THE CRYPT OF THE CRAMPS: Random Pixels, Stray Facts & Henry Rollins' Memories

Here is a sampling of some of the intriguing and phantasmagoric images sent to me by friends and fiends from all over the globe and beyond. If any of these images are copyrighted, it wouldn't surprise me a fucking bit.

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.

In 1995 The Cramps appeared on the TV-series Beverly Hills, 90210Beverly Hills, 90210 in the Halloween episode "Gypsies, Cramps and Fleas." They played 2 songs in show: "Mean Machine" and "Strange Love." Lux started the song by saying "Hey boys and ghouls, are you ready to rise the dead?"

In June 1978, the Cramps, a pioneering New York-based rock band who blend the primitive twangy stomp of rockabilly with the attitude and willful perversity of punk, were touring the West Coast and discovered they'd been lined up with perhaps the most unusual gig of their career. The Cramps were booked to play a show at the Napa State Mental Hospital, a facility for the emotionally challenged, and found themselves facing an audience that was half smuggled-in punk fans and half in-patients whose reaction to the performance was often vocal and demonstrative. A cameraman from the punk-oriented video collective Target Video was on hand with a primitive black-and-white camera, and the results became the infamous The Cramps: Live at the Napa State Mental Hospital.

According to current theory in the sports science literature (as of 1997), skeletal muscle cramps during exercise probably happen when muscles that are shortened (for example, a calf muscle when your toe is pointed) are repeatedly stimulated.

This article is about the word "shit". For the waste product, see feces. For the egestion of bodily wastes, see defecation.

The lux (symbol: lx) is the SI unit of illuminance and luminous emittance. It is used in photometry as a measure of the apparent intensity of light hitting or passing through a surface. It is analogous to the radiometric unit watts per square metre, but with the power at each wavelength weighted according to the luminosity function, a standardized model of human visual (but not circadian) brightness perception. In English, "lux" is used in both singular and plural.

Inhalant use, especially glue sniffing, is widely associated with the late 1970s punk youth subculture in the UK and North America.

Poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac are plants that can cause a skin rash called allergic contact dermatitis upon contact.

Owen Adams: It's hard to think of Lux Interior as dead, despite what reports say. Then again, it was always hard to think of him as alive.

Henry Rollins remembers Lux Interior
By August Brown|February 07, 2009
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/07/entertainment/et-luxinterior7#

I grew up in Washington, D.C., in the '70s, and when punk rock came along, I realized that my ship had come in. The Cramps would come down to D.C. and I would see them play in a space about the size of your living room. It was kind of scary being in the front row. Lux would find something to swing from -- if there were ceiling tiles, they'd all be on the floor by the end of the thing. Lux would somehow find his way out of his pants and be down to a pair of bikini briefs twitching all over the floor. He's a very large man, very tall and very pale and very sweaty. They all looked so amazing. Each one could have been a movie star.

I remember buying their first or second single from a roadie who was selling them for three bucks at the door. It's probably worth its weight in gold now. The first two Cramps 7-inches are some of the first independent singles I ever owned. Once I drove up to New York to see them in my little VW; it was me and most of the Bad Brains all crammed into my little car. It was at Irving Plaza, and H.R. from Bad Brains, he went backstage because he's a big rock star, and he came out with a slick of the album cover and the whole band had signed the back. I still have it to this day.

Ian MacKaye's first band, the Teen Idles, once opened for the Cramps, and it was a big deal. So the Cramps go on and we're all up front and Lux is unbuttoning his pants and flopping around on the ground. So, being helpful Boy Scouts, we just kind of yanked on his jeans. They rolled off and we were just standing there with these dripping jeans.

Afterward, we walked backstage to give Lux his pants back, and we're kind of terrified of the Cramps because we don't know what they are like. And we go backstage and there is [guitarist] Bryan Gregory looking satanic, and Ian kind of mumbles "Oh, here's Lux's pants." And Bryan Gregory says, "Oh look! Lux! The boys have brought your pants back and they're cleaned and pressed." And everyone laughed, and Lux said thank you, and we just kind of ran downstairs.

Many years later we played together at the Pukkelpop festival [in Europe]. At that time Lux was in his rubber pants/high heels/pour-wine-all-over-himself era. So they finished their set and he's walking up the stairs with that bouffant, he's been rolling on the ground and he's red from wine, his mascara is running and I think one heel is broken. He's this very large man tottering up the stairs, and I said, "Hey, Lux," and he kind of looked at me and said, "Good afternoon!" Such a classy dude.

You get the idea that there was something very decent about them, that there was something almost like your dad about how they were. And it seems to me that Lux and [his wife and bandmate] Ivy were fairly insular, away from the general roar of things, which makes them interesting to me.

I really appreciated their fascination with '50s car culture and everything camp. They'll be the first to tell you, "We're not in school right now." And so to me the Cramps were always just really fun and clever. Like the lyrics for "Garbageman," they're smart and cool, in the way that Mark Twain was smart and cool.

Those early records, like the first two singles and the "Gravest Hits" EP and "Songs the Lord Taught Us" and "Psychedelic Jungle," to me are just as good as American music gets. There's a handful of bands that are just part of your working mojo, and the Cramps are one of those bands. I went to that Miles Davis function they had the other night and I saw Raymond Pettibon and Mike Watt there, and they were just really bummed about Lux. To have that and Ron Asheton right in the same immediate period of time was really a loss.

In my opinion, when it comes to being a frontperson, you should say, "That person could never hold a full-time job. Just give him a microphone and get out of his way." And that was Lux -- he was definitely that uncontainable personality. And that voice -- the guy could really sing. Nothing sounds like him. He had that gender-bending kind of "What is he?" thing. But he wasn't a tough guy and wasn't trying to intimidate you. He was kind of crazy, and you gave him some room because he might get some on you. That informed me as far as being a frontperson as far as owning your territory up there. I always tried to be that.

The Ivy League is an athletic conference comprising eight private institutions of higher education in the Northeastern United States.

Tor Johnson (19 October 1903 – 12 May 1971) was a Swedish professional wrestler known as The Super Swedish Angel, and actor.

The Rorschach test is a psychological test in which subjects' perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed using psychological interpretation, complex scientifically derived algorithms, or both. Some psychologists use this test to examine a person's personality characteristics and emotional functioning. It has been employed to detect an underlying thought disorder, especially in cases where patients are reluctant to describe their thinking processes openly. The test takes its name from that of its creator, Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach.

The Mission of the United States Department of the Interior is to protect and provide access to our Nation's natural and cultural heritage and honor our trust.