Dublin Opinion

Donagh is correct in pointing out on a recent post of his that I am the morbid banshee rock obit specialist of this blog. This weather, it seems that the greats are passing away on a weekly basis. Latest in the list I found out about last night through my very own Poison Ivy - Lux Interior, frontman of the Cramps, who died in Glendale, California, last Wednesday.

Appreciations can be found over here NME -Hamish MacBain and here Pitchfork - Tom Breihan

Having only ever seen the Cramps in the ‘flesh’, as it were, once - I’m not overly surprised that Lux’s body has given up at the relatively young age of 62. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a frontman (or woman) put as much into a performance as that night in the SFX (around the time that unemployment in Ireland was last at these levels). As if an hour and a half in stilletoes and sprayed-on PVC keks wasn’t enough - he also managed to climb up onto the stacks and gesture at us with his lad once perched up there. One of the most amazing gigs I was ever at.

On to the inevitable YouTube clips - through which I found this one of the Cramps in 1978 putting Foucault brilliantly into practise by playing the Napa Mental Hospital (the track being ‘The Way I Walk’) :

And here they are on the Tube sometime in the 80s..

..being the morbid sod I am, I can’t help noticing that poor auld Paula Yates is alongside Jools Holland introducing them…

My other abiding memory of Lux, apart from him up on a stack of speakers pointing his lad in the direction of the North Circular - was a great radio show / compilation I once picked up on CD somewhere. Entitled ‘The Purple Knif Show’, I think it’s a slot he had (one-off?) on a L.A. radio station. Played during the show are a selection of mad, bad and wonderful singles coming from various renegades that influenced the very particular aesthetic the Cramps had. A bit of already ‘psycho’ 50s rockabilly, a touch of injun surf (Link Wray), a good dose of B-Movie horror (Addams Family Theme). Also included are a couple of famous theme tunes done nice and fuzzy - the 007 theme and the one from TV’s Dragnet (I knew I’d fit the Fall in somewhere). In between the platters are a number of interventions by Lux - clearly in his working clothes behind the turntable. A cd that was well worth the money.

I also notice on YouTube that one, or several people, have had the good taste to stick the Cramps music onto footage of the derlicious burlesque idol Bettie Page - also passed away in the last couple of weeks. She probably accounts for another large part of the Cramps aesthetic, that degenerate 50s S/M feel that must’ve made taking public transport fun.

Thoughts go out to Poison Ivy. Lux eterna - pardon me Latin…