It’s something of a travesty that The Cramps don’t feature in “Please Kill Me”.Their mining of the lost, more off-kilter areas of American music like exotica, garage punk and rockabilly also lit the fire below the overground acceptance of burlesque and exploitation films. If this band hadn’t existed then the label that this pressing is on would never have existed either.A world without The Cramps doesn’t bear thinking about.This band changed everything.They took too far to the extreme and never compromised.The bloody gears of their rockin’ machine will roll across the hearts and minds of anyone that’s been blessed with either faculty forevermore. The Cramps brought ancient knowledge back from the bone yard to fuel their rama-lama-ding-dongin’est escapades.They lit the blue touch paper.Take this record home and hear it go boom! The Cramps’ evangelical archaeology never fitted into any comfortable pigeonhole and for some reason they appear to have been airbrushed out of history. Often copied but never equalled, their ability to ooze, throb and undulate has been known to alter the life course of the listener. If you never heard them before then, I envy you. Not goth, never silly psychobilly.The Cramps are the embodiment of American music. An unparalleled collision of rock’n’roll with show business. Sadly, you can’t see them play anymore but you can hear their joyous, galumphing ruckus blast out of your record machine for all eternity if you treat yourself to this. “Songs The Lord Taught Us” was their opening salvo and hooking up with Alex Chilton was a master stroke. It still sounds further out than anything that’s being concocted today because they simply couldn’t help themselves. “Psychedelic Jungle” took the original blueprint into the farthest reaches of garage punk.The big beat got more fuzzed up and the world was beginning to wake up.The Cramps inspired several generations without the luxury of a hit record or a spot on TV. Lindsay Hutton (Original founder of “The Legion Of The Cramped”)
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