174. The Cramps – Songs The Lord Taught Us
(In memory of singer Lux Interior, who passed away yesterday at the age of 62)
I was at a party the summer after I graduated high school. Last big fling before most of my friends went off to college. The host was playing the usual fare on the stereo; Zeppelin, AC/DC, typical rock and roll. And then someone came in with a stack of albums, ripped the Skynyrd off the table in the middle of Freebird, and put this album on. Most people were too drunk to notice. A few kids got pissed off. And there were about five of us who were completely mesmerized by the sound coming from the speakers. It was one of those albums where you enjoyed the songs to the extent that you were fully anticipating the next song to see what they would come up with next. Teenage Werewolf, Sunglasses After Dark and Zombie Dance were all awesome, but it was Tear it Up that sealed the deal for me.
What can I say about Lux and The Cramps that hasn’t already been said? This is music that was made for a party, even if that party is just you in your bedroom listening to an album that none of your friends want to hear. This wasn’t music that was accessible to the masses, it was definitely an acquired taste, but once you acquired it, you couldn’t let it go. It set you on fire. These were songs to be played in an abandoned house in the backwoods of some hick town late at night, maybe with dogs howling in the background and a full moon your only light. It’s garage rock, if that garage is filled with B-movie posters and moonshine. It’s perverse in so many ways, but a perversion of rock was just what music needed at the time this came out.
Songs the Lord Taught Us was a molotov cocktail that burned down anything I thought I knew about rock and roll. And until I heard Deadbolt, there was not a single album or band in this genre that grabbed me the way Songs or The Cramps did.
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February 20th, 2009
[...] Here’s a fitting tribute to the man and the band and their best album. [...]