My Date With The Cramps:
"No photos, no handshakes, no hugs and you have 5 minutes !!!"

After that awesome Cramps show the security cleaned out the venue very quickly.
So we used our aftershow passes and some help from Wild Sandy (that's another story) to get right away to the backstage area.
We had to wait a couple of minutes until the stage manager brought us to a small room where we had to wait again.
A few minutes later we went into another small room and got the instructions for the interview:
No photos, no handshakes, no hugs and you have 5 minutes !!
OK !!!! If that doesn't make you nervous... what else ?
Andrew, Bodo and me had to wait only one minute. I started my little "mp3 player with voice recording" and then started ....

Michael The Mutant: Oh, hello. It’s nice to meet you again.

Ivy: Hello, how are you?

MTM: I’m fine, a little bit nervous

Ivy: Oh, don’t be

Lux: Me too.

MTM: Do you remember my old colourful children-tape-recorder from 2003 ? Well now it’s this digital thing, I hope it works.

Lux: It looks like a suppository, lets see if it works.

Lux tries to "insert" the mic but then drops it.

Ivy: Oh, well it did work. Oh Lux!

MTM: First of all, thank you very much for making this possible for us and I have to hurry up a little bit so we don’t steal your time. So I start ...

Ivy: Ok

MTM: Everybody wants to know if you are working on a new album?

Ivy: Well, we’re working on new songs and we’re working on this record coming out sometime early next year. It’s like the whole of the gravest hits session. We ended up mixing 19 songs. We own the multi tracks to everything.

Lux: Everything!

Ivy: Ultimate performances of human fly, love me, additional takes….

Lux: Ultimate performances of everything except the ones that uh…

Ivy: Except that ones that never came out like ‘Louie Louie’, ‘Hungry’, with Alex Chilton on the Hammond organ.

Lux: And ‘Problem Child’ by Roy Orbison

Ivy: Yeah, a whole lot of stuff. So a total of 21 counting the original ‘Love Me’ and ‘Human Fly’.

Lux: And better versions of most of our songs that were on ‘The Songs That The Lord Taught Us’, better versions that uh, ‘Love Me’ is a better version than the one we put out.

Ivy: It’s not better it’s just different.

Lux: But both versions are on there and they’re both different mixes.

Ivy: It’ll be double vinyl, gatefold but one CD.

MTM: Double vinyl gatefold ? That's so great !

Lux: It’s an album that sounds better than Pink Floyd or Jethro Tull. If you get stoned and listen to it on the headphones it’s actually better than Jethro Tull.

MTM: Ok :-)

Lux: So I’ve been told, I’ve never heard Jethro Tull.

MTM: You’re crazy! Are you working on a DVD as well?

Lux: Yeah, yeah

Ivy: We’re working on it and hopefully it’ll be finished.

Lux: Yeah, hopefully we’ll put them out at the same time, that’ll be nice. You know, we’ve made all these video’s through the years and no one has seen them and they’ve shown them one time on MTV at 4 O’clock in the morning, you know, 4 or 5 people have seen ‘em, that’s about it.

MTM: All in 3D? (smiling)

Lux: Yes! All in 3D if you take the right drugs.

MTM: Ok :-)

Lux: I’ve got a lot of 3D videos of HER !

Ivy: Have you?

Lux: (pointing to the tour manager) He took a lot of them!

Ivy: You’ve been taking videos? Filming from the ceiling?

Lux: Yeah! I would never forget‘em!

MTM: I have a video of Munich from ’91 where you crash down through the floor of the stage and kept on singing and if you want to use that for your DVD.

Ivy: Yes! You have a video of it?

MTM: Yeah, and the good thing about it is the ‘Human Fly’ song is on the normal video and after the video is another camera position of the same song so you have two positions of ‘Human Fly’.

Ivy: Wow! Was this from TV or where?

MTM: It’s a private video, from a fan.

Ivy: That’s one of the weirdest things that’s ever happened.

Lux: Where was that?

Ivy: Munich, you crashed through the floor, you hacked up the floor and you jumped up in the air….

Lux: That was in the bullfighting ring in Spain.

Ivy: No, that was in Munich

Lux: That was where they had left some drugs in the dressing room…

Ivy: And I turned around and there was the mic cord going down into the hole and you could hear him singing and then when he came out he got full of splinters cause all the wood went downwards and when he came they went…

Lux: Oh, I know that one!

Ivy: Yeah, that one.

Lux: Yeah, the splinters went like that and when I came back up they went in.

MTM: You were singing ‘Goo Goo Muck’! I’ll send you that video. It’s a European playing video.

Ivy: We can play anything.

MTM: I’ll send you that.

Lux: We’re excited about going back to Portugal because when we were in Portugal last time I chopped a hole in the floor too – we’re going to Portugal next – and they put us in a dressing room of a bullfighting ring and the dressing room had a curtain in the middle of it where this side was the rock and roll band and on the other side of the curtain was all the drugs they give to the bull fighters after they get gored. We were just filling our pockets with this stuff!

Ivy: There was like painkillers and Valium.

Lux: Yeah! Unbelievable!

Ivy: But they put a rock and roll band in a room….

Lux: …with a curtain so the rock and roll band won’t get to the drugs! Yeah, except the smart ones that can go behind the curtain.

MTM: Do you prefer festivals or solo shows?

Ivy: Both, they’re just different.

Lux: Oh, I don’t care.

Ivy: Festivals, a lot of people that normally wouldn’t see the band, they’ve never seen us and they kind of have their mouths open. That’s great.

Lux: It’s kinda fun.

Ivy: That’s what we mostly see like when we first started but when we have our own shows with our fans, that’s cool.

MTM: Do you remember the festival with the 14-year-old girls where you autographed her back and her…

Lux: Her breast! Yes. ‘Which breast do you want me to autograph?’ ‘You can autograph my breast!’

Ivy: Was that in Oslo?

MTM: Yeah

Ivy: You were there too?

MTM: No, it was filmed.

Ivy: Someone was filming that?

Lux: Uh oh, ahhhh. Choppers’ right, the cops are gonna come down.

Ivy: Someone was filming it?

MTM: Yeah, it was like a webcast from the festival. And when you autographed those girls, it was nice.

Ivy: Oh yeah, and I asked if they were like 13? And she says ‘no, I’m 14!’.

MTM: You seem to have so many young fans too, you’re music is for all ages.

Ivy: Get ‘em young and treat ‘em rough.

MTM: Good philosophy! What are you listening too in the tour bus?

Ivy: We don’t have a bus this time around, we just camp out at Heathrow. We did bring our cd’s but they won’t let us play them on the plane even so we listen in our room. We bought Donna And The Good Times.

Lux: Donna And The Good Times, that’s so good.

Ivy: We bought some Giallo soundtracks

Lux: Eugenie De Sade from 1970 and some Jess Franco. The music we played just before we came on stage is Jess Franco playing the organ. Several of his movies have that organ playing.

MTM: Was that from a movie?

Ivy: Yeah, he’s a director but I don’t know if you can find it but we have this friend, an amazing guy, you might know of him called Brian Horrorwitz, he has an American website….

Lux: Yeah, Trash Palace! www.trashpalace.com.

Ivy: He’s in a band called the Ubangis. He’s really cool. He gets these Giallo movies and Giallo soundtracks that aren’t even out and makes these compilations that are incredible so I don’t know if they’re available or not but, you need to make friends with him. He’s a cool guy.

MTM: So, thank you so much and you’re looking beautiful.

Ivy: Oh thanks!

MTM: Both of you!

Ivy: Ahhhh. Thanks for coming.

Lux: Even under fluorescent lighting!

At the end it was 15 minutes of magical moments.

I don't have a clue what kind of coffin Ivy uses, but she looks younger than ever !
As we went outside the backstage room she told me that she loves what we are doing with the website and as i said "hopefully we can give you something back with our support for what you are giving to us" ... SHE gave ME a hug !!!
I will never forget that interview, we had so much fun and as you already noticed, they did the interview, not me. Maybe because i didn't ask the same boring questions as a huge music magazine would ask.


Just down the road happened to be a After Show Party in a club. We met some good friends there again and had some more beer...
As Chopper came in to have a couple of drinks too, i couldn't resist to give him a handshake and thanked him for a very good gig. We chatted a little bit and once again i got a little photo-souvenir.

That's it, folks !

thanks to Andrew, Wild Sandy and Bodo for their help.
Michael the Mutant