The Cramps’ ‘Gravest Gravy’ Unearths Long-Lost Sessions From One of Rock’s Most Brilliantly Deranged Bands: Album Review
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- The Cramps release "Gravest Gravy," an album of long-lost October 1977 sessions at Memphis' Ardent Studios produced by Big Star co-founder Alex Chilton, culled from recordings that produced the band's first two singles later collected on "Gravest Hits," featuring songs not included on the original EP.
- Poison Ivy holds the rights to most of the band's catalog and has partnered with Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye to revive the group's Vengeance Records and launch a reissue campaign spanning most albums, unreleased material, and an official merchandise line, with "Gravest Gravy" as the first release.
- Chilton asked The Cramps to record every song they knew during the 1977 sessions, and the tracks were originally mixed by Lux Interior and Poison Ivy in the late 1980s — who also selected the cover photo — but for unclear reasons the project was never completed until now.
- The Cramps were founded by Lux Interior and Poison Ivy; Lux died in 2009, and the source notes that several key figures behind the band's sound and vision — including Lux, Nick Knox, Bryan Gregory, Chilton, and photographer Stephanie Chernikowski — are no longer alive.
- The Cramps' early lineup featured two guitarists (Ivy and Bryan Gregory) and no bassist, giving their sound a trebly, trashier quality, and the new album includes obscure '50s and '60s covers like Paul Revere and the Raiders' "Hungry," Sam Phillips' "Problem Child," and Jimmy Lloyd's "Rocket in My Pocket."
Why it matters: The release marks the first new Cramps material in decades and the opening of a broader catalog reissue effort led by Rollins, MacKaye, and Ivy — a long-overdue reintroduction of a pioneering psychobilly act whose legacy had faded since Lux Interior's 2009 death, with several of its key architects now deceased.
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