The Cramps

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The Cramps are a punk rock band originally formed in 1972. Their line-up has rotated much over the years, with Lux Interior and Poison Ivy, the lead singer and lead guitarist respectively as the only permanent members.

The Cramps were part of the early CBGBs punk rock movement that had emerged in New York. The Cramps are credited as the founders of the psychobilly genre of music, as well as a prominent factor in terms of influence on the gothabilly genre.

The Cramps music is mostly in blues form, played at varying, (though usually fast) tempos, with a very minimal drumkit. An integral part of the early Cramps sound is dual guitars, without a bassist. The content of their songs and image is sleaze, trashy Americana (much in the style of filmmaker John Waters), sexual fetishism, clever bad jokes, and cheap, horror B-movie clichés.

The Cramps sound was heavily influenced by early rockabilly and proto-rock'n'roll like Link Wray and Hasil Adkins, 1960s surf music acts such as The Ventures and Dick Dale, 1960s garage rock artists like The Standells, The Gants, The Trashmen, The Green Fuz and The Sonics, as well as the post-glam/early punk scene from which they emerged. They also were influenced to a degree by The Ramones and Screamin' Jay Hawkins, who is often credited for having pioneered their style of theatrical horror-blues.

In turn, The Cramps have strongly influenced subsequent punk and rockabilly revival bands, even creating a genre in their wake. "Psychobilly," a style played by bands like The Meteors and the Sharks, is a term coined by the Cramps, although Lux Interior maintains that the term does not describe their own style. The Cramps also influenced or anticipated acts like The White Stripes, The Gun Club, The Fuzztones, James Chance and the Contortions, The Birthday Party, Flat Duo Jets, Queen Adreena and The Horrors. It is also widely acknowledged that The Cramps inspired the more recent Psychobilly subgenre, Gothabilly — which focuses even more so on the monster/horror themes.

 It is debatable that the Cramps coined the phrase psychobilly. It is perhaps mentioned for the first time in Johnny Cash's song "One Piece at a Time," released in 1976.

Lux Interior (born Erick Purkhiser) and Poison Ivy (born Kristy Wallace) met in Sacramento, California in 1972. Due to their common artistic interests and shared devotion to record collecting, they decided to form The Cramps. Lux took his stage name from a car ad, and Ivy claimed to have received hers in a dream (she was first Poison Ivy Rorschach, taking her last name from that of the inventor of the Rorschach test). In 1973, they moved to Akron, Ohio, and then to New York in 1975, soon entering into CBGB's early punk scene with other emerging acts like The Ramones, Patti Smith, and Television. The lineup in 1976 was Poison Ivy Rorschach, Lux Interior, Bryan Gregory (guitar) and his sister Pam "Ballam" (drums).

In a short period of time, the Cramps changed drummers twice; Miriam Linna (later of Nervous Rex, the Zantees, and the A-Bones) replaced Pam Ballam, and Nick Knox (formerly with the Electric Eels) replaced Linna in September 1977. In the late 1970s, the Cramps briefly shared a rehearsal space with The Fleshtones, and performed regularly in New York at places like CBGB's and Max's Kansas City, releasing two indie singles produced by Alex Chilton at Ardent Studios in Memphis in 1977 before being signed by Miles Copeland to the young I.R.S. Records label. In June of 1978 they gave a free concert for patients at the California State Mental Hospital in Napa, recorded on a Sony Portapak video camera by the San Francisco collective Target Video and later released as Live at Napa State Mental Hospital. The Cramps released the two singles again on their 1979 Gravest Hits EP, before Chilton brought The Cramps back that year to Memphis to record their first full length album, Songs The Lord Taught Us, at Phillips Recording, operated by former Sun Records label owner Sam Phillips.

After relocating to Los Angeles, Kid Congo Powers of The Gun Club joined the Cramps on guitar. But while recording their second LP, Psychedelic Jungle, The Cramps and Miles Copeland began to dispute royalties and creative rights. The ensuing court case prevented them from releasing anything until 1983, when they recorded Smell of Female live at New York's Peppermint Lounge; Kid Congo Powers subsequently departed. Mike Metoff of The Pagans (cousin of Nick Knox) was the final second guitarist - albeit only live - of the Cramps' pre-bassist era.

In 1985 the Cramps recorded a one-off track for the horror movie "The Return of the Living Dead" called "Surfin' Dead", on which Ivy played bass as well as guitar. With the release of 1986's A Date With Elvis, the Cramps permanently added a bass guitar to the mix, but had trouble finding a suitable player, so Ivy temporarily filled in as the band's bassist.. The album featured an increased focus on sexual double entendre, and met with differing fates on either side of the Atlantic: in Europe, it sold over 250,000 copies, while in the U.S. the band had major problems finding a record company prepared to release it.

It was not until 1986 that the Cramps found a suitable permanent bass player: Candy Del Mar [of Satan's Cheerleaders], who made her recorded debut on the raw live album ROCKINNREELININAUCKLANDNEWZEALANDXXX, which was followed by the studio album Stay Sick in 1990. The Cramps hit the top 40 singles chart in the UK for the first and only time with "Bikini Girls with Machine Guns"; Ivy posed as such both on the cover of the single and in the promotional video for the song. The Cramps went on to record many more albums and singles through the 1990's and 2000's, for various labels and with varying degrees of success.

In honor of the excess of The Cramps, there is displayed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a shattered bass drum head that Lux's head went through during a live show.

from Wikipedia licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.