(Image from Miriam Linna's kicksville 66 blog at: http://kicksville66.blogspot.com/2009/05/my-first-band-cramps-1976-pt-1.html)"Here's some clips from various Cramps articles and interviews I have collected (and then brilliantly lost) over the years..."
--Fasbinder 62
http://groups. yahoo.com/ group/Zombies_ March_On/
Cramps, the: Interview (june 1980 ZigZag) – Lux trembles with glee at
the memory of a night in Bristol, where they played an old church "It
was in the cellar, there was no floor. So they had this tarpaulin
where the floorboards used to be. You could see the church through
the holes and there was the Lord's Prayer behind us, it was great."
That night Lux was compelled to indulge in some of his notorious
onstage lunacy and got hold of some wires hanging down to swing out
over the punters. He made it back onto the stage by walking on their
shoulders. "They were all going, step on my shoulder, hurt me!"
Interview (4 jan 86, NME) "Nick's been to every Raiders game this
season," beams Lux. "The Raiders are more rock'n roll than 99 out of
100 groups today. Wherever they go people are frightened to death of
them…" Ivy "They're a bunch of hoodlums. There's a cliché about
sport; it's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.
But their motto is just `Win, Baby!'"
Lux "The truth of the matter is they just want to go in and destroy
the other team… Their uniform is silver and black with skull and
crossbones. Anyplace they play they can sell out the stadium because
people know there's gonna be fights. When the Raiders play, they
say `Your mother's a fuckin' bitch you fuckin' asshole!" They scream
at other players, they antagonise them. It's not like morale-
building, good natured sports, it's way beyond."
Lux "I feel like I've been surfing, I've listened to enough surf
records. I think there's something more deviant about surf records
than really had to do with surf music. All the best surf music was
made in our part of town, a whole way away from the beach. That
becomes suspect in my mind because all these records are so, like,
Manic. Maybe the girls in their bikini's caused all this manic
activity. But I think it had to do with something more involved than
that." He trails off mysteriously.
"Ecstasy is really great!" proclaims Lux. "Have you ever taken
ecstasy? It's LSD, heroin… it makes you lurve your fellow man. Can
you imagine a drug that makes you lurve your fellow man?" his
beatific grin quickly evaporates into a mock responsible expression
following a warning glance from Ivy.
"Yeah," she says "It'll give you Parkinson's disease."
Lux says "It's too bad they're not legal cos anybody can make `em and
anything can happen."
Clipping - "I wish I could make my new stuff sound as different as
the Cramps are to Status Quo, but I can't." Frank Black.
3 reviews of Flamejob – The Cramps also ritually abuse `Route 66' in
a way that makes the Stones sound like the safe old English drips
that they are, treating it with the same reverence as their version
of `Heartbreak Hotel' – that is, with all the respect of a PCP crazed
drunk starting a fight at the Queen Mothers funeral. / Lux Interior
once memorably stated that he spends 95% of his time having sex and
the other 5% thinking about having it. / Signing to hip indie label
Creation was a most unlikely but highly clever move.
Interview (Halloween 1989) The album's title was originally the catch-
phrase of an obscure `60s TV horror host in Cleveland who went by the
name of Ghoulardi. Lux, who was a teenager at the time, remembers his
performances well. "He was really great! He'd say `Stay Sick!,' `Turn
Blue!' and `Purple Knif' which is fink spelt backwards. Everybody
drank these big Ghoulardi shakes which had every flavour imaginable
mixed into them… and then green dye! That guy was intense. On TV he
had this wavering little halo around him and one spot light under his
face. He'd blow things up on TV. They'd be showing a horror movie and
then, after the commercial break, he'd have a model of a split-level
house with a car and mom and dad waving to each other in the front
garden… then he'd blow it up on TV. That guy was like Hitler or
something, he was really something different."
On Date with Elvis not being released in the States… "All these A+R
departments in America are a buncha scared bunny Rabbits" sneers Lux
in disgust "all hoping they can hold onto their pay-cheques for one
more week. There are a lot of record companies that have tied up a
lot of our time over the years, going out to dinner with us, talking
with us… But when it comes round to the real thing, they're all
groupies. Some people talk about it and some people do it!"
Interview (City Limits) "You can see a film like Naughty Dallas and
the strippers really existed. It happened. There was no concept or
anything. These are things that interest us because they're to deal
with real people." Opines the striking Mr Interior as a way of
expressing his disgust at those who see the band as a two-dimensional
cartoon. "We have 3000 films on video-tape and we're looking for
stuff all the time."
Interview – "We're the Kings and Queens of Rock
and Roll." Says Ivy "We don't take life seriously, we take ourselves
seriously, and what we do, we're just totally committed to
it." "We've already dominated the world" snarls Lux "If only they'd
just come to that realisation. "
Interview (Poison Ivy on her self-image) – What image do you have of
yourself? "Flaky and incredibly disorganised. I also think that I am
completely normal and it is the rest of the world which isn't. A lot
of values that are really valued in contemporary society I don't
have. I'm spaced out most of the time. I like it that way, being on a
different wavelength." What image are you trying to achieve? "That of
a well-decorated Christmas tree." Do you wear make up? "People think
I wear too much but I don't think that's possible. I hate the natural
look."
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