... and, A Day Late

I’m so bummed. I had Bruce Willis up as a Halloween trick, and I planned on posting the Cramps for a Halloween treat. Then my ISP went down last night. I called tech support, and they told me that, since my cable TV was still on, maybe my splitter was bad. Right. Comcast is in the process of taking over from Adelphia. Let me tell you, I can’t wait. Comcast ain’t the best cable company I’ve had, but they are way better than Adelphia.

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But we still have the Cramps.

The Cramps came up in the same New York scene that gave us the Ramones, Blondie, and many other seminal bands. Rather than strictly punk music, though, the band mined rockabilly, blues, and surf music to create a genre known as psychobilly. Or, like it says on the backside of their debut EP, “The group developed its uniquely mutant strain of rock ‘n’ roll aided only by the sickly, blue rays of late night TV.”

Their later music does draw heavily from pop culture with references to trashy Americana (much in the style of filmmaker John Waters), sexual fetishism, clever bad jokes, and B-movie clichés. The first two albums (“Gravest Hits” and “Songs the Lord Taught Us”), which is where today’s music comes from, leans more toward traditional rockabilly along the references to movies such as The Fly and I Was a Teenage Werewolf.

Zombie Dance.mp3
I Was a Teenage Werewolf.mp3
The Mad Daddy.mp3
Lonesome Town.mp3
Human Fly.mp3

The Cramps’ official Website, with tour dates and stuff.

A very cool Cramps collector’s page.

One other sort of unique thing: Kid Congo Powers, Cramps guitar player from 1980-1983, has posted on his site a written and MP3 oral history of his time with the Cramps.

posted by aikin @ 10:05 PM