Joe (the Amphetamine Porky of Desire) Fernbacher, Creem, 8/86
The Cramps and their demonically hilarious brand of indocile rock ’n’ sonics, have always been an infectious, skull-munching, rockaholic bunch. From their early days on, they’ve put tongue in orifice and have never gotten off of that proverbial hayride to Purgatory.
Whether you tag them sleezeabilly, shockabilly, or even slimeabilly, as I’m sure a lot of those grease-pomaded ’billy purists out there in the manic wastelands of nostalgia-turned-schizophrenia-and-homicidal would call ’em, the Cramps consistently manage to confuse you every step of the way with their understandings and permutations of rock contradiction in all of its inherent glory.
A Date With Elvis (which is so new that it’s dedicated to the memory of Ricky Nelson, and I’m not even all that sure that this was done before or after his maxi atmosphere blow-out) starts out with an evil tremolo ode called “How Far Can Too Far Go?”--a minor sampler of summarized Cramp-philosophy that snarls and nips at your tenderloin mind with its unnerving question--and ends with “Aloha From Hell,” a tit-upping journey into what REALLY happens when Tipper Gore has had one too many Vodka Martinis with her designer valiums and joyrides the congressional trolley that links the various houses of gov’t, wailing out Lesley Gore’s Greatest Hits at the top of her besotted, bespattering lungs. Phew!!!
Sandwiched in between these two songs, like some psychosexual-tuna-inspired revision of Susan Brownmillers’ feminist tome, Against Our Will, are a series of Crampabilly “Bouncing Betty” mines (those are the ones that were designed specifically to disembowel rather than kill) that’d be far too intelligent for the Kleenex and zipper set of the Pussycat Theaters, but way too metaphorically raunchy for Playboy Channel (even though a Lux Interior, Ivy Rorschach sitcom about transsexual mailmen running a restaurant in Queens on HBO wouldn’t be entirely out of the question...).
Beginning with “The Hot Pearl Snatch”--a kind of internal/gangster gynecological/heist epic--rambling through the nihilistic folk balladry of “People Ain’t No Good,” the skin-magazine inspired, “What’s Inside A Girl?” and the frantically anthemic and beautiful “Can Your Pussy Do The Dog?,” A Date With Elvis is fully realized and probably has Natalie Wood spinning in her...
Side Two of this Crampagraphic excursion into the duller edges of the pornographic imagination begins with a Tolkien-via-Henry Miller glimpse into a mythical land called, “Kismiaz,” (get it?) a place that not only rivals but reviles such places as Atlantis, Gondwanaland, Hyperborea and Buffalo, NY. Next we’ve got “Cornfed Dames,” a Crampsemantic version of Jessica Lange’s Country movie, adorned as usual with a guitar/tremolo (Ivy really is the Supreme Dream of the Wavering Electric Inevitable) solo that’s gotta go down in the annals of pure stun-grunge/garage sentimentality. And this seafood platter of sonic-sensuality rounds out with “(Hot Pool Of) Woman-need,” a song that left me utterly speechless and describes in a much better fashion the LP’s cover (Ivy in a Lizard-skin bathing suit that’d give Morrison a hard-on even in rock’n’roll heaven) which in and of itself is worth at least a thousand or so words.
By way of closing down this grist-mill of words, let me just say that A Date With Elvis reaffirms what a good friend of mine once said: “Some days rock’n’roll makes you feel old, real old. Other days it makes you feel younger than yesterday.” This is definitely one of those younger than yesterday LPs. A Date With Elvis is already the best record of 1986, and I don’t think ANYONE’S gonna beat it out. Hotcha! A click of the heels, and a forced dream march into the valley of Ivy Rorschach’s thighs...
Get your own Free Home Page