Clipping File: Feb. 4, 2009

Lux Interior of the Cramps Passes Away at the Glendale Memorial Hospital

Randall Roberts

L.A. Weekly

http://blogs.laweekly.com/westcoastsound/news/lux-interior-of-the-cramps-pas/

For some of us, he was the embodiment of cool. The way he crawled, the way he climbed the speaker cabinets like a panther, the way that Poison Ivy, his wife and collaborator in the Cramps, looked at him with equal parts love and indifference. Lux Interior, born Erick Lee Purkhiser in 1948, was an icon, and his influence on American culture will only rise with his passing.

In 2004, LA Weekly's Jonny Whiteside wrote a great profile of his friends Poison and Lux, and captured the band's essence:

That exhilarating manifestation of deviant intent and skull-denting impact remains Lux and Ivy's exclusive domain. Where punk rock was a barrage of refutation that fomented rabid exultation, the Cramps reclaimed the hillbilly power long since flushed down the Mersey. Through a self-stated "disdain for the myth of musical progress," they melded their mutant propensities to emerge as a guiding voice in the wilderness, a commanding force that redefined the rock n roll spectrum while outgunning almost everyfuckingbody in the game.

The Cramps' New York publicist, Girlie Action, released the following statement:

For Immediate Release:
February 4, 2009

Lux Interior, lead singer of The Cramps, passed away this morning due to an existing heart condition at Glendale Memorial Hospital in Glendale, California at 4:30 AM PST today. Lux has been an inspiration and influence to millions of artists and fans around the world. He and wife Poison Ivy's contributions with The Cramps have had an immeasurable impact on modern music.

The Cramps emerged from the original New York punk scene of CBGB and Max's Kansas City, with a singular sound and iconography. Their distinct take on rockabilly and surf along with their midnight movie imagery reminded us all just how exciting, dangerous, vital and sexy rock and roll should be and has spawned entire subcultures. Lux was a fearless frontman who transformed every stage he stepped on into a place of passion, abandon, and true freedom. He is a rare icon who will be missed dearly.
(via The Daily Swarm)

Lux Tributes This Week

It has been a year now since Lux Interior went to wherever a creature like that goes when the world becomes too small to contain him. The good part is, he left behind a lot of cool stuff for us to play with. We are sad that Lux has gone someplace where we can't see or hear him, but just imagine what it would have been like had we never had him at all. It was, indeed, a wonderful life. Lux reveled in it and gave it freely to us. He showed us how it could and should be done, and repeatedly proved the impossible.
Who would have thought he'd ever reach 60? And, once he did, who would have thought he could ever die?
Lux, wherever you are right now, I know you aren't resting in peace, for that was not your way. I hope you are someplace loud and sweaty, with an eternal stage for you to bleed on and an endless supply of microphones to swallow. May you stay sick, get fucked up , and blow up your mind forever in some beautiful garden where the natives are always restless. I wonder what new kind of kick you have found behind that green door.
So, no RIP for you, my friend. Rather, I will just say "well done," and thanks for letting us share it. with you.

--Chuck

KOGAR THE SWINGING APE has announced that there will be a Lux Interior tribute radio show on Thursday, Feb 4th from 11pm to 1am. It will air on WRIR-LP 97.3 FM, Richmond Independent Radio, with Slickee Boys drummer, Dacoit Dan.

Kogar says, "You can listen live on the net, or download the show later when its available on their website...Dan was kind enough to let me pick most of the songs for the show. It'll be a mix of Cramps tunes and Lux and Ivy favorites with interview bits, and movie trailers, and more."

Here's Dan's page at the WRIR website:

http://wrir.org/x/modules/news/index.php?storytopic=160

And Kogar's Jungle Juice blog at:

http://kogarsjunglejuice.blogspot.com/

Later this week, Kogar plans to post the remastered version of "Lux and Ivy's Favorites volume 12," the Lux Interior Memorial edition, with a few mp3 tweaks and a new cover.

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.

This IS the way Neil Esposito died...

Woman uses sex act as manslaughter defense

Wednesday, March 3, 2004

MIDDLETOWN, Connecticut (AP) -- A woman charged with causing a fatal car crash in 1999 says that she couldn't have been behind the wheel because she was performing a sex act on the driver at the time.

Heather Specyalski, 33, was charged with second-degree manslaughter in the crash that killed businessman Neil Esposito. Prosecutors allege that she was driving Esposito's Mercedes-Benz convertible when it veered off the road and hit several trees.

But Specyalski claims that Esposito was driving, and she was performing oral sex on him at the time, said her attorney, Jeremiah Donovan. He noted that Esposito's pants were down when he was thrown from the car.

Superior Court Judge Robert L. Holzberg ruled Tuesday that Specyalski can proceed with the defense, despite objections by the prosecutor.

"A defendant has a right to offer a defense no matter how outlandish, silly or unbelievable one might think it will be," Holzberg said. He added: "No one ever told me in law school that we'd be having these kinds of conversations in open court."

Assistant State's Attorney Maureen Platt said the defense is flawed.

"His pants could have been down because he was mooning a car he was drag racing," Platt said. "His pants could have been down because he was urinating out of a window. His pants could have been down because he wasn't feeling well."

Also Tuesday, Holzberg denied Donovan's motion to use gender as grounds to eliminate jurors. Donovan had argued that women would be biased and more likely to convict.

Lux Approaches

Until quite recently, I knew very little about the personal lives of Lux, Ivy, and various other Cramps. After Lux died, bits of intriguing information started coming to my attention. I had always known that Erick Purkhiser was born in Akron, Ohio, as was I. Earlier this year I found out that his family lived in Stowe, Ohio, which was right next to my hometown of Cuyahoga Falls. Over the weekend, courtesy of a controversial ebay auction, I learned that Lux and his family actually lived in Cuyahoga Falls at the same time I did, just a little over a mile from my house. Also, he had a son, and it is almost certain that the boy attended the same elementary school I did (since they lived even closer to it) at the same time I did. He's a few years younger than I am, so it would only have been for a year or two, and we'd have been at opposite ends of the building. But it got me thinking. If Lux-- or Erick-- ever attended any of our school plays or pageants, then HE would have seen ME on stage decades before I would see him. Interesting thought, that.

If this keeps up, I'll eventually find out he lived in my basement at some point.

--Chuck

(Above) Lux Interior's performance art tribute to Chuck Berry's Number One hit song from 1972.

Remembering the Cramps' Lux Interior: Matchmaker, Symbol, Expert Driver
By Camille Dodero
Friday, Feb. 6 2009
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/archives/2009/02/remembering_the_1.php

I met one of my best friends seeing the Cramps live. This is probably one of the highest compliments you can pay a musician of any age, genre, or scale, aside from having actually conceived a child to a band's record--and frankly that involves premeditation, and if doesn't, it likely involves misjudgment or Massive Attack, and in any case, if you're making babies to the Cramps, you are a couple of sick fucks. But meeting a best friend at a band's show and ending the night with a rare understanding between complete strangers--We Need to Be Friends Immediately--seems to reflect on the performer, in retrospect, because it involves serendipity and miracles, artists as sublime conduits and unsuspecting heroes. In this instance, the spindly, psycho-sexy, leather-pants-wearing Lux Interior as Wesley Autry. Without Lux on October 16, 2004, I wouldn't know K, or eventually met J and S, or ended up here, and I most certainly would've gotten run over by that train.

Actually, that night in Boston, the Cramps played the old classic "Drug Train," a two-minute-plus "Johnny B. Goode"-styled hootenanny in which Lux plays conductor, woo-woos like a steam trumpet, and tries to wrangle innocent bystanders on board by bragging about the VIP section: "I've seen Elvis with your Mother/On the drug train." This is exactly what I came to love about the Cramps: ludicrous, debased, Presley-obsessed, and totally inappropriate. Right now, the track "Can Your Pussy Do the Dog?" is the most popular Cramps ringtone on iTunes. And their other song titles also shriek volumes: "Eyeball in My Martini," "Don't Eat Stuff Off the Sidewalk," and "Dr. Fucker M.D. (Musical Deviant)." So brilliant, so stupid. And let us consider "Bend Over, I'll Drive" from 1991's Look Mom, No Head, in which our hero Lux repeatedly demands his beloved lean over so he can take the controls. It's very romantic, especially since Lux's pillow talk stinks of necro fetishism: "Bend over, I'll drive/Is this the way Grace Kelly died?" This is wax-museum foreplay, werewolf flirtation, the sound of filthy hitchhiker seduction.

According to Cramps lore, picking up a hitchhiker is exactly how Lux Interior met his spikey-heeled sidekick, wife, and guitarist Poison Ivy Rorschach. She also supposedly funded the Cramps' first record with money she'd made as a dominatrix. But far-and-away the greatest footnote in the Cramps legend is their 1978 live show at the Napa State Mental Hospital. Before Pitchfork TV, and Girl Talk on a rollercoaster with a camera, and all those supposedly innovative scripted scenes of bands playing rooftops, lofts, and dog parks (guilty), the Cramps booked a show in a California asylum. Someone there from a punk collective Target Video had a camera, and the grainy black-and-white footage is unbelievable. Lux is open-shirted and electric, the room is a mixture of patients and covert fans. It's tough to discern who's who, mostly because there is no fourth wall: audience members wander the stage listlessly, hug-assault Lux, grab him for mid-song solo dances. "We drove 300 miles to play for you people," Lux tells them. The immediate response, "FUCKKKK YOOO!" He continues, "Somebody told me you people are crazy, but I'm not sure about that. You seem to be alright with me." Inmates running the asylum, as it goes, I once watched this entire performance on a date.

The date, the best friend, the asylum video--all this means is that I liked the Cramps more than I ever probably would have, left to my own devices. I'm fully aware, they more or less wrote the same three songs over and over and over. And that, with all that thonged-out lady ass and horrorcore iconography, they really should have been metal. And that some of their schtick was just plain gross. But Lux Interior sang about being a teenage fly, drank beer out of a sneaker, performed in his skivvies, and enticed his wife by telling her to bend over so he could drive. Genius. Especially since it was the way Lux Interior died.

Nice Obit

LUX INTERIOR
by The Indie Dad
http://www.sicmagazine.net/articles/114/obituary-lux-interior-1946-2009

On February 4, 2009 Erick Purkhiser died. If I’d read that I wouldn’t have batted an eye lid. But Erick had the alter ego Lux Interior. Erick died of a “pre-existing” heart condition (whatever the Hell that is). But Lux, well you gotta imagine someone lifted the coffin lid and plunged in a stake. And just like Dracula, Lux won’t stay dead – because every time someone hears a Cramps record it’s like the curse of the Vampire will spread.

Lux could have been known to the world as Vip Vop. “I had Vip Vop on my driver’s license and every time I got stopped by the cops they would hassle me: “Vip Vop – I oughta give you a ticket just for that!”

In terms of commitment to a pure seam of Rock & Roll The Cramps can have few equals and only The Ramones could be said to surpass them. But no-one could accuse Da brudders of being SEXY (well, maybe Dee Dee). The Cramps – the constant being Lux and Poison Ivy – are, like The Ramones…. flawless. Show me a bad Cramps song? No, you can’t. Some maybe more throw away than others but not bad. BAD maybe but not bad. They took the base elements of R&R – booze, drugs, fucking and leather, added b-movies – and kept them base. When you listen to a Cramps’ song you are lifted to a higher state of being (though getting fucked up too doesn’t hurt).

Jeez, even the titles make you feel better. “Bikini Girls With Machine Guns”, “Most Exalted Potentate Of Love”, “Aloha From Hell”, Can Your Pussy Do The Dog?” Get to the lyrics and it’s time to grin like a monkey. What’s Inside A Girl? – “There’s some things baby I just can’t swallow, Mama told me that girls are hollow”.

As well as writing some damn exciting music Lux & Ivy were archivists, delighting in collecting Rock & Roll and Exotica records. They spent a lot of time driving round thrift stores and warehouses buying unbelievable stuff, Sun label stuff for a nickel.

I took a damn long time but just managed to see The Cramps in 2006 at the Astoria. I ended up getting a ticket from e-bay as it had sold out long before I got wind of it. And the audience of the faithful was all you might hope – freaks in the best sense, a tattoo convention full of greasers and outlandish ladies in fetish gear. A smattering of uninitiated gawpers like me who knew the spectacle would be superb. Lux, then 60, was all over the stage, drinking red wine from the bottle by holding the neck in his teeth and putting his head back. Then spraying it out like a blood mist. Clearly he had arrived on our shores in a casket full of Ohio earth. “It’s good to see so many of you out on a full moon… It’s when I like to feed!”

In a very Mark Twain sidebar, Lux had been reported as dying from a heroin overdose in 1987 and so had already seen something of the reaction his death might find.

Quiet apart from a 34 year career in R&R, Lux had a 35 year partnership with his wife and co-founder Poison Ivy. That’s a Hell of a long time – and I bet it was a Hell of a time. Maybe Ivy can take some comfort from this Mark Twain quote –

“Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.”

Spanish Fly

OBITUARIO

La muerte del rey Zombie
Lux Interior, líder de The Cramps, fallece a los 60 años, en Los Ángeles, debido a una dolencia cardiaca
ÍÑIGO LÓPEZ PALACIOS
Madrid - 05/02/2009
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/cultura/muerte/rey/Zombie/elpepucul

Lux Interior, líder y frontman de The Cramps, falleció el pasado 4 de febrero a los 60 años, en el Glendale Memorial Hospital de Los Ángeles debido a una enfermedad cardiaca, según informó su agente.

The Cramps surgen en Nueva York en la segunda mitad de la década de los setenta. Interior (cuyo nombre real era Erick Lee Purkhiser) y su mujer Kristy Wallace (conocida como Poison Ivy) forman el grupo en 1976 para dar salida a su fascinación por la cultura basura de los años cincuenta y sesenta, las películas de serie B, los cómics, la magia negra y el rockabilly.

La explosión punk, con su iconoclasta negación de todo lo considerado de buen gusto, fue el vehículo ideal para su sonido y su estética. The Cramps se convierten en los más raros de ese mítico circuito de inadaptados compuesto por gente como The Ramones, Patti Smith o Richard Hell que se movía alrededor de clubs como el C.B.G.B. o el Max Kansas City.

A pesar de que sus cifras resultan ridículas (Billboard asegura que de los 14 álbumes publicados por The Cramps, el más vendedor fue Bad Music for Bad People, de 1984, con unas miserables 95.000 copias y que su último disco How To Make a Monster, de 2004, apenas colocó 11.000) la influencia de The Cramps ha sido colosal. No sólo son los inventores del psicobilly, combinación de todas sus pasiones. Sino que demostraron que el punk, además de rabioso, podía ser teatral y divertido, y colocaron en el mapa a muchos de sus mitos con la reivindicación de leyendas olvidadas, como el hoy mítico cineasta Ed Wood y músicos como Link Wray, The Sonics o Hasil Adkins. De hecho gran parte de sus mayores éxitos son versiones hiperaceleradas de viejos temas de esos entonces ignotos pioneros del rock'n'roll que luego recopilarían en su colección Born Bad y que les proporcionaron esa reputación, de la que ellos estaban tan orgullosos, de profanadores de tumbas.

Le Morte d'Intérieur II

Lux Interior's Astral Ascension: Jonny Whiteside's Report from the Ceremony

By Jonny Whiteside in news

Thursday, Mar. 12 2009 @ 1:59PM
http://blogs.laweekly.com/westcoastsound/news/lux-interiors-astral-ascension/

The death on February 4 of Erick Lee Purkhiser, BKA Cramps singer Lux Interior -- singer, writer, artist, 3D photographer, daredevil, shape shifter. Mojo Man from Mars, Ding Dong Daddy from Diddy Wah Diddy (as his surviving longtime partner in crime Poison Ivy described him) was as numbing and unacceptable a trauma as can be imagined, a black hole of tragedy that pulled the hearts of innumerable fans and friends down to the bitter deep end, but there had to be a formal farewell.

A public observance was unthinkable. Just picture the teeming, tearful confederacy of scum who'd show up. But Ivy hit on the perfect spot. Tucked off Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades, the Self Realization Fellowship - Lake Shrine, a fave Elvis hang when he was in town during his mid-60's extracurricular spiritual quest, is an unspeakably beautiful setting and was ideal for Lux Interior's send-off, administered via an appropriately offbeat ceremony, the Astral Ascension.

Held on February 21 inside a reproduction of a 18th century windmill, the trans-denominational service was performed before an ornate sandalwood altar with a backdrop of six portraits -- Jesus, Krishna and the Fellowships own assorted founding gurus; the mood was muted, bleak, and Ivy's entrance brought a flood of tears; clad in form fitting leopard print, she placed a Hurrell-style glamour portrait of Lux beside the rostrum where speakers would address the crowd of 50 or 60 people.

Minister Brahmachari Dale explained their hope-filled transitional view of death, read from the Bhagavad-Gita, recited the 23rd Psalm, and exhorted attendees to concentrate on sending messages of love to Lux's spirit -- and damn, kiddies, it felt like he was right there in the room (when Ivy was arranging the service, she mentioned a similar predisposition, and the coordinator replied, "Oh, he will be there").

Next, a musical interlude, Mary Mayo 's "For All We Know," an evocative, psychedelic R&B ballad with simmering bubble sound effects and eerie theremin runs; musician and longtime Lux and Ivy chum Dave Stuckey spoke first, and his recollections brought booms of laughter: "We had gone to see [R&B star] Young Jesse at a very fancy French restaurant, and when Lux sat down at the table, he immediately picked up the elaborately folded napkin and put it on his head. It made a very nice hat." At a Swap Meet, Lux came across a huge table of bootleg rock videos, one of them a Cramps tape. As Stuckey described it, he said "Watch this," approached the seller, who was busy organizing his wares, held up the video "and asked him -- in that voice -- 'How much for this one?' The guys eyes bugged out and he stammered "It's . . it's . . free."

Self-Realization Center - Lake Shrine, scene of Lux Interior's Ascension Ceremony.

Former Mumps keyboardist Kirstian Hoffman, who had first allied himself with the couple at CBGB's almost 35 years ago, spoke next and began by pointing first at Lux's photo and then the portrait of Jesus, saying "I want to put this picture over there." He also drew gales of additional yucks by talking about what a great visual artist Lux was, a fact emphasized when he produced a long player album by NYC rockabilly revivalist Robert Gordon, whose head shot cover art had been magnificently vandalized, a la Mad Magazine, with blacked teeth, a van dyke beard and a Rat Fink style swarm of flies (Lux's ire was raised by Gordon's choice to cover Cramps staple "The Way I Walk"). Hoffman also read a message from guitarist Kid Congo Powers (on tour in Europe), an affectionate, slightly skewed homage that reinforced just what a profound affect Lux had made on the lives of anyone who saw him perform or was fortunate enough to know him.

Dale proceeded; a flower ceremony, a fire ceremony, the Astral Ascension Prayer, a closing benediction and a final song, the Charades' version of 1939 Duke Ellington hit "Flamingo." A severely cramped doo-woppy arrangement fraught with trashy guitar that, taken with the song's surrealist lyrics, provided a perfect coda. The stunned crowd, including Russ Meyer biographer Jimmy McDonough, comic-Sponge Bob voice Tom Kenny, In the Red Records' Larry Hardy, Johnny Legend, Charmin' Allan Larman, a slew of local underworld rock types and 3D camera buffs (an abiding passion of Lux's), wandered outside.

A reception followed at Silver Lake's Edendale Grill, much grimly carouse, a looping slide show of Lux baby and childhood shots, candid snaps (i.e. Lux wearing panties on his head -- they made a very nice hat) and assorted live combat action photography. Muted chatter ensued and in an unexpected twist, I met the guy who was driving the day he and Lux famously pulled over to pick up a hitchhiker, who turned out to be Poison Ivy. "I only knew Lux for about three years, but I knew Erick very well," he said. "Back then, I was his psychedelic partner, you might say, and a few years ago I got an e-mail from him saying "you don't know who this is" -- of course I did -- "but do you remember when we picked up that really pretty girl hitchhiker and your dog Wheezer jumped all over her? Well I've been jumping all over her for the past 35 years and we have a band called the Cramps."

A first hand account of that fabled meeting was a knock out, but the finality of the day's tone overrode all else. As Poison Ivy herself wrote in the service-accompanying program, "Lux seemed like a creature from another world, with one foot already out of this dimension. As much as we might wonder 'Where are you now?' we can also wonder 'Where on Earth did you come from?' Now that's a mystery!"