The return of The Cramps?

We are all familiar with the impact of using an old song in a TV series, film, on an influencer's choreography posted on TikTok or even in a simple TV commercial... The venerable Kate Bush knows this very well - and so does her accountant - she, whose 1985 masterpiece Running Up That Hill made it to the top of the charts thanks to the series Stranger Things.

What if the awesome Cramps were next to get the top spot? What if the mythical couple Kristy Marlana Wallace aka Poison Ivy and her husband Erick Lee Purkhiser aka Lux Interior (who passed away in 2009) were to top the charts too? Thanks to Wednesday, a new series that premiered on Netflix on the 23rd of November 2022 produced by Tim Burton, the cover of Ronnie Cook and the Gaylads' obscure song Goo Goo Muck, which appeared on the Cramps' 1981 album Psychedelic Jungle, has been listened to by hundreds of thousands of streamers around the world!

The guardians of the rock'n'roll temple but also its most savage desecrators: Lux Interior and Poison Ivy were both! From 1976 to 2009, the Cramps perpetually reminded those who had forgotten that rock'n'roll had to be primitive, boisterous, violent, sexual and anti-cerebral. And their magical and poisonous potion of rockabilly, punk and garage rock made the zombies dance with Neanderthal drums, fifties guitars and primal screams.

Without the Cramps, there would be no Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, no White Stripes. Nor Nick Cave's Bad Seeds or Gun Club, two bands with whom they shared one of their guitarists, Kid Congo Powers... Fanatics of fifties rock'n'roll, whether famous (Elvis, Ricky Nelson, Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent...) or more obscure (Link Wray, Hasil Adkins, Dick Dale...), the New York tandem who had gone into exile in California were particularly fond of Z movies (directed by Ed Wood, John Waters or their clones) and all the American white trash imagery.

LISTEN TO ALBUMS BY THE CRAMPS ON QOBUZ