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THE CRAMPS
How to Make A Monster (Vengeance)
Reviewed by Holly Day
One of the great revelatory moments of my life came - as so many seemed to do - at a keg party in California. My friend Mary had just moved down the street from me, and to celebrate her new apartment, we threw a huge party and invited hundreds of people. Anyway, I was really, really drunk, and then most of the people went home, and Mary and I ended up sitting on the couch in her living room, ripping apart her record collection and occasionally playing half a track before grabbing the needle and shouting, "No, wait! I haven't heard this song for ever!"
And then, while we were digging around, out fell this pile of black and white photos that had apparently been stuck inside a record jacket. After closing one eye and squinting very hard against the fog of alcohol and the dim ambient light, I could make out a much younger Mary with a tall, striped mohawk lounging on couch with a very familiar-looking couple. "Oh, wow," I asked finally. "Is that Lux Interior?"
"Oh, yeah," answered Mary nonchalantly. "I hung out with The Cramps lots when I was living in Baltimore." To prove it, she dug around in her record collection and pulled out a copy of The Cramps' "Bad Music For Bad People" and showed me the signature. "Stephen Blickenstaff's one of my oldest and dearest friends," she said, referring to the artist who designed the artwork for the seminal Cramps' record.
As I sat there, just trying to digest this, Mary began piling up photo after photo of her with The Cramps' Poison Ivy and Lux Interior on my lap, followed by a couple of pictures of her with filmmaker John Waters, who was, according to Mary, the host of the party in the photos.
Like I said, that night was pure revelation. Here I was, twenty-one, working as a secretary for a medical company by day and taking community college classes at night, and for what? Making rent money? It was that night that I realized that there was a truly interesting world out there, full of exciting people doing exciting things, and that I was not taking advantage of the life I had. The very next day, I started sending out letters to colleges, and six months later, I was moving out of my apartment and heading off to Florida.
So anyway, that's what The Cramps mean to me, is that night. It goes without saying that I also think they're one of the greatest bands of all time, and that I think their nasty, feedback-heavy horror show rockabilly makes for some of the most fun party music this side of Howlin' Wolf. This new record is just smashing, with two CDs of previously-unreleased material from their live 1978 show at the (dearly-departed CBGB), their 1977 show at Max's Kansas City and bits from various recording sessions that never made it to their records. There's multiple versions of such classics as "I Was a Teenage Werewolf," "Sunglasses After Dark," "I'm Cramped," "Domino," and the knee-quakingly beautiful "Love Me," as well as some rarer pieces, like "All Women are Bad" and "Five Years Ahead of My Time" - according to the notes on the back of the disc, all this stuff is completely previously unreleased. There's also some hefty liner notes and photographs included that are worth the price of the CD alone.
© 2005 - Holly Day