CONCERT REVIEW: Cramps, Asbury Park NJ
- Al Muzer
The first-ever Jersey Shore (Asbury Park) appearance of The Cramps was one of those mind-warpin' time-travel highlights you're still talking about if you were lucky enough to witness - and're still kicking yourself over if you missed.
Proving once and for all that a life-long avoidance of the sun can keep you young and pale forever, coolly-detached, leather-clad, one-time dominatrix Poison Ivy Rorschach spewed up a continuous barrage of echo-laden surf-twang and super-fuzzed power chords while the frothing, fish-in-the-sand stage antics and dysfunctionally-erotic lyrics of Lux Interior had the crowd bouncing along furiously to the band's kitschy, junk-laden, slightly askew world view before you could say "It Thing Hard-On."
Kicking their enthusiastically performed set off with "Cramp Stomp" from their latest CD, Big Beat From Badsville (Epitaph), Lux, Ivy, drummer Harry Drumdini and bassist Slim (ex-Mad Daddys) Chance [the latter two are spittin' images of long-ago predecessors Nick Knox and Bryan Gregory] covered all stages of the band's 20-plus-year, trash-lovin' career with no special emphasis placed on the last two albums ( ...Badsville and 1994s Flamejob) and their full attention focused on making as much racket as possible.
Doing noisy justice to staples such as "Love Me," "Garbage Man," "I Was A Teenage Werewolf," "Sunglasses After Dark," "Creature From The Black Leather Lagoon," "God Monster," "Goo Goo Muck," " Naked Girl Falling Down The Stairs," "The Hot Pearl Snatch," "What's Inside A Girl?," "Ultra Twist," "TV Set," "Can Your Pussy Do The Dog?" and "Human Fly"; the band barreled through a loud, over-the-top, tunefully-obnoxious 19-song assault on all that is decent, rock-a-billy and right with the power, energy, vitality, noise and freakish sexuality of the Gravest Hits-era four-piece in full, pale-skinned bloom.
