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November 23, 2004
The Cramps: Songs The Lord Taught Us
"In the spring of 1976, The Cramps began to fester in a NYC apartment. Without fresh air or natural light, the group developed its uniquely mutant strain of Rock'n'Roll aided only by the sickly, blue rays of late night TV." [from liner notes to this album]
This post is more specifically about the song 'I Was A Teenage Werewolf', and about the singer, Lux Interior ñ ". . . wherein Elvis gets crossed with Vincent Price and decent folks ask, 'what hath God wrought?'" [also from liner notes].
Lux is Elvis' twin brother Jesse, risen from the dead, the monster Elvis, the evil twin. Lux was a teenage werewolf . . . and his daddy drove a UFO. Lux is a monster in that he becomes these characters, or he is possessed by them (characters he creates take him over).
The CD version of 'Songs The Lord Taught Us' has an "original mix" of 'I Was A Teenage Werewolf' on it. Recorded live in the studio, Lux really loses himself in this performance. He growls, groans, moans, and stalks his lyrical terrain as if hypnotised or possessed . . . his performance is 'uncanny' (maybe?).
At my seminar I was asked if I wanted to create a monster, or become a monster, to try and tease out what the monster might mean in my research, where it resides.
I was thinking about how Lux Interior uses the monster as a strategy to lose his 'self', to take on a persona (schizophrenia) . . . to become someone or something else. I guess this relates to some of what I've been reading about the Surrealists and Freud, and the exploration of the subconscious. But more I was thinking about 'The Dice Man', and about how our egos, or senses of our own identities, stop us exploring certain possibilities.
The monster in this respect is like a nom de plume. Actually I guess 'Lux Interior' is exactly that. The author has more exploratory freedom through assuming an identity that is other to their everyday self.
Posted by Luke Wood at November 23, 2004 09:58 AM