culture, musings

Meteors and The Popular Imagination

When we look to the sky, our imaginations soar. But for many people — ancient and modern, across wide expanse of geography and culture — the night sky has meant nightmares. And among those things of which some cultures are still afraid are oft-misunderstood meteors.

Perseids
Photo courtesy of NASA.

Every August around this time, our planet passes through debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle. The result: the Persied meteor shower (named for the constellation Perseus, out of which the perseids seem to appear). Igniting the night sky with sudden and often striking streaks of light, these meteors — simply bits of dust and ice — will burn up in the earth’s atmosphere just as the eye catches glimpse of them. Rates can get as high as 100 meteors per hour.

Many of us will marvel at the event. Most will sleep through it. But some will actually avert their eyes.

In many parts of eastern Europe, for example, among some Slavic peoples, seeing a meteor sets one ill at ease. For it is believed that everyone has a personal star that falls upon his or her death.

Residents of the village of Carancas in Peru became convinced that they were sickened by a meteorite that fell to earth in September, 2007.

Indeed, in the Book of Revelation, such sickness is foretold when an angel blows his trumpet and a star falls from heaven “blazing like a torch.” Contaminating a third of the world’s rivers and springs, “many died from the water, because it was made bitter.” (Revelation 8:10-11)

In ancient Egypt and Greece, meteorites were thought to be of the gods, and were venerated as such. They were objects to revered, not so much as feared, but nonetheless were seen as portents of something momentous.

There is even evidence among early Native American peoples that meteors were seen as omens — of good times and bad. Among the latter were the Blackfeet of Montana who believed a meteor was a sign that sickness would come to the tribe in the coming winter. Then there were the Cahuilla of southern California that believed meteors were signs of the spirit of their first shaman, Takwich. Disliked by his peole,  Takwich was said to wander the night sky, looking for Cahuilla that had wandered from their tribe so that he could fall upon them and steal their spirit.

Most comically, the Nunamiut Eskimos and the Koasati of Louisiana believed meteors to be the feces of stars.

Still, for every tale of doom, gloom and celestial excrement, there are dozens more from cultures from all over the globe that tell of good fortune follows the sighting of a meteor. Indeed, as children of Disney, we are told that when we wish upon a (falling?) star, our dreams will come true.

So this weekend, if you decide to look to the skies, keep in mind that if there is any meaning in the sighting of meteors, it is in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps better than seeing meteors are signs of good or ill from the heavens, we should instead look to celestial events as inspiration for living. For after all, we live but a short time, eventually burning out in the atmosphere of our own lives. We are not permanent. We need not live in fear of anything except that which prevents us from truly living.

Jack London once wrote: “I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live… I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time” (The Bulletin, San Francisco, California, December 2, 1916).

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music

Get the Cramps

If Elvis Presley were to have had illegitimate children with both Vampira and Bettie Page, the result still wouldn’t have come close to spawning THE CRAMPS.

LUX AND IVY
The Cramps, circa 1990. Left to right: Nick Knox (drums), Candy del Mar (bass), Poison Ivy (Guitar), and Lux Interior (vocals)

Influenced by early rockabilly, rhythm and blues, garage rock and surf music, THE CRAMPS unofficially began when Lux Interior (born Erick Lee Purkhiser) and Poison Ivy (born Kristy Marlana Wallace) met in Sacramento, California in 1972. A mutual admiration for the rockabilly of Ricky Nelson (to whom every CRAMPS album is dedicated), the surf sounds of Dick Dale, garage bands like The Standells and The Gants, and the glam rock of the New York Dolls and T. Rex, would turn into a lifelong love affair for the pair, lighting the spark for a new kind of music that they coined as “psycho-billy” (or “voodoo psychobilly” as the term would appear on their early fliers). Though soon abandoned by the band themselves (and picked up quickly by an act called The Meteors that have claimed ownership of it ever since) the label “psycho-billy” stuck. But with Ivy’s Carl Perkins-esque guitar and Lux’s near inhalation of the microphone, THE CRAMPS became something other than the sum of their influences.

NOTHING BUT THE GRAVEST OF HITS

Releasing their first EP, Gravest Hits, in 1979 (which included a cover of The Trashmen’s “Surfin’ Bird”), THE CRAMPS were well cemented in the CBGB punk movement of the late seventies and early eighties, playing alongside bands like Television, Blondie, The Damned, The Ramones, and The Talking Heads. But unlike some of these other American punk rock acts, THE CRAMPS were never to surface with a hit song until well into the nineteen eighties.

Poison Ivy of The Cramps. Photo Credit © Demed L'Her
Poison Ivy of The Cramps. Photo Credit © Demed L’Her

First came  “Can Your Pussy Do The Dog?” followed by “Bikini Girls with Machine Guns”. But while both songs charted (well in the UK), THE CRAMPS remained little more than garage band. Punk gave way to the new wave, with bands like The Smiths — who once opened for THE CRAMPS at the then recently revamped 40s swing club “The Meadowbrook” in New Jersey — rising to a level of popularity that Lux and Ivy would never attain. But an extremely dedicated cult following — coupled with Lux and Ivy’s passion for the music and each other — carried the band through the nineties playing smaller venues, and then well into the first decade of the twentieth century, where younger and younger crowds came out in increasing numbers, recognizing Lux and Ivy as punk rock progenitors.

LONGEVITY

Appreciated by fans and critics alike for all things kinky and campy (never better expressed than in 2003’s fetish-filled  “Like a Bad Girld Should“), THE CRAMPS continued strong well into the twenty-first century until tragedy struck on February 4, 2009 when Lux suddenly died due to aortic dissection at the age of 62.

The Cramps: Lux and Ivy (Photo Credit © Steve Jennings)

In the end, beauty is in the eyeliner of the beholder. And while it would be hard to classify the music of THE CRAMPS as beautiful, the love shared by Lux and Ivy — the very heart of the band — may be one of the more beautiful love stories in all of rock and roll history. His worship of her and her playfulness with him kept the pair forever young.

Though they may not be remembered for much in the years to come, three events certainly solidify THE CRAMPS‘ place in rock and pop culture:

 

By Christopher Michael Davis