Released on this day (12 February 1990) by Enigma Records: Stay Sick!, the joyous and life-affirming fourth studio album by punkabilly deities The Cramps. Stay Sick! represented something of a comeback for the perverse black leather-jacketed Addams Family of punk: due to legal hassles with their former record label there had been a four-year gap since their previous album A Date with Elvis (1986). This one will always be a sacred text and sentimental favourite of mine: I interviewed Crampsâ fiercely glamorous guitarist and co-founder Poison Ivy Rorschach (she was a vision in leopard skin and diamantĂŠ cat glasses) on the Stay Sick! tour for my university newspaper when they performed at The Rialto in Montreal. (Read it here!). As she explained to me then, in a suitably macabre touch, The Cramps signed their record contract with Enigma over the grave of actor Bela Lugosi at the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City (âIt just seemed like an appropriate thing to doâ). Anyway, Stay Sick! pulsates with The Crampsâ everyday-is-Halloween voodoo-hillbilly black magic, would be the final LP with Nick Knox on drums, the first and last with bubble-gum-cracking bassist Candy Del Mar (she was great!) and would feature The Crampsâ highest-charting single ever (âBikini Girls with Machine Gunsâ reached number 35 on the UK Top 40 in 1990). And the lyrics offer the wit and wisdom of frothing mad man Lux Interior, like âYou might believe the world is sweet / And fine as sugar candy, but I myself believe in whatever comes in handy âŚâ (from âDaisys Up Your Butterflyâ) and âNow they say that virtue is its own reward / But when that surf comes in I'm gonna get my board / Got my own ideas about the righteous kick / You can keep the rewards, I'd just as soon stay sick âŚâ (from âBikini Girls with Machine Gunsâ). Swallow a fistful of bop pills and crank Stay Sick! up LOUD today! Pictured: portrait of Poison Ivy by Rocky Schenck, 1990.
















