Uncovered treasures from the pioneers of psychobilly
They “walked it like they talked it” is how Dave Marsh described The Cramps in the second edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide. How true. The Cramps aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but no one can accuse them of not staying true to their values. Led by eccentric singer Lux Interior and his stone-faced life-partner, guitarist Poison Ivy, the band produced their own brand of oddity for over thirty years. They released eight studio albums, live recordings, a host of singles, and performed their music their way all over the U.S. and Europe. The party ended in 2009, after the death of Lux at age 62, and there’s hardly been a peep from the Cramps camp since. This changed in August 2026 when Gravest Gravy, a collection of unearthed demos from 1977, invaded our psyche. Tracks were selected by Henry Rollins, and the LP includes some unheard gems, along with early takes on songs the band remade for their first two albums. It’s not the best place to start for anyone new to the band, but for die-hard followers, it’s essential listening.
I was first exposed to The Cramps through the concert documentary Urgh! A Music War. Released in 1981 to promote The Police and introduce a slew of new wave bands, the film helped expand my alternative music record collection. Bands were shown performing one song live in France, England, or the States (The Police did three), and The Cramps, to say the least, were the most outrageous. In their clip, Lux commands the front of the stage, shirtless with noticeable scratches on his sweaty chest, wearing tight leather pants that are at their lowest point without exposing himself yet looking like they might fall down at any moment. The band blasts through a cover of Johnny Burnette’s 1956 rocker “Tear It Up” while Lux sings, screams, hiccups, and bounces on stage, shoving the microphone in and out of his mouth, in an act of obvious disorder. Whenever anyone talks about the “energy” of punk rock, this is it. But The Cramps weren’t punk at all. What they played was rockabilly and rock and roll of the fifties and sixties. I can’t say that my twenty-something self ever saw or heard anything like it. The Cramps’ bizarre style of revival was unique, and their craziness was a perfect fit for the late ‘70s/early ‘80s punk and new wave crowds.
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At some point, I bought my first Cramps album, Psychedelic Jungle (1981), their second LP and the only one my local record store stocked. Made up of half originals and half covers, I remember thinking as I sorted through which ones were the covers, “Where did they find these songs?” Turns out, this was Lux and Ivy’s passion: searching for old 45’s in used record stores, thrift shops, and even buying a bunch from Sun Records when they had a cleaning out the attic sale. Psychedelic Jungle opens with “Green Fuz,” a sixties treasure by Randy Alvey and the Green Fuz, followed by “Goo Goo Muck,” a 1962 garage classic by Ronnie Cook and the Gaylads that found new life through the Netflix series Wednesday. There isn’t an original song until the fourth track, “Voodoo Idol,” but unless you check, it sounds like it could have been written twenty-five years earlier. “Voodoo Idol’s” outlandish tale of a jungle guitar hero is a riot, and it’s one of Lux and Ivy’s finest creations. The rest of Psychedelic Jungle is just as rebellious, staying true to the core values of rock and roll. Craving more, I searched and found their other two releases: Gravest Hits (1979), an EP collection of early singles, and their first full-length, Songs the Lord Taught Us (1980). These too were filled with covers and originals, all performed with the same formula of off-beat humor and glam. It would take a couple of outcasts, with laser vision and a never say die attitude, to turn this chaotic spirit into a legitimate band.
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Erick Lee Purkhiser (Lux Interior) and Kristy Marlana Wallace (Poison Ivy Rorschach) met while both were enrolled at Sacramento State in the early 1970s. Ivy was hitchhiking, and Lux gave her a ride. Lux was smitten and Ivy was intrigued as he told author Dick Porter for his book Journey to the Centre of the Cramps. “I’d seen him around the campus, and I thought he was extremely exotic. He would have these pants, and each leg of the pants was a different colour. That kind of thing fascinated me.” Lux grew up near Akron, Ohio, devouring horror comics, 1950s B-movies, and the music and antics he heard from Cleveland radio DJ Pete “Mad Daddy” Myers. Ivy was a California misfit who played guitar, admired Link Wray and Duane Eddy, and was a bad girl who “wore slutty eye makeup.” It wasn’t long before they were inseparable.
Lux and Ivy shared an appreciation for Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop, and The York Dolls, but found few records in stores that matched their tastes. “We’d go to record stores looking for new records, and there wasn’t anything good,” Lux explained to Porter. “So we started listening to this stuff you could buy really cheap in junk stores, and it was blowing our minds. It was just so wild and great. Anything with the word ‘bop’ in the title, we bought.” These record hauls, including a cross-country trip to Memphis to buy as many rockabilly singles as they could carry for twenty cents apiece at the Sun Records warehouse, got them interested in starting their own band. With zero chance their rockabilly-inspired music would catch on in mid-1970s California, Lux and Ivy headed to Ohio to launch The Cramps. But it was short-lived. After reading an article in a music magazine about the happenings at the CBGB music club with Talking Heads, Blondie, and the Ramones, it was clear they needed to move to New York City to make it work.
Lux and Ivy would always be the mainstays of The Cramps. Drummer Nick Knox played with them for thirteen years, but with other members, it was a rotating circus of guitarists, bassists, and drummers. They met Bryan Gregory in New York, and with him the band developed their initial twin-guitar (no bass) sound. Drums were played by Gregory’s sister Pam and then another short-term drummer before Knox came on board. The Cramps began playing CBGB and Max’s Kansas City and met Alex Chilton from The Box Tops and Big Star, who offered to produce some demos. Chilton took them to Ardent Studios in Memphis to cut the songs on Gravest Gravy, a thrill for Lux and Ivy because of its connection to Sam Phillips. Even more elating was meeting Phillips when he stopped by the studio one evening. “He’s like a vampire,” Ivy told Porter. “You see photos of him from years ago and he looks younger now, and we thought he must be Sam Phillips’ son when we met him. He knows everything.”
Gravest Gravy includes early renditions of four tracks that ended up on Psychedelic Jungle: “The Natives Are Restless,” “Jungle Hop,” “Can’t Find My Mind,” and “Rockin’ Bones.” The original 1959 version of “Rockin’ Bones” by Ronnie Dawson is pistol-fast with terrific rockabilly guitar, and The Cramps’ 1977 demo slows it down a bit with Gregory (probably) shouting/singing in the background. By the time they re-did it for Psychedelic Jungle, they slowed the tempo even more, adding comedic, ghoulish backing voices, and Lux providing some choice vocals. All three versions are a treat. “TV Set” and “Twist and Shout” (not The Isley Brothers hit) both found their way to Songs the Lord Taught Us, and “Domino” is featured on Gravest Hits. The splendid covers of “Problem Child” (Roy Orbison),” and “Rocket In My Pocket” (Jimmy Lloyd Logsdon) are previously unreleased, as is “Hungry” which is the Paul Revere & the Raiders hit, or at least it was before Lux shreds it.
“I Can’t Hardly Stand It” with its emotional, hiccupy vocals later came out as a single and was included on the compilation disc Bad Music for Bad People. I have to admit that I played Bad Music for Bad People more than any Cramps LP in the eighties because, like Gravest Gravy, it was packed with so many quirky songs. “Love Me,” “New Kind of Kick,” “Uranium Rock,” and the nutty “She Said” made this collection of singles a gem to own in 1984. The Cramps’ recording approach for “She Said,” a 1964 song by Hasil Adkins, was certainly unorthodox, according to Kid Congo Powers, who briefly played in the band. “Lux, to get that correct Hasil Adkins sound and phrasing, he stuck a whole styrofoam cup in his mouth and sang the entire song chewing on it,” Kid told Porter. “So this is where I was learning what recording technique was all about. And then we just ran around throwing ashtrays and screaming.” All the tracks on Gravest Gravy are no less off the rails.
“Rocket in My Pocket” is the last track on Gravest Gravy, and hidden at the end is a recording of an angry and crazed Lux Interior. I had read about this studio incident years earlier in the Alex Chilton biography, A Man Called Destruction where author Holly George-Warren provides some background. “Three friends of Alex showed up, sitting on the studio floor—and from the control room out comes Lux in his zone: The door smashes open and they behold a frenzied, perspiring, red-faced Lux Werewolf. Lux picks up a chair, lets out an unearthly cry, flings the chair over their heads and staggers to the mic.” Not sure what is happening, one of Chilton’s friends stops Lux mid-song, maybe to calm him down. He clearly knew nothing about a Cramps recording session. “And Lux goes berserk,” wrote George-Warren, “starts growing real fangs, sprouts hair from his ears, shoots flames out of his nostrils and screams, No one can stop a Cramps performance!” The inclusion of the less than two-minute recording explains everything about what The Cramps were all about.