Crash Course No. 40: Feeling the Cramps

The literal beating heart of the band.

The Very Basics
The Cramps started when Erick Lee Purkhiser (aka, Lux Interior) met Kristy Marlana Wallace (aka, Poison Ivy Rorschach) at Sacramento University in a class called Art and Shamanism. They bonded over collecting in general, records in particular. They started a pilgrimage east from there, stopping first in Akron, Ohio (1973), then New York City (1975), where they became a staple of the scene around CBGBs and Max’s Kansas City; after they played their first show, Lux Interior offered this bon mot: “Gee, we could do this again.” When they nailed down an original line-up, it featured Bryan Gregory on guitar and Pam Balam on drums, but twisted knot at the heart of the Cramps would forever and always be Lux Interior on vocals/front-man presence and Poison Ivy commanding lead guitar. Nick Knox (drums) deserves honorable mention as the longest-serving member of the band, lasting from 1977 to 1991. After several years in New York, the band returned to the West Coast and based themselves in Los Angeles.

Their debut EP, Gravest Hits (1979) buzzed big enough that Big Star’s Alex Chilton produced their debut album, 1980s, Songs the Lord Taught Us. The then-fledgling I.R.S. Records released it, but the Cramps chafed at the lack of creative control from the off and the relationship quickly soured. After 1981’s Psychedelic Jungle dropped, I.R.S. blocked them from releasing any new material until 1983’s live album Smell of Female. There's no real telling how much that hurt the band in the States , but they always did better in the UK, where they had their first hit singles - e.g., “Can Your Pussy Do the Dog” and, their one and only UK Top 40 single, “Bikini Girls with Machine Guns” – and where Stay Sick! (1990) charted at No. 62; meanwhile, back in the States, they couldn’t even find distribution for 1986’s A Date with Elvis until 1990. The rest of their discography, includes studio albums Look Mom No Head! (1991), Flamejob (1994), Big Beat from Badsville (1997) and Fiends of Dope Island (2003), plus the compilations Off the Bone (1983, released illegally, apparently) and, most famously (or this was the first one I heard), Bad Music for Bad People.

While critics have classified under a grab-bag of genres (e.g., psychobilly, gothabilly, garage punk, rockabilly, garage rock, horror punk, neo-rockabilly, punk rock and surf), the Cramps dubbed it “rockabilly voodoo” on their early promotional flyers. They claimed various influences, everything from early rockabilly (e.g., Jerry Lott, aka, The Phantom), “rhythm and blues, and rock and roll like Link Wray (both big fans) and Hasil Adkins,” 60s surf acts, 60s garage like The Standells, the Trashmen, the Green Fuz and the Sonics, The Ramones on the punk side, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and, believe it or not, Ricky Nelson. A quote from Wikipedia about A Date with Elvis speaks to their aesthetic arc:

“The album featured what was to become a predominating theme of their work from here on: a move away from the B-movie horror focus to an increased emphasis on sexual double entendre.”

One Hit No More, No. 115: Tom Tom Club, a Club Without David Byrne

Think this gets to it best.

Was it all just a plot to escape the soul-sucking gravity of David Byrne? I kid. I kid.

The Hit
“We only said no one time that I can think of right now. It was one of those over-the-top gangster lyrics. We wouldn’t dream of censoring anyone’s lyrics but we reserve the right to deny permission to use our music if we think its garbage.”
- jambands.com interview with Chris Frantz (2001? Really?)

Because the making of Tom Tom Club’s “Genius of Love” is no different from everything else they did, I figured I’d fill this section with its multiple second lives as a popular simple. The first act to repurpose it was Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde for “Genius Rap,” but “It’s Nasty” by Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five couldn’t have been too far behind. The (very likely incomplete) of artists who have borrowed it, for better or worse, continues from there – e.g., Tupac Shakur, Puff Daddy, Coolio, Busta Rhymes, L’Trimm, Funkdoobiest, Busta Rhymes, Mariah Carey, etc. etc.

I honestly can’t recall the first time I heard it, but I’m confident I had no clue who performed it; honestly, the first time I gave it any thought was when I heard Mariah Carey's "Fantasy" and thought, "hold it, I know that sample." And had someone said “Tom Tom Club,” I’m almost certain I would either said, “who?” or assumed it was some mid-‘80s synth act I ignored...so I fucked up.

What’s not to love about a song that melds bubbly and twitchy so seamlessly? Obviously, that means I actually listened the lyrics for the first time for the first time this week and; 1) I never caught all the name-drops and 2) it’s unclear whether or not Frantz was the “laughing boyfriend” referenced in the song, but he claimed it in at least one interview.

The Rest of the Story
“[Q:] Those early Tom Tom Club singles were pretty groundbreaking in mixing up disco, funk, reggae and rap with post-punk art-school attitude. Was that a conscious strategy?”

“[Tina Weymouth]: It was sort of organically grown that way. We wanted to make a dance record, we didn't want to sound like our other band and compete with that. We wanted to make something more escapist. And I think we succeeded rather well, actually.”

One Hit No More, No. 98: Steve Forbert, an Unlikely Romeo

First impression.

The Hit
With Steve Forbert’s 1979 hit, “Romeo’s Tune,” we hit…yet another song I’d never heard. No memories or associations with childhood, nothing about the old man playing it and telling me about “real music” (his tastes go back 20 years prior, for the record), which leaves just the song itself.

To speak in the royal mode, Forbert comes off as an acquired taste the first time you hear him. Musically, it’s a fine song, great even, for people who are into sparkling piano phrases tangling with extended keening altos on the guitar and, a personal favorite, that warm, grounding glow an electric organ lends a song…and then Forbert starts singing. His voice sounds pinched to where you wait for him to clear his throat and, if not flat, possessed of a similar quality. Unless he’s not rasping out something like a shout, his vocals seem to fade into the music of the chorus, and so on.

And then, as one does when listening for what else someone did in his career, you keep listening. You find Forbert’s voice growing on you, and in a way you can’t put words to until someone does it for you - in this case, a Rolling Stone article from 1980, where they noted what sold Danny Fields, one of the original interpreters of New York punk to the mainstream, on Forbert as a performer:

“He attacked his acoustic guitar fiercely, took raw, careening harmonica solos, and sang in a manner nobody had heard before — hoarse, almost whispering at times, but with a sure command of texture and nuance and a sense of high drama.”

And, sure, I guess that makes his voice an acquired taste. To wrap up “Romeo’s Tune” - and it is a great song, worthy of a No. 11 hit - Forbert wrote it about a girl he either knew or heard about in his hometown of Meridian, Mississippi, but he had it dedicated to Florence Ballard of The Supremes out of sympathy for the way the music business screwed her over. As I discovered bouncing around the internet, that seems pretty on-brand for Forbert.

Crash Course, No. 36: Blondie, Definitely Important, but Also Better than I Thought

Not the inspiration, btw.

The format I used for the posts on Black Sabbath and Blitzen Trapper doesn’t feel like a good fit for this. It probably wasn’t a good fit for either of those, but there’s just…something about Blondie’s history that makes more sense of telling it all at once.

“Q: What do you think it is that makes your songs so appealing to so many generations?"

"[Chris Stein]: They’re cheerful. You know, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don't know. We tap into a lot of things from musical history when making the songs. They’re based on a lot of stuff that’s come before us so maybe that’s… You know, we got one review recently from one of those Canadian festivals. It [was] a really great glowing review, and she said that the band almost sounds psychedelic in its presentation, which I thought was great because I always think that, but I never really see it in print. There’s a lot of influences from the ’60s, ’70s, [and] later music in there, so I think maybe that clicks with people.”
- Time Magazineinterview with Debbie Harry and Chris Stein (2014)

A number of sources I read while researching this post praised Blondie’s genre-bending progress throughout the band’s short, original career. This comes from Wikipedia's section on their “style and legacy,” but something much like it topped several interviews:

“The band is known not only for the striking stage persona and vocal performances of Harry but also for incorporating elements in their work from numerous subgenres of music, reaching from their punk roots to embrace new wave, disco, pop, rap, and reggae.”

I get that and I don’t. The bulk of their eponymous debut listens like a throwbacks to an early-60s sound, if with a “bad girl” twist, and they did more or less leave that behind for the follow-up album, Plastic Letters, only to call it back now and again. There’s no question their music expanded and evolved - the distance between Plastic Letters and Autoamerican is wider than I knew going in - but it all sounds more like...Blondie than any one of the genres they dabbled in. To hit that from the other direction, it feels more natural to say someone else’s song sounds like Blondie than the other way around, even as it’s fair to acknowledge that most Blondie songs sound like something else.