Cramped

What’s this? A random, non-topical post on The Cramps? That’s right. Maintaining non-topical irrelevance is the very raison d’etre of Gemini Spacecraft. Besides, some pretty ace footage has recently surfaced catching Lux & Ivy and their various cohorts in their prime, back before they trafficked in sorta hokey self-parody, that stuff of middle-aged rock 'n' roll. 




 
The first clip originally ran as a wrap-up story for a local Memphis news show, circa 1977, when the band was there in Bluff City cutting those first sessions at Phillips Recording with Alex Chilton. I first saw it sometime in the mid-90s, when author/documentarian Robert Gordon included it in his collection of Memphis music shorts he called “Banned, Burned, & Forgotten” (or something like that), which he showed during his book tour for It Came From Memphis. Yes, I know the footage is kinda rough. But the band rocks! And check out Bryan Gregory! Dig Axl Chitlin’s effete, southern stoner accent. Then of course, there’s the story's end, when you get to hear the Memphis tv journalist announce The Cramps' show at the Orpheum, all those year ago.  Of particular interest is that moment when the news guy mentions the other bands on the bill that night. How often to ya get to here a “The Clits” on TeeVee?  Is it just me, or did journalism have more integrity back then?

The second clip catches the band in ’81, with Kid Congo Powers in tow, playing a smokin’ version of their “hit” version of the Ronnie Cook & the Gaylads tune “Goo Goo Muck.”

Cover Song Cage Match #1

Introducing a new feature to the GS: Equal parts comparison study and contest, the idea here is to locate original versions of a few songs and pit them against imitators in a Cover Song Cage Match. Hey, it might not be as fun as a chicken fight, but at least it’s cleaner, and you're less likely to break yr pecker. Anyway, if you want to vote on a winner on any of these matchups, just user Blogger’s comment tool below.

First up⎯Can’t rightly start a Cover Song Cage Match without this one, eh?⎯The Novas vs. the Cramps doin’ “The Crusher.” My copy of the original comes from Back from the Grave, vol. 2. Liner notes on that comp say this about it: “THE NOVAS⎯The Crusher. The height of intellectual psychedelia. These Minnesota Gentlemen must be the ‘precocious,’ ‘ephemeral,’ and ‘interpretive,’ teenagers referred to on the liner notes to the RCA/COLUMBIA collection MINDBLOWERS.” The Cramps’ version ain’t nothin’ to sneeze at neither. You be the judge.

Next, another one from Back from the Grave, vol. 2, the Unrelated Segments’ original version of “Cry, Cry, Cry” (originally released on the Liberty label) vs. the Cynics’ cover, from their 1990 Get Hip LP Rock ‘n’ Roll.



Finally, the main event on this week’s card, Roy Orbison & the Teen Kings’ original 1956 version of “Go Go Go” (Sun 242) vs. an entire tag team of challengers. You got Jerry Lee Lewis doing his version, which he called “Down the Line,” from the Live at the Star Club LP, from 1963. Then there’s the Killers’s cuz Mickey Gilley’s version, from 1965, likewise dubbed “Down the Line,” on the Astro Label (and yes, that one does play better than it looks). And the Del-Tinos' 1963 version puts the Atomic Knee Drop on it to wrap things up.

All right turkey necks, until the rematch…

RIP Lux Interior

It's taken a couple of days for Gemini Spacecraft to get around to posting the requisite obit for Lux Interior, who died Wednesday of a heart condition at age 62. I gotta say, the news bummed me out. His passing, like Bo Diddley's last summer, and Link Wray's a few years ago, seems to accelerate a sad fade-out that's already happening too fast for my money. Sure, the Cramps got plenty silly during the last 15 or so years, but I still think of Lux as a kind of walking, talking, microphone-munching human antenna, picking up signals from outer space, relaying them back to us in a form we can understand, i.e., as covers of "Strychnine," "Green Fuzz," and "All Tore Up." Many a corn-fed rube, myself included, got hipped to an entire alternate dimension thanks to him. I'll always love "Gravest Hits," "Songs the Lord Taught Us," and "LIve at the Peppermint Lounge," just as I'll always distrust anyone who doesn't keep these records around the house.

As long as we're indulging in Cramps/Lux Interior memories, my personal favorite is of a show in Pittsburgh, 1992. During the "Surfin' Bird" finale, when he'd usually peel out of that two- piece latex body condom he wore, an audience member, probably a plant, tossed some women's panties at him. So Lux stripped all the way down and tried to get into those panties. But his cue came to get back to the mic to sing the next round of poppa-oom-mow-mow before he got the draws on straight. He finished out the song, and the rest of the show, with his shlong dangling. Now that's a dedicated showman!

The above clip comes from a local Memphis TV news story on the Cramps, from when they recorded "Gravest Hits" and "Songs the Lord Taught Us" at Phillips Recording with Alex Chilton. I first saw this spot during Robert Gordon's book tour for "It Came from Memphis," in 1995. Instead of reading, Gordon showed a collection of footage he'd compiled called "Banned, Burned, and Forgotten," or something like that. How weird that this was the subject of a local news spot. And how weird to be standing there watching it nearly 20 years later, in a Borders bookstore, curious shoppers milling about while the anchor wrapped things up, announcing that the Cramps would be appearing that long gone weekend along with "the Clits."