Three Classic Albums From The Cramps Coming Back To Vinyl
The release comes just after Netflix’s ‘Wednesday,’ the series that sparked a Cramps revival, premiered its new season.
Psychobilly pioneers the Cramps are about to bring three classic punk rock records back to vinyl. Reissues are forthcoming for 1980’s Songs the Lord Taught Us, 1981’s Psychedelic Jungle, and the 1984 compilation Bad Music For Bad People.
Order The Cramps’ early albums on standard and color vinyl now.
The Cramps reissues are launching in the wake of Wednesday, the TV series that sparked a Cramps revival in 2022, returning to Netflix for its second season. “Goo Goo Muck” from Psychedelic Jungle soundtracked a popular dance sequence by series star Jenna Ortega in the first season, leading to an exponential increase in weekly streams of “Goo Goo Muck” (from 2,500 to over 134,000) and launching the track to Billboard’s Digital Song Sales chart for the first time.
Produced by Big Star’s Alex Chilton, Songs The Lord Taught Us is the Cramps’ cult classic debut. In the same way that everyone who bought the Velvet Underground’s debut supposedly started a band, the haunted, feral old-school rock ‘n’ roll of Songs The Lord Taught Us never made the Cramps superstars in their moment, but it stands as a foundational influence for hundreds of subsequent acts. “They made sexy music for people who didn’t buy mainstream sex appeal, peering back at ’50s rockabilly and R&B through a big, dirty punk magnifying glass,” wrote Pitchfork’s Anna Gaca in a 2020 retrospective review published just in time for Halloween.
For Psychedelic Jungle, the group’s sophomore LP, the Cramps themselves took over production duties and kept serving up raw and ragged rock ‘n’ roll seasoned with B-movie horror antics. As Ned Raggett put it at All Music Guide, on this second platter of originals and expertly chosen covers, “the same atmosphere of swampy, trashy, rockabilly-into-voodoo ramalama reigns supreme.”
Though released in 1984, Bad Music For Bad People compiles 11 tracks from the years before the Cramps released their first album. The Poison Ivy-produced comp includes highlights like “New Kind of Kick,” later covered by the Jesus And Mary Chain, and the B-side “Drug Train,” as well as an alternate mix of “Goo Goo Muck” and “Human Fly” from the band’s revered debut EP Gravest Hits.
