Date with Elvis

Originally planned for 1985 to join in the onslaught of Elvis s 50th Anniversary commemorative reissues, A Date With Elvis came out in early 1986 in Europe only, where it went on to sell more than 200,000 copies. The only album featuring The Cramps as a three-piece band (Poison Ivy doubled on bass), it careens from the sociopathic advice of People Ain t No Good (later covered by Nick Cave) to mind-on-vacation odes like Aloha From Hell and Kizmiaz (where The Cramps prove they were exotic when exotic wasn t cool), in the process offing more paeans to poontang than you can shake a snake at and fittingly finishing off with a soulful lovesick cover of the Charlie Feathers s It s Just That Song. Can Your Pussy Do The Dog was voted single of the year for 1986 in Playboy s annual music issue! Continuing in the tortured tradition of stark rockabilly ballads, three of the bonus tracks Blue Moon Baby, Georgia Lee Brown and Andy Starr s frighteningly horny Give Me A Woman were originally available only as rare B-sides. Get Off the Road (theme song from the Herschell Gordon Lewis Z-movie She-Devils on Wheels) was the only time Ivy (publicly) sang a song to satisfy Lux Interior s fetish request (what did he have to do in return?) and in an attempt to create a realistic sound effect, one of their biker pals almost turned a peel-out on his Harley into a wipe-out in the studio parking lot.