Betty Page as a dolled-up scream queen – and boy could she play some on that huge Chet Atkins 50s guitar. Bryan reputedly got a later gig as a zombie in a George Romero flick.Īnd Ivy, well she was every bit as glam and gorgeous in real life. Skunk fringed and scarfaced, he played the bass lines on 5 and 6, cigarette hanging from his lips. Vintage Cramps had a sneering Bryan Gregory upstage on a beat up old six string. I was lucky enough to catch them playing live in a Sheffield club. It all came at breakneck speed played through tiny Fender and Vox amps cranked up to eleventeen.Īnd at the heart of that big surfpunk sound? A wild haired bikini-clad guitar-totin’ Cali girl by the name of Poison Ivy. I would quickly find that The Cramps were a campy concoction of wild old 50s rockabilly, 60s horror movie and sexploitation culture.

Sure enough the cover was like an old B-Movie schlocker and the band, well, looked like The Munsters on acid. I found it listed in some music mag and sent away for the vinyl. It had as much to do with old surfer music like Duane Eddy and Link Wray as it had with modern rock n roll and it had genuine Hammer Horror bats in its belfry. The sound was deeply familiar but disturbing and wild as if from another era.

It was simultaneously subversive and hilarious. The DJ on some fading pirate station was playing a massive reverb filled swamp punk number called Under The Wire, a paean to dirty phone calls. The first I heard of The Cramps was on late night radio.

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