by
Rob Jones
The Cramps Coast to Coast is a live radio broadcast that has been put to CD by the good folk of Sonic Boom-and, may we bless this label for a gung ho gift! The Cramps are on form and open your ears, close your eyes, tune in the brain and smell the male and female presence of a unique encounter with a one off act. This is as close as your music playing apparatus can get to the real thing. As Lux intimates there is no other band like his-and, how we miss him and his combo!
These two 1979 shows have our anti-heroes lining up with Mr, Interior, Poison Ivy Rorschach, Bryan Gregory and Nick Knox and this fesity four know how to Twist & Shout I shall always be envious of my brother as he managed to see The Cramps live and that experience is not an option after the sad passing away of the legendary Lux in 2009. It is up to releases such as this 66 minute, 21 track firecracker to take every Human Fly aboard a Mystery Plane for a Weekend on Mars!
The sets present are from The Irving Plaza, New York (songs 1-13) and The Keystone, Palo Alto (14-21) and the graveyard garage, surreal psychobilly cuts through the atmosphere like a turbo powered kango hammer. The Cramps are described as thriving on ‘depraved influences….TV, 60’s garage punk, comic books, jungle movies, deep-ghetto R & B and shock-vallue theatrics’ but there is even more to their momentous mantra.
Coast to Coast is a fine document of The Cramps 70’s fuzz-drenched, reverb soaked majesty in advance of their debut album. The early anthems are aplenty in the sonic stew and these belters provide many joys along with some tasty rarities. The versions of Rockin’ Bones with its whirlpool warcry adding to the lead vocals is the beast amongst a lot of monster tunes-but, there is no filler only killer here!
I’ve been to New York and Palo Alto but I’ve not seen The Cramps! There you go-as Lux states ‘I can hear the hair growing out of my arms right now’ and, get ready for a similar sensation!
