This piece is so sincere and respectful, I am willing to forgive the "seminal goth band" thing...

... and you know how I feel about that. He gets points, too, for not describing Lux as an "Elvis from hell/on acid." The Johnny Cash/Iggy Pop/Alice Cooper thing is perhaps a bit unwieldy, but at least it's original. I have a number of little cultural prejudices like that. For example, they aren't "graphic novels," they're COMIC BOOKS!
Goddammit.
-Chuck

Lux Interior of the Cramps Died Earlier This Month...But With All that Coverage of Casey Anthony You Probably Missed It

February 13, 2009
by Timothy Sexton
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1472451/lux_interior_of_the_cramps_died_earlier_pg2_pg2.html?cat=9

In a testament to the incompetence of the conservative media that controls the transmission of information in America (yes, that whole liberal media bullcorn is just a bunch of holy crap on a cracker), I just today, February 13, found out that Lux Interior died earlier this month. While it is possible to know exactly how much fecal matter Casey Anthony pooped into a prison toilet bowl courtesy of the seemingly endless coverage devoted to making this murderous bitch a celebrity by CNN Headline News, and while every American knows more about how much Chris Brown enjoys punching women than they do about how the incompetent Democratic leaders in Congress are allowing the minority evildoers in the GOP to run Congress, not one single mention of the passing of one of the most influential musicians in the world of rock music ever reached the hallowed and credible grounds of mainstream media in America.

Lux Interior was the name taken by Erick Purhiser when he formed the seminal goth band The Cramps. And by seminal, I mean The Cramps pretty much invented the goth genre, not to mention the psychobilly genre. Yes, this man whose name is not worthy of mention in the era where a complete moron like Kiran Chetry is allowed to give you the news on CNN every morning, invented two entire genres. That's two more than Kanye West, any winner of American Idol, and any country singer who started after the 1950s. The Cramps were formed in 1973 by Lux Interior who, with his wife Poison Ivy, fronted a legendary band that you either immediately love or hate. What do the Cramps sound like? Imagine, if you can, Johnny Cash channeling Iggy Pop as he performs in the guise of Alice Cooper. And even then you still can't get the Cramps until you've heard them.

Lux Interior was a madman on the stage that made artists generally perceived as wildmen look like Clay Aiken. He took the outrageousness of Jerry Lee Lewis and combined with the artistic bent of Little Richard and then topped it off with his own unique bent. He was an original and that is a hard thing to be in the conformist world of rock music. Too bad that more people would be able to recognize that baby-killing piece of filth than would be able to recognize Lux Interior. But then again that is exactly the America that The Cramps routinely described in songs with titles like "Bikini Girls With Machine Guns" and "Confessions of a Psycho Cat."