I love that during this free concert for the patients at the Napa State Psychiatric Hospital, people were having a great time jumping up on stage to sing and dance with The Cramps. Early in the performance lead singer Lux Interior tells the audience, "Somebody told me you people are crazy, but I'm not so sure about that. You seem to be all right to me."
The San Francisco-based group The Mutants performed with The Cramps that day, too. This video makes me so happy.
From Open Culture
During this era, "California's former governor Ronald Reagan was contending for the presidency after slashing social services at the state level. We Were There to Be There (a documentary about this performance) begins with this crucial socio-political context, remembering the show as "both a landmark moment for punk rock and for the perception of mental health care within U.S. popular culture." … "It was a beautiful, beautiful thing," says Jill Hoffman-Kowal of Target Video. "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 couple of hours of total freedom. They didn't judge the band, and the band didn't judge them."
