Although they take their name from a Nuge song and use a Confederate flag in their imagery, The Pussy’s politics ain’t god, guns, and gay-bashin’– they run both red and blue. In fact, on the band’s fifth album From Hell to Texas (SPV), they assail religion on “Lazy Jesus” (“God’s just a king with a lot less money”) and bash “The Late, Great USA.” “We walk the line,” Suys says. “The party we vote for is
the Party party.” The song, she continues, is about returning home from Europe to notice the little differences between here and there. “Some of the freedoms over there are different… like, you know, hash and nice, state-sponsored hookers.Then you come back to America, land of supposed freedom, and you’re not allowed to smoke 50 feet in front of a building and shit. It’s like, ‘What the fuck?”{read more}
I like this so I’m stealing it. Thank you baby for giving me The Cramps. RIP LUX.
Lux Interior is dead. It can’t be. He had defied serious injury so many times before in performances that at times he seemed like an indestructible, pasty-skinned zombie who would never rest.
The lead singer and founder of the Cramps, Lux died a few days ago in a California hospital at age 60 from a heart condition.
I once was among a group of people who helped the singer perform one of his typically insane feats at a Cramps concert in Chicago 15 years ago. As he attempted to scale one of the low-rent opera boxes at the Vic Theatre wearing little more than high heels and vinyl pants, we reached down and pulled him up. We were then treated to an in-your-face, microphone-swallowing performance by the wildest rock frontman I have ever seen this side of Iggy Pop and the Jesus Lizard’s David Yow.
The erstwhile Lux, whose real name was Erick Lee Purkhiser, formed the Cramps in New York in 1976 with his wife, guitarist Poison Ivy Rorschach (a.k.a. Kristy Wallace). From the get-go, the group anticipated punk and put its own demented twist on it, with songs that blended campy B-movie imagery, rockabilly fervor and surf-music reverb.Though the band’s early records are prized by punk aficionados, the band excelled onstage, and its shows were as theatrical as they were chaotic. With their gender-bending stage outfits, the Cramps flipped the script on rock’s sexual role-playing: Lux was the sexy vamp, while his wife played the impassively mysterious guitarist shrouded in shadows.
For all the chaos he caused, Lux Interior was a thoughtful, passionate fan offstage. He could talk for hours about early rock ‘n’ roll, with a musicologist’s knowledge, and would share the treasures in his vast collection of obscure 45-r.p.m. singles with anyone who visited his home.
The Cramps never broke up.
[props to Greg Kot @ Chicago Tribune – you said it well]