The True Trash Aesthetic

THIS IS THE TRUE trash aesthetic. This is every bad movie that you've ever seen on Creature Features or Groovy Ghoulies. This is every Three Stooges comedy wrapped up in one gigantic wad of Larry's hair. This is every lousy cartoon which demented, misguided youths have ever forced you to watch. This is every sex-and-death dime novel you've frantically glanced over in the back section of the corner magazine stand. Imagine them all together and they can't begin to plumb the depths to which the Cramps sink.

This is the pure ethic of destruction. This is the punk aesthetic taken to one of its logical extremes. This is pure Americana and its every wrecking crew and garbage detail in American suddenly turned loose on a total mission of annihilation. Add this all up, and the Cramps are still way ahead of the game.

ROCKABILLY, Elvis Presley, the Sun Sessions, and Jerry Lee Lewis: that's how it all began and that's how it all might end if the Cramps have their way. Britain is in the midst of a rockabilly revival, with younger bands emerging from all around the country and older folks like Matchbox on the charts. America has its share of rockabilly revivalists. Charlatans like Robert Gordon are beginning to toy with the lower rungs of the charts, and meticulous imitators like Texas' Fabulous Thunderbirds are starting to reach far beyond their initial hardcore following.

All of the said pretenders pale beside the masters of punk rockabilly, the Cramps. The Cramps are the real thing: not hip, because they've lived through too many passing fads. They originally tried to ply their wares in the midwest, about five years ago, but made about as much headway as Abbie Hoffman would at a John Birch convention. Now the band is a mainstay of the New York scene, having made the big move several years ago. The New York press generally slag the band off as a low-budget model of the Tubes or as genetically defected punks, but New York fans know a good thing when they see one.

Songs the Lord Taught Us is the first album from a band that should have five years worth of records behind them. All those summers of sizzling and winters of icy marinating should have produced an album of epic proportions. It has. The title is no joke: this is an inspired album, one that only true believers could have conjured.

The Cramps pursue their vision with a messianic zeal. "Garbage Man" delivers the ultimate manifesto to those who think the Cramps are nothing more than the Munsters on dope and to those punky types who believe themselves too cool for the crypt:

You ain't no punk you punk

You wanna talk about the real junk?...

If you can't dig me you can't dig nothin'

Do you want the real thing or are you just

talkin'?

Do you understand?

I'm the garbage man.

They define their territory and their stance in one easy lesson. This is not a band for the art school elitists or the hard-core, headbanger punks, nor one to start a new cult. This is garbage fever for the masses, and the Cramps openly invite us to break down the barriers we build up in the defense of our own musical limitations.

Lux Interior, vocals, "Poison" Ivy Rorschach, guitar, Bryan Gregory, guitar, and Nick Knox, drums compose the Cramps, a most unusual foursome. The absence of bass gives the music that trash quality inherent in surf music and early rockabilly. The sound outperforms all contenders in establishing that certain reckless abandon which lay at the heart of the earliest rock and roll. Yet everything is updated for the 1980's, starting with increased speed and ending with atonal, buzzsaw guitar work and demented lyrical concerns.

Songs the Lord Taught Us contains ten original compositions and three ancient covers. The fact that all 13 blend so seamlessly is attributable to the band's choice of forgotten but exquisite raunch-classics, and to their ability to work light years ahead of the influences.

Side one's first selection--"TV Set"--perfectly demonstrates this principle: a straight slice of rocking blues, with a sweeping crescendo of an opening fit for the King himself. The sheer crunch of two guitars with nothing to anchor them to the rhythm boggles. More often than not, all three instrumentalists seem to play a note or more apart, creating more sonic splash than a complete collection of Carl Perkins records. The middle eight finds either Ivy or Gregory imitating the sound of static on a portable radio as you switch from one station to the next.

LUX INTERIOR produces the most startling revelations. One of the most striking voices since Elvis Presley and generous amounts of echo combine forces to sing about cutting up some poor soul to put in his television, radio, and refrigerator. His deep ringing voice makes Wolfman Jack sound like Porky Pig: it's no less than absolutely riveting.

The Cramps will take almost any song and beat it into submission. When they're through, they gleefully move on to plunder more music from rock's "sacred" archives. "Sunglasses After Dark" gives surf music the thrashing of a lifetime, and "Mad Daddy" experiments with roller rink organ music. Even "B" movies are fair game, as "I was a Teenage Werewolf" and "Zombie Dance" testify.

The whole set is lovingly produced by Alex Chilton, merely the mastermind behind the Boxtops. The Cramps returned to Memphis, Tenn.--where they recorded their Gravest Hits E.P. in 1977--to grovel in their roots. The whole affair is a uniquely American celebration. The Cramps remind us once and for all where and how it all began. Not even the merest whiff of British influence finds its way onto this album. Good riddance. Maybe once the Cramps get through destroying rock's conventions from the ground up we'll really have something to howl about.