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Transcript

The Cramps: Zombies, Teenage Werewolves, and Rock ‘N’ Roll Saviors · DISGRACELAND

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Disgraceland is a production of double Elvis. Wello Ghuls and Goblins,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: and salutations to all.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: You creepy cats and kittens.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: This is a special Halloween episode of Disgraceland on the
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: one and only Kings and Queens of rock and roll.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: The Cramps.
• 0:18
  Speaker 3: This is if you can try to imagine a fun,
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: not so serious look at sexually charged burning corpses, seventeen stories, suicides,
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: zombies who can't dance, human flies, and teenage werewolves. This
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: is not a scholarly look at the cultural significance of
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: Lux Interiors and Poison Ivy's musical output.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: This is, like I said, nothing more than a Halloween.
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: Hoo inspired by the incredible music and wild career of
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: the original Halloween heads, The Cramps.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Hope you can dig it mellow.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: This is the story of one of the greatest rock
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: and roll bands of all time, The Cramps, a band
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: who's singer Lux Interior and guitarist Poison Ivy Rorshak dedicated
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: their lives to the mission of saving rock and roll,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: a mission that was challenged by soulless zombies, confused by
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: burning corpses, bled dry by a vampire, and for a
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: time smothered by giant radioactive cockroaches. But it's also a
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: story about great music, Unlike that music I played for
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: you at the top of the show that wasn't great music.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: That was a preset loop for my melotron called Shah
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Shah Shasha Tussi MK one. I played you that loop
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: because I can't afford the rights to shadow Dancing by
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Andy Gibb. And why would I play you that specific
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: slice of sunken nut cheese? Could I afford it? Because
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: that was the number one song in America on June thirteenth,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight, and that was the day of The
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Cramps played a live set at a mental institution in
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: northern California, creating a myth that would challenge the definition
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: of what it means to be rock and week on
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: this episode, Zombies, corpses, vampires, radioactive cockroaches, and saving rock
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: and roll with the Cramps. I'm Jake Brennan in this
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: this Disgraceland. Unless something is done, and done quickly, rock
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: and roll will cease to exist in a year. Forest
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery is not your average cemetery. Located
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: six miles outside Hollywood, It's the eternal home to some
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: of the biggest names from Tinseltown's famed history. There's Sammy
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Davis Junior's headstone, Sammy the known Satanist, and there's Errol
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: Flynn's grave. Back in the early days of Hollywood, Errol
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: was one of the movie business's biggest stars. He was
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: also a pedophile. Some believe Walt Disney is buried here.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: He has a burial plot, but most believe his head
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: was severed from his body after death, cryogenically frozen and
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: stored in an undisclosed location in Disneyland. Lawn Cheney, the
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Phantom of the Opera, rests anonymously in an unmarked grave,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: and Lawn Cheney's son, Lawn Cheney Junior, who famously played
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: the werewolf in Universals nineteen forty one classic The Wolfman, Well,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: his body does not rest anonymously next to his famous
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: fathers Old Lawn Cheney Junior donated his body to science
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: after drinking a pinacolata at Trader Vicks. The Cramp's Frontman,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Luck's interior and his partner not just in crime, but
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: in life, in love, and in art Poison Ivy the
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Cramps Inimitable guitarist and for all intents and purposes, producer.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: This duo knew about donating their bodies, their lives, even
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: to something bigger than themselves. Lux and Ivy loved each other,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: but for the better part of two decades, they sacrificed
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: everything for the one thing in this world that they
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: both loved the most, rock and roll. Put more specifically,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: the Cramps dedicated their lives to saving rock and roll life,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: though was fleeting here in Glendale in their apartment near
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: the cemetery, as they carefully cruised through their well cultivated
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: record collection. A rock and roll archive is a dream
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: thousands of obscure fifties and sixties forty five's organized by
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: niche genre rockabilly, bop, music, beat combos, dou WoT, garage, novelty,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: and surf by the likes of artists like Charlie Feathers,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: Bo Diddley, the Paramounts, the Flamingos, the Sonics, the trash Men,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: and Link Ray a lifetime's work of collecting. Most of
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: these artists were already long gone, as dead as Sammy
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: and Lon Cheney Junior and the rest, but their music
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: lived on. Rock and roll was still very much alive
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: as long as Lux and Ivy had something to say
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: about it. But death was in the air. Literally that
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: smell like burning tires, but with a strange sweetness to it.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Something was on fire. Ivy called the fire department, which
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: responded quickly and reminded Ivy and Lux ominously of how
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: close they lived to the cemetery. The burning smell was
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: the crematorium. That strange sweet scent was burning flesh. It
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: coated their neighborhood. Some nights brought down an eerie, depressing feeling,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: but not as depressing as the television. Television used to
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: be hours and hours of horror movies and monster flicks,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: b films that aimed their subversiveness at teenagers coming of
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: age in the early nineteen sixties, taking their cues from
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: the subversive comics of the forties and fifties, the Vaults
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: of Horror, and the tales from the crips. But now,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: aside from the occasional off market creature double feature, the
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: fun and fantastical monsters were hard to come by. TV
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: was twenty four to seven cable news, hateful narratives spun
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: by squares to trick you into thinking your neighbors were
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: the monsters. TV was hair and makeup evangelists, hypocritically moralizing
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: from the pulpit. TV was the dreaded MTV. MTV music television,
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: a concept that started out pure back in the early eighties,
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: back when The Cramps were a young band, Back when
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: some of the Cramp's friends and quote unquote punk rock
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: contemporaries Blondie and The Gogs, to name a few, or
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: themselves young bands.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: MTV helped rocket.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: These bands into superstardom, but had now a decade later,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: evolved or devolved, depending on your point of view, away
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: from the heady, avant garde fringes of the television medium
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: into a corporate advertising behemos. To lux that meant MTV
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: was dead, as dead as those bodies burning out beyond
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: their backyard.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: MTV had nothing to.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Do anymore with the rock and rollers who came up
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: through the punk and new wave scenes. These days, MTV.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: Truly had nothing to do with rock and roll at all.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Sure, MTV buttered its bread with rock artists, but not
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: with rock and roll. Rock and roll was sex. Rock
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: was stiff. Rock and roll, in Luxe's estimation, was meant
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: to horrify adults. And please teenagers. Rock was Billboard charts
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: and big business. Rock and roll was supposed to separate
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: the squares from the cool people rock bands like U
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: two and The Police and Genesis, bands MTV featured regularly. Now,
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: these bands were so square and their square minions in
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: the rock press called the Cramp sexist because of their
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: dangerous rock and roll song titles like Can Your Pussy
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Do the Dog, which was ironic given that the Cramps
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: were the very definition of feminism, the co creation of
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: one of the greatest female rock and roll guitar players ever,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: whose creativity shaped The Cramps into a singular and wholly
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: unique band within the history of rock and roll. Ken
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Your Pussy Do the Dog wasn't sexist. It was rock
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: and roll. It was dangerous, the way rock and roll
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: is supposed to be, the way Iggy pop and Rufus
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Thomas and Big Mama Thornton meant for it to be.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Rock and roll wasn't supposed to be. Staying on MTV
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: accepting a fucking award for his humanitarian efforts for saving
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: some goddamn rainforest, Lux turned the TV off in disgusted
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: and went back to his forty fives. He grabbed a
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: less obscure title, the Flamingos nineteen fifty nine hit I
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Only Have Eyes for You and Me put it on
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: the turntable. The eerie u op baritone vocal behind the
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: duop duop chorus was dirty. It affected him like a drug,
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: an aphrodisiac. Actually, the trippiness of the track brought him
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: back back to a time when rock and roll reigned supreme,
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: back to his teenage delinquent days in suburban Ohio in
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: the early sixties. The clothes were tight and black, all black, Lux,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: back before he invented the moniker Luck's interior and still
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: answered to his god given name, Eric Perkiser, dressed as
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: his older brother and his older brother's friends did, which
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: is to say they dressed like Marlon Brando and the
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Wild One, but darker, meaner. The style had as much
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: to do with Brando as it did with the Brando
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: inspired bike gang from outer Space in the Twilight Zone
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: episode entitled black Leather Jackets, But even that description doesn't
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: quite do the look of Lux and his Hoodland friends justice.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: They wore all black, no blue denim, and they blackened
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: their hair with thick pommade and engine grease, the drugged
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: out sixties and sexual freedom of the Summer of Love
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: hadn't yet arrived. So Lux got high at the tripped
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: out sounds of the Flamingos and turned on by the
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: girls in the dance hall. The local hop doing the
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: bug lucks unsteadily stood on the old wooden beer bottle box,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: peering in the window. He and his hood friends were
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: too much trouble to be allowed into the dance case.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: In point, his hoodland buddies were off behind lucks at
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: this moment, popping the hubcaps off the cars in the
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: dance hall parking lot to fence for cash. Lux didn't
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: care about the money. It was the thrill of it.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Stealing hubcaps was a gas but nowhere nearest thrilling as
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: the girls inside that dance hall right now. Just as
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Lux and his friends donned the tightest clothes they could
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: fit into, the girls at the hop did the same.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: The girls flailed around to shed wooly hit purple people eater.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: The novelty song with its one long horn with one
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: big eyes subversively contextualized sex for horny teenage boys like Lux,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: and it drove the girls in the dance all nuts
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: as they did the bug. The dance the bug, like
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: the song, was also pure sex. From Lux's estimation, these
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: girls writhing about their hands, feeling all over their bodies
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: for the figurative bug, attempting in all of their hot
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: vanity to locate the bug on their breasts, on their bellies,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: on their thighs, searching, touching, grabbing. It drove young Lucks nuts,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: pure sex, pure rock and roll, as thrilling, dangerous and
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: scary as the sound of the police siren coming from
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: behind it. Lux's car raced down the highway. He saw
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: our hitchhiking on the side of the road, and he
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: slammed on the brakes, immediately brought the car to a halt,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: and then jammed the shift into a reverse, burning rubber backward,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: to pick up the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: big hippie hair, halter top, the shortest, tightest shorts you
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: could imagine. Her name was Christy. Almost instantly, she loved Lux,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: who was still going by the name Eric, and she
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: was jazzed by their immediate mutual admiration, a connection that
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: matched the intensity of their shared love for rock and roll.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Out west in Sacramento, where they had both escaped the
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: square influence of the zombie conformists. From the respective hometowns
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: his in Stow, Ohio, Hers and San Bernardino. There was
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: plenty of freedom to explore that love. It was nineteen
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: seventy two. The hippie movement lurched on. They ate mushrooms
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: and contemplated God as a Bo Diddley riff. They drank
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: wine and had lots of great sex, and they smoked
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: grass and went on a quest to find every forty
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: five single ever issued by Sun Records, the legendary record
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: label the first released.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: Elvis Presley's music.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Elvis back in the Sundays was a rock and roll freaks,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: freak dyed, black hair, black eyeliner, pink suits, armed with
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: his mama's pill prescriptions so he could get all the
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: session players at Sun High and therefore be allowed to
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: keep his annoying little teenage ass hanging around. Elvis did
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: what he could keep one step ahead of the zombie
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: norms tried to keep him down. So lux, Eric and
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Christy did the same. That meant making music themselves, making
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: rock and roll themselves.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: But there was no way.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: They were going to be able to make the rock
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: and roll. They loved out West, in the middle of
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: the hippie movement, where everyone seemed to be trying so
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: hard to seem like they weren't trying. It was a
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: movement that was supposed to be above freedom, but the
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: now had its own set of social norms. How you
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: were supposed to look, talk, even think, definitely what you
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: could listen to. It was a movement quickly consumed by
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: its own kind of conformist zombies. So in nineteen seventy five,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: Eric and Christy split from the coast from New York City.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: All they had with them was their record collection, their
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: rock and roll spirit. In a name they would call
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: their new band, The Cramps. Hustlers, thieves, homicidal maniacs, garbage everywhere, junkies, homeless,
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Vietnam vettes, eating out of trash bins, buildings on fire,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: a skyrocketing crime rate, rapists lurking around dark corners, gangs
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: getting wild in the streets, muggers. A city on the brink.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Mid seventies, New York City was beautiful, the perfect place
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: to start a bare bone, sexually fueled, violently dangerous rock
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: and roll band. The Cramps were the mastermind creation of
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: Eric and Christy, who had now started introducing themselves around
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: town as Lux Interior in Poison Ivy Roarshack. Lux and Ivy.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: Quickly hooked up with a fellow rock and roll ghoul.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Brian Gregory. Brian fashioned himself after the Rolling Stones Brian Jones,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: but more like Brian Jones in nineteen seventy five, which
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: is to say dead Brian Jones. Brian Gregory looked deathly
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: and mean scary with his super high cheek bones and
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: deep set eyes. His polka dot guitar offset than that look,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: which matched well with the Cramps drummer Brian's sister Pam,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: who was quickly replaced by drummer Nick Knox, another musician
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: who leaned into the dark gothic side of Southern rock
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: and roll for fashion inspiration. Both musicians perfectly suited the
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: new image portrayed by Lux and Ivy. Ivy style combined
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: classic burlesque with the commanding presence of the Duchess, the
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: female guitarist who played in Bo Didley's band, and Lux
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: appeared as though he crawled out of your television set.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: Back in nineteen fifty six.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: During one of those long running horror flip marathons and
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: landed in the rough trade section of Manhattan's meatpacking district.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: Luck stuck to his skin tight black jeans, rail thin
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: and tall. He seldom wore a shirt on stage, but
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: he did wear high heels. His hair, of course, was
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: dyed black and teased high to give him a Frankenstein
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: monster effect. The Cramps looked hillbilly and cosmopolitan at the
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: same time. They looked, in a word, scary, and their
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: music matched their look. The first recorded Cramps music, as
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: with most recorded Cramps music, walked a fine line just
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: like the bands looked in. They sounded incredibly dark but
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: also incredibly exciting, loose and fun. Original songs about teenage
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: werewolves and drug trains, and great covers by the likes
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: of Johnny Burnett, the Gay Lads, and too many awesome
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: and obscure fifties and sixties rock and roll artists to mention,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: all funneled through a slap back, jungle boogie of early
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: rock and roll production updated for the Blank generation. The
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: covers were songs the Cramps made their own, songs that
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: indicated a unique understanding of and reverence for mysterious slices
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: of American music that had slipped through the cracks rockabilly
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: garage novelty songs that the Cramps eventually turned the burgeoning
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: New York punk scene onto. It was a time when
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: other New York bands, including Blondie, The Ramones, Television, and
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: the Talking Heads were creating undeniably unique takes on rock
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: and roll themselves. Then it was also a time when
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: the Cramps would create one song in particular that would
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: cause New York to take notice. Lux's interior walked down
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: the dirty Manhattan sidewalk. It was early. Unlike the rest
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: of the city, which was up early and headed for work,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: Lux wasn't coming. He was going going home after a
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: long night in one of New York's rock and roll clubs.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: If it was Cebegb's, Lux would likely not be in
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: a great mood. The crowd at Sebe's in those early
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: days didn't take to the Cramps, an audience of hipsters, zombies, conformists,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: just the same as the hippies out west and the
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: squares back home. But if it was Max's Kansas City
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: the night before, then there was a good chance Lux
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: was in a better mood. But that mood was about
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: to change. That morning's post headline read human fly climbs Tower.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: It was about some brave but clearly insane thrill seeker
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: who climbed all the way up one of the World
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Trade Center towers scaling buildings was on the collective mine
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: of Manhattan. At the moment, six in the morning, Lux
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: was almost back in his park. The garbage trucks were
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: out full force. Lucks rounded the corner toward his building,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: and there sirens, cops, an ambulance. Mannix frantically moving about,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: a crowd of early morning gawkers, quickly passing rubberneckers, and
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the fray bloodied on the sidewalk
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: the mangled and contorted body of one of Lux's neighbors
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: who just pitched himself off the next door roof, plummeting
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: to his death some ten plus stories below. Having taken
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: all that this city could give, Lux took it as
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: literal inspiration from above and went to work with Ivy
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: on writing a new song, The Human Fly, with the
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: lyrics I spell it fl Y, I say buzz buzz buzz,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: and it's just because cuz cuz I'm a human fly
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: and I don't know why.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: This is six eyes.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: The song was brilliant, a perfect combination of retro rock
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: and roll cool with its question mark in the mysterious
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: ninety six tiers reference and modern weirdness with Lux's novelty
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Yes vocals by way of iggy pop and Charlie Feathers's
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Buzz Buzz Buzz Human Flyes stood out among the Cramp songs.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: The band caught the eye of the former big star
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: and box top songsmith from Memphis, Alex Chilton. Almost overnight,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: they were on their way south to make music in
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: the cradle of rock and roll at Memphis's Ardent Studios,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: with Chilton helming the production. The singles produced with Chilton
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: led to label attention from Miles Copeland, brother of Stuart Cold,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: drummer for one of England's hottest up and coming bands
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: at the time, the Police. Miles Copeland managed The Police
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: and sold and distributed their music through his independent record
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: label IRS Records. Miles Copeland was keen on signing the Cramps.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Little did the Cramps know Miles Copeland was a vampire.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after this. We're We're, We're. Miles
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Copeland couldn't believe the stories he was hearing about this
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: American band. He'd of course seen them live already. A
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: scorcher of a set in London, the band was at
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: the peak of its voodoo horror sex power in front
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: of a European crowd that was mad for Lux and
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: Ivy's brand of wild horny Americana. Lux nearly naked up
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: there with his leather pants sliding off of his skinny ass,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: the microphone with his rockabilly hiccup, Ivy nailing every riff
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: with her violent cool in that thousand yard stare to
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: freeze any and all aspiring creeps. With Brian Gregory resurrecting
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: Brian Jones and Nick Knox beating the devil out of
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: his kit with his Dale Hawk and swampfoot, London didn't
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: know what hit them. The Cramps were propelled by the
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: adoring crowd. The adoration was a far cry from the
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: comatosa zombie dance of the New York hipster crowds the
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: band was used to, But Miles Copeland heard that the
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: Cramps delivered this show every night, no matter if the
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: audience was a packed out rock and roll star of
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: crowd like the one in London. Were ten scensters in
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: an abandoned dance hall in a Washington, DC suburb. Then
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: there was the story about the Cramps in the mental institution.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: The Cramp's newly released single, The Human Fly caused New
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: York City to take notice. It got the band booked
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: into Seagb's and Maxis Kansas City with some regularity, but
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: as previously noted, those crowds were lame zombie hipsters. They
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: barely moved while the Cramps poured their souls out on stage.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Lux literally bled, cutting himself with broken glass, crawling across
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: the Florida deliver the most honest form of rock and
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: roll he could conjure. Ivy took a job as dominatrix
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: to avoid the straight world so she could make enough
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: cash to keep the band going, and Brian Gregory took
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: up heroin and plunged into drug abuse, such was his
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: commitment to the Brian Jones bit, while Nick Knox held
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: on for Dear Life. The Cramps were the real deal,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: but New York City didn't appreciate them, not like they
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: did Television or Blondie. But while the Cramps were derided
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: in the New York rock press, the traveling British press
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: thought otherwise In a feature published by The New Musical
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: Express on June tenth, nineteen seventy eight, entitled Psychobilly and
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: Other Musical Diseasesritish journalist Paul Rimbali heap praise upon the
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Cramp's unique brand of vintage, horror influenced rock and roll,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: but he also noted that the Cramps are regarded as
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: at best a joke, at worst and artless conniving fraud.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: In the process. The British press also gave the Cramps
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: style of music a name, Psychobilly. It was now official.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: The Cramps had made something wholly unique, creating their own
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: subgenre of rock and roll in their quest to save
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: rock and roll.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: It was more than anything New York.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Had given them, So the writing was on the New
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: York City wall for Lux and Ivy, they needed to
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: go west. Upon doing so, they encountered more zombies in
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Los Angeles. Not hipster zombies, but hardcore authoritarians masked as
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: punks music fans who were actually violent and hateful at
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: their core. In need of a gig, the Cramps were
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: hipped to an institution several hours north of LA that
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: would allow them play and provide an enthusiastic audience. The
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Camarilla State Mental Hospital in Napa, California, a mental institution,
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: the nuthouse. It was perfect. Lux thought, where else could
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: the true spirit of rock and roll be more alive
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: than inside the drab institutional walls of a looney bin.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: Real rock and roll was made by Luoni's Elvis was
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: out of his fucking mind.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: And that Bo Diddley riff.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: There's no way any sane person would have created the
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: Bo Didley riff. Charlie Feathers saying like he swallowed his
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: science experiment, Roddy self sang like he lit his hair
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: on fire, and Link Ray played like a man possessed. Yes,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: the insane hell, Yes, a mental institution. This, this is
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: where the Crabs would become one with the perfect audience.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: From their first notes on stage inside the psychiatric hospital,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: in front of the patients or the inmates. As Lux
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: would later recall, Lux's intuition was proven correct. As Lux
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: Ivy and Brian and Nick bashed away at their instruments,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: the patients well went. The patients went nuts. They were
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: banging their heads, poe going, doing all kinds of dancing,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: actually working themselves into a frenzy. And when the first
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: song rapped, Lux introduced the band and said to the audience,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: somebody told me you people are crazy, but I'm not
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: so sure about that.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: You seem to be all right to me.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: If there had been any question about whether or not
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: the crowd was with him, Lux answered it with that comment.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: The patients went at the next song and the rest
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: of the set with even more fervor. Responding to Lux's empathy,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: they rushed the stage, screaming into the microphone, hugging Lux,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: diving off the stage, humping the floor, humping each other,
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: chasing each other around the dance hall, making out for
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: a moment, and though they were locked up in an institution,
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: there was total freedom, such as the power of real
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: rock and rold. Some patients actually escaped during the confusion
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: cause by the rock is set. Then they eventually returned
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: to their own volition. The gig at the mental institution
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: gave wings to the growing myth of the Cramps. Words
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: spread to London that rock and roll might be saved
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: after all, and if it was going to be rescued
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: from the clutches of the hipster zombies on both coasts,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: the Cramps might be rock and Roll's best hope, Miles
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: Copeland signed the Cramps to his IRS record label. The
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: excellent album Songs The Lord Taught Us was recorded at
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: Phillips Recording in Memphis, the studio run by the legendary
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: Sam Phillips, who founded Sun Records and first recorded Elvis Presley,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: Jerry Lee Lewis and other rock and roll pioneers. The
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: album was produced by big Stars Alex Chilton, and by
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: any standard production shortcomings aside songs, The Lord Taught Us
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: is a rock and roll masterpiece. It brought growing fame
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: to the Cramps in the UK and throughout Europe, made
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: possible with the new backing of IRS and Miles Copeland.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: A second record was needed imminently to capitalize on the
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Cramp's new momentum. New York City was dead. The Los Angeles,
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: despite its hardcore Zombies, was the next best bet for
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: geographic inspiration. The Cramps relocated and replaced Brian Gregory with
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: Gun Club guitarist Kid Congo Powers. The recording of their
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: second album was on deck, but that's when the Vampire
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: fully emerged. As far as rock and roll businessmen go,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Miles Copeland, the third looks like a Vampire He's always
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: looked impossibly young, Anglo with a parasitic glow about him.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: He's a suit with an inherently intimidating stature, born of
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: privilege in class. Miles's main priority was his brother's band,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: The Police, and for good reason. Since their inception, the
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: Police were in the ascendant. Granted they started on third base.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Miles's father was perhaps also a vampire. That is an
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: unknowable fact, But what is noble is that Miles Copeland
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: the Second was a founding member of the Central Intelligence Agency,
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: better known as the CIA. Rumors were rampant that The
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: Cramp's new manager, Miles Copeland the Third, was himself a
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: CIA cutout, and that the bands he'd signed to his
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: record label, including The Police, The Go Gos Ram and
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: The Bengals, were mere tools to disseminate disinformation to influence
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: American youth on behalf of the CIA. Perhaps this explains
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: the differences that arose quickly between Miles and The Cramps,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: who fell out over creative and financial differences around the
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: time they were to begin recording their second full length album.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: Rock and roll bands can be a lot of things,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: but unwitting tools of government disinformation is one thing they
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: cannot be. Regardless of what Miles Copeland was or wasn't,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: it that he was hell bent on sucking the rock
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: and roll life out of the Cramps. From their differences,
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: a lawsuit emerged, and the stipulation of that lawsuit was
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: that until Miles and the Cramps worked out their legal issues,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: the Cramps were court ordered not to release or sell
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: any new music. The well heeled Miles Copeland the Third
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: used as financial resources to drag the case out, putting
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: pressure on the Cramps to come to a settlement that
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: favored Copeland. The Cramps didn't back down, but again, this
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: meant the Cramps couldn't release any new music, and this
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: meant nearly three years of professional death. The band played
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: live as a means to make ends meet and to
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: keep up some momentum, and their fans flocked to shows,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: but there were stard for new music as Copeland the
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: Vampire bled the Cramps dry. Then the cockroaches came out,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: big radioactive, nuclear powered bootlegging cockroaches. They crawled out of
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: the woodwork and mother to Cramp's career, flooding the market
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: with the legal live recordings from the band's many live shows,
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: live shows that were now necessary to keep the band afloat,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: But the bootleggers were so persistent, so prolific, that the
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Cramps were forced to stop performing their new original songs
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: for fear that the cockroaches will record their tunes prematurely
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: and release them to the public.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: Before the Cramps could get out of their lawsuit and.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: Release those songs themselves, the only move that Cramps had
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: left was to perform covers during their live shows while
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: waiting for their legal troubles to resolve. Miles Copeland the
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: Vampire had taken a healthy bite out of the Cramps,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: transfiguring one of the most original rock and roll.
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: Groups on the planet into a cover band.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: All back in Lux's apartment years later, with the smell
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: of burning flesh from the nearby crematorium blanketing his and
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: Ivy's Glendale neighborhood, the Cramp singer continued to cruise his
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: collection of forty five records, looking for something to put
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: on the turntable. While keeping one year on the television
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: tuned to MTV in the background. Lux was curious to
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: see the Cramps new video on the idiot Box. The
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: song was hot Shit, as was the video. It was
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: a new song, of course, it had been a few
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: years since the Cramps finally overcame the bootlegging cockroaches and
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: broke free from the legal clutches of the vmpiric Miles
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: Copeland and were once again allowed to record and release
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: new original material. First, they did so after satiating fans
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: with the excellent live album Smell of Female from New
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: York's Peppermint Lounge in nineteen eighty and then with the
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six studio album A Date with Elvis. Both
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: records were critical, if not commercial hits, but the single
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: and video Bikini Girls with Machine Guns from their latest
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: long player Stay Sick. They were too good for the
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: song not to be a hit, or so thought anyone
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: with rock and roll ears. Sadly, those people were wrong.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: Sure the song got played on MTV and even received
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: some radio play, but it wasn't a hit. It didn't
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: matter how great the song was, and it was indeed great.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: Bikini Girls with Machine Guns culminated a year's long rock
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: and roll obsession with this song. Lux and Ivy finally
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: frankenstein their uniquely specific brand of rock and roll into
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: something truly monstrous. The song had everything. A massive hooky chorus,
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: killer energy and swing, a stinging, heroic anti guitar hero
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: guitar solo from Ivy, and an undeniably unique lyrical pov.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, what in the world could possibly be better
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: than Bikini Girls with Machine Guns? Nothing?
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: That's what.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: First of all, they're girls, Second of all they're in bikinis,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: and third they've got fucking machine guns. Man, all right,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: sorry forgive me for indulging my inner Beavis and butt head.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: Back to saving rock and roll.
• 35:23
  Speaker 5: As far as Lux and Ivy's goal of bringing rock
• 35:26
  Speaker 5: and roll to the masses, to the mainstream media outlets
• 35:29
  Speaker 5: needed to disseminate the Cramps brand of mad teenage bop
• 35:32
  Speaker 5: to the radio, to television.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: Well, finally, finally, the Cramps had sound and production on
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: this single worthy of the band's originality. And by the
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: time the Cramps recorded Bikini Girls with Machine Guns, they'd
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: abandoned the two guitar assault they've used in their early
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: days and added Candy Delmar on bass, and that new
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: bottom added a level of modern sophistication to the Cramps sound.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: That a great song like Bikini Girls with Machine Guns,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: demanding the video weirder than weird and cool as fuck.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Lux and skin tight black latex and high heels Ivy.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: You know burlesque belly dancer best firing off a machine
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: gun with her panties sliding down to her high heeled ankles.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: The video oohs is violence, booze, sex, and cool. You
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: know all the things red blooded American teenagers are preternaturally
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: driven to it.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: This stuff will kill you. It's a loaded with.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: Fun bikini girls with machine guns, as the lyric goes,
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: pure awesomeness. But Lux didn't see his video on TV
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: that day, just another repeat of Sting's ridiculous video for
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: Will Be Together Tonight. Luck shut the TV off and
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: went back to his forty five's Because for all the
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: awesomeness of bikini girls with machine guns, it didn't matter,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: None of it mattered. Didn't matter how great the song was,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: it was too late. Didn't matter how great the video was,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: because it was too late. It was a different time.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: It was nineteen ninety. Had Bikini Girls with Machine Guns
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: been written and released earlier, say back in nineteen eighty three,
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: I believe it would have made the Cramps a household name,
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: and perhaps rock and roll would have been saved. Back
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: in the early eighties, MTV was jammed with idiosyncratic rock
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: and roll videos. Take Cyndy Lapper's hit She Bought. There's
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: Cindy with her orange hair bouncing around your television screens,
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: singing above female masturbation, or the Go Gos early eighties
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: hit We Got The Beat. The Go Gos Irs Records
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: cleaned up their punk image at tad for the cameras,
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: But there's Belinda and the Girls Lux and Ivy's La
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: punk contemporaries taking the piss out of Smokey Robinson's going
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: to a Go Go with the updated We Got The Beat.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: Take off your punk rock hipster hat for just a
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: minute and try to see Cindy Lappers, she Bop, and
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: the Go Gos We Got the Beat, and the Cramps
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Bikini Girls with Machine Guns as a Midwestern or suburban
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: teenage kid in nineteen eighty three would have There's not
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: that much of a difference. Broadly speaking, The big difference
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: is timing. She Bob and We Got the Beat emerged
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: when MTV leaned into weird rock and roll. By the
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: time the video for Bikini Girls with Machine Guns came
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: out in nineteen ninety, MTV was busy broadcasting self serious
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: rock music by Sting U two, Genesis and others. But
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: in the early nineteen eighties, when the she Bop and
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: We Got the Beat videos were released, the Cramps were
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: effectively stuck in music jail. The window to break on
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: MTV for a band as weird and idiosyncratic as the
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: Cramps had come and gone during the hit making network's
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: nascent years from nineteen eighty one to nineteen eighty four,
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: when the Cramps were legally prohibited from recording and releasing
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: new material. The time they spent during that era battling
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: a music industry vampire and combating radioactive bootlegging hawkroaches was
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: time they could have spent inspired and perhaps writing and
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: releasing songs like Bikini Girls with Machine Guns during an
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: era when the mainstream public would have been receptive to
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: their brand of rock and roll weirdness. Had that happen,
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: perhaps Lux and Ivy's mission of saving rock and roll
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: from corporate rock would have succeeded. But that didn't happen.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: Bikini Girls with Machine Guns was just a modest hit
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: and only in the UK, but it did keep the
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: Cramps going as a band. They continued touring and making
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: great music throughout the nineties and early two thousands. Lux
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: and Ivy never gave up the ghost, and they kept
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: on their music. Their rock and roll inspired countless younger
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: bands in the so called psychobilly category, a subgenre of
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: rock and roll that the Cramps unintentionally created. Rock and
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: roll archivists around the world, serious scholar of various genres,
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: most notably garage rockabilly, punk, horr rock, and novelty records,
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: owe a significant debt of gratitude to the Cramps for
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: their inspiration. Sam Goes, for the goth girls on TikTok
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: and for the horror core kids, and also for the
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: former Disney star Jenna or Tega, who brought the Cramps
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: to the forefront of pop culture in twenty twenty two
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: with a dance the actress choreographed herself for an episode
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: of the wildly popular Netflix series Wednesday. During the dance,
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: Ortega's Wednesday character owns all ninety six of the teenaged
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: eyes glued to her as she twitches and struts through
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: the high school dance to the Cramps song Googo Mauk.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: It's an inadvert in twenty first century homage to the
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: bug from back in Lux's childhood. Shout out to music
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: supervisor Jen Malone, an ex goth herself, for having the
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: taste in good sense to include the Cramps in this
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: modern hit television series. The Cramps influence spread and wide
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: because the Cramps created something wholly unique in rock and
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: roll through the dedication that they put into their music. Unfortunately,
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: that dedication came to an end when Lux died suddenly
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine from heart failure. Ivy, after
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: losing the love of her life and her creative partner,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: disappeared completely from the public eye. The Cramps gave their
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: lives to saving rock and roll, but that didn't happen.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: Rock and roll is dead, dead, just like the efforts
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: of the zombie conformists and the music biz vampire and
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: the bootlegging cockroaches. But the Cramps music is alive, and
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: that is anything but a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: this is Disgraceland.
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: That was a fun one Happy Halloween, everybody, hope you
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: dug it. This week's question of the Week in honor
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: of the Cramps, is this what band made the greatest
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: rock and roll music ever.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: Okay, you know the drill, one band and one band.
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: Only tell me why. Rock and roll to me is
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: low down, dirty, fun, guitar driven.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: Music for teenagers and or music that makes you feel
• 42:27
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• 42:30
  Speaker 1: guess what band, in your estimation made the greatest rock
• 42:34
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• 42:36
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• 42:39
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• 42:41
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• 42:52
  Speaker 1: Win some free merch already, then God comes to Credits.
• 42:56
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  Speaker 1: slash at disgracelampod Rock Arolla. He then