The Cramps have been scaring music goers for over 25 years. Since lead band members Lux and Poison Ivy have started their own label reissues have been coming out like water from a busted pipe. The first new album has a new kind of energy to it. That can happen when you are in complete control of your destiny. I think its one of their first studio albums that can actually compare with seeing them live in concert.
I got a chance to talk with the very sexy Poison Ivy. Not phone sex but an interview.
Daniel Robert Epstein: How come there was such a long break between the last Cramps album and this one?
Poison Ivy: A few reasons. Our last album was on Epitaph [Records] and the owner was a huge Cramps fan so right when our album was coming out he had some personal issues and had to put another guy in charge who was not a fan of us so it wasn't a benevolent situation. We had to leave and that took us to 1999. Then we started our own label and that took a year. It's really just a lot of legal stuff. We wanted to start with reissues just to learn how to be a label because we do everything. If you see an ad in a magazine it's because we called and placed the ad. So we started with the six issues in the fall of 2001. We wanted the new album to come out last year but we missed the deadline because we're a band and we're not really deadline oriented. We had a personnel change because had to get the right lineup to get the album done.
DRE: How long did it take to get all the rights back for those reissues?
PI: Well we had the rights but we had licensed them to Restless Records and we waited for the license to expire. That took time too because they had it for a certain period of time and once it was up it came back to us. But we decided to remaster them and add bonus tracks. But we have the rights to those but the only ones we don't have the rights to are Flame Job [1994] and we own the songs on the greatest hits but not the actual rights to the package of greatest hits. But we plan to put out our own gravest gravy with a whole bunch of unreleased stuff.
DRE: There are some great songs on the new album. One Way Ticket definitely stood out. What was it like putting together that song?
PI: Well it's a very exhilarating song to play. It's very athletic mainly for [drummer Harry] Drumdini. Its wild, crazy and we never play it the same way twice. In fact after we did the take of that song we liked finally, the engineer told us he ran out of tape, we about killed him. Then we had to do another one and I thought we did it even wilder because we were fuming but I think it was good for that song to be in such a jacked up state. It has to be done live in the studio. It's not a song where people just come in and do their parts.
DRE: What cover songs are you doing this tour?
PI: We'll be doing Hang Up which is on the album. It's from this northwest band called The Wailers. They kind of preceded the Sonics. We're doing Oowee Baby which was written by Jerry Reed. Lux wrote new lyrics for his band Taboo. I'm not sure if we'll do it on the tour but we did on New Year's Eve so we might do it again.
DRE: What's it like working with Drumdini and [bassist Scott] Chopper [Franklin]?
PI: It's great. Drumdini has been with us for ten years. People always talk about our revolving door personnel and that's ridiculous. Our band has been around for a long time. They overlook Drumdini and Nick Knox was with us for 13 years. That's pretty constant. However with Chopper we kept running into him at all the same events. We had some auditions back in 1999 and he was a close tie with someone. Then we kept seeing him at custom car shows and every time we saw him he looked like he was ready to step onstage with The Cramps. He loves all the music, culture and movies. Lux, me and Drumdini were always together even though sometimes it was rough but then there was always a member who was a fan of the band and a good player but didn't have the same cultural background but with Chopper it feels like we're all on the same wavelength. We're natural hoodlums.
DRE: Any specific movies inspire this album?
PI: The title, Fiends of Dope Island, is inspired by the movie Fiend of Dope Island [released in 1961]. But the song Fissure Of Rolando refers to the movie The Brain from Planet Arous [released in 1957] it stars John Agar and that's why the album is dedicated to him. In The Brain from Planet Arous, John Agar gets possessed by the brain and the only way to kill it is to hit it in axe across the Fissure Of Rolando [the large deep groove or indentation that separates the parietal and frontal lobes].
DRE: What makes you and Lux stick together all these years?
PI: We're just crazy about each other. Its true love.
DRE: Are you guys still calling your music psychobilly, because a lot of critics sure do?
PI: It's weird. We used that word when we first started out in 1976 before we even had gigs we had posters for fake gigs we hoped to have which had psychobilly and rockabilly on them. I think psychobilly has evolved into a musical style now which kind of isn't what we are. Maybe it means different things to different people. There seems to be a style of music called psychobilly now and I think it's defined by a standup bass, a very speeded up pace which we don't do. I think our songs have a more sensuous tempo to our songs. I'm not sure what exactly defines psychobilly but it seems to have taken on a life on its own. But its not quite what we do.
DRE: As I did my research I kept reading about this infamous 1978 show at the Napa State Mental Hospital. What happened there?
PI: I can't actually recall who got us there. We liked the idea of doing it and we met the Screamers and they had played at Camarillo [State Mental Hospital] and we thought it would be similar. They had said everyone was catatonic and didn't move. We thought it would be fun. I just don't know how we ended up there. But at Napa it was like playing for children. People had no sense of space boundaries. There was a woman there who during our songs told us her uncle was an agent and thought he could take us places but she was just an inmate. There was another guy there in a cowboy hat who said he was in heaven because he thought he was going to miss punk rock because he was in Napa. He never thought punk rock would come to him. There's a video of the show with people dry humping on the ground and all that. There was very little supervision from the staff. It was very insane.
DRE: I also read about your shiny, black '72 Riviera Boattail.
PI: Yeah my devil bat. It sounds like a poor excuse but another reason our album took a long time was because we bought that car in '99 and we bought it because it needed a lot of work. I wanted to customize it. It ended up being a bigger project which always happens. We could hardly drive it home because the head lining was falling on our heads. That part we didn't care about because we planned to redo it but the exterior vinyl roof is reptile with a zebra interior. But we ended up rebuilding the engine which we could live without that. But we have it and it's a sweet drive.
DRE: Has Lux had to punch out any stage crashers lately?
PI: Where'd you hear that?
DRE: I heard about Boston and North Carolina.
PI: I didn't hear about those but Chicago was like a bloodbath but it was because security wasn't doing anything. The whole band stopped playing and Harry had to step out from behind the drums because no one was taking care of us. Our stage tech got dragged into the audience and then the house security thought he was part of the crowd and tried to throw him out. Then Chopper pulled him back onto the stage, his face had gotten ripped open. Then I accidentally got clocked with a mike stand and then I was half knocked out so I didn't see the second fight. There was a trail of blood from Chopper's side from the guy they took offstage and on my side there was a trail of blood from the guy who worked for us. This was the House of Blues which is supposed to be the fanciest gig in the nation. It was a horrible drag.
DRE: I went to a New York show of yours and there was a lot of younger people there.
PI: It's strange because we're talking about taking a harder stance because they put us in these 18 & over and 21 & over shows. Then we'll go out to sign autographs and there is these 15 year olds who couldn't get into the show. I remember being that age and music is all you had to keep you sane at all. I also remember listening to music from different eras. We want to make a stronger point to play to all ages because they need us and we need them.
For us a lot of the music that influenced us wasn't what we grew up with. I discovered it through record collecting and now its even more accessible with the reissues. We used to have to find the originals at junk stores and swap meets. Now a lot of previously obscure music is available to anyone that wants it.
DRE: Still doing drugs?
PI: Not much. I don't understand that just say no attitude. There are so many ways for people to hurt and kill themselves with too much TV and mind numbing jobs or relationships. I don't think there's anything wrong with chemical triggers to change the scenery of your consciousness.
DRE: How did you develop your unique live shows?
PI: I don't even know. Its self expression to us and I guess it's evolved. We just do what we do. The stage is our playground and it's the ultimate self expression. We're as loud as we're legally allowed to be at every gig. What we wear is our taste in clothes, what we play is our taste in music. If it's crazy it's because we're crazy and we get paid for it.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
I got a chance to talk with the very sexy Poison Ivy. Not phone sex but an interview.
Daniel Robert Epstein: How come there was such a long break between the last Cramps album and this one?
Poison Ivy: A few reasons. Our last album was on Epitaph [Records] and the owner was a huge Cramps fan so right when our album was coming out he had some personal issues and had to put another guy in charge who was not a fan of us so it wasn't a benevolent situation. We had to leave and that took us to 1999. Then we started our own label and that took a year. It's really just a lot of legal stuff. We wanted to start with reissues just to learn how to be a label because we do everything. If you see an ad in a magazine it's because we called and placed the ad. So we started with the six issues in the fall of 2001. We wanted the new album to come out last year but we missed the deadline because we're a band and we're not really deadline oriented. We had a personnel change because had to get the right lineup to get the album done.
DRE: How long did it take to get all the rights back for those reissues?
PI: Well we had the rights but we had licensed them to Restless Records and we waited for the license to expire. That took time too because they had it for a certain period of time and once it was up it came back to us. But we decided to remaster them and add bonus tracks. But we have the rights to those but the only ones we don't have the rights to are Flame Job [1994] and we own the songs on the greatest hits but not the actual rights to the package of greatest hits. But we plan to put out our own gravest gravy with a whole bunch of unreleased stuff.
DRE: There are some great songs on the new album. One Way Ticket definitely stood out. What was it like putting together that song?
PI: Well it's a very exhilarating song to play. It's very athletic mainly for [drummer Harry] Drumdini. Its wild, crazy and we never play it the same way twice. In fact after we did the take of that song we liked finally, the engineer told us he ran out of tape, we about killed him. Then we had to do another one and I thought we did it even wilder because we were fuming but I think it was good for that song to be in such a jacked up state. It has to be done live in the studio. It's not a song where people just come in and do their parts.
DRE: What cover songs are you doing this tour?
PI: We'll be doing Hang Up which is on the album. It's from this northwest band called The Wailers. They kind of preceded the Sonics. We're doing Oowee Baby which was written by Jerry Reed. Lux wrote new lyrics for his band Taboo. I'm not sure if we'll do it on the tour but we did on New Year's Eve so we might do it again.
DRE: What's it like working with Drumdini and [bassist Scott] Chopper [Franklin]?
PI: It's great. Drumdini has been with us for ten years. People always talk about our revolving door personnel and that's ridiculous. Our band has been around for a long time. They overlook Drumdini and Nick Knox was with us for 13 years. That's pretty constant. However with Chopper we kept running into him at all the same events. We had some auditions back in 1999 and he was a close tie with someone. Then we kept seeing him at custom car shows and every time we saw him he looked like he was ready to step onstage with The Cramps. He loves all the music, culture and movies. Lux, me and Drumdini were always together even though sometimes it was rough but then there was always a member who was a fan of the band and a good player but didn't have the same cultural background but with Chopper it feels like we're all on the same wavelength. We're natural hoodlums.
DRE: Any specific movies inspire this album?
PI: The title, Fiends of Dope Island, is inspired by the movie Fiend of Dope Island [released in 1961]. But the song Fissure Of Rolando refers to the movie The Brain from Planet Arous [released in 1957] it stars John Agar and that's why the album is dedicated to him. In The Brain from Planet Arous, John Agar gets possessed by the brain and the only way to kill it is to hit it in axe across the Fissure Of Rolando [the large deep groove or indentation that separates the parietal and frontal lobes].
DRE: What makes you and Lux stick together all these years?
PI: We're just crazy about each other. Its true love.
DRE: Are you guys still calling your music psychobilly, because a lot of critics sure do?
PI: It's weird. We used that word when we first started out in 1976 before we even had gigs we had posters for fake gigs we hoped to have which had psychobilly and rockabilly on them. I think psychobilly has evolved into a musical style now which kind of isn't what we are. Maybe it means different things to different people. There seems to be a style of music called psychobilly now and I think it's defined by a standup bass, a very speeded up pace which we don't do. I think our songs have a more sensuous tempo to our songs. I'm not sure what exactly defines psychobilly but it seems to have taken on a life on its own. But its not quite what we do.
DRE: As I did my research I kept reading about this infamous 1978 show at the Napa State Mental Hospital. What happened there?
PI: I can't actually recall who got us there. We liked the idea of doing it and we met the Screamers and they had played at Camarillo [State Mental Hospital] and we thought it would be similar. They had said everyone was catatonic and didn't move. We thought it would be fun. I just don't know how we ended up there. But at Napa it was like playing for children. People had no sense of space boundaries. There was a woman there who during our songs told us her uncle was an agent and thought he could take us places but she was just an inmate. There was another guy there in a cowboy hat who said he was in heaven because he thought he was going to miss punk rock because he was in Napa. He never thought punk rock would come to him. There's a video of the show with people dry humping on the ground and all that. There was very little supervision from the staff. It was very insane.
DRE: I also read about your shiny, black '72 Riviera Boattail.
PI: Yeah my devil bat. It sounds like a poor excuse but another reason our album took a long time was because we bought that car in '99 and we bought it because it needed a lot of work. I wanted to customize it. It ended up being a bigger project which always happens. We could hardly drive it home because the head lining was falling on our heads. That part we didn't care about because we planned to redo it but the exterior vinyl roof is reptile with a zebra interior. But we ended up rebuilding the engine which we could live without that. But we have it and it's a sweet drive.
DRE: Has Lux had to punch out any stage crashers lately?
PI: Where'd you hear that?
DRE: I heard about Boston and North Carolina.
PI: I didn't hear about those but Chicago was like a bloodbath but it was because security wasn't doing anything. The whole band stopped playing and Harry had to step out from behind the drums because no one was taking care of us. Our stage tech got dragged into the audience and then the house security thought he was part of the crowd and tried to throw him out. Then Chopper pulled him back onto the stage, his face had gotten ripped open. Then I accidentally got clocked with a mike stand and then I was half knocked out so I didn't see the second fight. There was a trail of blood from Chopper's side from the guy they took offstage and on my side there was a trail of blood from the guy who worked for us. This was the House of Blues which is supposed to be the fanciest gig in the nation. It was a horrible drag.
DRE: I went to a New York show of yours and there was a lot of younger people there.
PI: It's strange because we're talking about taking a harder stance because they put us in these 18 & over and 21 & over shows. Then we'll go out to sign autographs and there is these 15 year olds who couldn't get into the show. I remember being that age and music is all you had to keep you sane at all. I also remember listening to music from different eras. We want to make a stronger point to play to all ages because they need us and we need them.
For us a lot of the music that influenced us wasn't what we grew up with. I discovered it through record collecting and now its even more accessible with the reissues. We used to have to find the originals at junk stores and swap meets. Now a lot of previously obscure music is available to anyone that wants it.
DRE: Still doing drugs?
PI: Not much. I don't understand that just say no attitude. There are so many ways for people to hurt and kill themselves with too much TV and mind numbing jobs or relationships. I don't think there's anything wrong with chemical triggers to change the scenery of your consciousness.
DRE: How did you develop your unique live shows?
PI: I don't even know. Its self expression to us and I guess it's evolved. We just do what we do. The stage is our playground and it's the ultimate self expression. We're as loud as we're legally allowed to be at every gig. What we wear is our taste in clothes, what we play is our taste in music. If it's crazy it's because we're crazy and we get paid for it.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
VIEW 18 of 18 COMMENTS
Some girl drew a crowd by what she didn't wear
She made everybody look up there
It was a naked girl fallin' down the stairs!
It was a naked girl....right in my FACE!
High class culture all over the place!
My watch stopped tickin', shoes came unlaced,
When someone gave her a shove down a stair case.
Naked girl fallin' down the stairs
Naked girl fallin' down the stairs
all the way down, she was up in the air
It was a naked girl fallin' down the stairs