probably 15 feet in front of us was a wall of rocks about 10 feet high. So we turned around and went back to San Francisco.

What are some of your influences?

I've been listening a lot to this radio show online called Intoxica Radio. This DJ, Howie Pyro, who's an old friend of mine, runs a podcast and it's live on Tuesday nights. It's mostly '60s stuff and it's kind of novelty records but also rock 'n' roll records and crazy, obscure garage rock to R&B to pop. He has an incredible collection and he always has weird themes, like "In the Jungle." I've also been collecting so many 45s that I've become a DJ, somehow. Those are more party records -- mostly '50s, '60s stuff.

How about guilty pleasures?

Guilty pleasures? Wow. I don't really have any guilt [laughs]. I just got a single of 'Lady Bump,' by Penny [McLean]. That's a really terrible song, but I really love it. I'm embarrassed to say I like it.

What's your biggest vice?

Hmmm, I don't drink, I don't smoke -- I do dance the hoochie-coo, but I don't know if I consider that a vice. My vice is probably kombucha tea. I'm addicted to it. It's a healthy addiction, though.

What's in your festival survival kit?

Earplugs, aspirin, and a fake ID [laughs].

Belated Photo Credit

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck Miller) — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 03:14:00 +0000

I have a name to attach to this nifty photo of Ivy and Lux that I've used on here a couple of times. It was taken by Howard Thompson of North Fork Sound. He has a really cool blog which is WELL WORTH checking out:

http://northforksound.blogspot.com/

You Need Hands

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck Miller) — Wed, 19 May 2010 20:30:00 +0000

The Talented Mister Criswell sez:
"Dude, this is some fucked up shit right here. Check it out!"

Lux Imitates Art Imitating Lux Imitating Other Art

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck Miller) — Tue, 18 May 2010 04:46:00 +0000

(Above) "Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2" (1912) by Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp was a French/American artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art. He advised modern art collectors, such as Peggy Guggenheim and other prominent figures, thereby helping to shape the tastes of Western art during this period.[1] A playful man, Duchamp challenged conventional thought about artistic processes and art marketing, not so much by writing, but through subversive actions such as dubbing a urinal art and naming it Fountain. He produced relatively few artworks, while moving quickly through the avant-garde circles of his time.

Duchamp once said, "The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act."
(Wikipedia)

(Above) "(Almost) Nude Lux Descending an Ivy"

"Lux is really into Duchamp. He has read every biography and autobiography written. I think if Duchamp hadn’t died in Lux’s lifetime, I’d think that Lux was reincarnated as Duchamp."
--Poison Ivy, 1995

"Naked Girl Falling Down the Stairs"
The Cramps

CRAMPS VIDEO! GOO GOO MUCK 1981, WITH KID CONGO!!

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck Miller) — Tue, 18 May 2010 04:14:00 +0000

MOTHERFUCKERS! Can your ass stand the shocking true facts about the HIDEOUS, HEADHUNTING GOO GOO MUCK from WHEREVER THE FUCK!?!?! Well, ready or not, HERE IT IS!!!

Back

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck Miller) — Wed, 05 May 2010 07:58:00 +0000

For reasons which must remain lame and unprovable, I haven't posted anything on here in quite a while. The rumors of my death were not exaggerated in the least, but I couldn't let that hold me back forever. A few pressing matters did come up. There was a death in my family, for one thing. In fact, since I subscribe to the philosophy of the universal brotherhood of all mankind, there were several million of them. Also, a bunch of dogs ate all my homework, and I was sick with bird flu, mad cow disease, chicken pox and toads in my stool.

Anyway, here are some swell Cramps pics for you to look at, plus one fucked-up old comic book story from about a zillion years ago.

SUPER BONUS LINK
click HERE
to visit the
ABSOLUTE ALL-TIME GREATEST CRAMPS SITE that has EVER existed, or EVER WILL.

The Cramps at WRECKINGPIT

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck Miller) — Wed, 05 May 2010 07:41:00 +0000

http://www.wreckingpit.com/psycho/bands/cramps.php3

Although the Cramps always claim in interviews they don't play psychobilly, it would be odd not to mention them on a psychobilly website. The similarities between psychobilly and the Cramps are obvious. Both have their roots in rockabilly and mix it with modern punkrock influences. The difference is probably that psychobilly is a nineties or eighties thing, and the Cramps can be considered more as a retro band...

(For the rest, including some lyrics, links, guitar tabs, etc., go HERE.)

More Goddamn Death

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck Miller) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 04:40:00 +0000

MESSAGE TO DEATH: Motherfucker, you need to quit gobbling up all our best people. Why don't you go after somebody we could do without? I mean, Dick Cheney has been sitting on your doorstep for years now. Look, I can understand why you'd be reluctant to let him in-- I wouldn't want him in my place either. But you know better than anyone how inevitable you are. You're gonna have to man up and do it one of these days. Dude, you knew the risks when you put on the uniform. And what about all those goddamn Baldwin Brothers? Or Doctor Phil? You really must start doing some fair and balanced reaping.
I would tell you to drop dead, but I confess I can't see how that would work.

--Chuck

Influential guitarist, singer Alex Chilton dies

(AP) NEW ORLEANS — Singer and guitarist Alex Chilton, known for his influential work with bands the Box Tops and Big Star, has died. He was 59.

Chilton's longtime friend John Fry says that Chilton died Wednesday at a hospital in New Orleans after experiencing what appeared to be heart problems.

Fry, the owner of Memphis-based Ardent Studios, says he has spoken to Chilton's wife and that she's very distressed. Fry said: "It was just a sudden and unexpected event."

Chilton had been scheduled to perform with Big Star on Saturday at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas.

The festival's creative director, Brent Grulke, says Chilton's gift for melody was second to none.

Gulke says: "Alex Chilton always messed with your head, charming and amazing you while doing so."

As the teenage singer for the pop-soul outfit the Box Tops, Chilton topped the charts with The Letter in 1967. The band's other hits were Soul Deep and Cry Like A Baby.

His work with Big Star had less mainstream success but made him a cult hero to other musicians, as evidenced by the title of the 1987 Replacements song, Alex Chilton. Big Star's three 1970s LPs all earned spots on Rolling Stone magazine's list of 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Chilton said in a 1987 interview that did not mind flying under the radar.

"What would be ideal would be to make a ton of money and have nobody know about you," he said. "Fame has a lot of baggage to carry around. I wouldn't want to be like Bruce Springsteen. I don't need that much money and wouldn't want to have 20 bodyguards following me.

"If I did become really popular, the critics probably wouldn't like me all that much," he said. "They like to root for the underdog."

In 1977, the Cramps 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 damn albums of all time. (Pierre Perrone)

Kid Congo Powers in OKC

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck Miller) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:24:00 +0000

Kid Congo Powers and the Pink Monkey Birds played in Oklahoma City on March 15, and I was there. I had heard from a number of people that Kid is a really nice guy and a joy to meet in person, and it's true. If I had done everything he's done, I would be a total superior elitist asshole about it. Hell, I'm an asshole now, with the pitiful few things I have managed to do...
So I guess let's thank God that I am not Kid Congo and he is.

Kid Congo, Oklahoma City, 3-15-2010
(Photos by Susan Wallace)

Anyhow, the club was small and seedy, and it smelled like small, seedy clubs everywhere, and that's the way I like 'em. The turnout was not very good, which probably had a lot to do with the fact that it was both Monday night and Oklahoma, neither of which have a reputation for excitement. But the ambiance struck a chord in me. It reminded me more of the gigs we used to play back when I was in a band than a big deal rock and roll show, and that made it special. We played more than one gig where my band outnumbered the audience-- and we were a trio. It wasn't quite that bad for the Pink Monkey Birds Monday night. In fact, it wasn't bad at all. It was intimate and friendly and I could have danced all night, if I could dance. And if they had played all night. Which I wouldn't have minded. Kid and his cohorts gave it their all and a massive good time was had by all.

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.

Former Cramps, Gun Club, and Bad Seeds guitarist Kid Congo Powers and his band The Pink Monkeybirds play a song from their most recent album 'Dracula Boots' (available on LP and CD from Inthered Records) at Oklahoma City club The Conservatory March 15, 2010. Go see this band live. (Vidiocy by Perry Amberson)

Poison Ivy 1992 Interview

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck Miller) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:44:00 +0000

From PENETRATING INSIGHTS

http://nonozeroblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/poison-ivy-rorshach.html

Originally posted February 7, 2009

I have been really torn up about Lux Interior's death in the hospital a few days ago, and thinking about Lux and Ivy the last few days motivated me to hunt through my filing cabinet for this old interview transcription.

It's an interview I did with Poison Ivy Rorshach of The Cramps back on February 23rd, 1992; she was in Providence, RI, on tour at the time, and I was in Ottawa, writing for Trans FM (which was the magazine of CKCU 93.1, Carleton's University radio station). Portions of this interview appeared in the paper at the time.

CKCU had a weird little rubber-lined booth there at the station that you'd squeeze into, and then you'd pick up the phone and speak to whomever at the appointed time, and the interview would be recorded and theoretically ready to air.

I freely admit here at the outset that I asked really dumb questions, and said really embarrassing things - not the least of which was describing The Cramps' back catalogue as sounding "hollow" right at the start of the interview.

Luckily, Ivy must have realised I wasn't actually mean or ignorant, just incredibly clumsy with words. Things improved thereafter and, in retrospect, the first lady of rock'n'roll guitar was very generous with her time indeed.

My sincere best wishes to her at this time, and my greatest respect to the greatest couple in rock'n'roll, Lux & Ivy.

Pius: On the new album "Look Mom! No Head", you've achieved a very full sound - and I guess that's very much your doing as you produced it. Obviously the bass shows more prominence, because you didn't have bass until recently --

Ivy: Well, we did since "Date With Elvis". I played bass on "Date With Elvis" and... the other one on that. But we didn't have a bass player like this one though (Slim Chance), so that makes a big difference.

Pius: There seems to be a move away from the more hollow sound of your earlier albums. Was this intentional, or was this just the way things worked out?

Ivy: Um, OK. I guess I don't understand what hollow means in relation to sound.

Pius: Well, I think it's a really cool sound on the first few albums. It's hard to describe.

Ivy: For us, "Songs The Lord Taught Us" - we felt, even though the production on that is fascinating, it didn't showcase The Cramps for what we are, which is a tough rock'n'roll band. It didn't get what we do live, which is rock. It didn't really capture that.

It definitely had a creepy atmosphere, and that has a certain kind of appeal to it. But, at the same time, it didn't really show us for that (rocking sound). And then after ("Songs The Lord Taught Us"), we didn't know much about production either, and we were limited by budget restraints.

Pius: Do you ever think about going back to a creepy sound?

Ivy: We kind of like trying to do it all at the same time. I think we want the presence too, cuz in our early stuff, you couldn't - I think the vocals really suffered on our early stuff. You couldn't hear what Lux was saying or singing. I think there's just more presence now. But yeah, we've always liked to have a creepy edge to our music.

Pius: How did you hook up with the two new members (bass player Slim Chance and drummer Nickey Alexander) of The Cramps?

Ivy: Through word of mouth, mainly. We had met Slim Chance before, when he was in a band called The Mad Daddys. He was the bass player, and I really loved his bass playing in that band. We'd met him before cuz we knew the singer in that band.

We were just trying to get members who were really dedicated. We'd got to the point where we felt like Lux and I were kind of carrying the thing. The rest were acting like a back-up band. We just wanted it to feel more like it did when we started, like a real gang.

Pius: So have you got that now, do you think?

Ivy: Yeah, I do. I know I do (laughs). Those guys are crazy. Yeah, we're able to do songs now we couldn't do before. We'd wanted to do "Hipsville 29 BC" for years. We were never able to really get in a groove with it in the past.

Pius: And has the new line-up changed your live show?

Ivy: Yeah, it has. It really has. I know I go out on a limb more than I used to be able to. I feel freer and we play off each other more than we have in the past - in that sense. But, in other ways, it hasn't changed. It's still just us, you know. We've always gone out there with no props and just ourselves.

Pius: How did you decide to get the Reverend Horton Heat to open the show?

Ivy: We were made aware that they were available, and we had seen them do a show in Los Angeles at the Blue Saloon, and it was a real wild show - so that sounded like it would be a great opener. They're pretty frantic. They're all over the place (laughs). Guy lays on the floor and plays guitar and stuff.

Pius: Do you listen to a lot of Sub>Pop?

Ivy: Ah, not a lot. To be honest, I prefer the more Horton Heat kind of sound. I do like some of that music...a lot of the bands from that area (Seattle) seem like they're trying maybe too hard to be original. Too many chord changes and things that aren't really set in a groove that I can hear. But, you know, some of it's good stuff.

Pius: Do you play "Alligator Stomp" live?

Ivy: Yes, we do.

Pius: And do people ever actually, you know --

Ivy: Do the Alligator Stomp? (laughs)

Pius: Yeah.

Ivy: In some places they haven't. It seems like it hasn't totally caught on. They do something, but it's not like what we think the Alligator is, this dance where you literally have to be on the floor and knock people down. It was a dance that was (laughs) semi-popular in Cleveland back when the Dead Boys and Pere Ubu were in a band called Rocket From The Tombs.

I think this guy David Thomas, who used to be Crocus Behemoth, I think he started it or something. But it was this Ohio dance. People were doing it there. It was called gatoring.

Pius: Cool. That's one of my favourite tracks on the new one.

Ivy: Yeah, it's fun. It's fun to play.

Pius: Is there any one place where you consistently have the weirdest crowds?

Ivy: Umm, golly... Spain is the weirdest, Barcelona. They're, ah (laughs), they're very high. We're told that they take mescaline there, which is something you don't hear about anywhere usually. It seems like Lux'll just do some minor gesture with his hand and a wave of people'll fall backwards or something. It's a really strange kind of energy and there's people sitting on each others' shoulders and stuff.

Their culture was very cut off for years under this Franco regime, and now they've just gotten the equivalent of London in the 60s, Swinging London. They're just, uh - all flaming youth there right now (laughs).

Pius: A lot of the bands I talk to say they prefer playing in Europe to America.

Ivy: We don't. We love playing America. In a way, we're happiest here. There's great crowds here and it feels more like home, like...(sighs). In some ways it's similar, but in some ways, Europeans understand our background more, the roots of our music. Oddly enough, most Americans don't seem to know their own history.

But, at the same time, somehow it feels better, just for the moment at hand, that America feels like it's got more of a rapport. It didn't at first, you know. I mean, it took Europe - popularity in Europe - to bring attention to us in America. But now that we've got it, it's... I don't know, I just love playing America.

Pius: Do you have a favourite place to play there?

Ivy: I really like New Orleans, cuz I like the city a lot too, and then I like the crowds. There's a club there called Tipatina's and it's always just like a sweat bath. It seems really hellish in a good way.

Some of the smaller places up north... We feel really excited about being in New York again, and it was good - but we were more excited the next night when we played Trenton, New Jersey. It was (laughs) like a wilder rock'n'roll crowd, and a grimier venue and everything, and it just felt like old times.

Pius: Is it important to you that your albums be available on vinyl? Are you a vinyl purist?

Ivy: I wish they were. The only way they're available on vinyl now is through import - because you can't really make the record companies here do it. They claim to lose money and I guess it's true, because they don't even have the outlets to sell it themselves.

It's just evolved to that point. I certainly do miss it. I think it's even more important that people see a 12" cover. That gives more importance. I think the package is important.

Pius: Do you prefer to buy vinyl?

Ivy: I love both. I do like the way some things can sound on CD, but in some ways I prefer vinyl. The one thing I do like about CD, it's not the format itself, but see - the CD market has caused record companies to reissue a lot of old blues and old material that probably never would've come out and never would've been possible for anyone to acquire on vinyl even, because it would just be too hard or collectible.

Now it's available, and I think that is influencing culture. I'm hearing a lot of bands... I keep wondering if that is why bands are getting into guitar more. Maybe it is giving young people a chance to hear that kind of music. So, you know, there's a good side to it too.

Pius: Are you still collecting?

Ivy: Any form. Vinyl, CD, everything we can get our hands on, at all times.

Pius: Can you just run down a few of the ones that have most impressed you of late?

Ivy: There's a Bo Diddley CD called "Rare & Well Done", it's quite good. Some stuff I'd never heard, and I'm a big Bo Diddley fan too. The Howling Wolf box set's real good. I'm trying to name stuff that people can find, you know.

I could name rare stuff, but - oh yeah, the Trashmen have CDs out. One's the Trashmen live, you know the Trashmen who did Surfin' Bird? One is a live performance on a CD, and another is some rare album or something that's come out on a CD. This label called Sundazed, they offered a CD called "Surf 'N' Drag". It's called "Surf 'N' Drag Volume One". It's been out like three years and there's no Volume Two but anyways, it's really good.

Pius: The new album was recorded in Hollywood. Do you still live there?

Ivy: Yeah, we do, yeah.

Pius: This is kind of a dumb question, it's just personal interest, but have you ever met Winona Ryder?

Ivy: No, I haven't. I like her movies. I really like her vibe. She seems kinda eerie. I really liked Beetlejuice, real kind of Charles Addams vibe to it.

Pius: Why did you decide to have Iggy Pop guest on "Miniskirt Blues"?

Ivy: Well, we got lucky with that. We'd desired to have him do it, this duet on that song, and we'd met him the previous year. Done some festivals together and found out he was also a fan of ours. We're of course big fans of his. And then later when we wanted to see if he'd be involved in the song, we couldn't get a hold of him because he was touring.

So we just went ahead in the studio in Hollywood. And when Lux went out to buy some wine, he ran into Iggy buying some beer! He was rehearsing next door at S.I.R. for some tour or festival that he was gonna be doing, and he came and stopped by the studio, and when he got there, he said, "is there anything you want me to sing on?" So we didn't even have to ask him, cuz we kind of weren't sure if we should. He just did that song real briefly, one take. Got outta there, said, "gotta run".

We just thought it would suit him cuz we were just trying to make a really heavy, grungy Stooges-kinda thing. That was fun.

Pius: I don't know if this is a touchy subject, but one of the funnier things I found in reading "The Wild, Wild World of The Cramps" was the various theories on what might've happened to Brian Gregory. Have you heard anything new, or --

Ivy: No, and a lot of that initial thing was hype from the record company, when they thought they still had him signed as a solo artist, and they were trying to hype a solo career cuz they thought he'd want to have one. It turned out, he - you know, I mean, that didn't, umm - no, I just, I mean, he had drug problems and stuff, and just faded away.

Pius: It's probably an understatement to say that The Cramps have some unconventional, albeit more pure, ideas about rock'n'roll. I always hear you really hate the idea of benefits or things like that, or politics. Would you mind talking for a bit about what rock'n'roll means to you?

Ivy: It isn't so much against benefits, just using rock'n'roll as a political platform is not the purpose of rock'n'roll.

I also am very suspicious of the motives of...celebrities who use their celebrity to promote that. It seems like what they're really trying to promote is their own celebrity. I think it's pompous, you know, besides being corny. Maturity begins at home, and I think you should really take care of what's around you first, and that no one should question that.

A lot of big causes, that "We Are The World" thing with Ethiopia - for all the money raised, they couldn't even get it to the people because of the politics in that land, you know? There's just so much going on in our own country. I almost think people would let someone starve who's sitting right next to them and not, you know...

Also, it's just not the purpose of rock'n'roll to sing about something like that. Rock'n'roll is a certain type of music and it celebrates being in the body now. It's Bacchanalian. Whatever we're concerned about, we should take care of, but I don't think it should be a public platform.

Pius: Do you consider rock'n'roll a lifestyle as well as a form of music?

Ivy: Seems to be, yeah. It's a real all or nothing kind of thing, it has to be. I mean, we're always The Cramps. We're at different intensities. We're at our most intense when we're on the stage, we're most concentrated. We're at a different form of intensity in the studio and maybe we're less intense on some other occasion. People say you have different sides to you, and I don't feel like that. I think it's just different intensities. It's just stepping on the gas here and there.

Pius: What do you think of the allegations a lot of rappers are making that white rock'n'rollers really ripped off blacks in the 50s?

Ivy: It's unfortunately naive and it's an example of Americans not understanding their own culture. I've heard that criticism about Elvis Presley in particular, which is really a shame. He didn't rip off anybody. He actually was incredibly original. He synthesized many styles of music in a very innocent way, and no one was doing what he was doing.

He was a freak, he was from outer space, he was a pioneer in his day. It's a shame that he's not recognized as that, that he's been trivialized so much. I think it's misplaced frustration to blame him for something like that. I can understand the frustration, but I think they're misdirecting their wrath. I just wish people understood the origins of rock'n'roll more than they do.

Pius: He's becoming a scapegoat.

Ivy: He certainly is. What he did was phenomenal, no one else had done it (laughs). There wasn't anyone, black, white or purple, who was doing what he was doing. It's a shame that that's just one more way he's been trivialized.

You know, people focused on his health problems or his mortal failings to begin with as a way of putting him down. And now this is just one more new way. I think he was too intense for anyone to realise how significant he was. It'll probably take a hundred years for people to look back and realise.

Pius: A lot of the strength of rock'n'roll innuendoes - especially sexual innuendoes in the 50s and early 60s - came from the conservatism of the time. The Cramps have made an art of (lyrical innuendo), and I was thinking about this last night, and I thought it was really funny - because you've got things like 2 Live Crew, where people are being so blatant, and yet The Cramps are very subtle and I think it works. Do you ever think about that?

Ivy: Not consciously. I think what we do is natural. Sometimes I see bands being so blatant, I think they're trying to be outrageous. We don't try to be outrageous. We're just expressing ourselves in a natural way.

That blatant language (sighs) - it almost seems like, if you can't think of something to say, then that's a cheap way out or something. It's just easy to swear, and somehow it doesn't seem (laughs) romantic enough or something. We feel we're more traditional, like Howling Wolf or something. It should also be seductive. There's a point where something's so blatant it won't be seductive anymore.

Pius: Do you think that's why it still has that power? Because people still want that?

Ivy: I think so. I think that's why a lot of blues songs can appeal to me now, something that was from the 50s. Because of that same kind of innuendo that you're talking about. It's sexy, rather than confrontational. It's just more seriously about getting it on, rather than getting in a fight.

Pius: The Cramps have always had what I guess is a healthy fascination for serial killers. This may sound funny, but do you have a favourite?

Ivy: A favourite killer? Is that what you mean?

Pius: Yeah, yeah.

Ivy: For me, I would think Ed Gein. It sounds strange, but in a way he was just culturally different from the people in his area. He was reading a lot of books about cannibalism and headhunters and other cultures - the things that he did are actually common practises in some primitive cultures and in other countries, or maybe in another era. And since he was living alone, he was a total loner... In a way, you can almost look at it that that's what he was doing.

Then the thing that's amusing about him is that he never denied what he was doing. People would say, "gosh, we haven't been able to find Mary Hogan", and he'd say, "oh well, Mary's just hanging upside down in my shed right now". And they'd go, "ha ha, you're so funny", you know. And he knew that he could joke that way - so he had like a sick sense of humour (laughs) about the whole thing.

He was in a town full of really boring, dumb people and it's almost like (laughs) he had to amuse himself. Strange as that sounds, in a way it almost sounds like he did what he had to do. I don't feel that way about more vicious... There was just something about him that didn't seem vicious to me. He's just hunting for dear (laughs).

Pius: Have you ever heard of Starkweather? Charles Starkweather?

Ivy: Oh yeah. Yeah, I read that book. That's an interesting story. He ended up worshipped by all these girls.

Pius: I thought that might be a more Cramps type guy, cuz he was --

Ivy: Real, yeah, James Dean kind of era. And again, I think he was driven crazy cuz he was insulted so much for being short and having - didn't he have a speech impediment?

Pius: Yeah, and bow legs.

Ivy: So he was just ridiculed to the point...you know. I think he was driven beyond the brink.

Pius: Are you still really into horror movies?

Ivy: Oh yeah, all the time. Last night we watched "The Unearthly".

Pius: Have you seen any newer ones lately?

Ivy: I guess the last new thing we saw was "Naked Lunch", which we both liked a lot.

Pius: Do you go to the movies a lot, or rent them mostly?

Ivy: We go to them when we can. We don't get to see much when we're touring, but as soon as we get off the road, we like going to the movies. We liked "The Addams Family". It seemed like not many people did, but we thought it was good.

Pius: You and Lux met through hitch-hiking. Is this something you'd recommend?

Ivy: No, not now. And I know it sounds odd to say that, I was doing that. It was the mid-70s in Northern California. Even at that, looking back, I figure it might not have been that bright - but at the time it was pretty common practise. It seemed like a natural thing to do. It was kind of a time and place situation. No, I wouldn't advise, no. (laughs) Stay away from bars, pills and freeways.

Pius: Do you ever see a time when you won't want to do The Cramps?

Ivy: Not that I can think of. We don't plan our future as much as a lot of other bands, but I think that makes us enjoy what we're doing right now more. Maybe that makes us last longer - because we're digging it. That was the thing, getting the new members, we just wanted to make sure we were digging it right now.

Ivy and Lux, 2004- The Eric Blair Show

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck Miller) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:37:00 +0000

Everything That Rises Must Converge

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck Miller) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:56:00 +0000

Lux Interior's Astral Ascension: Jonny Whiteside's Report from the Ceremony

By Jonny Whiteside in news
LA Weekly

Thursday, Mar. 12 2009 @ 1:59PM
http://blogs.laweekly.com/westcoastsound/news/lux-interiors-astral-ascension/

"Lux seemed like a creature from another world, with one foot already out of this dimension. As much as we might wonder 'Where are you now?' we can also wonder 'Where on Earth did you come from?' Now that's a mystery!"-- Poison Ivy

The death on February 4 of Erick Lee Purkhiser, BKA Cramps singer Lux Interior -- singer, writer, artist, 3D photographer, daredevil, shape shifter. Mojo Man from Mars, Ding Dong Daddy from Diddy Wah Diddy (as his surviving longtime partner in crime Poison Ivy described him) was as numbing and unacceptable a trauma as can be imagined, a black hole of tragedy that pulled the hearts of innumerable fans and friends down to the bitter deep end, but there had to be a formal farewell.

A public observance was unthinkable. Just picture the teeming, tearful confederacy of scum who'd show up. But Ivy hit on the perfect spot. Tucked off Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades, the Self Realization Fellowship - Lake Shrine, a fave Elvis hang when he was in town during his mid-60's extracurricular spiritual quest, is an unspeakably beautiful setting and was ideal for Lux Interior's send-off, administered via an appropriately offbeat ceremony, the Astral Ascension.

Held on February 21 inside a reproduction of a 18th century windmill, the trans-denominational service was performed before an ornate sandalwood altar with a backdrop of six portraits -- Jesus, Krishna and the Fellowships own assorted founding gurus; the mood was muted, bleak, and Ivy's entrance brought a flood of tears; clad in form fitting leopard print, she placed a Hurrell-style glamour portrait of Lux beside the rostrum where speakers would address the crowd of 50 or 60 people.

Minister Brahmachari Dale explained their hope-filled transitional view of death, read from the Bhagavad-Gita, recited the 23rd Psalm, and exhorted attendees to concentrate on sending messages of love to Lux's spirit -- and damn, kiddies, it felt like he was right there in the room (when Ivy was arranging the service, she mentioned a similar predisposition, and the coordinator replied, "Oh, he will be there").

Next, a musical interlude, Mary Mayo 's "For All We Know," an evocative, psychedelic R&B ballad with simmering bubble sound effects and eerie theremin runs; musician and longtime Lux and Ivy chum Dave Stuckey spoke first, and his recollections brought booms of laughter: "We had gone to see [R&B star] Young Jesse at a very fancy French restaurant, and when Lux sat down at the table, he immediately picked up the elaborately folded napkin and put it on his head. It made a very nice hat." At a Swap Meet, Lux came across a huge table of bootleg rock videos, one of them a Cramps tape. As Stuckey described it, he said "Watch this," approached the seller, who was busy organizing his wares, held up the video "and asked him -- in that voice -- 'How much for this one?' The guys eyes bugged out and he stammered "It's . . it's . . free."

Self-Realization Center - Lake Shrine, scene of Lux Interior's Ascension Ceremony.

Former Mumps keyboardist Kirstian Hoffman, who had first allied himself with the couple at CBGB's almost 35 years ago, spoke next and began by pointing first at Lux's photo and then the portrait of Jesus, saying "I want to put this picture over there." He also drew gales of additional yucks by talking about what a great visual artist Lux was, a fact emphasized when he produced a long player album by NYC rockabilly revivalist Robert Gordon, whose head shot cover art had been magnificently vandalized, a la Mad Magazine, with blacked teeth, a van dyke beard and a Rat Fink style swarm of flies (Lux's ire was raised by Gordon's choice to cover Cramps staple "The Way I Walk"). Hoffman also read a message from guitarist Kid Congo Powers (on tour in Europe), an affectionate, slightly skewed homage that reinforced just what a profound affect Lux had made on the lives of anyone who saw him perform or was fortunate enough to know him.

Dale proceeded; a flower ceremony, a fire ceremony, the Astral Ascension Prayer, a closing benediction and a final song, the Charades' version of 1939 Duke Ellington hit "Flamingo." A severely cramped doo-woppy arrangement fraught with trashy guitar that, taken with the song's surrealist lyrics, provided a perfect coda. The stunned crowd, including Russ Meyer biographer Jimmy McDonough, comic-Sponge Bob voice Tom Kenny, In the Red Records' Larry Hardy, Johnny Legend, Charmin' Allan Larman, a slew of local underworld rock types and 3D camera buffs (an abiding passion of Lux's), wandered outside.

A reception followed at Silver Lake's Edendale Grill, much grimly carouse, a looping slide show of Lux baby and childhood shots, candid snaps (i.e. Lux wearing panties on his head -- they made a very nice hat) and assorted live combat action photography. Muted chatter ensued and in an unexpected twist, I met the guy who was driving the day he and Lux famously pulled over to pick up a hitchhiker, who turned out to be Poison Ivy. "I only knew Lux for about three years, but I knew Erick very well," he said. "Back then, I was his psychedelic partner, you might say, and a few years ago I got an e-mail from him saying "you don't know who this is" -- of course I did -- "but do you remember when we picked up that really pretty girl hitchhiker and your dog Wheezer jumped all over her? Well I've been jumping all over her for the past 35 years and we have a band called the Cramps."

A first hand account of that fabled meeting was a knock out, but the finality of the day's tone overrode all else. As Poison Ivy herself wrote in the service-accompanying program, "Lux seemed like a creature from another world, with one foot already out of this dimension. As much as we might wonder 'Where are you now?' we can also wonder 'Where on Earth did you come from?' Now that's a mystery!"