#6 The Beaverlick Gazette: "Polewhacker's People: Interview With Rip Deathcramp
On a warm, humid night in April, I was called to the hotel suite of one of Rock music’s most misunderstood musician/ composers, the man who redefined the possibilities of the electric guitar, yet created one of the most controversial and offensive catalog of songs in the history of the genre and a man who also just happens to be one of our town’s favorite sons.
Rip Deathcramp, the Beaverlick native and son of Harvey and Marge Deathcramp, has not spoken to the press in almost twenty years after questions of Satanism, terrible substance abuse, wild sexual exploits, and the infamous incident when he signed a contract with Tone-deaf Records and attempted to eat Record Executive Marv Hammerstein’s desk.
Apparently, Rip has decided that enough time has passed and “maybe, after all this time, the press has more interesting questions for me, like…if you played “The Minute Waltz” on guitar twice as fast, would you have to call it “The Thirty Second Waltz” …or what?”
Once I got to the Motel 6 on the outskirts of Grande Butte, North Dakota, a former industrial powerhouse of a city now a poor shadow of its former self, a dark and desolate town filled with antique shops, bars, liquor stores, Bail Bondsmen, and opiate addiction, it wasn’t hard to find his room of this native son and musical monolith: I just had to follow the bras, panties, empty liquor bottles, vomit, pieces of furniture, and a broken television sitting just outside his door in a pile of glass. The music coming from inside the room, a sound akin to giving cats a set of drums, a piano, some horns, and massive doses of hallucinogenics, putting them in a huge box and shoving them down a water slide, turned out to be the latest release from the group Drunk Surgeons playing their latest power ballad: “I Cut My C**K Off For You, But You Just Want My Cash” played at a volume that could knock the balls off a rhino at fifty paces. I was wondering how hard I would have to pound on the door to his room, but fortunately for me, the door had been broken off its hinges and thrown into the swimming pool.
Rip noticed me and turned down the music to a dull roar, and we sat down for the interview. There were two sleeping women on the bed, one completely naked except for Groucho Marx glasses and a fright wig handcuffed to the bed, and next to her, another woman dressed as a nurse with a tattoo that said “This End Up” on the right cheek of her rear end, and yet somehow, they managed to sleep through the interview:
Polewhacker: Your first band: Free Beer, had a minor hit in 1979 called “Brain Cramp In A Tutu”. You formed the band while the four members were seniors at Beaverlick High School. How did you come up with the name of the band and why did the band break up?
Rip Deathcramp: Well, the reason we called the band Free Beer was obvious wasn’t it? We were four really angry young men playing really angry songs, and most people hated us, so we named the band Free Beer because when people saw it on the marquee outside the clubs, they thought they were getting Free Beer!
We invented thrash mental purely by accident: we would write and rehearse songs at one tempo, but when we played them live, our drummer, Monkey Nuts, would play them really fast. What we didn’t know was that Monkey had a thing for voltage. He liked to lick electrical outlets before he went on stage. Once we found out people liked us playing the songs really fast, we stuck wires up his a** and plugged him into a socket. Things were going really great for us until he discovered methamphetamines one night and exploded right there in the drummer’s chair.
There was no way forward after that.
Polewhacker: Your next band, which you formed in 1981: Cheerleaders In Chains, had many hits: “You Taste Like Jerky”, “Torn Clothes And Carpet Burns”, and the stunning ballad: “Dog Show” was extremely successful until you unveiled what became your signature guitar technique which, of course, was your amazing ability to play the instrument with your…your…
Rip Deathcramp: Instrument?
Polewhacker: Instrument. That got you banned in 37 states, Canada, Great Britain, and Guam. Did you feel that was unfair?
Rip Deathcramp: Well, yeah. I mean…everyone could see I had one: it looked like I had an an anaconda and two big hamsters stuffed in the front of my trousers! I developed the technique for playing guitar with it, slapping it up against the fingerboard, and it was an ARTISTIC choice. Leave it to the blue hairs to get their bloomers in a bunch.
Polewhacker: And how did you…come up with the technique?
Rip Deathcramp: Well, I can’t really give you the details, seeing as you are writing for a family publication like the Beaverlick Gazette, but I would like to thank a girl I met in Pittsburg named Twinkle.
Polewhacker: The next band you formed in 1990: Sex Crisis, and you released songs whose titles cannot be printed in this article. Why did you choose such offensive titles and subject matter?
Rip Deathcramp: Well, the subject interested me and, I admit, I was angry. My…instrument turned green and fell off in the winter of 1988, and I had to have plastic surgery. They ended up taking some of my lower intestine and making me a new one that runs on hydraulics. They put the button that I push to make the mechanism, you know, “work”, in my belly button. It really is a miracle of science! The only problem is, I really can’t use it for playing guitar anymore, so I had to use a store-bought model.
Polewhacker: So now you are using a big, rubber…
Rip Deathcramp: Yes.
Polewhacker: Genius!
Rip Deathcramp: It vibrates. So does the one in my pants! Everything works out as the Big Man Upstairs intends it to.
Polewhacker: In 2002, you released your last album: “The Voices In My Head Tell Me I Am Sane” that featured your last hit: “Martians Anal Probed My Brain”. Since then, you and your band have been touring the world in a Volkswagen van. Do you feel that you have been treated wrongly by the music industry and have you done any recordings that may be released in the future?
Rip Deathcramp: Well, yeah…I mean…if there was any justice in this world, I would be dead right now! I would’ve been dead after snorting cocaine off a stripper’s a** and found on the floor of a seedy hotel in L.A. and the world would’ve mourned me and bought up all my albums. I should have been a legend! But, life isn’t so bad. People still show up to the concerts. The van is almost paid off. I am playing with a great group of guys, except the bass player thinks he can photosynthesize and the drummer has all the intelligence of driveway gravel. I have so many STDs the doctors say that they are coagulating together to create some kind of super STD. All I know is, my pee glows in the dark and I have to have sex wearing a specially designed hazmat suit.
Sometimes I do wish I would’ve stayed in Beaverlick. I could’ve gotten a job at the needle factory or maybe taken over for my father at Deathcramp’s flower shop, but it just wasn’t in the cards. Besides, the girls in Beaverlick were, let’s face it, Hamburger Queens.
Polewhacker: And do you have any new recordings you are planning to release?
Rip Deathcramp: I am going to do a classical piece with the Boston Pops and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on the life and genius of Albert Einstein called “Schoolgirls In Disgrace”. It should be my crowning achievement!
Polewhacker: Do you have any words for the folks at home, Rip?
Rip Deathcramp: Well…no. But, if you could, take out the part where I called the girls of Beaverlick “Hamburger Queens” ok? I have a class reunion coming up and those land seals will beat the ever-lovin’ S**T out of me!
There Goes The Neighborhood by Geraldine Sweetlove
Watch out ladies! There’s a new hoe in town… and this one is T-r-o-u-b-l-e. Yesterday I seen her walkin’ the tracks down by Dog Lick Lake in her high heels carryin’ her suitcases, and she was headed straight for town.
I axed her if she need any help carryin’ that stuff … (bein’ neighborly-like and all), and she grinned real big and popped her girdle snaps at me! That’s about the time I got a whiff of that smelly perfume, so I axed her where she come up with that stuff. She says to me she got it from an old boyfriend, and I’m thinkin’ to myself I bet he’s so old she used him up and she’s out huntin’ again.
I heard she got a room at the motel, so git your rollin’ pins ready and keep an eye on your huzbunds.
A Beaverlick resident is celebrating a pothole’s three-month existence by throwing it a birthday party.
Blip Dipster is drawing attention to treacherous road conditions in front of his house on Amelia Marble Memorial Blvd in hopes of gaining the attention of city officials.
“I’ve had a celebration for Pothole,” Dipster told reporters. “I got some cake, lit a candle and had a little birthday party for Pothole. Pothole seemed thrilled with the idea!” However, Dipster said he did not sing “Happy Birthday” to the pothole, but only because “it was too hot out.”
Pantera Broom from Beaverlick’s Public Works Department and Full Contact Backgammon Squad said the pothole outside Dipster’s home is in fact on the list of potholes to be filled and should be finished by Saturday.
“The weather is always a challenge. I know they got a lot done this week with the good weather,” she said. “Last week they patched almost 2,000 potholes. Anytime it’s pouring down rain it’s difficult to patch but as long as we have good weather, crews are out there working on that list. The only problem now is getting them to work on the potholes”
Dipster said he didn’t think complaining was getting him anywhere, so he felt his best option was to draw attention to the problem.
He said: “I thought, ‘What I can I do to have a little fun.’ Everyone is always complaining about the potholes, but complaining doesn’t seem to be getting anything done. So, I said: I want to keep it top of mind. I know my neighbors are just as disgusted as I am so I said: "let’s just celebrate it’s birthday… It’s third birthday!”
“I spotted something on the pothole, and thought “‘What on earth is that?’” said neighbor Alf Gorgeous. “Went outside and there was a card and cake sitting there, how weird is that?” Mr. Gorgeous went on to explain: “Blip is kind of a strange bird anyway. Last year, he had a boil lanced right on his belly button and they pulled a faucet washer from it. The year before, he wrote a play about the milk that went sour in his refrigerator and when on to perform it in the nude at the bandshell at Dewberry Memorial Park.” Alf went on to add: “He twitches a lot.”
“The reaction has been amazing online,” enthused Blip. “Everybody has been commented saying ‘why wasn’t my pothole invited?’ It could have been one hell of a party.”
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