Rock and Roll Is Dead

[Skummy]

...and here's why;

Lux Interior Dies

It might only be me and VP that actually care about this, but I'm genuinely gutted, he's one of my biggest influences, and The Cramps are one of my all-time favourite bands. If rockabilly didn't die with Hasil Adkins, it certainly has done now. I know I'm prone to bang on about pushing the limits of sound, and avant-garde experimentalism, and how rock and roll is bullshit - but when it's done right, and The Cramps did it better than just about anyone, it can't be beat. This is what it must have felt like when Elvis died.

[Summers]

Rock and roll isn't dead.

[tristy]

I think rock and roll died a long time before Lux passed on. Still, though, I've only heard a handful of songs by the Cramps, but what I heard certainly wasn't bad.

[MalaCloudy Black]

Yeah, I read about this last night. Sucks - I only had one Cramps album and it wasn't even a proper album, it was more like someone just zipped a shitload of Cramps songs up and threw it up online. I liked it a lot though..

[ROC]

I heard about the story and this gutted me more than the guitarist from the Stooges dying, mostly because the Cramps weren't always my cup of tea musically, but when they were on, they were fucking on. And that's because Lux Interior was fucking crazy. RIP indeed.

[DMN in the House]

As long as Iggy Pop breathes, rock n roll lives.

[Skummy]

If that statement hadn't already have become null and void when Iggy became a born-again Christian, it would have been shat all over the moment he started advertising car insurance.

And besides;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5OMuj4FpII

THAT is how it's fucking done. Take notes Mr. Pop, and just about everybody else.

Edited February 5, 2009 by Skakskaw Skum Skuggan

[ROC]

If that statement hadn't already have become null and void when Iggy became a born-again Christian, it would have been shat all over the moment he started advertising car insurance.

And besides;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5OMuj4FpII

THAT is how it's fucking done. Take notes Mr. Pop, and just about everybody else.

you should've shown the CBGB show where Lux nearly ATE THE MIC. That's RIP for you.

[Skummy]

Well, yes, there's any number of bad-ass Lux live moments - even up to as recently as three years ago when I saw them in France, he was still very much THE MAN. But come on, that video was in a MENTAL HOSPITAL. A mental hospital that, prior to The Cramps playing there (and to a lesser extent since), was most famous was inordinate levels of drug abuse, violence, un-natural deaths, sexual abuse and any other perceivable form of abuse on patients. It was like Johnny Cash at San Quentin on a bad acid trip.

[VerbalPuke]

If that statement hadn't already have become null and void when Iggy became a born-again Christian, it would have been shat all over the moment he started advertising car insurance.

And besides;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5OMuj4FpII

THAT is how it's fucking done. Take notes Mr. Pop, and just about everybody else.

If we're going to show the Cramps at their best, here it is. I'm saddened to hear this news, on par with Ron Asheton, because the Cramps definitely sparked my interest in so many bands they drew influence from. I have a large compilation which may have just been something a Cramps fan put together, but it's fantastic, it's "Songs the Cramps taught us". It has a ton of songs the Cramps liberally borrowed from or songs that influenced their work (Lee Dresser and the Krazy Kats, Bo Diddley, The Trashmen, Roy Orbison, The Sonics, Link Wray, Elroy Dietzel, and a ton more. If anybody is interested I'll be here).

This full show is available on DVD. I own it, therefore you should all own it.

It was like Johnny Cash at San Quentin on a bad acid trip.

Funny you reference this in this thread. On that very DVD of the Cramps at the Napa Valley Mental Hospital, the bonus footage features a band Crime (San Francisco based punk band that dressed like cops on stage) playing a show at San Quentin State Prison.

A lot of people want to be scary in rock and roll, but very few can actually accomplish it. Lux did.

Edit - And strangely I forgot to mention, I actually have "Stay Sick" tattooed on the left side of my chest using the lettering from the Cramps logo.

Edited February 6, 2009 by VerbalPuke

[BuddyAwesome]

Rock and roll certainly is not dead. Several rock legends are keeping it alive, and there's the new generation of indie trash who think they're all the next big thing...

But yeah, AC/DC, Heaven & Hell, KISS... All of them still active. Rock and roll is a live, just not well.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

In tribute, The talksport overnight DJ is playing clips from The Cramps songs all night.

[ROC]

Rock and roll certainly is not dead. Several rock legends are keeping it alive, and there's the new generation of indie trash who think they're all the next big thing...

But yeah, AC/DC, Heaven & Hell, KISS... All of them still active. Rock and roll is a live, just not well.

...Examples?

It doesn't seem to be indie trash clogging up mainstream rock radio. I'd blame that on rock never getting out of post-grunge.

...Then again, if we're being literal about it, it has been 50 years since The Day The Music Died and it surely can't help that a band so indelibly influenced by the 50s is without its key member.

Okay, this is just depressing.

[BuddyAwesome]

Buddy Holly is my all time favorite, and his death may have been the day that music died. But yes, ROC, on the whole I agree this thread is too depressing..

Oh, and by indie trash bands I was namely referring to some awful band my room mate tried getting me into called the Brian Jones Town Massacre. Garbage.

[Skummy]

Okay, if the idea that the likes of KISS are "keeping rock and roll" alive wasn't abhorrent enough to make me disagree vehemently with you, then a dislike of Brian Jonestown Massacre certainly is. They're not as good as they once were, but they're this generation's Velvet Underground or Sonic Youth; might not mean much now, but they'll stand the test of time. They're one of the most interesting and creative bands working within the pop and rock idiom today.

The fact is, rock and roll as a relevant subversive artform has been "dead" for years. Rock and roll is about rebellion and about being anti-establishment and anti-just about everything. And between it being watered down at every turn since its inception for middle America to digest, Elvis joining the army, Buddy dying, Hasil Adkins dying, Johnny Rotten and Iggy Pop advertising butter and car insurance, and now losing the last remnants of the soul of rock and roll music in Lux Interior..."rock and roll" as a concept was dead years ago, this is just the final nail in the coffin. The only band around even close to what "rock and roll" really should be about is Monotonix, and they get treated as practically a novelty act by the mainstream music press because of it.

As for KISS; the only one of them remotely "rock 'n' roll" was Ace Frehley. Gene Simmons is one of the least rock and roll men in music, and I can't really touch on AC/DC without being overwhelmed by my hatred of them, so I won't go into that.

There were only five true white male rock and rollers; Lux Interior, G.G. Allin, Keith Richards, Gene Vincent and Lemmy Kilmister.

[VerbalPuke]

I agree with those five, but somehow I think members of the MC5 should be in there.

[BuddyAwesome]

I would say Rob Halford was pretty damn rock and roll, judging by your definition of the term. And by the way, KISS used to be very anti-everything, but I'll be the first to admit that their fame got the best of them. Motley Crue also, very much fits the description!