It’s not always easy to rally for NYC’s holiday-centric Motherfucker parties. Every time you get a precious day off you also get roped into degrading yourself with rock and booze. However, if the Cramps are playing said party, you don’t pussy out. It’s an unspoken rock rule, like “Don’t talk when Bono’s talking,” and “Don’t look Bowie in the eye unless he says you can.” So when L.A.’s raddest gothabillies showed up at Limelight for the Labor Day installment of Motherfucker madness, we put on our finest vinyl and showed up. It was gross. It was grimy. It was worth it. Rob Sheffield and Elizabeth Goodman discuss.

RS: What a strange show. The quality-of-life factor inside Limelight was like a refugee camp or something. I spent an hour just walking around looking for a place to stand where I wouldn’t be getting pushed or shoved or forced to smell other people getting sick. It was awful. In fact, by the time the band actually went on, I was in a decidedly grumpy mood. And then they went on and they were SO INCREDIBLY GREAT I got into a very happy mood indeed. I couldn’t believe how great they were. Lux is fifty-fucking-eight years old! Two years YOUNGER than David Johansen, who looks like he could be Lux’s dad. How the hell does he do it? Yoga and moisturizer secrets of the punk rock elderly! “That song was by Arthur Lee. One of the greatest rock & roll singers who ever lived. But he’s dead. I’m alive. And I ain’t chopped liver myself.” Genius.

EG: My favorite part was when he told the crowd we should be ashamed of ourselves. And it’s like: “We know, Lux, we should we should. Shame us!” Also, who doesn’t want to make out with Poison Ivy? Someone told me that Jeffrey Lee Pierce wrote “For The Love Of Ivy” for her. Of course he did. I want to be her. Or at least be her hair. Is that stuff real?

RS: Excellent question about her hair. I hope it’s a weave of bat-hair. “For the Love of Ivy” is the subtitle of “Poison Ivy 2,” Alyssa Milano’s third-finest film. I loved how Lux and Ivy worked it–they didn’t act at all like a famous band reprising their legend. They weren’t coasting at all, they earned it like a young, hungry band.

Ivy is so cool… she reminds me of one of my many favorite Cramps songs, “All Women Are Bad.”

EG: Yeah, wow. I wonder if the Poison Ivy film folks are really that cool that they put a Gun Club reference in an Alyssa Milano film. I have to say that I prefer Drew with her dark roots as “poison” Ivy, and I like Alicia Silverstone in “Crush” best of all the teen-girl-goes-all-Glen-Close flicks. Anyway. Back to the Cramps. The other thing I love about them is how they totally play flocks of covers with absolutely no shame. It’s like “Hanky Panky” by Tommy James and the Shondells. Yeah. No. That’s ours. And it is theirs.

Can we take a moment to address Lux’s bizarrely perfect, wrinkle-free face? He looks better with eyeliner than Green Day do these days. Maybe he uses that rice-wine shit the Japanese saki-makers discovered.

RS: Lux and Ivy were the devil in the flesh. (Rose McGowan in “Devil in the Flesh”–now there’s a psycho-teen-girl movie.)

You’re so right about those oldies covers–I couldn’t believe they made “Psychotic Reaction” so, uh, vivid, like, I never noticed before it’s the same song as Pere Ubu’s “Final Solution” plus David Bowie’s “Jean Genie” but now I know. Lux werewolfed “The Way I Walk” like Karen O. In fact, the whole band was like YYYs times Grandpa Munster. I loved the boyish little rockabilly bassist. What was he, their nephew? Couldn’t tell if his red shirt was vinyl or just sparkled like it was. I completely failed to guess the gender of the drummer. Didn’t come close.

EG: The bassist reminded me of those kids Morrissey gets to play with him. Where you can totally tell Mozzer dressed them and, like, spit on a napkin
and wiped their faces before sending them onstage. The bassist kept looking around like, “Am I onstage with Lux Interior? Am I wearing vinyl or just industrial-strength sequins? Am I going to be scolded by one of my heroes soon? I hope so.” I wonder if Kid Congo was jealous. When we were driving up we passed Kid Congo striding down the street and it was like “holy shit that’s Kid Congo!” and then three seconds later it was like “duh, it’s Kid Congo, this is a Cramps show.”

RS: Yes! That bassist TOTALLY looked like one of Morrissey’s sweet and tender hooligans, like the one who taunts him with the ice cream cone in the video for “We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful.” That was a great Morrissey phase, all those incredibly well-bathed and well-groomed rockabilly boys. The drummer looked male when looking up (like Rufus Wainwright actually) then female when looking down… I kept going, “dude. No, chick. No, dude.” He/she totally rolled with it when Lux jumped down from the balcony and began smashing the drums with his Dorian Gray/Peter Murphy face. Did you notice how serene Ivy was? No angst, no sweat. She’s a pro here to push a button, nothing personal. Even when the mike stand practically landed on her head. Lux is the only rock star I’ve ever seen who can hold a wine bottle upright in his lips while simultaneously spraying the entire contents of the bottle in a six-foot arc above his head. My, that’s lip control…lucky lady, Ivy. I’m so jealous you saw Kid Congo!

EG: Okay. The wine-spraying-gargling thing: did he do that before or did he steal it from Karen? If he was inspired by Miss O that would be so many kinds of hot. Circle, circle, circle and all that. Ivy looks like she was on her way to some insanely cool party with like a pantheon of really suave dead celebrities like Edie Sedgwick and Andy Warhol and maybe Brian Jones and, like, Nick Cave if he were dead. Except she got deterred and found this guitar and this band and was kind enough to humor us with a few songs. All she does is play perfect goth-country riffs and smile/pout and move her head through space without altering a hair on her head. It’s living art.

By the end of that filthy set I didn’t even care that I had the sweat of approximately 583 gender-indeterminate creeper-and-vinyl clad bondage aficionados all over my clothes and skin.