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http://blog.nola.com/checkitout/2009/02/rip_lux_interior.html
New Orleans Times-Picayune R.I.P. Lux Interior
He was skinnier than Iggy, taller than Danzig, and paler than Robert Smith. Last night on WWOZ, Billy Delle called him "a great interpreter of American rock'n'roll songs."
He was Lux Interior, one of the most distinctive frontmen in punk rock. Whole now-decadent genres of pop music owe their existence to the band he led for more than three decades, the seminal psychobilly corndogs known as The Cramps. No-one sounded like him, though hundreds tried, and his quavering, quaking, booming, whinnying, insinuating voice was silenced forever yesterday.
Let's take a look back, shall we? The Cramps stayed active as a band for a long time through a lot of lineup changes, but for me, nothing can ever touch their early records: Gravest Hits, Psychedelic Jungle, and Songs the Lord Taught Us, all released between 1979 and 1981.
It's impossibly hot music. No bass whatsoever, two guitars that compete more often than complement, a drum kit that's between 1 and 1 1/2 actual drums, and Lux Interior. He made it all work, even if he hardly sounded like he was in the same building as the band sometimes.
Heck, the recording equipment may not have been in the same building as the band. It didn't need to be. The Cramps' first LPs and EP are some of the most ferocious, sexy, filthy, fun and exciting sounds you'll ever come across, and the key is the unearthly pipes of Lux Interior.
We'll miss you, Lux, you wonderful scumbag. Thank you for making such incredible music.
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From: http://www.dischord.com/news/307/2009/2/lux-interior-dies-at-60
Without Lux Interior and the Cramps there is a fair chance that Dischord never would have come into existence. Thirty years ago Jeff and Ian went to see the Cramps play at Georgetown University's Hall of Nations and came out of the gig inspired to form a band. By that summer they were in The Slinkees and by fall they were playing in The Teen Idles. A year later The Teen Idles created Dischord and released their posthumous record.
We are deeply saddened by the news of Lux's death and want to send our thoughts to his family.
He was beyond inspirational...
He was the garbageman.
Thank you, Lux.
Love. Dischord
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http://www.memphisflyer.com/memphis/Content?oid=oid%3A55348
Bad News for Bad People: RIP Lux Interior
Cramps front-thing Lux Interior died yesterday of heart failure. He was 60…something, depending on whose dates you believe.
The last time I saw Interior was some time in the late 1990s. He was sitting in a booth at the Arcade restaurant waiting on an early afternoon breakfast and looking as though he'd just walked off the stage. His black mascara was smeared and running down his face, making his long pale face look even more corpse-like beneath a shock of spiky dyed black hair. My wife and I, who had both grown up with Songs the Lord Taught Us, and Bad Music for Bad People, agreed that after years of trying, Interior, who'd strutted his ageless stuff at the New Daisy the night before, finally looked like an actual member of the undead.
The Cramps formed in 1973, following in the campy footsteps of rock and soul sideshows like Screaming Jay Hawkins, Screaming Lord Sutch, The Sonics ,and countless garage bands from the '50s and '60s that took their cues from cheaply made sci-fi films and horror comics. They mixed the transgender glam of the New York Dolls and Wayne County with the freight train rumble of Johnny Cash's Sun recordings and lots of '60s-era surf rock. Interior and his wife/band mate Poison Ivy called their music psychobilly. The style that has since been championed by Reverend Horton Heat and Southern Culture on the Skids as well as more mainstream acts like Junior Brown.
Although they broke out on the New York scene playing venues like Max's Kansas City and CBGBs The Cramps' first singles were recorded by Alex Chilton at Memphis' Ardent Studio, and their first LP Songs The Lord Taught Us was recorded by Chilton a year later at Sam Phillips' Phillips Recording Studio.
The Cramps popularized several psychotic romps penned by '50s rockabilly oddity Hasil Adkins effectively re-launching his career as a one-man band. Their pre-goth music had a darkly comic edge laced with outrageous sexual innuendo. Fewer artists have penned lyrics as hysterical as "Eyeball in My Martini," or as to the point as "bend over, I'll drive."
It's sad to think that there will never be another Lux Interior sighting at the Arcade. Well, unless the afterlife is actually like a Cramps song and we're all treated to a post-mortem performance of "Zombie Dance."
by Chris Davis