THE
GRAN&W
by Brian
Brannon
"Some strange
things have
happened on this
tour," says sultry
psychobilly guitarist
Poison Ivy Rorschach
over the phone lines from
France. "We did a show in
on
Munich, and Lux hacked
the stage with the base of the
mike stand, which caused the
stage to weaken. Then, he jumped
from the drum riser onto the stage,
and went right through it. He made at
hole the size of his hips and just disap-
peared. He kept on singing all the while,
and then he came out. It was unreal, it
was like a dream."
Mad love rants and traces of the bizarre
decorate the Cramps' music. Felonious
frontman Lux Interior belts
out tunes in the key of doom and sings in
tongues while stomping about the stage in
high-heeled glory. Between his leather
g-string and Ivy's fringes, frills and fishnets,
it might seem like the two are trying to
outdo each other, but Ivy dismisses the no-
tion. "We're not competing," she says.
"We're partners in crime."
Recent recruits Slim Chance (ex-Mad
Daddy) on bass and drummer Nickey
Alexander (ex-Weirdos) on drums round out
the new line-up, Ivy says, giving The Crea-
tures From The Black Leather Lagoon their
most aggressive rhythm section to date. The
Cramps latest is the down and dirty Look
Mom, No Head, where Interior sings about
dames, booze, chains, boots and eyeballs in
Martinis while the rest of the band pounds
down with heavy-duty graveyard grooves. Iggy
Pop joins them for a hellacious cover of "Mini-
Skirt Blues" by The Flower People. "He was
rehearsing next to the studio where we
recorded," says Rorschach. "Lux ran into him at
the liquor store, so it just worked out."
The Cramps isn't a band that sheds their stage
skins and goes back to their regular nine-to-five
jobs. "The Cramps is genuine," says Poison. "It
just expresses our wild nature."
DAMNED
by Brian Brannon
Burning a trail of havoc and thunder,
The Damned introduced the world to a
brash revolution in 1976. The hard, raw
sounds of "Neat, Neat, Neat" snaked
the Sex Pistols as the first release from
the English punk explosion. Since then,
The Damned's lengthy legacy has earned
them the title "the Godfathers of Punk"
with such classic thrillers as Machine
Gun Etiquette, The Black Album,
Strawberries, Phantasmagoria and
Damned, Damned, Damned. This
prolific output and the band's desire to
keep it all going after fifteen years is a
product of "sheer stupidity," says
guitarist/bassist/nonconformist Captain
Sensible. Then he pauses, "No, it was
the music that kept us together. And, we
like each other...sometimes."
Sensible, along with Dave Vanian, Rat
Scabies and Paul Grey, recently returned
to the States to rage through sets from
the vintage vaults, denying cuts from
later, more refined albums. Guitarist
Brian James was the only member miss
ing from the original line-up. He had ex-
ited the tour long before The Damned
hit the I-Beam in S.F., where Sensible
attributed James' absence to medical
problems. "He was dying of an obscure
disease which affects guitarists," says
the Captain, "a self-inflicted ego."
Voiceman Dave Vanian has been
moonlighting of late with a group called
The Phantom Chords, but before he
joined The Damned, he used to dig
graves-professionally. "I was making
alright money until I started doing
Damned shows," says Vanian. "It was
all downhill from there."
There can be no doubt that Vanian's
Transylvanian demeanor inspired
legions of teenage girls to paint their
faces white and wear all black, but it
doesn't bother him. "I quite like it," he
says. "It's much nicer to see them attrac
tive looking like that than in hobnail
boots or something."
Die-hard Damned fans know most
every single is packed with a bitchin'
B-side of glorious noise. The "Smash
It Up" single contains a flip called
"Burglar," which gives clue to one of
Scabies' hobbies before he joined the
band. "When you are an English boy,
BE A M
FA
coming from some working class back-
ground, like I did," he says, "the options
open to you are very limited. You can
either become a footballer, turn to
crime, work in a factory or go into show
business. Well, I was really lousy in
school, and working for a living is a
kind of death. Show me someone that
likes their job, now that's a lucky per-
son. So crime was something you turned
to when you had to. It's called survival.
I was on probation when I joined The
Damned. That was cool, because the
band broke really fast, so I got this letter
from my probation officer, taking me off
probation. I was so busy touring and we
were so high profile, that in the end she
couldn't talk to me, she had to deal with
the secretary of the record company.
She said it wasn't worth it. It was all a
happy ending. But I wouldn't ever advo-
cate theft or any sort of crime."
Raging elephants, farts and chicken
noises punctuate many a Damned song.
along with The Damned's patent irrever-
ence for authority and organized reli-
gion. "All vicars should be hung, really.
Fuck the Pope as well," says Sensible.
"The Vatican made an executive deci-
sion that they would rather have people
in the Third World die of AIDS than let
them use condoms. That's disgusting."
Though The Damned is responsible
for setting countless trends in music and
punk fashion (a definite oxymoron),
they have never been much for jumping
on the bandwagon. Other less original
groups have borrowed bits from The
Damned's discography, but the band
doesn't mind. "All of a sudden, you real-
ize you're not the new kids on the block
anymore. Here comes the next genera
tion," says Scabies. "But the thing about
it is we do get quite a lot of lip service
from bands that are happening, like
Guns N' Roses, Faith No More
and Jane's Addiction. That's
satisfying in a way, but at
the same time it pisses you
off. I don't want to be
regarded as somebody's
favorite uncle."
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