The Cramps
Wednesday 28 May @ 11:35:51 |
 by Holly Day
When I was a kid, I always thought Morticia and Gomez Addams had the most perfect of marriages. They lived in a creaky old house decorated with dead animal parts, fostered each other’s strange hobbies—her carnivorous plants, his exploding trains—and loved each other to the point of obsession. They seemed, to me, the type of couple that would stay together forever, for the sole fact that anyone else that entered either person’s little world would probably run away screaming after the initial bliss of new love faded.
Enter Erick Purkhiser and Kirsty Wallace, better known as Lux Interior and Poison Ivy Rorschach of the legendary band The Cramps. Could any couple better epitomize the ideals that the Addams Family stood for? Together since they met as teenagers in Sacramento, Calif., their shared love for alien abduction theory, B-movie horror, and wearing spandex and leather has kept them together for longer than most Republican couples. Their band, The Cramps, has been around almost as long—since 1975 the pair has created some of the sleaziest, bone-rattling swamp rock since Hasil Adkins’ prime.
And they’re still at it. With the recent creation of their own label, Vengeance Records, The Cramps have released their newest offering to the subgenre of psychobilly, Fiends of Dope Island. Featuring new bassist Chopper Franklin and Harry Drumdini on drums, this album could come from no one else but the Cramps, from the songs about Jesus and drugs, voodoo and Martians, jivin’ and shuckin’, and, of course, Elvis. The music is loaded with all the gritty, sleazy guitar riffs and echoey vibrato that have been the Cramps’ trademark for nearly three decades, pushed along by tribal drumbeats and even the occasional theremin.
Another trademark of The Cramps, aside from their music, is their propensity to lose just about everyone associated with the band except for each other. Last time they were in Minneapolis, maybe six years ago, I got to a show only to find that the club owners had no idea who to direct me to regarding a Cramps interview because their tour manager had O.D.’d that night and hadn’t left any press passes at the door before doing so. In trying to set up an interview to coincide with this tour, I spent the day sitting by the phone only to be told that the tour manager had been fired at the last minute and no interviews were being set up until after their Minneapolis show. The band itself has undergone so many lineup changes they could have inspired Spinal Tap, changing everyone but the two key personnel with each album. Still, the fact that the Lux and Ivy themselves are still together and making beautiful music after all this time is a source of great inspiration to me—perhaps I was right, all those years ago, about freaks having the best marriages. I can only hope.
The Cramps play Wed., May 28, at First Avenue with special guests Quintron and Miss Pussycat, and Reverse Cowgirl. 6 p.m. $12/$15. 21+. 701 1st Ave. N., Mpls. 612-338-8388.
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