Formed in 1976 by husband and wife duo Lux Interior and Poison Ivy, The Cramps pioneered a ghoulish new brand of rock 'n' roll known as psychobilly. They took all the best elements of rockabilly, garage and surf music and steeped them in fetishism, Horror, 50's kitsch and B-movie clichés.
They covered rockabilly standards and masterfully subverted them with lashings of leather, blood curdling screams and the eerily distinctive sound of the psychobilly guitar.
With one foot in the past and one foot in the rock 'n' roll apocalypse they resurrected ? Mark & the Mysterians garage classic 96 Tears in the monstrous form of Human Fly...
...and turned Fever, originally made famous by Peggy Lee, into a haunting graveyard anthem.
With song titles like Bikini Girls With Machine Guns and I Was A Teenage Werewolf The Cramps inhabited a lusty, transgressive, go-go dancing world.
Unfortunately, lead singer, Lux Interior passed away in February of this year but I'm sure that if you look hard enough you'll still be able to find his spirit gyrating at a Zombie Dance somewhere this Halloween....
I'm looking at my gig notes from last night. When I say 'notes' I mean a few words scribbled on a Ticketmaster envelope. Across the top of the envelope my Felice Brothers gig companion has written 'Born fifty years too late'. Her argument is that this is rehashed Dylan 'for the kids' and that The Felice Brothers don't speak from the heart but instead draw upon tired old clichés of whiskey soaked men on the run. Now although lead singer, Ian Felice, has a voice more than a little similar to Dylan's and the influences of The Band, Woody Guthrie and Townes Van Zandt are all patently clear, I think there is certainly a place for The Felice Brothers in the here and now.
My friend argues that Ian Felice does not delve into himself in his writing. She explains that he is simply living out tired old outlaw fantasies. He writes lyrics such as, 'my teenage daughter’s knocked up' and what would a scrawny twenty year old know about such things?
Conversely, what I love about The Felice Brothers is their ability to deliver lyrically rich songs which address themes that are universal and timeless. Yes there are the usual references to poverty, prison and infidelity but when do those themes stop being relevant? As long as life involves struggle there will always be a place for music like this. Frankie's Gun is a deathbed song about a man who has been shot by his friend, Frankie. Clearly, this is a fictional narrative but it's rich with idiom, 'There's ten or twenty dollars and there ain't no lesser, that's for to take my sister to the picture show.'
and some brilliantly evoked detail about the friendship between the two men,
'Frankie, you're a friend of mine, got me off a bender after long-legged Brenda died'
They are five piece outfit with only two actual Felice brothers. Ian Felice is on lead vocals and lead guitar and James Felice is on accordion and keyboard. They are joined by David Turbeville on drums, a man called Christmas on bass and Greg Farley, a slightly over enthusiastic Marky Mark-esque character, on fiddle and washboard. Their performance at The Shepherd's Bush Empire was passionate and energetic. They were joined on stage mid-way through their set by support act (and Ian Felice's best friend), the wonderful A.A. Bondy.
Perhaps the set was a tad long and could have been broken up with a bit more interaction with the crowd and a more spaced out encore but they delivered an astounding array of songs from their vast catalogue. The set included the blush inducing Ballad of Lou the Welterweight which my friend strongly objected to on the basis of its crude content and lack of relation to personal experience but which I love because of the sepia drenched image of a fallen boxer it evokes in my mind,
'Before the bell would ring he had a way like Errol Flynn as he sauntered to the ring'
They ended with a cover of Two Hands by Townes Van Zandt. This choice seemed perhaps a little too earnest but it definitely ended the gig on an uplifting note.
A.A. Bondy's support set was one of the highlights of evening. He wandered on to the stage, with his harmonica and guitar, sleeves rolled like a young Springsteen. In a dreamy state, eyes barely open he began with the gorgeous Mightiest of Guns
The rest of the set was filled with beautiful and fragile songs such as When The Devil's Loose. At times the floating quality of the music transformed The Shepherd's Bush Empire into a ship on choppy waters. He joked about Alabama having no culture and explained that when people asked whether he'd been to The Tate on his London visit he replied,
'We just sit in our hotel room and watch YouTubes'
Monday night saw me treading the beer soaked carpets of The Stags Head once more, for a transatlantic rock 'n' roll feast. On the bill were Hygiene, Rock 'n' Roll Adventure Kids, The Okmoniks and last but not least the formidable Nobunny
Forget about Thumper, Peter Rabbit, Bugs and all the other innocuous bunnies of last century. Those halcyon days are over people. Was it was myxomatosis that heralded the birth of a new breed of sinister rabbits? I don't know but Nobunny is certainly no huggable fluffy carrot muncher. Think Joey Ramone crossed with Donnie Darko wearing nothing but a pair of red underpants and you're starting to get the picture.
Taking to the stage in a mangy rabbit mask and the aforementioned red briefs Nobunny delivered a set of good old fashioned punk rock with liberal smatterings of garage and psychobilly. With tremendous hooks, brilliant drums and some sweet-ass riffs Nobunny transformed his audience into a whooping, beer soaked, crowd surfing mess.
There is definitely something about donning a mask that gives a man licence to put on a no holds barred performance and Nobunny certainly let rip. Like the Duracell Bunny gone bad he hopped, skipped and hollered and, at one point, he even placed the microphone down his red pants. The evening climaxed with an encore of I am a Girlfriend spliced with I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend by The Ramones.
Little is known of the elusive Nobunny apart from the fact that he hails from Tuscon, Arizona and cites The Ramones, Hasil Adkins and The Cramps as some of his influences but if last night is anything to go by we'll probably be seeing a lot more of him (literally).
I've been trying to make up my mind about Bat for Lashes for a while now. I feel like I should like her. After all, she is a quirky female artist with a great voice and some badass leotard and sequined cape combos, and yet, her performance last night at The Roundhouse has confirmed that I don't. There is something about her non-threatening brand of wholesome sexuality that I find incredibly irritating. I prefer my female artists with a little more fire in their bellies. I like dangerous women like Karen O, Debbie Harry and Patti Smith. Although there is no denying that Bat for Lashes (aka Natasha Khan) is extremely talented she lacks the unknown quantity that I look for in a female solo artist.
Prancing around the stage barefoot and covered in glitter, she behaves like a sixteen year old girl on the cusp of discovering her sexuality but she is, in fact, a twenty nine year old woman. It's as if she inhabits some kind of twee fantasy world where it's acceptable to use a phrase like 'spewing comets' as a sexual metaphor.
If she achieves stellar success, which I'm sure she will, I could see her riding on stage on life size My Little Pony. Everything about her is cutesy, quirky, girl next door and the songs just melded into one big blur mediocrity.
She's been compared to artists such as Kate Bush and PJ Harvey and the influences are clear but with sentimental lyrics like 'heaven is a feeling I get in your arms' and 'I found a home in your eyes' I get the impression that she's never been haunted by the hounds of love or ever had to throw her bad fortune off the top of a tall building. Everything is just too sweet and one dimensional and as much as I'd like to join her in her glitter dipped paradise, I'm afraid I live in the real world.
I remember the first time I heard Debaser, Kim Deal's rumbling bassline combined with Frank Black's screaming vocals just made me want to explode. It was almost as if the feelings this song evoked in me were just too much to contain. I'm the kind person who gets obsessed with a song, listens to it ad nauseam and then goes off it but I have never tired of Debaser and it still the one song that is always guaranteed to get me on the dance floor. In spite of my undying love for the Pixies, Sunday's gig at the SECC was the first time I'd ever seen them live. The first time around my eleven year old self was too busy listening to the Shoop Shoop Song. When they reformed my adult self felt sceptical about paying to see a band (with a well documented history of not being able to stand each other) blatantly milking the cash cow. However, when they announced a tour in honour of Doolittle's twentieth birthday I decided it would be down right rude not to go along and celebrate this fantastic album's conception.
Sunday's show opened with footage from the film that inspired the song Debaser, Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali's Un Chien Andalou. I could hear mumbles of 'what the hell is this?' from the crowd but I think it was more a case of fascination than disgust. The dark and surreal visuals put the music into context and set the scene brilliantly. I knew that they would be playing Doolittle in its entirety so I expected them to go straight in to Debaser but instead they started with a Doolittle related b-side Dancing The Manta Ray. This was a great way to inject an element of surprise into the performance as playing an album in order definitely lacks the anticipation department.
After a few more b-sides Weird At My School, Bailey's Walk, Manta Ray they finally launched into Doolittle. The set went by in a flash because I was effectively just listening to an album that I already know inside out. The performance was slick but as is often the case at big arena gigs, I could hardly see the band and found myself watching the visuals on the screen instead of watching the barely visible band. I had a sinking feeling that I could have saved myself thirty quid and listened to the album at home. There were a few quips from Kim but Frank didn't speak to the crowd once and they just plowed through the album with little variation from the original recording.
Although, I was feeling content about having finally seen the Pixies live I was definitely not as elated as I hoped I would be. I found myself desperate to hear songs from Surfa Rosa and Come on Pilgrim so I was a tad disappointed when they returned for an encore of Wave Of Mutilation (UK Surf) and Into The White. I mean, Wave of Mutilation is a great song but how many versions of it do you need in one set?
What I didn't anticipate was the second encore. This was where my beloved Pixies really delivered the goods. I expected them to take the cash and run so when the strode back on stage the most I was hoping for was Where is my Mind? Instead they played, The Holiday Song, Nimrod's Son, Caribou, Broken Face, Something Against You, Vamos, Isla De Encanta and finally, Where Is My Mind? The second encore completely blew me away and hearing my unexpected favourites Caribou and Broken Face live finally soothed my cynical soul. After twenty years Frank can still scream like tormented male banshee and Kim Deal is still the coolest woman ever to hold a bass guitar.
