Rarely do we find a "lost" album after which we can say - if we had heard this when we should have, a lot of things would have been different. Such is the case with the newly discovered debut recordings psychobilly hero "The Cramps", who are only now on the record under the name Gravest Gravy, as a whole became available to the public.
Today we are dealing with the new album of the American group "The Cramps", which officially ceased to exist in 2009, with the death of its frontman Lux Interior. More precisely, we are dealing with their newly discovered zero album, the existence of which has been rumored for years, only to be released the other day. To make the surprise complete, Gravest Gravy is a great record from a time when rock and roll meant something to the ordinary world, a record that will quickly become a cult in its own right, perfectly complementing the legend of this ultimate renegade band.
During the career that started in 1976, "The Cramps" became a unique phenomenon in the history of rock and roll and certainly one of the biggest phenomena created under the umbrella of punk. Although no one would say that this phenomenon is as influential as the one built by "The Ramones", "The Cramps" were not far from it in terms of potential. Lux Interior (Erick Lee Purkhiser, 1946–2009) and Poison Ivy Rorschach (Kristy Marlana Wallace, b. 1953), the couple who ran them, belong to the authentic great heroes of American B culture. They were part of the punk and new wave scene and regularly performed in its birthplace, New York's CBGB club, creating an aesthetic that was based on the kitsch and thrash subculture of the fifties and sixties: they were inspired by low-budget horror films and similar films about juvenile delinquents, rockabilly and surf rock, superhero comics, sci-fi TV series... Like most young Americans of that era, they were raised on a cheap taste related to mass-produced pop products, that "fast food" of the teenage imagination. When the time came for them to form their own group in the mid-1970s, it inevitably turned into a merciless satire of the "American way of life", parodying all of the aforementioned content through furious psychobilly, as critics called the sound that "The Cramps" launched. Their ecstatic concerts became a matter of oral tradition: like a kind of rock vaudeville with singing, acting, devastating "camp" humor, partial undressing of people dressed in leather and passionate guitar music - everywhere they raised dust and drew attention to themselves. "The Cramps" dedicated their art to all troubled teenagers and their fantasies.
Unlike other punks, "The Cramps" did not preach any open confrontation with the officials of capitalist society - they preferred to undermine its foundations. In the naivety of early rock and roll, they recognized the revolutionary potential that destroys the cynicism of the capitalist scenes and in a true postmodern act presented it as a primordial liberating force in the contemporary context. For them, Elvis was Jesus, and the first wave of outlaw rockabilly was a pantheon, composed of "holy madmen" who performed a key diversion within the petty-bourgeois order, introducing sex and uncontrolled behavior into all homes.
THE CRAMPS PREQUEL
photo: masao nakagami / wikipedia...
Lux Interior and Poison Ivy met in Sacramento, California, where they were reportedly both trying to study back in 1973 – legend has it Ivy was hitchhiking when Lux drove up and told her he was going to the East Coast. Since then they were together. Admittedly, the story that they met earlier while collecting records seems more true, but in relation to "The Cramps" half of the history is made up anyway, so it doesn't even matter. Having no money to reach the Atlantic, they stopped in Akron, Ohio, where Lux is originally from, and there they tentatively formed a band, which they finally formed when they reached New York in 1976. They regularly hung out and performed with "The Ramones", Patti Smith, "Television", "Blondie", "Talking Heads", "Mink DeVille", "Suicide" and friends from Ohio, the "Dead Boys", and one of their earliest fans was is Alex Chilton.
Alex Chilton is the second main character of this story. The former sixteen-year-old genius from Memphis who recorded one of the most popular hits of the sixties with the group "Box Tops" - an R&B single The Letter - and then with "Big Star" he made three masterpieces of original records, which later had an incredible influence on the creation of alternative rock and "Americana", but at the time they could not find a solid distributor... However, all that was behind him at that moment, and he came to New York in the footsteps of his older brother, disillusioned with the music business and looking for new excitement, the something which would move him out of his stupor. There he discovered and began to obsessively follow the performances of the newly created "The Cramps". In the end, he approached them and convinced them to come to Memphis, offering them free recording sessions at the famous "Ardent" studio, where he also worked with "Big Star".
Although the deal was to record just a few tracks for a single or two - before turning on the "record" button, Chilton persuaded them to perform everything they knew how to play. And "The Cramps" did their best, immortalizing their first original songs, as well as daring covers, and their new friend joined them on several tracks, adding keyboards. Gravest Gravy gives us the opportunity to hear for the first time how exciting it sounded, assuring us that "The Cramps" were already a top phenomenon, and that Alex Chilton was the producer who understood them best. It's no wonder - it was a group of like-minded people: Chilton was from Memphis, and "The Cramps" felt that that city was the ideal place for them, because the entire culture they belonged to started from there - Elvis Presley (who died that very year) and early rock and roll on Sam Phillips' Sun Records label, then rockabilly and country... Everything was invented, including the cursed guru Alex Chilton. It's no wonder that Posion Ivy stated on the occasion of this release that "The Cramps" have always considered themselves a blues band and that this is best heard on Gravest Gravy.
"The Cramps" constantly changed the line-up, and that October 1977, the members of this ingenious composition were: Lux Interior, with a voice and stature similar to Frankenstein, the brilliant Poison Ivy, whose fingers knew how to perform all the garage rock anthems on the guitar, and the second guitarist Bryan Gregory and drummer Nick Knox ("The Cramps" were famous for not having a bass player for a long time). This is the team that recorded this enchanting, hitherto unknown work - a work for which a publisher could not be found, so it was torn up. Some of the tracks from that legendary first studio session were later released as singles and ended up on an EP compilation. Gravest Hits (1978), with which "The Cramps" announced their existence. Some in different versions ended up on the following records, and four things were not released until today. All of them are now collected for the first time and available in their original glory at Gravest Gravy, that key proof that "The Cramps" were a big band from the moment they formed, and that their debut could have had a more significant cultural impact and profoundly changed the history of rock and roll had it appeared in late 1977, in the first wave of punk releases.
Probably aware of this, "The Cramps" returned to Memphis on their own a year later and recorded a regular first album Songs the Lord Taught Us, which, unfortunately, was released with considerable delay - only in 1980. Instead of standing on the world stage side by side with "The Ramones", "Sex Pistols" and "The Clash", as a deranged version of what rock and roll should have been if it was left to teenagers, in its actual discographic life "The Cramps" will appear only much later and push on the podium with younger hardcore punk bands, throwing only to the place of a large cult group loved only by the dedicated.
NOT EVERY DAY
It's not every day that such ventures succeed. Even less that they succeed this spectacularly. Finding a lost album by a historically important group is tantamount to a miracle. However, this happened due to an unusual combination of circumstances, which is not characteristic of the modern music industry. After the death of Lux Interior, Poison Ivy retreated into complete privacy, rather than continue her vain stage presence. With her withdrawal, the original albums of "The Cramps" became unavailable over time, because no one renewed the contracts with the publishers.
In one of the better stories from the scene, two well-known rough-and-tumble punk guys recently took on the task of excavating their legacy and preparing it for the new digital age: Henry Rollins ("Black Flag" and solo career) and Ian McKay ("Minor Threat", "Fugazi"). That's how they found the untouched Holy Grail of early American punk archeology - the first demos of "The Cramps", produced by Chilton. It turns out that these are not demos in the sense of raw working materials, but a fully rounded album with songs in their finished form.
This is evidenced by the extraordinary visceral energy delivered through their well-known classics, both originals and covers, such as "TV Set", "Weekend On Mars", "I Can't Hardly Stand It", "The Natives Are Restless", "Can't Find My Mind", "Rockin' Bones", "Rocket In My Pocket". Left at the very end is Lux's argument with someone who broke into the studio while they were working, during which he literally shouts, "No one breaks into the studio where The Cramps are recording!", emphasizing the importance of the group as if they were "Led Zeppelin" and not a band making their first recordings.
I CAN'T FIND MY SENSE.
The human eye, tired of the glare of the screen, and the human ear, deafened by the same digital beat, are no longer able to receive rock and roll. They fail to distinguish small differences in rhythms, guitar melodies and distortions, nor to capture all the colors of the human voice. Everything human has become alien to us.
This makes it more precious to get hold of this unknown piece of music from the past, in which we find people still living ruthlessly, making mistakes and going crazy, and in the end, they make top-notch pop art out of all their imperfections, which still "grabs" the stomach today. With such epoch-making losers as "The Cramps" and Alex Chilton, such a surprise was only possible. Thus, "The Cramps" achieved in the best way what they always promised - they came back from the dead.
