I was trying to think of the best way to describe The Cramps to someone who has never heard them and what I came up with is The Cramps are like B-movie rock 'n' roll. Think of taking Shakin' Stevens with a Creutzfeldt-Jakob's cool jerk as directed by Russ Meyer... or the bit in the Fly with the inside-out monkey, or any scene from Evil Dead 2 and mix it all together and you are in the right direction.
The Cramps mixture of Sun-era, reverb-heavy rockabilly, surf guitar and horror movie imagery is one of the great pop concepts of modern music...
But their music isn't meant to be radically different, or to push boundaries. It isn't made for a wider commercial audience, and it isn't made to sell a million copies. It feels though it's made because this is the music the band themselves listen to, and appreciate. This is music about rock 'n' roll, attitude, and good times (and sometimes Werewolves).
The Cramps have never been an easy band to listen to because of their unfortunate history as regards record labels (I think they've been on 3 or 4 different ones), so at any given time, some of their albums are usually unavailable except for maybe that lucky last minute bid on eBay. It also means that there's never been a comprehensive retrospective or box set. Having said that the band has recently re-issued six classic albums on their very own Vengeance Record label so maybe we will someday soon get a proper box set collective or rarities compilation album.
You've gotta give the Cramps credit, they know their turf and they have managed to keep rock 'n roll exciting after all these years. And it's somehow comforting to know that they're still the leering psychobilly swamp monsters they always were, still deep-throating microphones and writhing around to the same strip-club drumbeats and Hazil Adkins-cum-Gerry Roslie guitar riffs in those same putridpools of skunked beer, acid-laced saliva and sex goop. All we can pray for is that they keep doing the thing we love the most for many years to come. And if the day comes where they just can't do it anymore and our favorite rock 'n roll daddy has a done passed on, we'll nail his bones up on the wall and take a few more times around a hardwood
floor, Before we turn off the lights and close the door.
Long live The Cramps!
