Saturday Night Live

Saturday night and some of the real stuff for you- while I am preparing to play records for the good folk of Sheffield that happen to know my friend RPM, you can listen to this rather than settle down to watch that shite on the telly. This is last night's heroes The Cramps in a live performance for TV on what seems to be The Late Show around 1990 doing the mighty Bikini Girls With Machine Guns and Muleskinner Blues. Proceed with caution- at one point Lux strips off his shirt to reveal...., well, you'll have to see for yourselves.



What's Inside A Girl? live in Amsterdam- Lux might hog the attention but Ivy and her guitar are the real stars...



And a few years earlier on The Tube, What's Inside A Girl? again and Hot Pearl Snatch.



Can Your Pussy Do The Dog?

Half Man Half Biscuit 'It Makes The Room Look Bigger'

I couldn't let yesterday's reference to Half Man Half Biscuit go without another post, especially as last month's With Goth On Our Side has become one of the most downloaded tracks from Bagging Area, which was a bit unexpected. In this song, from a 2003 six track e.p., the Poet Laureate of Birkenhead skewers D.I.Y.-

'I've just finished decorating
It was very irritating
And I know they're gonna come around tonight
And I know they're gonna say to me tonight
It makes the room look bigger'

This being HMHB Nigel Blackwell can toss away a line some songwriters would base an entire album around-

'I'm putting up a hook to hang my hopes upon'

And then follows it with...

'There's a fellow coming round to put the gas back on'

And...

'And if truth be told now that Thelma's gone
It makes the room look bigger'.

After ridiculing home improvement, modern Britain's favourite pastime, there's still time for a conversation with an elderly woman at a bus stop concerning poor bus services, Benny Goodman, three thugs, the nu-metal band Korn and a sub-machine gun.

Half Man Half Biscuit_03_It Makes The Room Look Bigger.mp3

The Cramps 'Bikini Girls With Machine Guns'

I love The Cramps. I love the way Lux and Ivy took high camp, trash, pop-culture, B-Movie shlock, mixed it with punk and blues and treated it so seriously. Real outsider culture. Their early stuff is raw and dirty, gothic and cartoony. They also kept making good records- 1986's A Date With Elvis and 1990's Stay Sick have bigger budgets and more gloss but stand up really well alongside their earlier stuff. This is off Stay Sick, and sums up their aesthetic pretty well- Bikini Girls With Machine Guns.

03 Bikini Girls With Machine Guns.mp3