Cramps

Cramps

You Better Duck: Live At The Clutch Cargo's, Detroit, MI. Dec. 29th, 1982

Dear Boss

***Incredible '82 live show from Clutch Cargo's Detroit, featuring Terry Graham of The Gun Club on drums. The Cramps are on top of their game with psychotic interplanetary performance of infamous garage punk-a-billy underground hits as "New Kind Of Kick," "Goo Goo Muck," "Potentate Of Love," and more.

Cramps

Hot Pearl Radio Broadcast

Mind Control

***FM broadcast live, Volkhaus, Zurich, April 21st, 1986. The godfathers of psychobilly/garage punk.

Cramps

A Date With Elvis

Vengeance

Originally planned for 1985 to join in the onslaught of Elvisʼs 50th Anniversary commemorative reissues, A Date With Elvis came out in early 1986 in Europe only, where it went on to sell more than 200,000 copies. The only album featuring The Cramps as a three-piece band (Poison Ivy doubled on bass), it careens from the sociopathic advice of “People Ainʼt No Good” (later covered by Nick Cave) to mind-on-vacation odes like “Aloha From Hell” and “Kizmiaz” (where The Cramps prove they were exotic when exotic wasnʼt cool), in the process offing more paeans to poontang than you can shake a snake at and fittingly finishing off with a soulful lovesick cover of the Charlie Feathers’s “Itʼs Just That Song.” “Can Your Pussy Do The Dog” was voted single of the year for 1986 in Playboyʼs annual music issue! Continuing in the tortured tradition of stark rockabilly ballads, three of the bonus tracks—“Blue Moon Baby,” “Georgia Lee Brown” and Andy Starrʼs frighteningly horny “Give Me A Woman”—were originally available only as rare B-sides. “Get Off the Road” (theme song from the Herschell Gordon Lewis Z-movie She-Devils on Wheels) was the only time Ivy (publicly) sang a song to satisfy Lux Interiorʼs fetish request (what did he have to do in return?) and in an attempt to create a realistic sound effect, one of their biker pals almost turned a peel-out on his Harley into a wipe-out in the studio parking lot. First pressing on colored vinyl

Cramps

Big Beat From Badsville

Vengeance

Dangerous, bizarre, but most of all cool, The Cramps one again prove themselves as leaders in skull-fracturing rock ʼnʼ roll, delving even deeper into a wicked netherworld where few have dared to tread. They are the architects of a sound that has spawned an entire subversive subculture. Originally released in 1997, Big Beat From Badsville is a haul-ass, careening monster of a record featuring more songs of mutilation, shape-shifting, psycho frenzies, she-devil-worship and pussy. The four rare bonus tracks on the CD include the nutty psycho-delic audio inkblot “Confessions of a Psycho Cat” and Poison Ivy’s chilling instrumental assault-weapon blast “Peter Gunn.

Cramps

Fiends Of Dope Island

Vengeance

The architects of a wicked toxibilly sound, The Cramps boast a cultural impact that spawned a legion of devil cults and left in its wake a cavalcade of cave-stomping imitators. On their final studio album, the self-produced Fiends of Dope Island, these charm-school rejects apply their sinister handiwork to a volatile combination of incantational rock ’n’ roll hexes like “Big Black Witchcraft Rock” and “Papa Satan Sang Louie” and put their hoodlum warp on exotica standard “Taboo” before swerving and careening through the crypt-kickin’ blues rave-ups “Dopefiend Boogie” and “Wrong Way Ticket,” finishing with the musical equivalent of a 13-car pile-up. First pressing on colored vinyl

Cramps

Look Mom No Head

Vengeance

Look Mom No Head! dresses rock ʼnʼ roll in its full regalia, with its many knobs, buttons and doo-dads. Man! The electric guitar sounds like it might launch a rocket! Replete with celebrations of intoxication and sexual prowess, The Cramps’ 1991 album sports “Dames, Booze, Chains and Boots” from the movie Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, a torchy rendition of Jack Nitzscheʼs slow-fuck blues “Hardworkinʼ Man” and the cross-dressing classic “I Wanna Get In Your Pants.” Minutes after Lux Interior ran into Iggy Pop buying beer next door to the recording studio, the two ended up singing “Miniskirt Blues” together. On the epic final track, biker rock ʼnʼ roll meets Screaming Mimi in B-movie trailer hell in “Wilder Wilder Faster Faster.” Stand back for CD bonus cut “Jelly Roll Rock” as Lux emits a fine spray throughout the entire vocal performance. Up your alley and in your face. First pressing on colored vinyl

Cramps

Rockinnreelininaucklandnewzealandxxx

Vengeance

Featuring an over-the-top live set from Down Under, RockNReelinInAucklandNewZealandXXX was recorded at the 100th show of The Cramps’ 1986 Date With Elvis Tour. The album was originally released incognito in cahoots with Ace Records in 1987 as a fake “limited-edition import” bootleg LP, and was intended to compete with the glut of unofficial Cramps recordings. The woman you hear screaming throughout the first half actually fainted when she stopped screaming! Included alongside other classic tunes are fractured versions of actual Elvis Presley hits “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Do the Clam” (angora angst written for Elvis by film-maker Ed Wood’s wife Dolores Fuller!). This release is recommended for those who wonder what it would sound like to hear a microphone thrown around and garbled into (Lux Interior was known to destroy a half dozen microphones in one night). Hear The Cramps get dixie-fried! First pressing on colored vinyl.

Cramps

Smell Of Female

Vengeance

Released in 1983 after a lengthy court battle with IRS Records, Smell of Female originally contained just the first six songs. These, plus out-of-control ad-lib freakouts “Beautiful Gardens” and “She Said” (previously omitted due to legal restrictions) were recorded live at New Yorkʼs famous Peppermint Lounge. There is nothing like the sound of The Cramps, and this set distills that cross of swamp water, moonshine and nitro down to a dangerous and unstable musical substance, captured live like a crazed animal. They rocked like few others could. Additional bonus track “Surfinʼ Dead” was recorded at A&M Studios in Hollywood and originally appeared on the 1984 soundtrack for Return of the Living Dead—when asked to write a “pop song” for the movie, The Cramps (by then a three-piece) threw into their cauldron a mix of Link Wray, Jan & Dean, Davie Allen, The Righteous Brothers, bongos, Phil Spector and eye of newt. First pressing on colored vinyl.

Cramps

Stay Sick

Vengeance

Sex-classic Stay Sick! was originally released in 1990 and features more of the dark side of rockabilly in a jugular vein. The opener, a hopped-up cover of obscure Sun Records tune “Bop Pills,” proves that rumors of amphetamine usage by the original Memphis rockabilly cats was not exaggerated, and sets the pace for the rest of the album. Hog-wild covers of “Shortninʼ Bread” and “Muleskinner Blues” probably have the original writers dancing on their graves, and The Cramps’ version of the perverse rarity “Her Love Rubbed Offʼ” shines a lurid spotlight on the only song that Carl Perkins was admittedly ashamed of writing. Plus, Stay Sick! delivers loads of action-packed originals celebrating kamikaze thrill-seeking and scary sexy she-creatures. This is pure jungle music—one half hillbilly and one half punk. If you canʼt dig this then you must have “Daisys Up Your Butterfly”! Still a favorite among rock ʼnʼ roll sickos worldwide. Orange Vinyl!