Awesome. I love the Cramps.

Love the dancing guy in a dress and all the funny vintage clothes

Incredible - some might call it exploitation, but the Cramps really brought a lot of joy to the residents.

That was awesome.

Man, that's beautiful. It looks like the folks were digging it thoroughly. I think it's cool the band was right there on the floor with the patients, interacting with them. Good stuff.

That was awesome exploitive!

The guy with the polka-dotted Flying V, is that g.e. smith? could there be two giant douchebags that big? I hope not

ah... takes me back to my first real concert: the cramps and the primevals at the geneva palladium in 1987. good times.

I love the two folks doing "the bump" in the background. Just to make sure we all know it's 1978. The Cramps rule!

I still have this on VHS from Target Video. It is a classic, but creepy in so many ways. It's the only live footage I believe of Brian Gregory too. Later on, he saw God, stole the Cramps van with equipment and disappeared off the face of the Earth.

Target Video used to be the only outlet of punk video during the late '70's and '80's. Since MTV wouldn't show any real punk rock, this company took their clunky video camera's and tried to record as many bands as they could. I got them through mail order in the back of Spin magazine or local fanzines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_Video

http://www.targetvideo.blogspot.com/

Another classic live recording they made was of the punk band Crime performing outside on the recreation grounds of the San Quentin Penitentiary.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=15485319

Sorry, only link I could find online.

Also there is the rare live video recording of the Screamers. The greatest punk band without an album to their name.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrQGP8Gf2UI

Check out that kid drummer...

Most of their recordings were of poor quality, but they serve a purpose in recording music history.

The whole video has him giving up the mike at some point, and 2 chicks are fighting for their rights to scream in it,...'


love that at 1:10 , amidst all the excitment, the cameran decides to focus on someone reading the paper, then zooms in on the actual paper... i mean wtf?

So punk is just mediocre rockabilly set in an edgy location. I get it now.

This is just about the greatest video EVAR. Seriously. It's like a train wreck, you just can't look away.

Ah, we do love the classics.


vertigo4: So punk is just mediocre rockabilly set in an edgy location. I get it now.

You'll never get it. Probably just as well.

Just a OT question, is it really that hard these days to highlight a text link and drag it into the navigation bar?

/firefox 3 supports it
//& "new window"'s gay too
///there's a back button, you know
////that's my quota for fark snark today

So punk is just mediocre rockabilly set in an edgy location. I get it now.

Perfect

The Cramps were only punk in adopting the general attitude of "you can still be in a band even if you can barely play your instrument". Calling their music "mediocre rockabilly" is being generous; musically, most of their songs are interchangeable and otherwise unremarkable. The wikipedia.org entry on the band is pretty good, as long as you put aside the "punk rock" connotations.

This recording was early on, before they hit their stride. The Cramps main fanbase were B-movie, trailer trash culture buffs, with a few "Rocky Horror Picture Show", John Waters and Ramones fans thrown in here and there. If you've never heard any other stuff by The Cramps but enjoy any of the above, check out their videos. A quick glance at YouTube, for instance, pulls up these titles (with pre-loaded innuendo):
"Bikini Girls with Machine Guns"
"Can Your Pussy Do the Dog?"
"Naked Girl Falling Down the Stairs"
"You've Got Good Taste"
"What's Inside a Girl?"
"Goo Goo Muck"
"Creature from the Black Leather Lagoon"

/don't say you weren't warned

Say what you want, The Cramps did an awesome cover of "Fever". It was featured in the best vampire movie of all time, "Near Dark". A YouTubie of it here:
YouTubie (new window)

//The Cramps. Fever.

The Cramps are great!!!

If memory serves, I think at least one audience member just kind of wandered off into the night at the Napa show.

/Loves me some Cramps.