Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of the passing of Lux Interior, the great frontman of The Cramps, one of the most influential bands of the last 40+ years. Lux lived up to all expectations and truly walked it like he talked it in such a way that he just might be in a group of one. As has been written by myself and a great many others, this band created a style. Not just music, but in every area of life from film subcultures to sexual freedom and just about everything in between, whether they planned to or not. And it’s showing no signs of stopping.

As we learn over and over again, with the Cramps, when we think there’s nothing left to find, something always pops up! Yesterday on the actual anniversary of Lux’s passing, this rare, very early unheard 1981 interview from radio station KALX appeared! This is an early (and interesting) interview as it was done right when guitarist Kid Congo Powers (who is still going strong and making incredible records) joined the band. So let’s transport ourselves 38 years back in time and listen to the beginning of a journey. Who can conceive of a band like this happening now??
 

 
And to quote that 50s rockabilly song, “Rockin’ Bones,” made popular in the punk era by The Cramps:
 

I wanna leave a happy memory when I go
I wanna leave something to let the whole world know
That the rock in roll daddy has a done passed on
But my bones will keep a-rockin’ long after I’ve gone
Roll on, rock on, raw bones
Well, there’s still a lot of rhythm in these
Rockin’ bones
Well, when I die don’t you bury me at all
Just nail my bones up on the wall
Beneath these bones let these words be seen
This is the bloody gears of a boppin’ machine
Roll on, rock on, raw bones
Well, there’s still a lot of rhythm in these
Rockin’ bones

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘We’re the best of the worst’: The Cramps on B-Movies, sex, drugs & rock-n-roll
At home with The Cramps: Lux and Ivy give you a tour of their stuff

A nice shot of the custom Poison Ivy and Lux Interior figures by an artist known as “N TT” over at Figure Realm. YES!
 
There are times when I’m out and about on the Internet looking for new and exciting things to bring to all of our dedicated Dangerous Minds readers, and occasionally (or always) I come across something I wasn’t looking for in the first place. And that’s how I happily ended up finding a bunch of different DIY figures and dolls based on the gothy likeness of Robert Smith, the one and only vocalist for The Cure, as well as Poison Ivy and Lux Interior of The Cramps. According to the person behind theses figures, artist “N TT” over at Figure Realm, it was noted that the six-inch version of Lux was made out of an action figure of Vince Neil from Mötley Crüe. Way to make the world a better place by recycling, N TT. Well done.

If you keep up with me here at DM, you know I have a deep affinity for all things action figures and the like. So stumbling on these figures by N TT was kind of like winning the action figure lottery for me. Anyway, good-old N TT has created some pretty fantastic DIY dolls/figures such as Robert Smith, Ivy and Lux (with Mr. Interior wearing a pair of black heels no less) and Jack Nance in character from the 1977 film Eraserhead. And since I know you’re wondering, though it’s not entirely clear, it would appear that N TT occasionally sells the tricked out figures that are posted on this page at Figure Realm.
 

Custom Lux Interior and Poison Ivy figures. Nice.
 

 

This disturbing interpretation of The Cure’s Robert Smith is based on the video for “Lullaby” from 1989. YIKES!
 
Many more after the jump…

 
Before there was Kim and Thurston, there was Poison Ivy Rorschach and Lux Interior, one of the most charming, happiest, long-standing (together thirty-seven years) collaborative couples in music. They gave a recently rediscovered interview to Dutch public radio station VPRO around 1990 during The Cramps’ Stay Sick tour.

In the hour long interview, Poison Ivy and Lux talk about the gyrations involved in dealing with major and independent labels, overseas distribution deals, their invention of the word “psychobilly,” the ‘80s war on drugs, voodoo, religion, war, sex, B movies, and how they “Crampified” original classics such as “Bop Pills.” Their encyclopedic knowledge of rockabilly and B movies, which they rattle off effortlessly, is incredible. Lux outlines the history of American B movies for the interviewer:

Lux: The thing that’s so great, I think, about B movies is that when you watch a movie like that, they were made so quickly and usually by fairly amateur filmmakers that what you’re seeing is much more of the reality of the time and place where they were made than a motion pictures studio like MGM or Paramount or something like that. You’re actually seeing people who can’t act very well, so you see them as people, and they usually take place in somebody’s real house and on real streets and things, while all the other movies were being made on sets. There’s a slice of reality you don’t get in regular movies with those. I don’t know what it is.  Once you’ve developed a taste for that, you can’t go back somehow.

Poison Ivy: A lot of sexploitation [movies], just even titles, influence our songs. The dialogue from a lot of those movies is in our songs. “Hot Pearl Snatch” is the name of a movie, “All Women Are Bad” is the name of a movie. They’re powerful titles to us enough that we felt like writing songs about them. Also they’re in lines of our songs.

Lux: “Bikini Girls With Machine Guns” could be a B movie. The line in that, “This stuff’ll kill ya,” that’s a title of a Herschell Gordon Lewis movie about moonshine. Our songs are just loaded with B movie titles and lines out of B movies. In “What’s Inside a Girl” I say “In the bottom of the bottomless body pit,” like that, and that’s out of a movie called—

Poison Ivy: “The Love Butcher.” That was actually a line of dialogue out of that movie. It’s hard for us not to use these lines because we’re just kind of submerged in these movies. We think that way. They don’t sound like dialogue to us.

Listen to The Cramps on VPRO radio

 
Below, Lux Interior and Poison Ivy interviewed in Amsterdam, 1990:

 
Thanks to Kogar!

 
Kristy Marlana Wallace aka Poison Ivy.
 

What’s inside a girl?
Somethin’ tellin’ me there’s a whole other world.”

 
This vintage photo of The Cramps’ Lux Interior and Poison Ivy—taken in April of 1972—is starting to make the rounds on Facebook. Consider my mind blown.
 
Source: Michael Murphy