Linna was a founding member of The Cramps, performing in the band from their first date on November 1, 1976 until July 10, 1977. She appears on none of their legitimate releases. Linna left The Cramps to join the rock and roll band Nervus Rex. After performing with the Zantees, Linna and Miller launched The A-Bones. The A-Bones released two 10" EPs, followed by four full-length albums between 1991 and 1996. The A-Bones regrouped after a short hiatus to perform in Spain with Little Richard, Andre Williams and the Great Gaylord. Linna also played drums on Maureen Tucker's 1994 album Dogs Under Stress. Linna and A-Bones bassist Marcus "The Carcass" Natale guested on a 2007 recording session by the protopunk band Figures of Light, produced by Miller; she also handled the drums on Figures of Light's 2011 album Drop Dead, produced by Mick Collins of The Dirtbombs. In 2014, as "Miriam," Linna released her first solo album on Norton Records, Nobody's Baby, produced by Sam Elwitt. The album features Linna singing over distinctly Phil Spector- and Jack Nitzsche-inspired arrangements of a selection of mostly obscure cover songs from the 1960s. Music journalist and blogger Lindsay Hutton wrote, "Everything about "Nobody's Baby" is a total triumph, the sound, the sleeve and mostly the power of the music trapped on either side of the record." Norton released her follow-up LP, Down Today, in 2015.
Linna as author, publisher
Linna's past magazine ventures include Kicks, Smut Peddler and Bad Seed. Her first fanzine in 1976 was The Flamin Groovies Monthly, which she inherited from Bomp Records prexie Greg Shaw. Her lengthy liner notes for Norton and other labels display an unusual writing style of wild word play and imaginative humor. In 1997, Linna and Miller published The Great Lost Photographs of Eddie Rocco. Rocco contributed to Ebony Song Parade and freelanced for Fort Worth's Sepia magazine, and the book collects many of his previously unpublished 1950s and 1960s images, including shots of Ruth Brown, Esquerita, Roy Orbison and the Treniers. In 2004, Linna co-edited Sin-A-Rama: Sleaze Sex Paperbacks of the Sixties, also contributing an article, "Ron Haydock aka Vin Saxon," about the twisted career of novelist-musician Ron Haydock. In 2009, her paperback book company, Kicks Books, launched with the publication of Sweets and Other Stories by Andre Williams. Subsequent books have included This Planet Is Doomed, a collection of Sun Ra's poetry; and Pulling a Train and Getting in the Wind, previously uncollected short stories by Harlan Ellison, Lord of Garbage by Kim Fowley, Benzedrine Highway by Charles Plymell, and Gone Man Squared by Royston Ellis. Linna also co-authored a biography of Texas musician Bobby Fuller, I Fought the Law, published by Kicks in 2015. According to Lester Bangs, "I opened up a copy of a Florida punk fanzine called New Order and read an article by Miriam Linna of the Cramps, Nervus Rex, and now Zantees: “I love the Ramones this is the celebration of everything American--everything teenaged and wonderful and white and urban”....the same issue featured a fullpage shot of Miriam and one her little friends posing proudly with their leathers and shades and pistol in front of the headquarters of the United White People’s Party, under a sign bearing three flags “GOD”, “COUNTRY”, “RACE” Linna owns one of the world's largest private collections of vintage paperbacks, including complete runs of Avon, Beacon, Signet and others. Her collection includes over 500 juvenile delinquent paperbacks, and she featured the covers of some of these in her book Bad Seed: A Postcard Book, published in 1992 by Running Press. On May 15, 2009, she launched an autobiographical blog, , documenting everything from Ashtabula angst to her days at the Strand Bookstore, and is illustrated with promo flyers, handwritten letters and photographs.
