{"id":7759,"date":"2026-08-06T11:04:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T10:04:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/?p=7759"},"modified":"2026-08-06T11:04:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T10:04:16","slug":"shindig-issue-178-the-cramps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/?p=7759","title":{"rendered":"Shindig! Issue #178 \u2013 The Cramps"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cI was a teenage werewolf,\u201d sang Lux Interior of THE CRAMPS on their 1980 debut Songs The Lord Taught Us<\/i>. \u201cI was a teenage Cramps fan,\u201d says Henry Rollins, who, as the band\u2019s archivist, has helped oversee the first \u201cnew\u201d material from the band in over 20 years in the shape of Gravest Gravy<\/i>, featuring previously unreleased, Alex Chilton-helmed demos from 1977. <\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Rollins and fellow teenage Cramps fan (and later member) Kid Congo Powers tell TIM MURRAY about Lux, Poison Ivy and the band\u2019s extraordinary legacy<\/b><\/p>\n

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David Godlis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.\u201d 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<\/i>, taken from long unheard early demo tapes recorded in 1977 with Alex Chilton producing. It\u2019<\/span>s the first official, newly released Cramps material in more than 20 years.<\/p>\n

For Rollins, it\u2019<\/span>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\u2019<\/span>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 \u2019n\u2019 roll the band espoused and, like few other groups, actually lived by.<\/p>\n