In our last episode, you’ll remember that Poison Ivy had played bass guitar for The Cramps for the first time ever. With the band hitting the road in the wake of “A Date With Elvis” they now acquired their first full-time bass player, Candy Del Mar of Satan’s Cheerleaders, as our tale continues…

The Cramps – RockinnReelinInAucklandNewZealandXXX | 1987 – 2.5

This almost the full “A Date With Elvis” album as played live in New Zealand and released on the band’s own Vengeance label as a self-made bootleg. After all, The Cramps, ever since their legal embargo while in court with IRS records, had become one of the most bootlegged bands around. The sound quality is below that of the crisper “Smell Of Female” set, but the band add some unique material to round out the setlist in a conceptually coherent way. To wit, two Elvis Presley songs make their live Cramped debut; “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Do the Clam.” The former won’t make you forget the grinding John Cale version but the latter takes the single from”Girl Happy” [Elvis’ 1965 answer to the AIP “Beach” films] sports some fantastic bongo playing making one of the most lighthearted Cramps performances ever. The “Birdfeed” track is just four minutes of the crazed feedback solo from their show-closing “Surfin’ Bird” opus, that could stretch anywhere from 6-15 minutes, depending.

The Cramps – Stay Sick| 1989 – 3.5

One of the pains of being a Cramps fan was the sometime interminable wait between releases. Thought their lawsuit was old news, it nonetheless took four years for their followup to “A Date With Elvis” to materialize. When it did, Candy Del Mar was still in the group, making her the longest lasting Cramps subordinate after drummer Nick Knox. The leadoff single here was the ridiculously sublime “Bikini Girls With Machine Guns.” Apparently, the song was inspired by girlie videos sold at survivalist/militia gatherings juxtaposing the two vastly different stimuli for a paying audience. “God Damn Rock & Roll” manages to be a powerful riposte to the turgidly familiar Bob Seger chestnut. Lux extols instead the virtue of “the kind of stuff that don’t save souls.”

Several covers appear but one of my favorite all time cover versions by the band appears on this album. I don’t know what possessed them to try their hand at the traditional song “Shortening Bread” but I’m so glad they did! In his delivery, Lux manages to invest the ostensibly harmless song with every ounce of lurid innuendo possible. That is to say, he makes it sound absolutely filthy. Ivy’s no slouch either, her intro leads recall her idol Link Wry at his most powerful. She later proceeds to ripping off thick zesty solos that quickly leave the listener forgetting that this is a 110+ year old plantation spiritual. Elsewhere, Jimmy Rogers’ “Muleskinner Blues” [a.k.a. Blue Yodel #8] will quickly leave any recollection of Dolly Parton’s take on it far behind. Lux and Ivy are into the subgenre of “laughing songs” and this was the first that appeared on a Cramps record [but not the last.]

The band offer another psychedelic touchstone with the incredible “Journey To The Center Of A Girl,” which manages to graft wild ping-pong vocal panning onto Lux’s performance. The song is about, well, have a guess. The subject of sex shows up again on the closing cover of Carl Perkin’s amazing “Her Love Rubbed Off.” This one was so deeply steeped in innuendo, it’s hard not to imagine it as a Cramps original. Likewise, the gentlemanly Perkins seems hardly the source for such ribald material.

This album marked a welcome return for The Cramps and it got a wide release on Enigma/Capitol in the States so their stock rose considerably on its release. The band toured widely, coming to my Florida location for the first time ever while touring behind this album. It hit all of the familiar Cramps touchstones save for horror movie rock, which they seem to have left behind by this point in time. The band’s production was spot on and they took their fame to a wider level on the platform this album afforded.

Next: The Post-Nick years begin…