ILM Artist Poll No. 105 · THE CRAMPS · Results Thread

Track Ballots Received: 012
Tracks Voted: 062
Album/Compilation/Eps Ballots Received: 034
Albums/Compilations/Eps Voted: 010
Results rollout: top 05 albums / top 50 tracks

Not that many voters this time around, but the results are satisfying imho and I guess wouldn't have varied incredibly if more people had joined the party.

woowoo! here for it.

https://i.imgur.com/fCnCm4X.png
05. A Date with Elvis 213 points, 7 votes. Year of Release:1986

https://i.imgur.com/M9Wo5R9.png
04. …Off the Bone 230 points, 6 votes, 5 Nº1 votes. Year of Release: 1983

https://i.imgur.com/M7QiJqL.png
03. Smell of Female 265 points, 8 votes Year of Release: 1983

https://i.imgur.com/qyM5b4w.png
02. Psychedelic Jungle 290 points, 9 votes Year of Release: 1981

https://i.imgur.com/bFSdMGh.png
01. Songs the Lord Taught Us 303 points, 9 votes, 2 Nº1 votes Year of Release: 1980

No surprises in the albums / eps / comp portion of the poll. ...Off the Bone was the most loved one with 6 nº1 votes (and a quintessential compilation tbh) yet it didn't take the first spot.

Small break before I proceed to songs 50-40

https://i.imgur.com/AlphrG1.png
50. Tear It Up 2 votes, 31 points.
https://youtu.be/jyz-tjWOf6Q

abstained from voting bc i had a super busy week and knew i would just get pulled into a nonstop cramps listening rabbithole, but v much looking forward to the results

https://i.imgur.com/uZwyyfT.png
49. How Far Can Too Far Go? 2 votes, 32 points.
https://youtu.be/ykJ1XDTVCfs

I didn't get a ballot in either, but looking forward to the rollout as well.

I assume any Cramps fan has seen their performance of "Tear It Up" in Urgh! A Music War but here it is in all its uh... glory?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIQR_3TPtJw

https://i.imgur.com/SWR3kvy.png
48. Love Me 2 votes, 33 points.
https://youtu.be/ykJ1XDTVCfs

https://i.imgur.com/h3ZhxDx.png
TIE 46. All Women Are Bad 2 votes, 34 points.
https://youtu.be/MtgSpGFTmTs

https://i.imgur.com/JVnl7Da.png
TIE 46. Call of the Wighat 2 votes, 34 points.
https://youtu.be/QGQzWxLEc48

https://i.imgur.com/KfM47C9.png
45. The Hot Pearl Snatch 1 vote, 36 points.
https://youtu.be/mRD83J6esZQ

https://i.imgur.com/mkfX1fB.png
44. Caveman 2 votes, 37 points.
https://youtu.be/wyIIMKhBmig

https://i.imgur.com/yOkUwjM.png
TIE 42. Voodoo Idol 2 votes, 39 points.
https://youtu.be/94w2K4bj09g

https://i.imgur.com/3BnrLGw.png
TIE 42. The Creature from Black Leather Lagoon 2 votes, 39 points.
https://youtu.be/BdkEapVungU

https://i.imgur.com/pU3dCiE.png
41. Mystery Plane 1 vote, 1 Nº1 vote 40 points.
https://youtu.be/g9c9jvWlEOY

That’s it for today!

here for the moka banner designs. a+ work

Cosign, these are great!

"Voodoo Idol" and "Caveman" too low! (They were my #9 and #14, respectively.) (I also voted for "Call of the Wighat" - it was my #16.)

"How do you keep a moron in wighat suspense?" gets me every time, just like "then I'm gonna kiss your pineapple".

This Alien Sex Fiend cover of mystery plane that I never knew existed was linked from a cramps setlist I came across - I guess they just googled the first line: https://youtu.be/8-lMSGVK5zI

Great images, Moka.

I was the sole vote for "Mystery Plane" it seems. It really did need my help after all!

One of the greatest opening lines in the Cramps' whole discography ("My daddy drives a UFO!") but a just-okay song.

Started a Spotify playlist, if anyone else is into that sort of thing...

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/40nNK2KxBTp99gJBFqxrIf?si=K0LRyIiATleqVS-hWXccTA

I had forgotten how much I like A Date With Elvis. That crisp airy sound juxtaposed with pretty much anything earlier is faintly jarring in a playlist. But I got out ye olde CD for highway listening last week and was overcome with "I'm not sure there are many tracks here I *don't* want to vote for" type thoughts.

awww "Caveman" wuz robbed, that made it pretty high for me

on the whole I prefer Psychedelic Jungle's heavier low end sound to the (imo) sometimes monochromatic roar of Songs The Lord Taught Us.

"Elvis" was the first album where they moved to guitar, bass, drums, vocals. As opposed to guitar, fucked-up guitar, drums, vocals.

5 of Off The Bone's 6 votes are number 1s. I surmise that there are 6 Europeans voting since it was never released in North America.

nah it was mine as well, a perfect distillation

I kinda feel like there should be a separate poll of opening lines, but they factored heavily in my song ranking.

Thank you everyone! It’s a fun poll to run particularly in this spooky time of the year. A shame we didn’t receive another ballot, having 13 ballots would have been extra spookier.

As someone who knows the results I have to say the top 50 is overall pretty good, there’s a few songs missing though, I can say per example that based on Spotify’s top 10 most streamed tracks there’s one that’s not only missing from our own top 50, but noone even voted for it. But overall I think you all did a great job picking out a great compendium of Cramps gravest hits.

5 of Off The Bone's 6 votes are number 1s. I surmise that there are 6 Europeans voting since it was never released in North America.

Nah, it was available in the US and not super expensive. The first Cramps I owned was the cassette of Bad Music for Bad People, and maybe a year later when I saw Off the Bone's 3D cover I bought that. Then later I got the CDs of Songs the Lord Taught Us and Psychedelic Jungle/Gravest Hits.

Thanks Moka. Images are so great.

great rollout so far! two votes from our ballot showed up: all women are bad, and creature from the black leather lagoon

There's some things, baby, I just can't swallow / Mama told me that girls are hollow

...is possibly what I'd have opted for in an opening line ballot. :)

Pretty impressive that I was the sole non-first-place vote for Off the Bone. (Possibly due to some vague, misguided notion that I should favour a 'proper' album for the top spot. I'm such a square.)

Hahaha I didn’t vote for neither Off the Bone or Bad Music because of that same misguided notion that compilations are somehow less genuine and gave the Gravest Hits EP my #1 vote instead.
I made my ballot before charting the results so I wouldn’t affect them - I mean, that would’ve been cheating - but I was very tempted to change my Gravest Hits vote afterwards when I saw I had somehow doomed “off the bone” to the 4th spot by being a “purist”.

I mean changing my vote would have only meant it jumped from 4th to 3rd place but still...

I’ll post the sheet with ballots and results at the end, but in the meantime the full top 10 for albums/eps/comps was:

1. Songs the Lord Taught Us
2. Psychedelic Jungle
3. Smell of Female
4. Off the Bone
5. A date with Elvis
6. Stay Sick!
7. Gravest Hits EP
8. Bad Music for Bad People
9. Flamejob
10. How to make a Monster

Actually the 10. is a TIE with RockinnReelininAucklandNewZealandXXX

i did not end up submitting a ballot, but i think we especially like off the bone and psychedelic jungle and songs the lord taught us. smell of female, too, i think. tbh i'm usually not which album is which, but i like what i hear!

I'm still really confused about the songs that were released on Bad Music/Off The Bone in the period between Psychedelic Jungle and A Date With Elvis. Some of my very favorites, but I was never sure where/when/how they were recorded.

"Save It"
"Can't Hardly Stand It"
"She Said"
"New Kind Of Kick"
"Drug Train"
"Love Me"
"Uranium Rock" (on Bad Music only)

I only now realized that three of those tracks "Drug Train", "Love Me", and "Can't Hardly Stand It" are from a 1980 single!!

https://www.discogs.com/The-Cramps-Drug-Train/master/657559

"Save It" and "New Kind Of Kick" were the B-sides to 1981's "The Crusher" 12" which explains why I love them so:

https://www.discogs.com/The-Cramps-The-Crusher/master/806238

And "She Said" was the B-side to the 1980 "Goo Goo Muck" single:

This is kind of blowing my mind b/c I always thought of these songs as "later" in their arc. "Uranium Rock" appears to be the only track from after 1981.

oops:

https://www.discogs.com/The-Cramps-Goo-Goo-Muck/master/53337

https://i.imgur.com/0q45lsF.png
40. Rockin’ Bones 2 votes, 40 points.
https://youtu.be/PfRmE5ui7sk

late cut for me

TOO LOW

Actually our number 1 is one of my favorite Cramps songs but I had no idea it was that well loved. For reference it’s not even in the top 20 most streamed (it’s #21) Cramps songs on Spotify.

https://i.imgur.com/igoAy18.png
01. Garbageman 11 votes, 3 Nº1 votes, 349 points
https://youtu.be/AyoAt7r1omc

ah, of course! good to have a wee bit of a surprise there.

thanks for this again, Moka. Images were so, so great too.

well it WAS my #2

thanks Moka!

Thank you everyone!

Here’s the imgur album if you want to see the poll results in image form:
https://imgur.com/a/Q4cKxxr

And the google sheets with ballots and full results!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zeBmXiRHZAKZpzWyX1eMj8fvGoehpZbVINf8PSTyHJE/

Happy Halloween!

Thanks, Moka for getting me excited again about a band I honestly don't listen to all that much these days. As I slide farther into middle age I find myself far less likely to put on a song like "Drug Train," let alone "Let's Get Fucked Up," and yet as noted above there was Lux onstage in his 60s rocking and raving. Great band, great poll, and great images!

Thank you Moka!

Middle Aged Folks putting on Let's Get Fucked Up

Garbageman is their leanest manifesto on how to live! My #1. Had no idea it would beat Human Fly, but I figured it would be top ten. Surprised and happy how well this spans their career, even if I didn't vote for anything post 80s. They're a band with just a few iconic numbers, but so much worthwhile stuff.

Thanks Moka!

Awesome results. Here's my full ballot:

Songs:
1. Human Fly
2. Garbageman
3. New Kind of Kick
4. She Said
5. Thee Most Exalted Potentate of Love
6. The Way I Walk
7. TV Set
8. Rockin’ Bones
9. Voodoo Idol
10. You Got Good Taste
11. Goo Goo Muck
12. Fever
13. The Strangeness in Me
14. Caveman
15. Surfin’ Dead
16. Call of the Wighat
17. People Ain’t No Good
18. What’s Inside a Girl?
19. Shortnin’ Bread
20. Primitive

Albums:
1. Off the Bone/Bad Music for Bad People (tie)
2. Smell of Female
3. Psychedelic Jungle
4. RockinnReelininAucklandNewZealandXXX
5. Songs the Lord Taught Us

I’m sure you’re all acquainted with William Shatner’s cover of Garbageman, which is bonkers:

https://youtu.be/FJEc-KPnIxI

Oh wow. For all my talk of weird semi-strategic voting, I still selected all but 1 or 2 of the top dozen. Nice!

My ballot

1. Garbageman
2. She Said
3. Save It
4. Human Fly
5. Thee Most Exalted Potentate of Love
6. Green Door
7. The Way I Walk
8. Cornfed Dames
9. What's Inside A Girl
10. Green Fuzz
11. Shortnin' Bread
12. You Got Good Taste
13. How Far Can Too Far Go?
14. Call of the Wighat
15. Beautiful Gardens
16. Primitive
17. TV Set
18. Lonesome Town
19. Bikini Girls with Machine Guns
20. Tear It Up

Albums
1. Off the Bone
2. Smell of Female
3. Date with Elvis
4. Psychedelic Jungle
5. Purple Knif Show (barring that, Songs the Lord Taught Us)

Finally read through the thread properly. Awesomeness. The Cramps rarely occur to me as a favourite beat combo, but that's insane as the recordings are so satisfying. The incentive to get cramped anew was appreciated.

Thanks for all your work Moka. Not least the fabulous imagery!

B's list (but not the B-List):

1 Human Fly
2 Can’t Find My Mind
3 I Was a Teenage Werewolf
4 Green Fuz
5 Sunglasses After Dark
6 Primitive
7 Good Taste
8 Kizmiaz
9 Lonesome Town
10 The Creature from the Black Leather Lagoon
11 I’m Cramped
12 Goo Goo Muck
13 The Mad Daddy
14 I Can’t Hardly Stand It
15 Surfin’ Bird
16 Rockin’ Bones
17 Garbage Man
18 Drug Train
19 All Women Are Bad
20 Uranium Rock

1) Human Fly
2) Goo Goo Muck
3) Sunglasses After Dark
4) You’ve Got Good Taste
5) New Kind Of Kick
6) Fever
7) The Most Exalted Potentate Of Love
8) I’m Cramped
9) Garbageman
10) Let’s Get Fucked Up
11) Faster Pussycat
12) I Was A Teenage Werewolf
13) The Way I Walk
14) Domino
15) Green Door
16) The Crusher
17) Shortnin’ Bread
18) She Said
19) Can Your Pussy Do The Dog
20) Route ’66

1) Songs The Lord Taught Us
2) Smell Of Female
3) Psychedelic Jungle
4) A Date With Elvis
5) Fiends Of Dope Island

Thanks for the poll...I voted for my favourites from 40 years ago. They're just one of those bands that, while I know why I loved them then (captured perfectly by Robot A. Hull's Creem review of Songs the Lord Taught Us), is long gone for me.

1. "Sunglasses After Dark"
2. "I Can't Hardly Stand It"
3. "Garbageman"
4. "New Kind of Kick"
5. "TV Set"
6. "Domino"
7. "Strychnine"
8. "Green Fuz"
9. "Goo Goo Muck"
10. "Green Door"

Seems my only selection to miss the 50 was "What's Behind the Mask?"

I'm guessing "Zombie Dance" was the Spotify favourite that received no votes here?

I misspoke! The song I was thinking was “Surfin Dead”. I had said it didn’t get a single vote but just checked and it did. It was our #59. “Zombie Dance” was our #60.

But yes. Both “Surfin Dead” (7th most popular on Spotify) and “Zombie Dance” (9th most popular) while both had single votes in here they weren’t very enthusiastic at all resulting in them missing from our top 50.

Flamejob is the only Cramps album not available in my country (no idea why) so maybe the Spotify top 20 varies from my country to other countries.

I have to notice how noone voted for songs from “Big Beat from Badsville” and “Fiends of Dope Island”. Spotify does have “Like a Bad Girl Should” from the former as their #15 most popular song.

I had never heard Fiends before checking it out while doing this poll. Really didn’t like it much.

It's interesting how a lot of people seem to grow out of The Cramps, and I don't just mean people mentioning it here as I have noticed it out in the wider world in general. It feels as if they are quite out of fashion currently. I don't listen to them a whole lot but when I do or when I (until recently) heard them played loud I would still get that same visceral thrill I did when I first heard them.

Flamey-shirt rockabilly subculture got so ossified and annoying in the 2000s, with Gen X/Guy Fieri/Betty Page/Pulp Fiction cliches, complete with a veneer of reactionary politics (Exene and Zoom from X being the highest profile manifestations...) that it may be a while before the fundamentals the Cramps gets re-explored. The band itself has the generous kink of the B-52s, but a lot of their followers did not.

Or maybe they won't get re-explored. The band that's made the best garage rock album of the year, LA Witch, played at this Cramps tribute last night

https://kathyvalentine.com/2020/10/26/upcoming-halloween-cramps-tribute/

The rest of that bill is olds. Did anyone watch?

One of the things that disappointed me about Flamejob when it came out was that I'd already dug up the obscuro track "Sinners", so even then, the culture they created was catching up with them. But I can't imagine ever drifting far from these records. They were just so transformative for me.

I didn't vote in this because I really only know Bad Music for Bad People and Stay Sick, but reading through the thread has inspired me to fix that.

As penance for my ignorance, I listened to the entire Miles Copeland episode of the Lefsetz podcast to see if he had any Cramps stories I could relate here, but it was about 5% Wishbone Ash, 5% the Go-Go's, and 90% The Police.

The podcast No Dogs in Space has this deep three-episode show on the Cramps that has plenty of IRS dirt, and a lotta details I didn't know. Never really occurred to me that Lux was old enough to have played in an original artyfacts Nuggets band, but it just took until 1980 to get an album out.

1972:

https://dangerousminds.net/content/uploads/images/made/content/uploads/images/luxivyhippies1bb_465_469_int.jpg

Love that pic.

Here's a great collection of pre-Cramps Lux and Ivy photos (with a couple other members thrown in there):

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?vanity=IvyTheCramps&set=a.496846107045336

The one of Bryan is great. Nick just looks like Nick.

The podcast No Dogs in Space has this deep three-episode show on the Cramps that has plenty of IRS dirt, and a lotta details I didn't know. Never really occurred to me that Lux was old enough to have played in an original artyfacts Nuggets band, but it just took until 1980 to get an album out.

― Julius Caesar Memento Hoodie (bendy), Friday, November 6, 2020 2:58 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Thanks for that! I really like Marcus Parks but can't stand Henry Zebrowski. It was cool to hear Marcus and his wife enthusiastically and knowledgeably banter about music history.

This has probably been posted elsewhere, but seemingly not in a Cramps thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99VB2UEeOyM

My friend Peter, who (along with Robot A. Hull's Creem review of Songs) got me onto the Cramps), seems blasé; another friend, who doesn't really like the Cramps, considers their cover inferior to the original anyway.

I love it--they may even land on Billboard's Top 100, apparently, which is almost unthinkable.

(In his first close-up, her dance partner even looks a little like Lux.)

my 12 year old stepdaughter is Wednesday obsessed and now digs The Cramps because of this scene. i kept waiting for a hard edit but we got the whole song.

sadly it seems Lady Gaga is the one benefitting as it went viral on Tik Tok but ousting The Cramps in favour of a Gaga song. Bah!

I'm happy that Ivy might see some money, good for them (also the scene is great, have not watched the show but I will at some point)

there are some truly astonishing live videos of the 1981-era Cramps doing "Goo Goo Muck", check YT

i love this one, with Kid -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g17I907BAFw

(xxpost) Meaning they substituted a Lady Gaga song over the same scene? Lady Gaga's fine, but that makes no sense at all--boo.

xp yes that's the one

yes! or did a recreation of the scene using Lady Gaga.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2022/12/06/netflixs-wednesday-dance-goes-viral-with-the-wrong-song/?sh=ce2263e5c416

x post

xp yes that's the one

although i always thought the audience are oddly tame, but of course most of them are probably hearing it for the first time.

goo goo muck is still doing pretty well, it was the top trending song on tiktok over the past week

Interesting fact about their songwriting credits: Lux and Ivy wrote all their songs together, and neither of them ever co-wrote with anyone else.

Link Wray helped write a few of their numbers.

I’ve just seen the scene across the room while some other family members were watching Wednesday.

https://fox5sandiego.com/entertainment/netflixs-wednesday-makes-60-year-old-goo-goo-muck-a-surprise-hit-but-who-gets-paid/

that's fascinating, thanks

Ever since Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 classic “Pulp Fiction” made obscure 1960s rock ‘n roll cool again

ooof!

well it is Fox News