Songs the Lord Taught Us

Cramps

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 25, 1990)
• Original Release Date: May 1980
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Fontana a&M
• ASIN: B000001I09
• Also Available in: Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #21,184 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #11 in	Music > Alternative Rock > American Alternative > Psychobilly
  #27 in	Music > Indie Music > Alternative Rock > American Alternative
  #38 in	Music > Alternative Rock > Hardcore & Punk > Garage Punk

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
The Cramps got away with their Z-movie, zombie-rock schtick because they were so intense in their conviction that it had more value than middlebrow humanist pop. Descending on Memphis to cut their debut album with Big Star legend Alex Chilton, the band served up a thirteen-song punkabilly testament to drive-in anti-culture, replete with garage-band guitars and booming voodoo drums. Versions of "Fever" "Strychnine," and the Johnny Burnette Trio's "Tear It Up" competed with Lux Interior-Poison Ivy originals like "T.V. Set" and "I Was a Teenage Werewolf." Songs the Lord Taught Us was also the first and last Cramps album to feature scary-looking guitarist Bryan Gregory. --Barney Hoskyns

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Saved rock 'n' roll , January 15, 2005

By	TimothyFarrell22 (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

We are all indebted to this band still. One of the single greatest testaments of punk, rockabilly, horror rock, and rock 'n' roll ever recorded. Greasy, primal, sleazy, primative, raw - just a few adjectives well suited at describing this album. And unlike many albums, the cover songs are just as good as the originals. I can honestly not see how anybody could hate this album, unless of course if you are an art snob who thinks "The Wall" is the greatest album ever. Hard rocking and catchy as hell.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I was walking by a pawn shop..., November 3, 2005

By	KCJW (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

...and I heard the song "Sunglasses After Dark" being played from behind the door. Before that I had never heard The Cramps, yet I ran in and bought the CD right out of the stereo for $4. This rocks from start to finish, and is the best straight-through listen album I own.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "I got somethin' to say/and you better lissen!, April 24, 2000

By	DAC Crowell (Rankin, IL United States) - See all my reviews

...I'm gonna tell ya 'bout _cool_/in one easy lesson! GO!" Yep...had to quote that, the beginning of this album's "Sunglasses After Dark", as that song really sums up the mad, crazed, dark-as-a-Memphis-alley-at-midnite badness of this amazing slab of rockabilly psychosis. There is nothing like the sound that is the Cramps, and for me, this album distills that cross of swampwater, moonshine, and nitro down to a dangerous and unstable musical substance, captured live like a crazed animal in these tracks cut at the legendary Sun Studio. Echo machines go mad, drums thud like someone pounding the furniture into matchsticks, and guitars slice through the speakers like some meat-saw-wielding mad butcher as Lux Interior howls, wails, spits like fury, and...yeah, tells you 'bout _cool_. Truly the sound of the South going horrifically wrong with total J.D. madness, rockabilly is supposed to be 'bad music'...but this is the baddest of the badness! It'll make you put a voodoo 8-ball gearshifter in your _life_! BUY!