The Cramps "Bad Music for Bad People" [1984]

Nothing says "punkers sell out" like their second "greatest hits" compilation in two years. "Bad Music for Bad People" is a high school haunted house of three-chord 60s garage rock and backslap reverb infused with enough airplane-model glue vapors and Betty Page pin-ups to constitute something representing American rebellion in a time when President Reagan was just starting to make the genuine article impossible. Singer Lux Interior attempts his best "Gene Vincent on bad acid" schtick while Poison Ivy tries to keep it all together with her pedestrian guitar delivery, especially with their drummer apparently playing his kit with pig bones. If punk music was ever truly a serious movement, these wacked-out wise-asses killed it dead. Questionable decision-making like singing with the mic halfway down your throat and carrying the Ramones' midnight slasher flick obsessions to their obvious, unfortunate conclusions, "Bad Music for Bad People" is thus rendered an absolutely perfect title, especially if "bad" = "lowlife."