what's inside a skirl?

Here's how it happened. You remember, because you are nothing but avid students of the skirblog, so references to past posts, esp. posts from only a few weeks ago illuminate little bulbs of recognition, like when I was last goin' on about Link Wray and the Cramps and all that...

Ok, so I thought the Link Wray would do it for me, and my man, MLV (new Gearhead is out. Dig it here) made me the XLNT Link Wray CD of not 22, and certainly not 24 Link Wray tunes, but the perfect 23. And I listened and dug heavily, but something was still nagging at me, and it turns out my goo goo was low on muck of all things. Yep, seemed my green fuzz was depleted, my bones not quite rockin'; my bird, sadly not the word. Yes, I was suffering from an acute lack of Lux and Ivy, (and Nick and many fine guitarists, but most of all Bryan Gregory (d.2001, heart attack) and Kid Congo. (C'mon... "Bryan Gregory" was the best name that guy could come up with. His real name was probably Merck Montclaire and he changed it to be different...): the Cramps, and it originally took a few loud, fuzzy chords from the Kills (saw 'em Sat. night at the horrible Slims in downtown SF. My old co-hort S..Sellars Nazzal joined me, and the two of us felt a little like the Kills' parents hanging out, proud of our kids. We still rock, kids. (and we both have kids who may one day rock) And so did the Kills rock. Far from their cool cool persona, they worked at making live music. Mr. Hince was drenched in sweat from thrashing and slicing away on his magically in tune guitar. And there are few things better right now than Allison Mosshart's hair, which hides her kinda scary expressions and beautiful wailing. They put on hell of a show.), who play a few Cramps-like chords on the song, "Midnight Train" which linked me to Link Wray, but it turns out it was always the Cramps! skeletons in many of our closets, and despite myself I realized I was cravin' and nothing short of full blown Crampdom. So you may not wanna talk to me right now. Nor read me either. Cause I'm... Cramped. 

How does somebody, some blog, discuss the Cramps in the year 2008? When the Cramps have been around longer than just about any band in your life, but unlike the Tubes, The Who, Joy Division, etc. are still puttin' out records and playing shows? When everything that could possibly be written about them has been written. But we don't believe that here at skirblog, inc. We know that there are always fresh bugs under any rock...

There from the first exalted cassette tape, bequeathed upon me, I'm pretty sure by ol' G. Kostelich (get hip, y'all), consisting of: side a) Songs the Lord Taught Us; side b) Psychedelic Jungle. This lethal combo was like being issued your basic uniform and weapons at boot camp in the Culture Wars. In the early '80s, coming into punk rock, having missed the first late '70s wave, you needed certain foundations to prepare you: Ramones, Television, Germs, Suicide (who the Kills often remind me of, not literally, but there is a shared spirit there), etc. and this tape of the Cramps was one of them. The Cramps didn't necessarily shock nor rewrite reality for me.  They sounded like they'd always been there, I mean, I did after all own Bobby "Boris" Pickett and the Crypt  Kickers 12" LP, Monster Mash, which I'd purchased with my paper route money (I don't know if you want to imagine me as a paper boy. I think I did a pretty good job of it. It enabled me to buy my own first stereo, the complete Who and Deep Purple catalogues up to that point as well as some odd 7" singles like: Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein;" Hot Butter, "Popcorn;" Queen, "Killer Queen;" etc.), so it made perfect sense to me that the Cramps did what they did. There was a niche to fill and it needed attention. Listen, "Human Fly" had to be made, if not by the Cramps, then by somebody else, believe me.

This is not a far fetched notion either, as it came to light later, most of the Cramps early recordings were actually *gasp* covers. Really. "Goo Goo Muck" was a cover. "Garbage Man," (which has one of the scariest, heaviest, most evil and beautiful rhythm guitar things going on in its background...) was a cover. Some of you knew this from the beginning. Some of you, like I failed to do, took your Mark E. Smiths seriously and listened to Link Wray every Saturday.  Or were, like Lux and Ivy were purported to be, serious obscure record collectors, and knew all the novelty tunes, weird one-off's and deep, dark vinyl ephemera. You can hear what the Cramps heard, albeit a lot less scratchy I'm imagining, on the now six record collection called "Born Bad." which has culled the original songs from whence the Cramps poached, and others from whence they were merely inspired. I'll tell you this: they, the Cramps, were fucking geniuses. Just listen to the original "Rockin' Bones," by Ronnie Dawson, a very up-tempo, rockabilly number sung in falsetto, (or maybe Dawson was really a  woman.. see album cover on right), subject matter slightly morbid in a campy fun kind of way. Which is where the Cramps re-working, slowing it way down, adding the balls, the volume and the electricity, is still campy and fun, but now also kinda menacing and thrilling and like it was probably supposed to be, even though they didn't write it. Weird huh?. And its all good (bakery inc.).

And we haven't even started talking about their personae, their show, their stance, their freakin' names for gods sake. The Gearhead dude said the other day that arguably "Lux Interior" is the single best punk rock pseudonym ever thunk up, and who's gonna argue that one? Lee Ving? Jello Biafra? No one, that's who. Then you got the interesting case of Ms. Poison Ivy Rorschach, who still fascinates and mystifies, (you can spend hours, as I have done, watching and re-watching their legendary Urgh, a Music War performances and the infamous Napa State Hospital footage on yinztube, where Ivy just stands there chewing gum and looking rather disgusted at the antics of Mr. Interior as he fellates the microphone and writhes around on the floor, his nasty leather half-pants barely covering him; and she, Ivy, in glitter stretch spandex and giant hair, barely moves. But she's brandishing her guitar, and chewing gum and looking utterly bored, yet each time her hand comes down, its a whip crack of high reverb, overblown twanging, domintrix strumming, cool. Chewin' gum.), and that's all well and good (bakery, inc.) and interesting, but not as interesting fresh and ass-kicking as their music sounds to me right now. As early as 1978 they were stripping things down, eschewing bass players, as is all the rage today, and keeping things very minimal,  hitting a clean snare hard and exactly when it needed to be hit. Funny how parodic and indebited to Elvis all of it is, yet for a non-Elvis fan like myself, exists simultaneoulsy without referencing Elvis at all. 

But what some people miss is that outside of the Halloween schtick, the Cramps, in their own garbled, heavily mediated (OK and medicated) way, managed to say a thing or two about... stuff.  (acutally they say: Life is short... and filled with stuff... don't know what for... I aint had enough...) and actually have a stance.  This is crazy because its subtle, and the Cramps are maybe the least subtle band ever next to KISS. Yet a song like "The Way I Walk," makes the same powerful statements about non-conformity that any of their punk contemporaries made, more in the way they play it then the way they say it. Yes the song is a cover, and is already about non-conformity, but the re-working the Cramps give it plays the theme out in the flesh. Lux and Ivy did walk the walk. Never broke character. The way the lived was just the way they lived. (Zen?)

My favorite lyric right now is from "What's Inside a Girl," oddly feminist in its way, and devotional:

Well there's some things I just can't swallow -- mama told me that girls are hollow.
Uh-uh...What's inside a girl? Something's telling me there's a whole nuther world.

I have to agree with Lux on this one. There is a whole nuther world, a universe really inside a girl, and the day I understood this, and also understood that its OK that I will never understand it, was the day things got clearer in my life.

Sound a bit zennish? Maybe. Maybe not. The Buddhists amongst you (and I know you're out there) will disagree. And agree. (we could go on like this forever). I will say that I've been dabbling in the zennastic arts of late, thanks to the wonderful women G&C (Za Goblets), who facilitated initiation rites to those less centered, myself being one of them. We got this priest, see? And he rules, ok? and he's teaching/showing us the basics. There aint a lot of complicated specs to this. Basically you try to sit still for x amont of time, and try hard not to think specific thoughts, or think thoughts about not thinking thoughts, or hear Cramps or Kills or Link Wray songs playing in your head, even when you've just come back from Kills show and their waves have been etched into your wavy folds. This is harder than it sounds. And easier. (see...)  I can tell you I may not fathom the universe inside a girl, but I do know that the skib's legs and buttox are def. not meant to sit on the floor cross legged for x amount of time. There are helpful cushions involved, all beginning with the letter z: zafus and zabutons made I believe in Zebulon and Zenda. You got your zazen sitting at your zendos and your zebras and zithers. I'm not gonna say too much about this other than its great, but I couldn't tell you why, other then what's inside a skirl? We may one day find out..

If you can't dig me you can't dig nothin'. Do you want the real thing, or are you
just talkin'? do you understand? I'm the skirblog man.

Comments

[LaVella]

Good to know what you've been up to when the sun goers down and the moon comes up...