The Cramps
The Cramps were an American garage punk band formed in 1976. Their line-up rotated much over their existence, with the husband and wife duo of lead singer Lux Interior and lead guitarist Poison Ivy as the only permanent members. Guitarist Bryan Gregory and drummer Pam Ballam rounded out the first complete lineup in April 1976.
They were part of the early CBGB punk movement that had emerged in New York. By being the first known band to blend punk rock with rockabilly, The Cramps are widely recognized as innovators of psychobilly, as well as garage punk.
Their music is mostly in rockabilly form, played at varying tempos, with a very minimal drumkit. An integral part of the early Cramps sound is dual guitars, without a bassist. The content of their songs and image is campy, trashy Americana, sexual fetishism, humor, and retro horror/sci-fi B-movie clichés.
Their sound was heavily influenced by early rockabilly, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll like Link Wray and Hasil Adkins, 1960s surf music acts such as The Ventures and Dick Dale, 1960s garage rock artists like The Standells, The Gants, The Trashmen, The Green Fuz and The Sonics,[citation needed] as well as the post-glam/early punk scene from which they emerged. They also were influenced to a degree by The Ramones and Screamin' Jay Hawkins, who is often credited for having pioneered their style of theatrical horror-blues.
In turn, they have strongly influenced subsequent punk and rockabilly revival bands, even creating a genre in their wake. The Cramps also influenced or anticipated acts as varied as Black Lips, The Birthday Party, The Dwarves, Flat Duo Jets, The Fuzztones, The Gun Club, Spacemen 3, The Horrors, Inca Babies, James Chance and the Contortions, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Reverend Horton Heat, My Bloody Valentine, The Molting Vultures, The Horrorpops, The Intelligence, The Specimen and The White Stripes.
1970s
Lux Interior (born Erick Lee Purkhiser) and Poison Ivy (born Kristy Wallace) met in Sacramento, California in 1972. Due to their common artistic interests and shared devotion to record collecting, they decided to form The Cramps. Lux took his stage name from a car ad, and Ivy claimed to have received hers in a dream (she was first Poison Ivy Rorschach, taking her last name from that of the inventor of the Rorschach test). In 1973, they moved to Akron, Ohio, and then to New York in 1975, soon entering into CBGB's early punk scene with other emerging acts like The Ramones, Patti Smith, and Television. The lineup in 1976 was Poison Ivy Rorschach, Lux Interior, Bryan Gregory (guitar) and his sister Pam "Ballam" Gregory (drums).
In a short period of time, the Cramps changed drummers twice; Miriam Linna (later of Nervus Rex, the Zantees, and the A-Bones) replaced Pam Ballam, and Nick Knox (formerly with the Electric Eels) replaced Linna in September 1977. In the late 1970s, the Cramps briefly shared a rehearsal space with The Fleshtones, and performed regularly in New York at places like CBGB's and Max's Kansas City, releasing two independent singles produced by Alex Chilton at Ardent Studios in Memphis in 1977 before being signed by Miles Copeland to the young I.R.S. Records label.
In June 1978 they gave a free concert for patients at the California State Mental Hospital in Napa, recorded on a Sony Portapak video camera by the San Francisco collective Target Video and later released as Live at Napa State Mental Hospital. They released the two singles again on their 1979 Gravest Hits EP, before Chilton brought them back that year to Memphis to record their first full length album, Songs The Lord Taught Us, at Phillips Recording, operated by former Sun Records label owner Sam Phillips.
1980s
The Cramps relocated to Los Angeles in 1980 and hired guitarist Kid Congo Powers of The Gun Club. While recording their second LP, Psychedelic Jungle, the band and Miles Copeland began to dispute royalties and creative rights. The ensuing court case prevented them from releasing anything until 1983, when they recorded Smell of Female live at New York's Peppermint Lounge; Kid Congo Powers subsequently departed. Mike Metoff of The Pagans (cousin of Nick Knox) was the final second guitarist - albeit only live - of the Cramps' pre-bass era. He accompanied them on an extensive European tour in 1984 (that had been cancelled twice because they couldn't find a suitable guitarist) which included four sold out nights at the legendary Hammersmith Palais. They also recorded performances of "The Most Exalted Potentate of Love" and "You Got Good Taste" which were broadcast on the acclaimed UK music show The Tube (the mid-summer night special).
In 1985 the Cramps recorded a one-off track for the horror movie The Return of the Living Dead called "Surfin' Dead", on which Ivy played bass as well as guitar. With the release of 1986's A Date With Elvis, the Cramps permanently added a bass guitar to the mix, but had trouble finding a suitable player, so Ivy temporarily filled in as the band's bassist. Fur joined them on the world tour to promte the album. Their popularity in the UK was at its peak as evidenced by the six nights at Hammersmith in London, three at the Odeon (as well as many other sell out dates throughout the UK) and then three at the Palais when they returned from the continent. The album featured an increased focus on sexual double entendre, and met with differing fates on either side of the Atlantic: in Europe, it sold over 250,000 copies, while in the U.S. the band had difficulty finding a record company prepared to release it.[citation needed]. It also included their first UK hit: "Can Your Pussy Do The Dog?"
It was not until 1986 that the Cramps found a suitable permanent bass player: Candy del Mar (of Satan's Cheerleaders), who made her recorded debut on the raw live album RockinnReelininAucklandNewZealandxxx, which was followed by the studio album Stay Sick in 1990.
1990s
Knox left in 1991. The Cramps hit the top 40 singles chart in the UK for the first and only time with "Bikini Girls with Machine Guns"; Ivy posed as such both on the cover of the single and in the promotional video for the song. The Cramps went on to record more albums and singles through the 1990s and 2000s, for various labels and with varying degrees of success.
In 1995 The Cramps appeared on the TV-series Beverly Hills, 90210 in the Halloween episode "Gypsies, Cramps and Fleas." They played 2 songs in show: "Mean Machine" and "Strange Love." Lux started the song by saying "Hey boys and ghouls, are you ready to rise the dead?".
In honor of the excess of The Cramps, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has on display a shattered bass drum head that Lux's head went through during a live show.
2000s
On January 10, 2001, Bryan Gregory died at Anaheim Memorial Medical Center of complications following a heart attack. He was 46.
On February 4, 2009 at 4:40 AM PST, Lux Interior died at the Glendale Memorial Hospital from a pre-existing heart condition. He was 62.
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