![]() They hit on a shared love of the New York Dolls, moved in together, and started collecting records, combing junk stores for ’50s doo-wop, R&B, and the sped-up, country-fried sound of white Southern rockabilly bands. The couple met in California, where a young Erick Purkhiser claimed he’d picked up Kristy Wallace hitchhiking. ![]() There were always four members of the Cramps, but Lux and Ivy’s bond made everything possible. Their work, Lux once said, was “a rallying point for certain kinds of people to come together and for certain kinds of people to stay out.” Songs the Lord Taught Us is the point of no return: the foundational document of psychobilly, a loud, theatrical, noticeably unpolished album with the tongue-in-cheek sense of the macabre that became the band’s signature. ![]() And like John Waters or the Rocky Horror Picture Show, the Cramps attracted a cult following. The things they left to the imagination-werewolves, UFOs, man-sized insects-were more fantastic still. #The books playall album cover serialShe and Lux were obsessed with early rock’n’roll and all the contemporaneous artifacts of lowbrow culture: B-movie sexpoloitation flicks, serial killers, pin-up girls, the type of comic books that represent a contributing factor to juvenile delinquency. Even Ivy’s name for the band has a sneer to it, a whiff of “female trouble,” sexual frustration, and constraint. If you can, well, welcome to the Cramps: They made sexy music for people who didn’t buy mainstream sex appeal, peering back at ’50s rockabilly and R&B through a big, dirty punk magnifying glass. Normal people can’t do this couldn’t make it look hot are too chickenshit to try. ![]() He doesn’t sing so much as shriek, leaning on the original lyric-“C’mon little baby, let’s tear the dancefloor up”-until it becomes “let’s tear this damn place up.” Poison Ivy Rorschach stands stage left, mirthless, possibly chewing gum, and bends the central guitar riff through the song’s moods: fast to start, slower, fast again, then slower still as Lux sucks the head of the microphone into his mouth, gasping rhythmically and sliding his hands over his latexed crotch. #The books playall album cover fullSo, it's a transitional album, bridging the gap between Crime of the Century and the forthcoming Breakfast in America, and even if it's not as full formed as either, it nevertheless has plenty of fine moments aside from "Give a Little Bit," including the music hall shuffle of "Loverboy," the Euro-artiness of "From Now On," and the "Fool on a Hill" allusions on "Fool's Overture.Six-and-a-half feet tall in heels, Lux Interior looms over the crowd, twitching and thrashing. If the rest of the album doesn't boast another song as tight or concise as this - "Downstream" comes close but it doesn't have the same hook, while "Babaji," a pseudo-spiritual moment that falls from the pop mark the other four tracks clock in well over six minutes, with the closer, "Fool's Overture," reaching nearly 11 minutes - it nevertheless places a greater emphasis on melody and gentle textures than any previous Supertramp release. It also feels more pop than it actually is, despite the opening single, "Give a Little Bit," their poppiest song to date, as well as their biggest hit. Actually, the cover photo picture of a snow-covered piano sitting on a mountain gives a good indication of what the album sounds like: it's elegant yet mildly absurd, witty but kind of obscure. isn't much of an exaggeration - this 1977 album finds Supertramp indulging in some of their quietest moments, spending almost the album in a subdued mood. The title of Even in the Quietest Moments. ![]()
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