I Think That’s Gonna Leave A Welt …

Well, hello, welcome back to my gilded palace of nonsense. I kinda meant to take a month off this summer which streeeetched in the face of a too hot, far too dry summer, life things and a bit of a dearth of good old-fashioned inspiration.

I am a just and considerate ruler of your world and I did try not to abandon you all. In fact I have been trying to write a review of Stevie Wonder Fulfillingness’ First Finale* for about 7 weeks now. So I gave up and tried to review something highbrow and jazzy. Same story.

Then last night, I had a slobbering sweaty leather epiphany; I needed to sacrifice to the elder gods and tap my baser instincts in order to loose the juice of Zeus.

Picasso paintings are fine for that kind of thing
And man Paganini sure knows how to sing
But that girl’s gyration makes my gong go ding

The Cramps Big Beat From Badsville, is here to save us all.

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The Cramps Big Beat From Badsville, is here to damn us all.

The Cramps glorious seventh is their only LP without any cover versions and that’s about it for recording info, snazzy facts and in-depth musicology for this review; let’s go get our Cramps on. As the sleeve notes** elucidate,

You’ll enjoy it whether naked on roller skates, semi-conscious, or both

Unless you are a square from Squaresville you know the form here, basically Big Beat From Badsville consists of 14 scuzz-tunes hallucinated straight from the Id of a pair of sleazo bad asses who had consumed nothing but murderous rock and roll, heavy drugs, sci-fi movies glimpsed while making out in a drive-in and 50’s girlie mags for decades straight.

This is the sort of good time that you have to try to piece together days afterwards from lurid flashbacks, local news headlines and any clues you can find in your underpants.

Well the doctor pulled me out and smacked me in the can
Wiped me off, took a look and said "it's a man!"

The first side in particular is a pulverizing listen, ‘Cramp Stomp’, ‘God Monster’ and ‘It Thing Hard-on’^ all fly out of the traps, scything down all the innocent bystanders it possibly can. The 1997 vintage Cramps were a tough crew, Slim Chance on bass and Harry Drumdini all subservient to my one and only true fishnetted goddess, Poison Ivy Rorschach. Ivy is such an incredible inventive rockabilly guitarist and she never ever seems to get her proper dues, the precision of her playing here on the likes of ‘Queen Of Pain’ is exemplary.

And then there’s Lux Interior. I miss him. He is on howlingly hilariously libidinous form on Big Beat From Badsville, which contains a couple of my very favourite Interiorities. For all his strutting around with knives and faux-glam menace, Lux is always far more Herman Munster and is genuinely a very funny lyricist. I’m not even going to venture into the basement of ‘Devil Behind That Bush’, ‘Hypno Sex Ray’ or ‘Super Goo’ but every single line here is pretty darn quotable.

My two faves are the none-more-arch ‘Queen Of Pain’, where if you put your head right up to the speaker at full volume you can hear his eyebrows slipping their (Roger) moorings, if you can tune out the disconcerting rustle of something stirring amidst his leathers. His delivery perfectly compliments the poised swing of it all,

Queen of pain, queen of pain.
You got me hanging from a chain
Queen of pain, queen of pain.
I'm bad and I know I'm to blame
Queen of pain, queen of pain
These marks will be hard to explain

It’s all I can do not to quote it all^^, it makes me laugh out loud, even whilst frugging away like a bad boy should.

Like so many bands I adore, the Cramps were a husband and wife act, supplemented by other players and there is a sliver of real feeling in ‘Like A Bad Girl Should’; although given the identities of this particular husband and wife said feelings are pure lust, ‘I love your ass for bad or worse’. It’s less jokey and more direct than their extensive array of other sex tunes, almost indecently intimate. It might be my fave Cramps track.

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Big Beat From Badsville, is not quite the perfect Cramps album, even if you’re not a Songs The Lord Taught Us fundamentalist. There are a couple of lesser tracks and the bonus cut ‘Confessions Of A Psycho Cat’ shoulda/coulda displaced a cut or two here.

I should mention a couple more goodies in despatches though the creeped out ‘Sheena’s In A Goth Gang’, the rockabilly ‘Hypno Sex Ray’ and the hurtling wrecker ‘Wet Nightmare’.

The production on Big Beat From Badsville is as shiny and wipe-clean as Lux’s leather trousers. It gives everything a very welcome sheen, only hitting a slightly jarring note on LP closer ‘Haulass Hyena’ which sounds like it was recorded elsewhere in time and space.

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If like myself you love rocking out to fierce-yet-good-humoured tales of below the belt brouhaha with the occasional monster thrown-in/hard-on then climb aboard the Big Beat From Badsville ghost train.

Queen of pain, queen of pain, what will I use to clean that stain?

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Big Beat From Badsville has a lurid cover even by Cramps standards, Lux’s picture of Ivy, legs akimbo on the drum. There is a tamer version of the cover around, not sure if that was the one used in more sensitive territories^* but I am glad I have the one I do.

My mum was less impressed than normal when she got it for me, from my Christmas list in 2016. Ah well, I hadn’t realised quite how rude the cover was. Eek.

1326 Down.

*its very good and I really enjoy the bitter hymnal of ‘They Won’t Go When I Go’ and ‘Boogie On Reggae Woman’ is a very good song title. Which is more a review of FFF in one sitting than I have managed since July.

**be still my beating heart! I love me a good rockin’ sleeve note.

^I don’t want to know where your head has to be at even to come up with that song title. It is hilariously excellent though.

^^I believe that the ‘garter belt / welt’ rhyming scheme has yet to be explored anywhere else in contemporary music.

^*ironic, given that was exactly what it was exposing …