The Bigger Picture

Lux Interior: A Psychobilly Passes

by Bob Moses

And now we pause to reflect on someone who is impossible to picture paused. Lux Interior, the glam/ghoul front man of The Cramps and presiding spirit of psychobilly, has passed on. Erick Purkhiser, accompanied by his wife and onstage partner Poison Ivy (formerly known as Kristy Wallace), donned white make-up and black leather, diverting and blending the course of punk and rockabilly.
They crashed the punk-rock party at Max’s Kansas City and CBGB in 1975, and released one of the foundation punk-rock singles, “Human Fly,” in 1978. Joseph Sasfy described an August, 1979, show at Washington, D.C.’s Psyche Delly in the Washington Post: “The Cramps, who have built a devoted following in D.C. because of their volatile performances, had the crowd at the Psyche Delly on their feet all night. Instead of slavishly imitating pure rockabilly, the band recalls the raucous primitivism and spontaneous outrageousness that is the music’s spirit.”
The Cramps
I was at that show. D.C. was hot and swampy as only D.C. in August can be. The Psyche Delly was packed and, as described, standing. I was with a friend who worked for RCA Records (he was also in a local power-pop band called The Catholics). He tipped me to the show, and I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. The Cramps were a still a raw, two-guitar, no-bass rock band then, before the psychobilly act grew increasingly baroque and made the swerve into Smell of Female titty-bar territory. The crowd was sweaty. The band was sweaty. Ivy’s skirt was short and all the hair, except for Bryan Gregory’s dangling white lock, the hair was high. I think Lux spent much of the show off the stage, in the crowd and on the floor. Writhing, howling, kicking and channeling the pure thud and crash of elemental rock.

There was a lot of genre exhumation going on then, including the rockabilly that Lux and the Cramps mined for inspiration. Lux could have become Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, a Halloween prank that got funny long after it was scary. I think Lux had a clear picture of where he was heading. And now he’s arrived.

Blue Photo ©Steve Jennings

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