I was never a huge Cramps fan, but I knew people who were really into their psychedelic; monster movie, kinky black leather swamp creature sound, and I can certainly appreciate their unique place in the great pantheon of rock(abilly) for mining that genre’s primal sound like no other band. So when I saw the Cramps front man, Lux Interior died on Thursday, it seemed appropriate to exhume one of my favorite songs by them for the Happy Medium Song of the Day—“Bikini Girls With Machine Guns”—and pass along a few interesting tidbits of information. For instance…
Lux Interior (Erick Purkhiser) was born in Stow, Ohio (just down the road from where Lori grew up) and raised in Akron. Apparently he was a big fan of Ghoulardi: the legendary late-night, Cleveland television personality and movie host. The band’s 1997 album Big Beat From Badsville is dedicated to Ghoulardi. Another album from the same year was called Stay Sick after Ghoulardi’s trademark sign-off.
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By the way, Lux was dead once before. In keeping with the band’s campy, horror-themed image, he was widely rumored to have overdosed on heroin in 1987. His wife and bandmate of 37 years, Poison Ivy Rorschach, even received flowers and funeral wreaths. "At first I thought it was kind of funny" he told the Los Angeles Times. "But then it started to give me a creepy feeling.”
In 1978 The Cramps performed an infamous show at the Napa State Mental Hospital in California. Lux maniacal stage presence (which often included writhing across the stage stripped down to his low slung underwear, and flinging himself around with Iggy Pop-like abandon) managed to incite a few of the patients to dance and jump around—no doubt earning them a few extra zaps of ECT after the show. The whole thing was filmed and looks like a grainy, punk-era version of Johnny Cash’s well known Folsom Prison concert.
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Lux Interior: zombie punk, and macabre pyschobilly ghoul was 62 when he died yesterday in Glendale of a pre-existing heart condition. He and The Cramps helped pioneer a sub genre of trashy rock n’ roll that influenced countless bands. A tad redundant at times, but highly entertaining to the end. (Please use the comments box to share your thoughts.)