| Written by Thingfish,
on 10-03-2009 01:15
|
Lux Interior died last month. The king of trash, guru of garage, the creature from the black leather lagoon and the most exhaulted potentate of love. In a personal and off-topic tribute, Netnewsasia raises a glass in honour of an underappreciated rock legend. Stay sick dude.
Lux Interior was the first great artist I ever saw. I haven't seen his band The Cramps play live in over 20 years, but they've always been in the background, occasional visitors on my iPod, a permanent presence on my life's playlist.
It's a bit of a flowery introduction, I know, but The Cramps really did have a powerful impact on my life. There was a time in the early '80s, when you could almost have mistaken me for Lux Interior - palid and drawn, black hair, black clothes, studs and psychedelic shirts; we were goths before goth, with similar passions for grungy guitars, skulls and old horror films. But the similarities ended there - I could never match Lux for style or attitude and, as the '80s wore on, Lux grew more out there, and I got my hair cut. As you do.
But while our lives diverged and I haven't seen The Cramps in a quarter of a century, reading of his death, seeing that chapter close for good, was like having a piece of my life amputated.
Life is short, filled with stuff
It's a month since Lux died, but I only heard about it a couple of days ago, when I saw his obituary in Mojo. The first time I saw The Cramps I was just 14, and it was among the most remarkable, formative and inspiring events of my life. It was 1979, I'd never seen a real band play, outside of the confines of my sleepy home town, and a friend got some tickets for The Police. We'd all have much rather seen The Stranglers or X-Ray Spex, but The Police were a bit punkish, and they were playing in Guildford, which was easy to get home from, and at that age, any gig is a big deal.
That summer was the last gasp of punk's first generation, and the moment when mod crawled back from the grave, thanks to the Jam, and to the Who's Quadrophenia, in which Sting made his acting debut. So our timid little group of punk wannabes disembarked from our train and found Guildford heaving with parker-wearing representatives of the new subculture, there for the Ace Face and mod support act Bobby Henry.
Into this sorry revival, The Cramps arrived like a wet fart at the ballet; an unknown gang of sleazy LA acid casualties, with the wrong sound, the wrong image and the wrong audience. And they blew everyone else off the stage. For maybe just half an hour, The Cramps bludgeoned the crowd with their own take on sixties garage punk, a grinding, high-volume assault of rockabilly, blues, punk and distorted reverb. While Nick Knox and Poison Ivy kept cool and controlled, delivering a pummelling, relentless backbone, a skeletal Bryan Gregory and psychotic Lux threw themselves around the stage like no rock band I'd even imagined before. Gregory, with his Gibson Flying-V, flicked burning cigarettes at the audience, while a leather-dressed Lux, ripping at his clothes and writhing on the ground, the antithesis of a mail-order mod, faced-off the crowd as if daring them to do something. They didn't.
The Police were good, even Bobby Henry was alright. But on the train home, the only thing we cared about was The Cramps.
The hottest thing from the north, to come out of the south
Alongside The Damned's Machine Gun Etiquette, The Cramps' 5-track 12" Gravest Hits EP had a bigger impact on my life than any other record that year. Unlike the Damned, who taught us three chords and told us to go start a band, the Cramps showed that even three chords was excessive. None of us had an ounce of Captain Sensible's fretboard finesse, but we could all play Human Fly. Gravest Hits was like no other record I'd ever heard. It demanded to be played at the highest volume and played again straight afterwards. Domino and Surfin’ Bird were two of the most intense slabs of noise ever committed to vinyl. They may have been covers, but Lux made them into originals.
The next time I saw the band was a few months later, while passing through Los Angeles with my family. There was the band, or part of it, stalking through the departure hall. So I did what any star-struck teenager would do - I went up and asked for their autographs. What else could I do? Just walk past cooly, maybe tip my hat in their direction? Lux was too cool and just kept walking, leaving Nick and Ivy to sign my Knott's Berry Farm carrier bag. Face to face, they were the nicest rock stars I'd met. Ivy even smiled.
Creature from the black leather lagoon
Over the next couple of years, the band released one great single after another, and every one a cult classic - Garbage Man, Drug Train, Goo Goo Muck, New Kind of Kick; I used to spend hours playing Cramps singles back to back. They may have looked like a bunch of speed-freak asylum escapees, but The Cramps were one of the most driven, focussed bands of their generation. Like Lemmy, the Ramones or Iggy Pop, Lux Interior created a sound and an image that fitted him like a pair of old leathers, and he stuck with it to the end.
The Cramps were musical outlaws; way beyond the sway of the critical cognoscenti, in a genre of their own, playing the music they wanted to play, no matter whether anyone else liked it. If they’d cared about critical respect or airplay, maybe they’d have refrained from releasing (get on-board the) Drug Train or Turn Round, I’ll Drive. And they survived because they persevered. They never bent with the breeze, never dabbled in dance or flirted with funk, and because they kept turning out new tunes, they never became a self-parodying tribute band.
The way he walked was just the way he walked
I only saw them a couple more times live, but they remained one of the most driven and compelling bands around, in a time when the live music scene in England was probably the best it has ever been. Just as it was that first night in Guildford, the sense of violence was always there - at Hammersmith Palais, I stood on the balcony and watched as an emotional Lux blew a gasket at some members of the audience. At one point he swept glasses and bottles from the drum riser into the crowd, minutes later he began whipping the front rows with his mike and suddenly leapt into the crowd and began pummelling someone - for what, I really can't remember. But as he beat his unfortunate quarry across the dance floor, a spotlight and bouncers followed in his wake. That may sound a little excessive, but the '80s weren't noted for moderation, and neither were The Cramps. Besides, unlike some other bands chasing the psychobilly bandwagon, The Cramps' trash-horror humour more than matched any threat of violence in the air.
They may have played with danger, but above all, The Cramps were a simple, fun, shock-your-neighbours rock n roll band. Songs like Can Your Pussy do the Dog, She Said or Bikini Girls With Machine Guns are celebrations of life, not threats to it. That's why, long after I last had a chance to see them live, I still kept buying their albums. How can anyone not want to own "Look Mom, No Head!"?
The Cramps released some great albums over the years - Songs the Lord Taught Us, Psychedelic Jungle, Smell of Female and A Date With Elvis all deserve a place on everyone's playlist. But the one Cramps album I've always turned back to, and the one I listened to yesterday, after reading that Lux had died, was Off The Bone, the '80s compilation of that first clutch of brilliant singles. If you've read this far and you've never bought a Cramps record, this is the one you need to own - even if you never buy another. Lux has died, but the spirit in his music will keep prowling the earth like a teenage werewolf. Beyond the grave, The Cramps still ooze, you'll still throb.
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