TS: The Cramps vs. Gun Club vs. X.............

I say cramps

why?

Cramps for being fucking excellent for a really long time.
Gun Club for being super fucking excellent for a very little while.
X for being cool old people.

X>Cramps>Gun Club

Cramps put on a more, er, entertaining show. Watching Lux Interior climb a speaker column while wearing leather bikini briefs and red high-heel pumps remains one of the more memorable moments in my life.
Song/album-wise, however, I have to go with X.
Going to see X next week in Boston, actually. Billy Zoom is still a badass.

after 20 years of listening to each of them, I spin up the cramps more often than X. gun club's the also-ran in this bunch.

at this point it's likely that I will never ever get tired of listening to bad music for bad people. I still pop in X every once in a while but when I hear "garbageman" it's just as good as the first time. neither time nor experience can erase the bottomless sleazy splendor of the cramps and it is a beautiful mystery.

cramps vs. misfits, on the other hand, that would be a tough one.

Totally impossible. Three way tie.

Cramps, no question. Seeing the Gun Club play Edinburgh was incredible, and 'Fire of love' was one of the first grown-up LPs I ever bought, but I haven't played them for years. The Cramps are for life, and always for the first time.

X . . I know I've heard bands from Australia, Japan and the US called X, but can't remember much about any of 'em.

Going to see X next week in Boston, actually. Billy Zoom is still a badass.

saw them in chicago a couple months back, was sitting on the stage next to dj bonebrake, he's a fucking TON. billy zoom was phoning it in and not exactly hiding it. exene was pissed afterwards, not sure if it was at him exactly but she was not happy with the show.

being tough + tortured + badass is great but the cramps managed to be stupid + goofy + still badass which is a much harder trick to pull off. they're usually a millimeter away from being a novelty act yet there's something so twisted in their grooves that they can't be written off easily, particularly the early stuff.

I guess you could say X were better musicians, and the cramps were amatuerish by comparison... but the cramps knew this, and they took their lemons and made lsd anyway.

Bryan Gregory Forever

srsly

rip

gtr solo in "garbageman" is alltime fire in the darkness

somebody left the portal open

live vibe from the heart of the wormhole

love all three of these bands but fire of love is the best album by any of them

fire of love is the best album by any of them

Almost impossible to decide. I'll give it to X based on "Los Angeles" and consistency. Cramps and G.C. are right there though.

Cramps Cramps Cramps

Oh this is tough. The Cramps might win for that fucking mental instute DVD alone. But Crime And the City Solution had some of my favorite guitar players and some incredible songs. On the other hand, GARBAGE MAN. Oof.

X still haven't really hit me so I'll refrain from criticizing. :\

Gravest Hits is one the best records EVER.
And the Napa dvd is simply incredible.

And it's hard to top Human Fly and that one about being on TV. TV Set?

I might have to go with the Cramps here.

I borrowed Gravest Hits to BigLurks years ago and I don't remember if I got it back. I think I did and it's just buried somewhere now. Either way he had it for a very long time and I don't remember anything from it :(

Another vote for the Cramps. Just one of the most fun live bands of all time. And they turned me on to so much other stuff.

i spent a night watching cramps stuff on youtube and was in serious awe of how much coolness there was over such a long period. so many bands owe them money. same with gun club too in a way. though after mother juno i kinda lost interest. and i tried! i bought the dribs and drabs that came out after, but i never played them that much. pastoral hide and seek. lucky jim. mother juno is still great though. and everything that came before it too.

"Lonesome Town" and "Domino" are immense. And "Gravest Hits" had that great live photo on the back cover that summed up perfectly all I was searching in rock music.

That said, Gun Club were quite good too!

i probably like under the big black sun as much as fire of love when all is said and done. though i might like sex beat more than anything by anyone ever.

Cramps easy. I'm a fan of all three, but there's only one I had the DJ play at my wedding (Human Fly, if yr interested)

What's great about the Cramps is they'd also fit into the thread "TS: The Cramps vs. B-52s vs. Devo". Maybe even "TS: Cramps, Ramones, Motorhead". I feel like their reputation is at an ebb right now, but their approach (the past holds as much crazy as the now) got so many different subgenres rolling. Seems like most bands "with a vision" can be dismissed as novelty acts. They've got the biggest set of great recordings of any of these bands. And yeah, that Napa Hospital video!

I love X, and feel like they were the right band at the wrong time. To loud for the adults, too adult for the kids. I like the Rhino anthology better than any of their albums- they're really well served when you look at them from a distance.

Love the Gun Club, but their catalog isn't as deep as the others.

the cramps did the same thing a lot of punk/new wave bands were doing at the time - thrift store retro, 50s rockabilly, 60s surf. b-52s, devo (who added a dimension by acting out the 50s view of the future), x, gun club, dead kennedys (east bay ray owes dick dale a heap o' money), heartbreakers, misfits, the blasters.

I think this starts with the ramones, dressing like 50s drugstore punks, having a gimmicky "look" on the cheap. but the cramps invented the whole psychobilly schtick.

what separates the cramps is that the retro stuff wasn't just window dressing, they internalized it totally without turning into a cliche regurgitating musuem piece (e.g. the fuzztones or the mad daddys). probably due to this attitude:

The Cramps have since rejected the idea of being a part of a psychobilly subculture, noting that "We weren't even describing the music when we put 'psychobilly' on our old fliers; we were just using carny terms to drum up business. It wasn't meant as a style of music."

speaking of the mad daddys, how many times did I see this cover in a record store in the 80s without knowing this

However, in the meantime Lux and Ivy busied themselves by producing The Mad Daddys' Music For Men album (though credited as Teresa Mendoza, the album's cover model is Ivy).

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/o370595.jpg

in other news, cramps are apparently touring this year with sean yseult from white zombie on bass

Another great thing about the Cramps is that they've always been really upfront about name checking films, music (including non-rockabilly music) and other sub-cultural stuff that they love, and I'm sure that has spun off into benefits for artists who might otherwise have remained forgotten. I've lost count of the number of cool things I first heard of in an interview with Lux and Ivy. The long interview with them from the ReSearch "Incredibly Strange Music" book is a prime example. They're SERIOUS record collectors.

I have the first four X albums, and everything by the Cramps up till Smell Of Female, in my iPod, but I've never heard Gun Club. Where do I start, and (more importantly, I think) where do I stop?

definitely get fire of love. miami is good. the las vegas story is good. the death party ep is good. maybe get some early live thing. that will do you. i love mother juno, but it's a bit different from the early years.

'Fire of Love' is definitely the place to start. 'Mother Juno' is the one where they suddenly started sounding like the Cocteaus, right?

If I could be bothered, I'd do a poll on the "non-canonical" later Cramps albums, because I think they all have their moments.

soukesian, I was going to mention that lux + ivy are only matched by thurston + kim when it comes to lobbying on the behalf of their obscure influences, thanks for bringing it up.

I have the first four X albums, and everything by the Cramps up till Smell Of Female, in my iPod, but I've never heard Gun Club. Where do I start, and (more importantly, I think) where do I stop?

you should start by getting a date with elvis

just kidding, scott + soukesian otm

Nice to see all the love for the Cramps. Anyone know of a decent book or in-depth article about them? I've always been curious about them personally and their lifestyle.

Or maybe I don't want to know.

supposedly their early records were financed by ivy's dominatrix career in nyc

when a heroin addicted bryan gregory quit the band, he just drove off in their van with all their equipment and they never saw him again

I think there were a couple books in the 80s / 90s but I imagine they're out of print and hard to find now?

this is a fun read

http://members.aol.com/kmitch87/cramps.htm

I thought there'd be a more passionate defense of X here.

you know that clip of "jaan penechaan ho" shown during the opening credits of ghost world? I remember lux + ivy being interviewed (or guest hosting?) on a video show back in the late 80s / early 90s and they played that clip in a "this is what we've been watching a lot of lately" kind of way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRRgt_2Nfmc

This like Sophie's Choice. But as much as a LOVE Miami (and I do), the Gun Club cannot touch The Cramps nor X.

never saw the video of "garbageman" before

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVLpaiH2hbQ

youtube cramps binge in 5... 4... 3..

yeah, i went crazy one night. so much great live footage on youtube. later stuff too that was really good.

i love youtube gluttony sometimes. not that long ago i must have watched six hours of stranglers footage.

Time damn well spent.

return of the living dead was on tv the other night. "surfing dead" is so perfect a fit for that movie.

I'm trying to remember the last youtube k-hole I fell into...

oh yeah, morbid angel!

tough one. gun club are definitely in third place, but fire of love is great and "sex beat" and "she's like heroin to me" are even matches for anything in the others' catalogs.

x vs. cramps is way harder, but i think i've gotta go with x. they were sorta my intro to punk rock and los angeles and wild gift still just can't be beat, doggs. i LOVE manzarek's jerking off all over los angeles, and i'm a sucker for john/exene wailing and the whole tortured beat artist lovers thing. they rocked really hard and sharp, but they could be tender and beautiful (like on "white girl") and they wrote self-consciously "mature" music that wasn't annoying hung up on how mature it was. basically what it comes down to though is that there's just not a bum song to be found on those first few records.

cramps rule, "garbageman" and "new kind of kick" and "human fly" and all the records through psychedelic jungle are full of awesome shit. their stuff is so scuzzily psychedelic in this way that seems uniquely theirs (cramps ripoff bands usually do a good job of illustrating this) but they're more hit-or-miss for me and i think bryan gregory's departure took away a lot of what made them different.

I'm trying to remember the last youtube k-hole I fell into...

A ton of Wilko Johnson-era Dr. Feelgood clips

"Anyone know of a decent book or in-depth article about them?[The Cramps] "

Search: Ivy's obituary for Bryan. A fine piece of writing, which should still be online somewhere.

I've thought this through. I'm glad this wasn't a poll because the results - whatever they were - would probbaly shock me.

Still, I'd vote X by a nose, but I'd like to go on record saying that this woul have been one of the toughest ILM polls EVAH!!!!

All right, I checked out the first two Gun Club discs...they do absolutely nothing for me. The guitars are okay, but Pierce is a totally unappealing voice/frontman. I can't understand them being in this thread except for chronological reasons.

Kid Congo Powers was in both the Gun Club and the Cramps . . but not in X. So far as I know. He's been a busy, busy fella over the years, so nothing would surprise.

Gun Club had 3 classic records:fire of love,miami (their best imo), and mother juno.
Cramps had 2:"psychedelic jungle" (their masterpiece), "songs the lord tought us" and an endless number of records that sounds more or less the same.

so i guess Gun club is my answer, they were also more varied, and ill take Miami to a desert island i think.

Swimming against the ILM tide a bit here, but I love the Gun Club so much that I'd vote them ahead of the Cramps (not heard enough X to make a fair judgement). I think unperson highlights why GC are the third choice for many -- JLP's voice. I happen to love it, but I can understand somebody being turned off by the way he sings, well, flat really. To me, it always sounded feral and odd in a good way, but I can understand somebody finding it off-putting too.

JLP's voice is one of the things that make Gun Club special.
in Miami,though, he is less off-key, and has the great bass voice that is missing in the rest of GC catalouge.maybe Chris Stein is responsible for that i don't know.it's a perfect record anyway.

I've never been able to figure out why I love his voice so much. I mean, ordinarily, when someone sings off-key it's terrible. My sense is that he sings flat, but does he actually? (Someone who knows something about singing to thread... Dan Perry?)

To me, Pierce's voice is absolutely chilling, particularly on the live stuff, where it's probably at its most ragged. Pure anguish. The Death Party EP in particular reminds me of the intensity of the Birthday Party immediately prior to their implosion, rather than the rockin' vibe of the Cramps.

"I've never been able to figure out why I love his voice so much"

the answer lies in the uniqeness.it's a voice with character, that result an emotional impact. the same songs, would have less effect if sung by someone else (see Gun Club covers for example).
in short, the power of GC is 99% Pierce's songwriting and voice.

for posterity, poison ivy's obit for bryan gregory

Sadly, after 20 years of misinformation and misquotes regarding the Bryan Gregory chapter of the Cramps, here’s my one and only chance to directly express my feelings. While it’s true that Bryan didn’t actually play on some of the seminal recordings that are attributed to him (he wasn’t always present for Songs the Lord Taught Us), he could be a truly charismatic live performer when the spirit moved him — particularly in the CBGB/Max’s Kansas City days, when spirit was everywhere in the air. He wasn’t anything like the myth promoted by his record company and subsequently the press; the real Bryan had a kooky charm the public doesn’t even know about — the truth was far stranger than fiction. He and I shared a birthday, and we met on our mutual birthday on February 20, 1976. We were almost the same size and could fit into each other’s pants and shoes. We understood each other because we weren’t the boy/girl next door, and we’d both already been through a lot and knew how to hustle tooth and nail to survive. We could be our scary selves without horrifying each other. My fondest memory is of tripping on acid together in Central Park that summer. We were never quite able to sustain that high. Bryan’s creative forte was more visual than sonic — when we met him, he had just moved to New York to pursue a graphic-arts career. He loved art, jewelry making, decorating — I think it was the visual aspects of the Cramps that appealed to him most. Lux and I had come to New York in 1975 with a mess of songs and crude home demos and a plan to take over the world, but I think it was mostly our exotic looks and Flying V guitar that lured Bryan to join us. When we gave the guitar to him, he immediately decorated it with polka-dot price stickers and painted our name in fancy script on the case, and you know what? It looked hot! Bryan was more enigmatic and incongruous than imagination would allow. Once, in a packed coffee shop, he pulled a switchblade on a boothful of square businessmen who were snickering about him, but on another occasion he whined that he couldn’t leave his apartment because the neighborhood teen toughs followed him down the street teasingly singing “Sweet Child in the City.” A sense of adventure led him to let Lux dangle him upside down by his ankles from a 17th-floor high-rise window “just to see what it’s like,” yet he despised touring because of his fear and hatred of “foreigners.” He thought rockabilly was “goofy” but said we made it work for us “’cuz you’re so weird.” We had a brief, intense relationship, and I don’t think any of us knew what hit us. At one time we all wanted to be in a band that people were afraid of offstage. He was a true DMF — Detroit Motherfucker. On a soul level, the affair was over by 1979, after we started touring and recording regularly. Without a passion for and understanding of the fundamental forces influencing the Cramps, a combination of too much hard work, chemical haze and backstage leeches drove him to the next bright, shiny object in his path and a pursuit of so-called social relevance. I’ll always remember the high-flyin’ Bryan that few people had the privilege to know, before he stopped being a rocker and became a “rock star” . . . the way he walked, the way he talked, the way he rocked. - Poison Ivy

X :)

Thanks for digging that out Edward, though I'm pretty sure I've read a longer version somewhere.

The Cramps 'How To Make a Monster' CD double, which makes an honest release of a lot of much-bootlegged early live material, has a 28 page booklet chock full of autobiographical reminiscences by Lux and Ivy.

If that isn't enough, check out www.kidcongopowers.com for a link to the full story of a life in the rockin' business, as told to New York Night train in 2005, with scans of Mr. Powers' Cramps scrapbook for good measure.

Nick Knox>Bonebrake all day and every day.

Somewhere I have a cassette I recorded of the Gun Club @ Wolfgangs in SF, mid 80s? You can hear me and all my friends yelling "you can't sing" through the whole thing. They were brilliant. They did a wonderfully unfunky version of "Genius of Love".