THE CRAMPS

In the spring of 1976, The CRAMPS began to fester in a NYC apartment. Without fresh air or natural light, the group developed its uniquely mutant strain of rock’n’roll aided only by the sickly blue rays of late night TV. While the jackhammer rhythms of punk were proliferating in NYC, The CRAMPS dove into the deepest recesses of the rock’n’roll psyche for the most primal of all rhythmic impulses — rockabilly — the sound of   southern culture falling apart in a blaze of shudders and hiccups.  As late night sci-fi reruns colored the room, The CRAMPS also picked and chose amongst the psychotic debris of previous rock eras - instrumental rock, surf, psychedelia, and sixties punk. And then they added the junkiest element of all — themselves.
— J. H. Sasfy, Professor of Rockology
from the liner notes of The Cramps 1979 release Gravest Hits

It would be almost impossible to have never heard of The CRAMPS. Their career has been the stuff of legend.  Dangerously bizarre but most of all cool, The CRAMPS represent everything that is truly reprehensible about rock’n’roll.  Founding members Lux Interior (the psycho-sexual Elvis/Werewolf hybrid from hell) and guitar-slinging soul-mate Poison Ivy (the ultimate bad girl vixen) are the architects of a wicked sound that distills a cross of swamp water, moonshine and nitro down to a dangerous and unstable musical substance. Their cultural impact has spawned a legion of devil cults and dance-floor catfights, and created in its wake a cavalcade of cave-stomping imitators. As punk rock pioneers in the late seventies, they cut their teeth on the stages of CBGB and Max’s Kansas City and recorded their first record at Sam Phillips legendary Sun Studios, funded mainly by Ivy’s income as a dominatrix in NYC. They coined the now popular term “psychobilly” on their 1976 gig posters. Their hair-raising live performances are still a total, no-holds-barred rock’n’roll assault. After a quarter century of mayhem, they’re too far gone to even consider any other course. (from the Cramps website)

Cemeteries, rock `n` roll, old mansions, horror movies, a splash of surrealism-add atmospheric clothing (preferably black) and some tongue-in-cheek humor, and the list does a pretty fair job of delineating the wacko-Gothic world of the Cramps.

This is the band, after all, that signed its current contract with Enigma Records at Bela Lugosi`s gravesite in Los Angeles. The band that foreshadowed today`s concerns about nutrition and diet with a 1981 song that cautioned listeners not to eat stuff off the sidewalk, no matter how good it looks. The band that once played a free concert for patients at a California mental hospital after being told by someone: ``You guys ought to play at a nut house. That`s where you belong.``

Formed some 13 years ago after Lux and Ivy migrated from California to New York-and added drummer Nick Knox and second guitarist Bryan Gregory (later replaced by Kid Congo Powers)-the Cramps forged their sound in the Big Apple`s punk/New Wave scene of the late `70s.

But while their early efforts displayed a good deal of punk`s urgency, their primary stylistic stomping ground became an alternate-universe version of rockabilly known as psychobilly-a crazed, take-it-to-the-max form where standard rockabilly vocal hiccups became desperate gulps and gasps, and rockabilly`s sprightly rhythms became stark, dark exercises in the weird and the warped. (Tom Popson - Chicago Tribune)

Conjuring a fiendish witches' brew of primal rockabilly, grease-stained '60s garage rock, vintage monster movies, perverse and glistening sex, and the detritus and effluvia of 50 years of American pop culture, the Cramps are a truly American creation much in the manner of the Cadillac, the White Castle hamburger, the Fender Stratocaster, and Jayne Mansfield. Often imitated, but never with the same psychic resonance as the original, the Cramps celebrate all that is dirty and gaudy with a perverse joy that draws in listeners with its fleshy decadence, not unlike an enchanted gingerbread house on the Las Vegas strip. The entire psychobilly scene would be unthinkable without them, and their prescient celebration of the echoey menace of first-generation rock & roll had a primal (if little acknowledged) influence on the rockabilly revival and the later roots rock movement. (Allmusic)

The Cramps Official Site
The Cramps Wiki
The Cramps Allmusic
Crypt of The Cramps
Mike's Cramps Webpage

Essential Listening


Songs the Lord Taught Us
Gravest Hits
A Date With Elvis
Stay Sick!

Essential Reading


The Wild World of The Cramps

...

THE LYRES

The Lyres are, for all intents and purposes, Jeff Connolly - keyboardist, record freak (he earned the moniker "Mono Man" for his refusal to allow stereo recordings into his collection), and all-around madman.  The band has gone through literally dozens of line-ups, with members being booted or exiting due to Conolly's legendarily difficult personality (Conolly once gave his definition of a group as "a group of people who do exactly what I tell them to do.")

Of the dozens of bands that emerged in the 1980s garage rock revival, Lyres were one of the few that seemed to realize that the point wasn't about how much paisley clothing you could wear or finding the right vintage effects pedals (i.e. wallowing in nostalgia for an era you were too young to have actually witnessed -- the musical equivalent of living in an episode of Happy Days), but about playing cool stripped-down rock & roll. Jeff "Monoman" Conolly understood that the Sonics and the Ramones were traveling in the same direction, but merely using a different path to get there, and, as a result, Lyres' recordings have an energy and passion that's stood the test of time far better than most of their contemporaries. While Conolly's Vox Continental organ keeps his 1960s obsessions up-front throughout, the rest of the band is capable of generating a hard-driving groove, and the performances capture what was exciting and soulful about 1960s punk without drowning in a sea of "retro." (Allmusic)

The Lyres originated from the ashes of DMZ - essentially the same concept, with perhaps a slightly more new wave/punk approach.  DMZ even managed a debut album on Sire(!), produced by Flo and Eddie (!!) though garage fans have dismissed it as too slick.

After DMZ shattered, Conolly founded Lyres with fellow ex-DMZ'ers - who soon enough fell by the wayside.  The band made a name for itself with their second album, On Fyre, which sold surprisingly well, even in the US, while establishing them a solid European following.  The follow-up, Lyres Lyres, was even better.

After that, the constantly-re-aligning band seemed to lose its inspiration, closing the 80's off with the intermittently successful A Promise Is A Promise, then largely disappearing, poking its head up once or twice in the 90's with a full-length album or another single or EP, as well as a stream of live albums from various sources.  The inspiration of their early days showed only in flashes.

The Lyres were inactive for most of the early 2000's, but of late have been touring again, mostly in Europe.  Conolly remains Conolly.

Lyres wiki
DMZ wiki
The Lyres Allmusic
DMZ allmusic
Right Now! The Lyres
Amusing Interview with Jeff Conolly

On Fyre
Lyres Lyres
DMZ: Live at the Rat