For the Love of Lux Interior

by Kim Morgan
Huffingtonpost.com
Feb. 4, 2009

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-morgan/for-the-love-lux-interior_b_164121.html

13 Reasons "She Said" The Cramps

1. Lux Interior in his growling, yowling, screaming, microphone sucking, high heel wearing glory was the ultimate macho fey and the Pied Piper of kink. No longer would I want just a rocker, I'd want a freaky, sleazy, degenerate rocker who could holler Hasil Adkins, borrow your pumps and quite possibly make out with both your sister and your brother when you weren't looking.

2. Poison Ivy remains one of my rock goddess Idols. The quintessence of too-cool-for-school, she'd stalk across the stage like a disinterested kitty cat -- slinky, sexy, unapproachable, perfect.

3. The Cramps blasted rockabilly out of the tired retro affectations of the perfectly coiffed, Eisenhower youth, rock-and-roll-at-the-hop-hop-hop-hop tedium. They knew Link Wray was a bad-ass. They worshipped crazy man Hasil Adkins. They dug the Sonics, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, The Ventures and they brought bump and grind to Jimmie Rogers. Fuck Fonzie. Long live Lux.

4. Poison Ivy got me into her idol, Bo Diddley's brilliant The Duchess. I bow down to her for this.

5. I didn't need to take drugs or get drunk to get high at a Cramps show (though that's fun too). They were also the perfect first date show. My longest relationship (now kaput) was aided by The Cramps (with Famous Monsters). A night of a new kind of kick indeed.

6. For some reason, The Cramps always make me think of what Christmas should really be like. I always wanted to spend Christmas with The Cramps.

7. Poison Ivy inspired one of the greatest songs by one of my favorite bands, The Gun Club, aptly titled, "For the love of Ivy." It features the sublimely violent erotic line: "I'm gonna buy me a gun just as long as my arm."
8. Lux and Ivy actually make marriage seem like a good idea. They were the surprisingly clean living Charles and Morticia Adams of rock.

9. "Bend over, I'll drive, bend over I'll drive. Is this the way Ernie Kovacs died? Bend over, I'll drive."

10. The Cramps had great taste. Lux found rockabilly singers like Charlie Feathers, Sonny Burgess and Malcolm Yelvington as kindred spirits to his other major influence: the Surrealists. In an interview Lux stated: "Marcel Duchamp is quite an inspiration... Because he kind of single-handedly demolished all that had gone before, and made a brand-new art. Man Ray was great too... We're just people who remain ever-curious. We're just attracted to whatever comes in handy. Again, like the Surrealists, anything you run across is actually beautiful; within a single city block, you find miraculous things. It's a good planet -- and good things can happen." Beautiful.

11. Garage Punk, Psychobilly, whatever-the-hell. They were The Cramps.

12. The Cramps make you believe that sexy almost always has to be sleazy.

13. Lux Interior was Louis Prima to Poison Ivy's Keely Smith. He was speed to her heroin. The living to her dead. They were sickness, health, young and old. He's can't possibly be gone.