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The Cramps, The Astoria, September 26 2003

added 29 September 2003 at 16.35

What the hell is this? A roadie wearing a vest, shorts and flip-flops? Surely a gimp’s outfit would be more appropriate for this band. But whatever the sartorial shortcomings of the road crew are, there’s not much faulting the sheer firepower of The Cramps.

Returning once more from beyond the grave for another of their periodic sleaze-fests, there’s something comforting about the sight of 55 year-old vocalist Lux Interior teetering in high heels whilst being whipped into submission by the reverbed tones of fuzzbox dominatrix Poison Ivy and her gloriously distorted guitar. Even though their best recorded work is well and truly behind them, a Cramps show still stands as a testament to pure unadulterated fun, hedonism and degenerate rock’n’roll while showing bands more than half their age just how it’s done.

Often dismissed as mere caricatures, The Cramps prove themselves again to be the real deal. The fact is The Cramps have been doing this for nigh on thirty years for the simple reason that they love it and they mean it. In short, they rock’n’roll because it’s all they can do. Opener 'Dames, Booze, Chains & Boots' may as well be a manifesto, setting the timbre with its echo-soaked rockabilly twanging and vocal eulogy to the deviant life, while garage classics 'Garbageman' and 'Domino' remind you why you fell in love with them in the first place.

Despite the collective groan of disappointment that greeted new album 'Fiends Of Dope Island', tonight’s cuts of new material are given a whole new lease of life. 'Big Black Witchcraft Rock' is a colossal slab of wild rock’n’roll, eagerly aided and abetted by drummer Harry Drumdini and the latest in a line of bass players, Chopper Franklin (a man who's quiff defies the works of Newton), while 'Papa Satan Sang Louie Louie' is deliciously depraved.

The best, of course, is saved towards the end. Coming on like a heavy dose of brown acid, Poison Ivy’s playing becomes increasingly primal as she teases and coaxes lysergic emanations from her six strings. 'New Kind Of Kick' shimmers and twists with all the intensity of a virgin trip which acts as a taster for the raw power of The Count Five’s 'Psychotic Reactions' and a genuinely unhinged reading of 'Surfin’ Bird'. 

The vagaries of fashion may well leave The Cramps as outsiders forever looking in, but one suspects that that’s just the way they want it. There are few bands that genuinely walk it like they talk it and even if their recent output doesn’t match the dizzy heights of yore, The Cramps are still needed to set the benchmark for just how exciting rock’n’roll can and should be and as a valuable lesson in how to grow old disgracefully. Follow that!

Julian Marszalek

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