I arrived to see the Cramps at The Ogden right in the middle of the second opening band. Up on stage, sat one sweaty guy at the center of a gigantic homemade organ (as it you can make an organ, at home) , which was able to create the sound of a four man band in a few keystrokes. Behind him was what looked like a bullhorn, but bigger. More like an outside speaker used in firehouses to play the Doomsday message. Out of it came what his fingers were tapping. To his left, a young woman stood dancing, wearing a 40's era swing dance dress with an adorable felt poodle stitched on. In her hair was a pompom so large as to only precariously balance on the front of her hair. All she did was sing a few backup vocals and shake maracas like I've never seen them being shaked before.
I was a bit late in getting to the venue, since I had to drop of a Dan's skateboard and true to style, I had totally forgotten what street exactly he lived on, even though I had been to his house many, many times before. Jack gave me a ride from my apartment and was taking shots of Jack Daniels the entire time. He must of had taken shots well before he even came to my door. After I finally found the street (8th and Pearl, remember self, 8th and Pearl, I started taking shots and drinking coffee I had bought from a donut shop in good time. It wouldn't be worth going to see the Cramps without having two entirely opposite drugs rushing through my body.
The organist finished his set by lighting a torch that was housed in a large coffee can poked thouroughly with holes and placing this contraption on top of a turntable as he started to scratch to the beat the organ was making which he was also sampling right then and there.
After he finished the maraca girl and him started a puppet show to the left of the organ. I was wondering just what a mini, purple/pink colored shed was actually doing in the middle of the stage. Now I knew. The puppet show had to do with an alligator thing selling drug laced snowballs that turned insects into giants. It had a happy ending.
During the break between puppets and the Cramps, I found Jack, who had to go back to his car to put away the chain from his chain wallet, and alex, who I told about the show and hope he could make. alex was popping out of the crowd of finely dressed people, mostly in black, because he was wearing a bright orange shirt with a 70's era skateboarder carving away. He didn't much care.
Jack had also met up with Meghan, his girlfriend and Courtney, her cousin. Courtney is fucking hot, wearing a top that was just covered with zippers -
all unzipped.
I said hello and started zipping up the more naughty ones and told her how much of a bad bad, bad bad girl she was. She looked mildly annoyed. Jack caught the eye of one young woman and they started talking, this ended with Jack giving her his record store business card. I congratulated Jack in the exchange of digits. Jack is an asshole, you can ask him, but it took balls to make a move on a woman while being within feet of his current girlfriend. I think the only thing that's stopping me from trying for Courtney is that Jack will actually succeed in breaking Meghan's heart and I'll look like an asshole, completely by association.
I told alex that I was, in fact, going to find my dream girl tonight, and started scanning around. I immediatley picked out this small girl, head shavened wearing a million studded bracelets and a Death To The Pixies t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off. It's the same graphic that I have in poster and t-shirt form. I started talking to her in Complete Idiot mode. "Hey, HEY!", (I learned this move from Dan, who could, and does get a new girl every week), "Do you like the Pixies?" She really tried her best to ignore me, but then started conversing with me, or should I say, tried to fight me. This was going no where, so I started talking to another girl to her right. She was much taller and much prettier with short bleached blonde hair cut so all the hair goes towards her face. She has a tattoo of a winged lion on top of her right collarbone and I enjoyed looking at it and talking to her. She thought I was staring at her breasts. They were immaculate breasts, but I was, in fact, looking at the tattoo.
Courtney started pulling me back from her and calling a cock block on me. A bit out of line if you ask me, perhaps she has something for me? Only in dreams I guess. I took it easy, knowing a way to stop her from getting in my way. I whipped out my super small notebook and began to draw her. People do not appreciate you drawing them without their permission, it's a self confidence thing and no one in my age group seems to have any confidence.
Showing her the picture that I drew of her, Courtney told me, "I look like a guy, you suck", and that was the end of her. But Courtney now wanted me to draw her. She looked drunk and was having a hell of a time keeping her eyes open, so that's how I drew her. She suprisingly also didn't enjoy my masterful rendering of the female subject, but I managed to show everyone and I mean everyone around the two drawings. Everyone laughed, mostly at me.
I then went back to the bleached blonde haired girl I was talking to and asked if I could draw her. I forget exactly how she answered, probably something like, "Do I have a choice?!", and I was quickly to work. I was only able to draw her simply, as the Cramps took the stage.
Now, I've seen some screwed up things before, I've seen people fall and have bones pop out of their skin, I've seen people continually throw up, I've seen someone bellyflop from a height of 50 feet, I've seen Topeka Kansas;
nothing compares to a Cramps show.
Here you have Lux Interior, he's got to be at least 50, looking like he should have died of a terminal disease last week. On stage he wears black vinyl pants and shirt, with a small, frightenly pretty belt. The pants are tight, tight enough to see a major package. His hair is dyed black and his front teeth were knocked out... well no one really knows when, not even him. They seem to have been replaced by gold substitutes. He starts singing a song written by a 60's era garage band whose members were no more the fifteen years old at the time of their first recording. With all this gruesome horrorshow, there's something very dainty about his movements, it may be that he can slip in the word, "Pussy" into each and every song or he's really just out there in terms of regular consciousness.
Poison Ivy, the lead guitarist is almost as old as Lux, but still wears go-go outfits. She came on stage and turned toward the back of the stage and picked up her guitar without bending her knees. My God, it turned me on, at least. Woman that old shouldn't be able to do that, but there you go.
The Cramps played their set, perhaps 3 songs were originals of theirs, the rest were covers from 60's and 70's bands that you've never heard of and some I've never heard the originals of. Lux was clearly and true to his character out of it, "This songs is dedicated to the people who know this song, it's...", Thunk! (hits himself with the mic), "dedicated to you... this song". He would say, "This is a song from our new album... whatever it's named", then end the song and go, "Oh wait, that was a song from [ some obscure garage band], this is our song", and ramble right into it. Fucking great. Before starting one song about space aliens, he told everyone that if we come in contact with a space alien, that we should take out our battle axe from our trusty holdster and hit the alien right here, as he pointed to the top of his head. It really doesn't get much better than that.
Right before the encore, Lux whipped on a black wrestling mask, and went into a awesome cover of The Novas tune, "The Crusher" and Jack and I went wild. Jack has the original records of almost every band the Cramps have covered, it's quite respectable. The whole place had the excitment of a mental hospital during a breakout. You could tell Lux could never do anything else but this, he was just too too perfect for the part of "fucked up lead singer of a band that writes songs about sex and monster movies".
The Cramps left the stage before the encore and I looked around for bleach blonde hair girl. I planned to give back the picture of her, cause I thought it would make her smile. I saw her and remembered where she was and waited for the encore.
Lux and Poison came out, Posion did the same move to get her guitar and I made everyone watch with me. Some were absolutely grossed out. I got turned on again. They started a 20 minute long rendition of, "Surfin' Bird", by The Trashmen. It's usually like a 2 minute song. The time was taken up with Lux putting the monitors that were on stage together and attempting to climb on top. Everytime he did, he found his mic was broken, or should I say, he had broken the mic just before.
I think the first occasion of the mic and stand being completely obliterated was when he bent the stand absent-mindedly and then tried to stick the whole thing in his pants. It didn't fit, but he managed to flash the entier crowd. I was one person away from the stage. By the forth mic and stand later, he gave up for some unknown reason and tried to climb one of the amps. That didn't work either, so he grabbed Poison Ivy's hair and tore it off! It was just a wig, and Poison Ivy was exposed with her real hair, which totally perplexingly, looked exactly the same as her wig.
Lux put on the wig and danced on stage, drinking wine and passing the bottle to Poison. Poison Ivy started to take off her high heeled, cheetah printed boots, only to throw them at Lux, who proceeded to turn them inside out and lick them. This all went on for another good ten minutes, with the bass player and drummer playing the same riff over and over, both looking into the distance, wondering how they got mixed up with this whole thing.
They ended surfing bird with a band when Lux stepped backwards and fell into the drumkit. They all left the stage. I took out the drawing of the girl, wrote on the backside, "Thanks for letting me draw you!", and perhaps even my number. I folded it, found the girl and gave it to her. I went to the front of the Ogden, bought a sticker, met up with Jack to get a ride home and collapsed on my couch, which I'm sleeping on all the time now, for some unknown reason.
It's been awhile since I've seen a performance where the band actually looked larger than life. If the Cramps are still alive, I'll be at their next show yelling and screaming and hitting people and dancing, just like that night.
