That Time The Cramps Played at a Mental Hospital
The show we are about to discuss is one that probably shouldn’t have happened and definitely would not have happened today.
At the Napa State Hospital in California, in front of about 200 patients and staff, The Mutants and The Cramps took the stage. You can find the full 20-minute video on Youtube, although the footage definitely doesn’t do the gig justice.
The band does nothing to mollify the spectators, they aren’t joking around, they are playing what would otherwise be a standard show for them. At the beginning of the set, Lux Interior says
“Somebody told me you people are crazy, but I’m not so sure about that. You seem alright to me.”
First of All, Who Are The Cramps?
The Cramps are a melting pot of sounds that can be vaguely summarized within the Shock/rockabilly and punk rock genres. Forming in New York, The Cramps had a 30-year run spanning from 1976 to 2006. They were rotating a door for different members. However, the two constants of the band were husband and wife duo, Lux Interior and Poison Ivy.
Their entrance into the scene began at the legendary venue, CBGB’s. Coincidently, CBGB’s also closed its doors in 2006 but during its time was a prominent spot for some of the world's most renowned musicians. You could see groups like The Ramones, The Misfits, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, and many more great bands.
The Cramps had a distinct visual style and musical sound. You can identify them within the first couple of chords of a song. They are a fusion of country twang, shock rock, and camp all while maintaining that raw punk energy. Their lyrics and melodies paint a visual picture that can be described as a low-budget horror film. Most likely why a lot of their songs are featured in movie soundtracks. You can hear them in movies and TV shows like Stranger Things, The Return of the Living Dead (1985), Texas Chain Saw Massacre 2 (1986), and even comedies like The Hangover.
Even though when describing The Cramps, words like trashy, wild, and unfiltered come to mind, they always looked right. Poison Ivy rocked perfectly teased curly hair with tight outfits that worked in all the right ways. While Lux wore outlandish, statement-making ensembles. You can see him performing and in interviews wearing catsuits with pearls and heels. In true not giving a fuck nature, when androgyny wasn’t in or widely understood.
They were so camp that they teetered on the edge of novelty. However, they were able to develop a fervent visual expression that manifested through their sound. The reason why The Cramps are considered punk rock and not just rockabilly has mostly to do with their attitude more so than the actual music. Punk, at its core, is really about the message of anti-conformity, DIY, and anticapitalism amongst other things. In the beginning, punk was largely about making your own reality through expression, and without the look, you were without the message.
With over 20 albums, eps, and live recordings, The Cramps graced us with a huge library of music. You can listen to their discography front to back, over and over, and still hear something different each time. Although many of the members are dead, their music lives on through a global cult following. Head to Youtube and watch their interviews and performances to get a better understanding of this band and how they fully lived a freak, creep lifestyle.
About Napa, The Institution and Venue
The state of California is known for a few things, famous people, vineyards, mental illness, and addiction. Napa specifically, is known for its wine and psychiatric hospital. The Napa State Hospital is one of the five psych institutions in California.
During the time when The Cramps came through, the Napa State Hospital was a mellow, countryside setting for people suffering from mental illness. Many of the patients were there by their own will, the will of their families, or were found not guilty of crimes for reasons of insanity/mental illness and deemed unfit to stand trial.
Now, the primary inhabitants are “forensic patients”. This means that the population is mainly made up of people who were committed because of crimes and oftentimes violence. Back then, patients who committed crimes made up less than 20% of the hospital's population, now it is about 80%. It has been home to many violent criminals, including numerous serial killers. In 2010 a psychiatric technician was strangled on the property, and only two months later a therapist received multiple skull fractures at the hands of a patient.
When The Cramps and The Mutants played, they used the small courtyard as the venue. The stage wasn’t really a stage but more of an elevated patio about 10 feet deep and 30 feet wide. On the walls were murals showing musicians that were painted by the patients and staff. The setting was perfectly eery for what was about to happen.
How Did This Happen?
You’re probably wondering how the hell and who the hell would approve of a punk show at a psychiatric hospital. Well, we can thank this little piece of history to Bart Swain.
Bart Swain was the newly hired activities specialist in the CPS unit at the time in June 1978. Swain received a call from Howie Klein, who was well-known in the San Fransisco punk and music scene. Klein would write for zines and helped Dirk Dirksen, who was nicknamed “The Pope of Punk”, schedule bands at Mabuhay Gardens. Klein came up with the idea for the concert and when he phoned Swain, he said The Readymades, a new-wave band, were interested in playing a hospital show for free.
Swain was stoked about the idea and had booked many performances for the patients in the past. He had violins and blues musicians come through, even Van Morrisons' daughter. He wanted the patients to have a wide range of experiences. However, when the musicians arrived it wasn’t The Readymades but none other than The Cramps and The Mutants.
Swain would later say he doesn’t remember the circumstances for the change but was just acting on the fly.
The Mutants were a new-wave punk group with little to no musical background but were known for their wild performances, props, and on-stage antics. The group once performed at a school for deaf people, where the audience used inflated balloons to feel the music. For them, this was another opportunity to blaze the trail for unconventional performances.
Once the mutants began playing, Swain immediately feared that he would be fired and it wasn’t because of the band. It was because of the cameras, which were aimed at residents as they interacted with the bands and was a huge violation of patient confidentiality. The only reason he didn’t shut it down was that his boss Alan Beals was there. He waited for his reaction but the boss let the show go on.
The Video
The footage is fuzzy and distorted and everything is hard to make out. The audio rolls in and Mystery Plane by The Cramps begins to play. “My daddy drives a UFO” rings through the recording and stony-faced Poison Ivy comes into focus. The camera moves to Lux Interior as he swings, sways, and lunges toward the audience like a drugstore Elvis. Guitar player Bryan Gregory plays most of the set with a cigarette pinned to the corner of his mouth.
At the beginning of the video the patients are bopping and bouncing to the music, but soon enough it gets rowdy. There is no synchronicity among the audience, everyone is doing their own thing. One man is moving his body back and forth while waving his arms in a frantic motion. Another man is holding his fist to his mouth as if it's a microphone with a big smile and dances along to the music.
As the show goes on it gets more intense but not in an obnoxious way. There is a sense of freedom, no judgment, just fun. Members of the audience jump on stage and join Lux by shouting into the microphone. They don’t know the words but no one cares. The camera pans to a man reading a newspaper while the show blares on. The concert is full of excitement and energy. The band is interacting with the audience, there are hugs and shouts, moving and shaking. You can tell everyone is having a great time.
Towards the middle of the set, Lux says “how do you like The Cramps so far?”
A woman yells into the microphone “I got cramps, what are you gonna do about it?”
Lux responds “I got cramps myself, and I can’t do anything with ‘em either”
The video only shows The Cramps' performance and not The Mutants. It was said that the reason was that The Cramps played first and it was too dark once The Mutants took the stage. However, images from photographer Ruby Ray show The Mutants opening for The Cramps, and that was also how Klein originally wrote it in a zine called The New York Rocker.
The Bands
Needless to say, The Mutants weren’t thrilled to not make the cut for the tape.
“I was angry at Joe, he put out a DVD or CD with The cramps. Man, that should have been us!” - Fritz Fox formerly known as Freddy Mutant.
However, the bands were all thrilled to put on a free show for the patients at the Napa State Hospital.
“Really, the only thing that stands out is the unreality of that situation. People would laugh unexplainably if you said something, or who couldn’t maintain eye contact without looking away. Some had very obvious problems. It was like going to Mars, in terms of interaction with the audience.” Brendan Early guitarist of The Mutants.
Jill Hoffman-Kowal of Target Video said “It was a beautiful thing what we did for those people. It was liberating, they had so much fun. They pretended they were singing, they were jumping on stage. It was a few hours of total freedom. They didn’t judge the band and the band didn’t judge them”
In an at-home interview with Lux Interior and Poison Ivy from a program called “After Hours”, the two say,
“We have always wanted to play at a mental institution because we always have problems with audiences not being quite what we’d like them to be, and those people just got right into it.” He goes on to say “when we played there 16 of the inmates escaped and it was a big deal and other people found out about it and other mental institutions. We have tried to play some places since then but it just hasn’t happened.”
However, It was not confirmed if patients did escape or not.
The Significance
This concert is a very rare piece of punk rock history. There are only a few comparisons, like when The Sex Pistols performed at Chelmsford Prison or when Gobstopper played a Christmas party at a home for developmentally disabled people.
However, the concert at Napa State Hospital is unlike any other. Within music history, shows at prisons have happened several times, but shows at psychiatric hospitals were slim to none. And, it’s extremely unlikely to ever happen again, especially at Napa State. It has become too dangerous, even for hardcore rockers.
It’ll forever be a landmark in music history. It is a testament to the ethos of punk rock and was significant for the mental health care system at the time in the United States. It was a moment of liberation and free entertainment for those disregarded and cut off from society.
Mental Health in the 80s
It is important to note the state of the mental health care system in California during the 80s. The impact from the 60s when governor Ronald Reagan's huge cuts to social services and deinstitutionalizing were still prevalent. What was well-intended was ruined by severely poor execution. The result was fewer inmates and more homeless and untreated mental illness which eventually lead to much higher incarceration rates.
In 1967 Reagon signed the Lanterman-Petris-Short act which ended the practice of institutionalizing patients against their will. This lead the state of California to rely on community treatment centers, that were either never built or had very few resources due to very low funding. This resulted in a huge increase in mentally ill people entering the prison system. The cycle is that low-level offenders would be sent to jail and sought stabilization through regular food, sleep, and hopefully no drugs or alcohol. However, there was also little to no mental health treatment. Then, they would be released back to the streets where they’d be arrested again and the cycle would continue.
The connection between deinstitutionalization and incarceration is very obvious. In 1978 there were approximately 25,000 people in the US prison system, by 2006 it had grown to well over 170,000, and by 2019, that number became 1,380,427.
My Favourite Songs By The Cramps
If you’re interested in listening to and exploring The Cramps a little deeper, check out my top songs (in no specific order):
Human Fly
GooGoo Muck
You Got Good Taste
Surfin’ Dead
Primitive
Rockin’ Bones
Strange Love
Garbageman
I Wanna Get In Your Pants
Queen Of Pain
God Damn Rock N’ Roll
I Was a Teenage Werewolf
Citations
Commentary, G. (2019, March 10). Hard truths about deinstitutionalization, then and now. CalMatters. Retrieved October 25, 2022, from https://calmatters.org/commentary/2019/03/hard-truths-about-deinstitutionalization-then-and-now/
Perdue, B. (2018) That time the cramps played a gig in a psychiatric hospital, AnotherMan. AnotherMan Magazine. Available at: https://www.anothermanmag.com/life-culture/10310/that-time-the-cramps-played-a-gig-in-a-psychiatric-hospital (Accessed: October 25, 2022).
Tashjian, R. (2018) In praise of the Cramps, the Scariest Band of All Time, Garage. Available at: https://garage.vice.com/en_us/article/9k74m8/the-cramps-style (Accessed: October 25, 2022).
(2016) YouTube. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acYAFerWhVw (Accessed: October 25, 2022).
California, S.of (no date) Department of State Hospitals - Napa, Organization Title. Available at: https://www.dsh.ca.gov/Napa/index.html (Accessed: October 25, 2022).
