The Cramps and Stow’s Lux Interior go viral in Netflix series ‘Wednesday’

Ohio horror-punk legend Lux Interior, the lead singer and co-founder of The Cramps, is enjoying a posthumous surge in popularity.

The band’s 1981 song “Goo Goo Muck” has gone viral thanks to its inclusion in a show-stopping dance scene in the hit series “Wednesday” on Netflix.

With Tim Burton as an executive producer, the quirky, macabre show is based on spooky characters that cartoonist Charles Addams created for The New Yorker, later adapted into the 1960s television comedy “The Addams Family,” Hollywood movies and various reboots over the past 60 years.

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The Netflix series premiered Nov. 23 to critical acclaim and huge ratings. Burton directed the first four episodes.

‘Wednesday’ digs ‘Goo Goo Muck’

Jenna Ortega stars as morose, sardonic, black-clad Wednesday Addams, a student investigating a series of murders at a private school in New England.

In the fourth episode, titled “Woe What a Night,” she lets loose at a school dance with an earnest, deadpan, arm-flailing routine to “Goo Goo Muck.”

Lux Interior, a Stow native whose real name was Erick Lee Purkhiser, wails away on the soundtrack.

“When the sun goes down and the moon comes up, I turn into a teenage goo goo muck,” he sings. “Yeah, I cruise through the city and I roam the streets, looking for something that is nice to eat. You better duck when I show up. The goo goo muck.”

What’s a goo goo muck? Good question. Apparently it's a wild beast conjured up by adolescent yearning. As the lyrics go: “I’m a teenage tiger looking for a feast.”

The Cramps released the song on their 1981 album “Psychedelic Jungle” from I.R.S. Records. It’s a cover version of a little-known single by Ronnie Cook and the Gaylads, released in 1962 on Audan Records, a small label from Bakersfield, California.

Purkhiser met his future wife and bandmate Kristy Wallace at Sacramento State in 1972. They lived briefly in Akron before relocating to New York and forming The Cramps, a self-described “psychobilly” band with horror-themed songs. The lead singer took the stage name Lux Interior while the guitarist became Poison Ivy.

The influential group released eight studio albums and enjoyed a cult following before Interior died unexpectedly from an aortic dissection Feb. 4, 2009, in Glendale, California. He was 62.

The Cramps make the cut

“Wednesday” music supervisor Jen Malone, a fan of The Cramps, told Variety that she and producer Nicole Weisberg had a long list of potential songs for the episode, but kept coming back to “Goo Goo Muck.” They had also considered “Human Fly,” another song by the group.

“The Cramps are perfect for Wednesday,” Malone explained. “They’re in her headspace, like Siouxsie and Joy Division. I’m a former Goth. To work with music I love, to find that right moment — the track had to be fun, quirky and lend itself to Wednesday’s personality. For the team to come back with ‘Goo Goo Muck’? Done.”

Ortega did her own choreography for the sequence, creating the dance moves after watching vintage videos for inspiration.

As she explained on Twitter: “Thanks to Siouxsie Sioux, Bob Fosse's Rich Man's Frug, Lisa Loring, Lene Lovich, Denis Lavant, and archival footage of goths dancing in clubs in the ’80s. Helped me out on this one.”

More than 150 million households have viewed “Wednesday” over the past month. Meanwhile, a Netflix clip of the dance scene on YouTube has garnered 17 million views.

Comments from online viewers have been overwhelmingly positive. Some typical praise:

“This scene is absolutely perfect! There should be more love for The Cramps!”

“Why is this dance so good?? I can watch it over and over.”

“The Cramps! It’s wild to think there’s a whole new generation of people hearing them for the first time thanks to this show.”

Kate Bush’s 1985 song “Running Up that Hill” and Metallica’s 1986 tune “Master of Puppets” racked up millions of dollars in sales this year and entered the Top 40 after being featured on the fourth season of the Netflix series “Stranger Things.”

While The Cramps’ revival hasn’t been nearly as dramatic, at least not yet, it’s still been remarkable.

According to Billboard, “Goo Goo Muck” has been streamed more than 2 million times in the United States since the premiere of “Wednesday,” an 8,650% increase from previous years.

As a result, The Cramps have achieved their first No. 1 on a Billboard chart. “Goo Goo Muck” topped the Alternative Digital Songs Sales list with 2,000 downloads from Nov. 25 to Dec. 1.

Billboard noted that the group’s only other appearance on the charts was “Bikini Girls With Machine Guns,” which reached No. 10 on the Alternative Airplay list in 1990.

Brother proud of Lux Interior

Interior’s brother Michael Purkhiser, a guitarist who enjoyed 1980s success in Northeast Ohio as a member of The Action and The Walking Clampetts, was happy to hear The Cramps’ tune included in “Wednesday.”

“Yeah, that’s a really cool scene from that movie,” he said. “I’m sure Lux would have loved seeing that.”

He thinks the show’s creators realized that the spooky nature of the band and that particular song married perfectly with the vibe of “Wednesday.”

While not a household name, The Cramps still have a devoted following in underground circles, he said.

“Lux has been gone for 14 years this coming February, but his legacy lives on,” Purkhiser said. “The Cramps’ music is timeless in my opinion. It’s timeless because it’s rock ’n’ roll, which is timeless. I’m sure that’s exactly what my brother would say. It’s stripped-down rock ’n’ roll and that music isn’t going away anytime in the near future.

“I’m very proud of my brother and his commitment to the music.”

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Malone told Variety that she was happy to acquaint a new generation with one of her favorite groups.

“This job is about the moment, the connection it makes with the audience,” Malone noted. “One bonus is introducing music to people who haven’t heard it before. Being a part of having kids get into The Cramps — that’s awesome.”

Thanks to “Wednesday” and The Cramps, they’re all goo goo mucks now.

Mark J. Price can be reached at mprice@thebeaconjournal.com.

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This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: The Cramps song ‘Goo Goo Muck’ goes viral in Netflix’s ‘Wednesday’