Good night Mr. Purkhiser
I must have been thirteen or fourteen when I first saw the Cramps. It was 1979 and I had no idea who they were. This shaggy looking band came out on stage and played tight, and fast rockabilly songs. At first I didn’t like them. But as the set unravelled so did the singer. Lux Interior craned out on one leg, looming over the audience who were barely three feet below him, he swung the microphone around thoughtlessly, hitting people, hitting himself, and then yanked at the cord and stuffed the device into his mouth, shoved it into his leather pants, and then layed on the ground with his head in the bass drum making horrible noises. He pulled himself together and the fell apart completely again. He unzipped his pants and lingered on the toes of his boots, leering at the audience, howling into the mic. I didn’t remember the rest of the band, or anyone else who played that night. I just remember Lux, and the name of the band.
The next day I bought their first 12″ ep, and memorized it. Next to Sid Vicious, Darby Crash, and the Clash as a whole there was no one cooler, creepier, or more threatening at the time. While it was true I didn’t want to be Lux Interior when I grew up, I still wanted to be Sid Vicious, I learned a trick or two about what cool meant, and how it looked on a tall, black haired, very skinny singer.
I lost interest in the Cramps about as quickly as I had gained it. Seeing them a few more times over the next couple years I was inspired again and again every time I saw them. It seemed to me that they were a live thing, the snotty vitriol, the looming microphone, the pants undone, the wild, roaring crowd was something which never quite got captured on their albums. Their version of ‘Human Fly’ and ‘Surfin Bird’ are timeless, superior in every way to the original surf tunes. The Cramps, and Lux Interior personified, and made real what lurked behind the snarl of every rockabilly hero of my grandfather. In Elvis’ underbite, beihind James Dean’s wince, somewhere in the back of Little Richard’s throat was the Cramps… just waiting for the right moment to leap out and kiss you, lick your cheek, and drool all over your face.
Never a popular band commercially in the United States, because we like things that are normal, regular, and both easy to digest but hard to forget here, the Cramps were made fellows of the French Alliance, granted citizenship, charted throughout Europe, and considered pioneers of punk rock, and the godfathers of shockabilly. As the Mutants were locally, a band you loved, but hated, and didn’t really ever go see, the Cramps were to us nationally. We loved them, couldn’t live without them, but never really wanted to go see them. In the later days of punk, as the 80’s unfolded into a revivalist movement of angry Reagan youth, the Cramps enjoyed a second breath of life, producing many more albums than they had during the intial wave of punk from the mid seventies into the early eithties. They endured through times of sarcasm, famine, and the worst period in american history for the arts.
Erik Purkhiser, Lux Interior, died on Wednesday morning of a heart condition. Good night Lux. See you in hell!
Human Fly – The Cramps