Lux Interior, RIP

Damn, what a shitty fuckin’ day this turned out to be. One of my true rock’n'roll heroes is gone. According to news reports that just started surfacing this evening, Lux (lead singer of The Cramps for those of you living in a cave the past 30 years) died at 4:30 at a Glendale, Calif., hospital this morning from a pre-existing heart condition. He was 62 (not 52 or 60 as being reported on some sites). In my humble opinion, this is the biggest rock’n'roll loss since Link Wray and Bo Diddley (and that’s sayin’ something). I was trying to remember the first time I ever heard The Cramps, and I can’t. It’s just been too long ago. It was probably in high school, circa ‘83 or ‘84, and probably on KYMC. But I’m not sure. For all I know it could’ve been later on, in college. I remember the Bad Music for Bad People album being everywhere back then. I also remember falling absolutely head-over-heels in love with their trashy, primitive rock’n'roll sound. Some called it punk. Others called it psychobilly, but I just called it wild-ass primitive rock’n'roll. And their music turned me and so many others on to some of the true greats of the past, like The Trashmen, Link Wray, The Sonics, Andre Williams, Hasil Adkins, Randy Alvey, Johnny Burnette, The Novas, Kip Tyler, Ronnie Dawson, and so many others (check out the amazing “Songs The Cramps Taught Us” series for a good healthy sampling). I feel lucky to have gotten to see The Cramps three times (twice in St. Louis and once in Columbia, Mo.) and they were phenomenal each time. Lux embodied everything that I hold sacred in regard to garage/punk/rock’n'roll music: Humor, sex, sleaze, perversion, trash, fun, B-movies and the primitive big beat. I don’t think I have ever witnessed a better showman in my life. I’m working on the next episode of the Savage Kick podcast tonight, and you can bet there’ll be a short tribute paid to him on this episode (Ron Asheton, too), but in the meantime (the podcast will post on Friday), I wanted to share with y’all a couple of things that I thought you might like to see/hear. First up is Lux taking the mic and hosting a radio show from 1984 called the Purple Knif Show. Click here to download or hit the play button down below.

Second, this fantastic video of The Cramps playing live at the Napa State Mental Hospital, recorded with a black-and-white video camera and a single microphone on June 13, 1978. This is the entire video, by the way, which I found on Vimeo. Enjoy:

The Cramps Live at Napa State Mental Hospital….Nuff Said from Jim Napolitano on Vimeo.