Shindig! Issue #178 – The Cramps
“I was a teenage werewolf,” sang Lux Interior of THE CRAMPS on their 1980 debut Songs The Lord Taught Us. “I was a teenage Cramps fan,” says Henry Rollins, who, as the band’s archivist, has helped oversee the first “new” material from the band in over 20 years in the shape of Gravest Gravy, featuring previously unreleased, Alex Chilton-helmed demos from 1977.
Rollins and fellow teenage Cramps fan (and later member) Kid Congo Powers tell TIM MURRAY about Lux, Poison Ivy and the band’s extraordinary legacy
I’m a Cramps fan forever. And as I like to say, I never got better. I saw The Cramps and I’m still sick, to this day.” So says Henry Rollins, singer, spoken word artist, former Black Flag frontman, sometime actor, radio presenter and, latterly, archivist for The Cramps. The Cramps took him on a lifelong journey that began with seeing them live in the early days, saw him discovering the world of rockabilly, garage-punk, B-movie horrors and trash films from the likes of Russ Meyer and Herschell Gordon Lewis, through their music and recommendations, and, in its latest stop, overseeing the release of a new record from The Cramps, Gravest Gravy, taken from long unheard early demo tapes recorded in 1977 with Alex Chilton producing. It’s the first official, newly released Cramps material in more than 20 years.
For Rollins, it’s the culmination of a lifetime of fandom and a further celebration of a group whose legacy has grown with little or no fanfare since the death of singer Lux Interior in 2009. There’s been no huge retrospective or posthumous releases until now, but their reputation has increased driven by word of mouth and a love of the brand of rock ’n’ roll the band espoused and, like few other groups, actually lived by.
“There was no act going on with The Cramps,” says one-time Cramp (and former Bad Seed and Gun Club founder) Kid Congo Powers. “On stage was a heightened realisation of what they were. People would always say they were so camp, although The Cramps would shudder or bristle at that word. It was just stuff they loved. They saw it as high art, very much in the same way John Waters sees those things. It’s gold, not trash.”
Like Rollins, Kid Congo Powers had been turned on to them early in the band’s life, in ’78, just after they’d recorded the songs that make up Gravest Gravy. “The Cramps came on, and I was completely astounded and converted on the spot after one song,” he recalls. “Visually, and musically, it was like nothing I had ever heard or seen before in my life. This music didn’t exist before they existed.
“I remember thinking to myself this is gonna end up in a riot or an orgy. I’m not sure which one – either would be okay. It was the energy. Everyone was just screaming and going crazy. Everyone went into a frenzy. I became their number #1, along with a lot of other #1 fans.”
Powers would soon after form The Gun Club (with Jeffrey Lee Pierce), a band that, like The Cramps took “old music and kind of dismantled it, then repurposed it in a modern way, a very dangerous way, a really funny, humorous kind of way and a very sexy kind of way”. They even had a song called ‘For The Love Of Ivy’, named after the band’s guitarist and Lux’s life partner, Poison Ivy. Within a few years he would become a Cramp.
To read the full article order issue #178. Better still subscribe so that you never miss an issue and have digital access to all back issues
