URGH!

I did not know that there is a fan site for the movie "URGH! A Music War," but there is. Sort of. More specifically, it is identified as a fan site for the DVD. Or A DVD, anyhow. I skimmed over the site and couldn't figure out how legitimate it actually is. Not at all, I'm thinking. I believe he's offering a bootleg DVD that is of better quality than the official release.

Needless to say, I cannot vouch for the quality of this, or even the legality, and I present it here merely for novelty purposes. Personally, I am not at all interested. I have no intention of purchasing either version. Since that movie was my first visual experience of the Cramps , it has a certain place in my heart, but I have that footage in a couple of different formats, along with the "outtakes" of "Teenage Werewolf" and "Human Fly." Frankly, "Tear It Up" constitutes the entire movie as far as I'm concerned, and the rest of the acts might just as well be incredibly lengthy opening and closing credits. While some of the rest of the film is decent, much of it is... rather unfortunate.

And, of course, Lux is on the cover, because who the fuck else were they gonna put on there? Jools Holland?

Be that as it may, you can go see what you think about the whole thing HERE:

http://www.urgh-dvd.com/index.html

The site features a short bio of the Cramps which I think is lifted from somewhere else, but I'm way too lazy to worry about that:

http://www.urgh-dvd.com/the-cramps.html

The Cramps
Brief Biography:

The Cramps, Lux Interior and Poison Ivy met in Sacramento, California in 1972. Due to their common artistic interests and shared devotion to record collecting, they decided to form The Cramps. Lux took his stage name from a car ad, and Ivy claimed to have received hers in a dream (she was first Poison Ivy Rorschach, taking her last name from that of the inventor of the Rorschach test). In 1973, they moved to Akron, Ohio, and then to New York in 1975, soon entering into CBGB's early punk scene with other emerging acts like The Ramones, Patti Smith, and Television. The lineup in 1976 was Poison Ivy Rorschach, Lux Interior, fellow-record collector Bryan Gregory (guitar) and his sister Pam "Ballam" (drums).

In a short period of time, the Cramps changed drummers twice; Miriam Linna (later of Nervous Rex, the Zantees, and the A-Bones) replaced Pam Ballam, and Nick Knox (Nicholas Stephanoff, formerly with the Electric Eels) replaced Linna in September 1977. In the late 1970s, the Cramps performed regularly in New York at places like CBGB's and Max's Kansas City, releasing two indie singles produced by Alex Chilton at Ardent Studios in Memphis in 1977 before being signed by Miles Copeland to the young I.R.S. Records label. In June of 1978 they gave a free concert for patients at the California State Mental Hospital in Napa, recorded on a Sony Portapak video camera by the San Francisco collective Target Video and later released as Live at Napa State Mental Hospital. They released the two singles again on their 1979 Gravest Hits EP, before Chilton brought them back that year to Memphis to record their first full length album, Songs The Lord Taught Us, at Phillips Recording, operated by former Sun Records label owner Sam Phillips.

After relocating to Los Angeles, Kid Congo Powers of The Gun Club joined the Cramps on guitar. But while recording their second LP, Psychedelic Jungle, the band and Miles Copeland began to dispute royalties and creative rights. The ensuing court case prevented them from releasing anything until 1983, when they recorded Smell of Female live at New York's Peppermint Lounge; Kid Congo Powers subsequently departed. Mike Hudson of The Pagans and Click Mort were the final second guitarists - albeit only live - of the Cramps' pre-bassist era.

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. With the release of 1986's A Date With Elvis, the Cramps permanently added a bass guitar to the mix, but had trouble finding a suitable player, so Ivy temporarily filled in as the band's bassist.. The album featured an increased focus on sexual double entendre, and met with differing fates on either side of the Atlantic: in Europe, it sold over 250,000 copies, while in the U.S. the band had major problems finding a record company prepared to release it.

It was not until 1987 that the Cramps found a suitable permanent bass player: Candy Del Mar, who made her recorded debut on the raw live album ROCKINNREELININAUCKLANDNEWZEALANDXXX, which was followed by the studio album Stay Sick in 1990. The Cramps went on to record many more albums and singles through the 1990's and 2000's, for various labels and with varying degrees of success.