The Cramps

I love The Cramps,always have,always will.It’s difficult for me to imagine someone who has never heard of them,but here we go….
The Cramps are a sort of voodoo/rockabilly/blues/punkrock’n'roll band,perhaps unique in that they created a musical style,Psychobilly ,yet insist that this term does not describe their own sound.Despite this odd stance,they have been a prime influence on such bands as The Meteors.Influenced by the likes of Dick Dale,and Link Wray the Cramps sound is stripped down primal rock’n'roll,usually played pretty fast,the lyrical content tends to revolve around trashy B-Movie cliches,campy Americana and a great deal of sex…think of them as a musical version of John Waters and you won’t go far wrong.A run through some of their song titles should give you an idea where they are coming from..Hot Pearl Snatch,Can Your Pussy Do The Dog?,Whats Inside a Girl?,Bikini Girls With Machine Guns,The Creature From The Black Leather Lagoon.
The Cramps have had many line up changes over the years,but the core of the band has always been vocalist Lux Interior,who comes across like Elvis if he had been raised in New Orleans by a Voodoo priest,and,for me anyway,the sexiest female guitarist in rock’n'roll,Poison Ivy Rorschach.Just to hammer that point home,here she is playing her trademark Gretsch

I went to see them once at the The Empire in Edinburgh,nowadays its the very posh and utterly soulless Festival Theatre.Back in ‘86-ish it was a sadly run down dive that had clearly,in times past, been a splendidly lavish theatre on a grand scale.The good thing about it being a dive however,was that it suited The Cramps perfectly.It was an excellent gig,and the band was on top form.It was late in the year as i remember,and cold.The Empire’s heating system seemed pre war, when the band came on i was standing maybe three rows back from the centre stage with my hands in my jacket pockets.Of course as the band emerged and began to play,everyone for thirty rows erupted and surged forward and together.There was a good couple of minutes of the sheerest panic of my life,as i was carried with the crush of the crowd,held upright only by the press of bodies before the crowding eased a little and i could wrestle my hands free.Thankfully Cramps numbers are fairly short!
Fever
Can Your Pussy Do The Dog?