Fast Jivin’ Class Cutters High On Booze – Spellbound Caveman And Mad Scientists From The Vault Of Lux & Ivy – album review

Straight from the leopard skin decorated music vaults of the Cramps Lux Interior and Poison Ivy comes this 2 CD collection with ‘Novelty singles, sound effects, stories about boll weevils, weird beards and The Blob.’ With ‘rare and obscure singles by no hit wonders and world famous artists, from Eddie Cochran and Kenny Rogers through to an Australian comedian singing about The Flintstones.’ Fighting Boredom’s resident delinquent, Quentin Nicotine has been listening, we got this back in a crumpled coffee stained envelope late last night.

My hair’s twisted, the quiff went about a hundred miles back, that’s what you get for pushing an open top Cadillac through a hurricane with just a half packet of cigarettes and bottle of rotten whiskey for company. The threads are beyond soaked and I’m cursing God, the sky and the way forward when I turn the last fly blown, rotten cactus edged corner on this hell ride they call a road and see it. There’s whispers about this place at the back of the roughest bars I know, cards stuck up in booths of record shops or hidden inside rockabilly seven inch slices. It’s a place that every hip cat knows but most have never been to. It’s nothing to look at, a tumbledown wooden shack with peeling paint and  a broken neon sign spitting sparks and buzzing like an angry wasps nest.

It looks like it used to read something more but now just seems to say Cramped! There’s a broken door hanging off one hinge and a sign with a skull and crossbones with Whiskey written below it. I don’t hesitate. I smooth down my sodden threads and do my best with the hair, keep my sunglasses in place, light a cigarette and walk right in.

I can’t see anything for a moment, the place is dark man, I look around and the bar comes into focus, I amble over and order a beer and whiskey from the barman with a dirty vest and a gold teeth leer. Lean back against the ramshackle wooden structure and look around. The biggest thing in the room is a juke box, Wurlitzer neon and full of slabs of vinyl. There’s music pumping out of it, hard fast and cool. The essence of youth and madness. There are dangerous looking couples jiving around the room and the atmosphere is loaded to say the least. 

My mind keeps moving back to the music, it’s rockabilly, rock’n’roll madness distilled into little slices of wonder, the sound of novelty, one off scratched up singles and organs grinding as guitars twang. It’s nothing deep, but this stuff is the essence of what we strive for, every overblown guitar solo harks back to these tiny pieces of madness. It’s where it started and I don’t think I’m leaving. i look around, the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen is smiling at me, her hair up in a quiff, her top off her shoulder showing the dice tattoo and her pedal pushers tighter that tight, she hols out her hand and we join the dance. I’m lost, I’m dancing and I’m gone.

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You can find out more on the Cherry Red website.

The Full Track List is

CD 1

1. Mr Custer Stomp – The Scouts
2. Tomahawk – Tom Brown And The Toms Toms
3. Fire Water – Rusty Isabell
4. Girl Machine – Johnny Walsh
5. Hot Sake – Ken Nordine And His Kinsmen
6. Bop Sticks – Conny And The Bellhops
7. The Cat – Rod Willis
8. Money (That’s What I Want) – Cherry Wainer
9. Spellbound – Tarantulas
10. Ooh Ya Ya Ya – The Ace Adams Singers
11. Yabba Dabba Doo – Frankie Davidson
12. We Like Birdland – Huey ‘Piano’ Smith
13. Sleeping In A Car – Tyrone Bracken
14. Weird Beard – Cindy Malone
15. Your Driver’s License, Please – Roy Tann
16. Ddt And The Boll Weevil – Lyn Earlington
17. Class Cutter – Dicky Stop
18. Nameless – The Rockin’ R’s
19. Fast Jivin’ – Eddie Cochran And Ernie Freeman
20. The Blob – The Zanies
21. Kan-Gu-Wa – The Scholars

CD 2

1. Spunky Onions – Billy Davis And The Legends
2. Upturn – Eddie Smith With The Horn
3. Shot Rod – Conny And The Bellhops
4. Cerveza – Boots Brown
5. Fallout Shelter – Dore Alpert
6. Baltimore Jones – Chuck Miller
7. Hot Saki – Eddie Atwood And His Goodies
8. Too, Too Many – John Worthan
9. Hideout – John And Judy
10. Flying Blue Angels –
George, Johnny And The Pilots
11. The Blast – Rusty Isabell
12. Met Rock/Heartbreak Hotel –
Frances Day Aka Gale Warning
13. Yeah! – ‘Mad Man’ Jones
14. Greasy Kid Stuff – Janie Grant
15. Space Monkey – Lisa Anders And The Victory Five
16. Had – Steve Douglas
17. Willie The Weeper – Kartunes
18. Kookie Limbo (Instrumental) – Kookie Joe
19. The Mad Scientist – The Zanies
20. Are You Nervous? – The Instrumentals
21. The Ghost Hop – The Surfmen

All words by Adrian Bloxham