WE'VE GOT CRAMPS

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LUX INTERIOR & THE GANG LIVE

ACTUALLY, LUX IS DEAD





The King Of Cult-Rock Is Dead! Long Live The King!

Lux, er, Erick Lee Purkhiser, worked with us at the Strand Bookstore back in 1977. He didn't stand out that much, considering. We don't think anybody knew him all that well. The place was full of punks & new wavers, musicians, artists, writers, actors, you know, your typical NYC shit-job workplace. They used to say, "What, you're just a playwrite? You don't wanna wait tables or anything?" Down at Unemployment they used to say that. (TRICK QUESTION!!! Don't answer it!)

Those who are fans of 70's music will recognize that year as a kind of watershed, especially in New York. Local kids, transplants from the 'burbs and the hinterlands, Rock 'N' Roll migrants from London to Tokyo all wound up at the Mudd Club, Max's Kansas City, and the country, blue-grass and blues emporium known as CBGB's: Our local watering holes. Shit happened, We're happy to say.

While the disco assholes were enjoying cocaine and oral sex with famous strangers in public uptown at Studio 54 and Plato's Retreat, the original club kids were enjoying throwing beer bottles at David Byrne and Johnny Rotten at the Orpheum Theater. Television and Blondie were our neighborhood bar bands, and you might run into Richard Hell or Patty Smith at the B&H or the Gem Spa, scarfing blintzes or quaffing an egg cream. The East Village went from being a scary junkie ghetto where nobody wanted to be to being a scary junkie ghetto where everybody wanted to be. The denizens of the Bowery and St. Marks Place were gradually pushed out by the incoming hordes of wannabee punks and NYU students and then the Yuppies, all the way East to Avenue D and South to East Broadway. Old ethnic naybuhhoods were reclaimed and recycled by an entirely new demographic: People with electric guitars, movie cameras, paintbrushes, notebooks & stick-pens, and other people who followed them around.

The Cramps were sort of stuck in between the wannabees and those they wanted to be. They were the new kids in town, even more amateurish than the average punk band. They had gimmicks galore and it was hard to know if they were serious musicians, or just a goof. That was the whole point. Not many people got it. Hence the cult status.

Anyway, we remember Lux as an older guy (30's) and his girlfriend(?) & band-mate, two of the quieter people at Strand parties, held clandestinely at the "World's Largest Bookstore," or very loudly & publicly at some local dive or in somebody's roach-infested fifth-floor walk-up apartment. Big and strange looking as he was, Lux would sort of fade into the background at these events, which almost always degenerated into drunken orgies with the accent on the drunk. Were you unwise enough to allow your place to be used for one of these events, you would invariably wake up with a crucifying hangover, a couple of unidentifiable ossified bodies on the floor, and puke somewhere in or around your toilet, which might be in the hall, whether it was meant to be there or not. The neighbours f**king loved us.

Ah, to be young and inebriated again! Pour us another one. At least we can still be inebriated...

Lux died a couple of weeks ago. Not from drinking, we don't think. According to his bio, he was just a simple aging kid from Akron (or Sacramento, or some f**king place out there in the darkness beyond the Hudson River), who only wanted to play Rock 'N' Roll. He happened to arrive in Manhattan just as the scene was exploding, and the rest is cult history. If you've never heard The Cramps punk-surf-Zacherley-inspired "psycho-billy" tunes, sit back and forget about relaxing.

And may Lux Interior rest in peace.


THE CRAMPS.COM
"LUX INTERIOR"
Press release on the death of band-member Lux.

' Contrary to some initial communication confusion in the rush for a press release in the midst of shock and chaos, Lux's passing (from aortic dissection) was sudden, shocking, unexpected and totally devastating. Five days of heroic measures were unable to save him. The memorial service that is being planned for Lux will be deeply private and at an undisclosed location. We request that instead of flowers, a donation be made in Lux's honor to his favorite charity, Best Friends Animal Society. '

YOUTUBE: THE CRAMPS
"THE CRAMPS" 'What's Inside A Girl'



YOUTUBE: THE CRAMPS
"U-MV030 - The Cramps - Naked Girl Falling Down the Stairs"



YOUTUBE: THE CRAMPS
"The Cramps - Can Your Pussy Do The Dog - 1998"



YOUTUBE: THE CRAMPS
"The Cramps - Bikini Girls with Machine Guns"



YOUTUBE: THE CRAMPS
"The Cramps - Like A Bad Girl Should"



YOUTUBE: THE CRAMPS
"Cramps - Let's Get F*cked Up music video"




ROLLING STONE
"The Cramps’ Frontman Lux Interior Dead at 62"
Obit.

' Lux Interior, the frontman for iconic punk band the Cramps, died today, February 4th, at the Glendale Memorial Hospital in Glendale, California. Interior, born Erick Lee Purkhiser, was 62 and is survived by his wife of 37 years, Cramps guitarist Kristy “Poison Ivy Rorschach” Wallace. In a statement released by the band’s publicist, a preexisting heart condition is named as the cause of death. '

WIKIPEDIA
"The Cramps"
A brief history of The Cramps.

' Lux Interior (born Erick Lee Purkhiser) and Poison Ivy (born Kristy Wallace) 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, Bryan Gregory (guitar) and his sister Pam "Ballam" Gregory (drums). '

TROUSER PRESS
"CRAMPS"
A review, for what it's worth.

' Predating and never quite participating in the early '80s rockabilly revival, the Cramps used that genre's primal sound as a jumping-off point for a uniquely weird pastiche of rock'n'roll, psychedelia and a monster movie/junk food/swamp-creature aesthetic. Led by uninhibited vocalist Lux Interior (Ohio native Erick Purkhiser, who was clearly a student of Cleveland television's Ghoulardi) and guitarist Poison Ivy Rorschach (California native Kirsty Wallace), the band had its roots in Cleveland but was actually formed in New York. (Drummer Miriam Linna, guitarist Bryan Gregory, drummer Nick Knox and guitarist Kid Congo Powers are among the Cramps' illustrious alumni, who all went on to spread the bad word far and wide among the faithful.) After two self-released 45s in '77, the Cramps crashed the 12-inch barrier with Gravest Hits, reissuing all four songs from those records plus a fifth track from the same time, all produced by Alex Chilton. '

THE GUARDIAN ONLINE
"The Cramps' Lux Interior was a twisted Elvis from hell"
Wanking in the UK.

' I was a teenage psychobilly fan with a blue flat-top, armed with Songs the Lord Taught Us, Psychedelic Jungle and Off the Bone, and the green-skinned Lux Interior on my Drug Train poster was like a super anti-hero, a deviant who would happily give a fuck in public. His wife, guitarist Poison Ivy, a bad-girl in full, burlesque glory on the Smell of Female cover, was his perfect lusty counterpart. It was her dominatrix work that funded the Cramps' early releases. The last Cramps gig review I read described Lux masturbating on stage and climaxing on the mike to Love Me as the set concluded. A typical show (Boston, 1986) found him clad in leopard-skin briefs drinking wine from an audience member's shoe and French-kissing a random person in the crowd for a full 10 minutes with the microphone in their mouths. '

ARTIST DIRECT
"The Cramps"
Help support the widow Interior!

' BUY The Cramps Compilations: Psychedelic Jungle/Gravest Hits; Bad Music for Bad People; How to Make a Monster; ...Off the Bone/Songs the Lord Taught Us; Psychedelic Jungle/Off the Bone/Songs the Lord Taught Us; What's Inside a Girl; Greatest Hits; Six LP Sampler; Lucky 13; The Cramps - Collection; The Cramps Box; ...Off the Bone '

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