Vengeance
2004
How To Make A Monster
About This Album
Part of the beauty of the Cramps is the consistency of their vision -- since 1976, their body of work has been one long fever dream of kinky sex, bug-eyed monsters, and switchblade-wielding juvies, married to the primal twang of an electric guitar and the malevolent thud of a drum kit. While the quality of their work has run through some peaks and valleys over the years (they've made plenty of good records, but just a few great ones), they seem to have known what they were shooting for from the very beginning. How to Make a Monster, a two-disc collection of demos, rehearsal tapes, and live recordings, documents the band's formative years (for the most part), and while a few of these takes push the boundaries of the word "primitive," this is the Cramps, alive and oozing, from the very first lo-fi run-though of "Quick Joey Small." The first two sets of recordings, from 1976, are plenty crude (in terms of both performance and audio quality), but the band's energy and abandon are already in place, and while later tapes (from 1981 through 1988) are cleaner, the band ultimately doesn't sound that much different, just tighter and better at what it's doing.
Track List

Disc 1 (try tracks 1,16,17 and 23)

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Disc 2 (try tracks 2 and 15)

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