Off The Bone - Review

The antidote to Eva Cassidy is perhaps The Cramps and their 1983 compilation Off The Bone. Wikipedia tells me that Sounds said of it, “a hell-fire cocktail of gutter riffing and chattering Rockabilly voodoo strum into which is dropped an electric sugar cube of psychedelic power”.

A bit of a mouthful and probably sums it up better than I could. As far as morning commutes go, due to it being Christmas and all I thought I would sample the motorway as opposed to my normal route of taking in Staffordshire A roads. The M6 was relatively deserted and Lux Interior was spewing forth his hell fire cocktail on the stereo, the day could only get worse.

As I said this is a compilation and it’s a compilation at times of their finest work, you have Interior doing his best Peggy Lee impression on Fever and his worst Ricky Nelson impression on Lonesome Town.

As well as standards such as Surfin Bird, they inject their own standards and classics into proceedings. This compilation gives us Human Fly, part of their debut release Gravest Hits. The other tracks on Gravest Hits are all represented here, as are a number of tracks from Psychedelic Jungle, the most famous being Goo Goo Muck.

All in all it’s a good strong compilation, that lifted the mood from yesterday, actually the mood for the last few CD’s has been resolutely downbeat and I hope this is the shape of Cramps to come.
8 out of 10.



Human Fly by The Cramps.