Strangely enough, it's been a busy last 4 weeks as usually releases tend to fizzle out and dry up for July & August. However this year seems to be a little different, although that could be down to the simple fact of being involved in the label and having to deal with pressing plants, publishing and administration (negatives) chatting with the bands, discussing artworks & enjoying the music (positives).
Lot's of exciting stuff happening in the coming months, in particular the start of a new publication/magazine which is called 'Mad Music For Bad People' ! My understanding is that this is due to be launched at this years Bedlam Breakout Festival (Sept 11/12/13)......as you can probably guess from the title, this rag has a firm orientation to all things Crampsical for sure, but that's just part of it, as it intends focussing almost excusively on recent and contemporary bands, aiming to inform on and highlight the current scenes, the shakers and movers as well as gigs, festivals and record releases....Rockabilly in all of it's guises !
Speaking of 'The Bedlam Breakout' a little birdy tells me that this will be the last chance to catch a couple of the bands live (Hmmm, how many times have we heard that ?) apparently both The Sharks & The Demented Scumcats (Sparky from DAG's garage punk band, who incidently, have just had their truly amazing and horribly expensive album 'Splatter Baby' repressed, bad news is that it's only 158 copies on purple vinyl so making it as rare as the initial release....get if you can) will no longer be playing live following the Northampton weekender !
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| Rippersville....Freaking Awesome Track ! |
Other news is that our Vince Ripper release on Trash Wax finally made it out of the pressing plant, 6 weeks later than expected truth be told but, alas, that be the nature of the beast presently, due mainly to the major labels swallowing up any manufacturing capacity out there....it's a beautiful item, even if I say so myself, great sleeve reminiscent of the 'American Werewolf In London' publicity shots on the front and the rear kind of harking back to the artwork of early Alien Sex Fiend releases and the tunes themselves are both killers !
Alien Sex Fiend go Rockabilly
!....Ex-ASF guitarist ‘Rodent’ unleashes his inner Cramp and delivers the goods
with this fantastic cover. It’s the flipside ‘Rippersville’ which really steals the
show though, think wigged out ‘Peter Gunn’ meets The Meteors ‘Attack Of The
Zorchmen’ on acid !
With just a 100 copies on coloured wax it's already shifting fast but don't worry if you miss a purple copy as we got a few more 100 copies on regular black vinyl too.
The CD version of our 1st release also got to see the light of day recently, The magnificent Vibes album, with alternative artwork in a digipak and the folk overseas were happy that they didn't have to sell the children to pay the postage rates ! Limited to just 250 copies, so you know what you have to do.
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| The Shockwaves circa 1985. |
Whilst on the subject of CDs and The Vibes, our next CD (yes, I know) will be The Shockwaves....an amazing combo from the 80's who had recorded 8 tracks for a split album (with The Locomotives) for Mike Spenser (he of The Cannibals), unfortunately for whatever reasons, these recordings were never released....that is until now ! Musically they fall squarely between The Vibes and The Purple Things, to such an extent that on hearing them the first time I thought I was listening to unreleased Vibes material....the truly amazing aspect isn't so much as the album never being released but the commercial success the members of The Shockwaves went on to enjoy after splitting up, the guys ended up such diverse groups as Orbital, The Shamen, Alabama 3, The Charles Napiers, The Diaboliks and Dan is currently the sometime Bassmeister for The Dustophonics.............Coming Soon (vinyl edition will be out at a later date)!
Loads of Cramps related stuff crawling out of the woodwork, including a lovely interview with Kid Congo Powers currently up on his blog where he mentions a ton of stuff I was totally unaware of...Did you know Jeffrey Lee Pierce was half Mexican ? or that of the hordes of folk who have graced the Cramps line-ups over the years that only Nick Knox and Kid Congo himself actually stayed on friendly terms with Lux and Ivy !!! Anyway if you're interested get on over and read it first hand for yourself.
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| Made from old Trabants. |
Lot's of Cramps bootlegs this year I've noticed, over in the UK it looks as if someone has latched onto an EU loophole which allows them to release live material that has been played over the radio, or somesuch (anyone want to confirm that ?)... Anyway, for a good few years now there has been a slowly emerging 'Billy/Garage' related scene in Russia, centred primarily around St Petersburg, with bands like The Swindlers kicking it off in the early 90's (Mad Fish, The Rattlesnakes and a good few others) and not forgetting our own favourite Russians Messer Chups/Guitaraculas/Bonecollectors and over the years a lot of Cramps material has appeared on flexi disc (not the best quality but cheap enough to be accessible) so you can imagine the joy of hearing that not only is there a thriving Cramps scene over there but a totally paralell one (Here's hoping the Chinese never get into The Cramps) and after much to-ing and fro-ing I managed to track down a few copies of an amazing pressing of The Cramps 1st gig at The Peppermint Lounge, it's a beautiful record, lovely sleeve and a brilliant sound....getting them cleared through customs was a nightmare and story that I won't bore you with.....but if you see a copy anywhere, get it as it's brilliant, you can try our website but not sure how many are left from the couple of boxes we had.
Stay Sick folk until the next time !
Shop is here :
www.trashwax.com
Trash Wax on Discogs :
www.discogs.com/seller/Darrenross (one offs and single items).
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