4th & B - Downtown San Diego
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October 21st 2002
See
review of the Cramps from June 12th 2003
By Amber Shaffer, SDAM Staff Writer,
and Sara Dozier, freelance writer
©Copyright 2024 SDAM.com/Amber
Shaffer
Neither of us are ever on time. I'm always late and she's irritatingly early. So between the two of us we managed to show up for the Cramps show with just enough time to get drinks before they came onstage. We decided to skip the opening act because the font on their web site indicated the ghoulish quality of their sound. The Cramps- in the end- were bizarre enough. A caveat- I haven't actively listened to the Cramps in 10 years, so when I was asked to write a review I hesitated. But they said it should be an atmosphere piece, so here goes. You could recognize the crowd from blocks away as they migrated in their straight cut bangs and faux fur toward the venue. We gave our extra ticket to a young, impressionable looking boy in line. Perhaps he's not so impressionable looking after the experience. Inside, drinks in hand, we watched the singer maintain his modest erection which some early twenties guy in front of us clearly enjoyed the experience. He still maintained the requisite heterosexual man distance between himself and his buddy, however. Homophobia in that environment was a little surprising. But you could tell that the Cramps were a favorite of his by the way he sang the lyrics, jumped up and down and gleefully rushed toward the stage when he just couldn't hold back any longer. We were thankful he was out of our way so we could see the band. The game is this: lead singer is fucked up on whatever, performs bizarre physical antics, attempts to talk to the crowd (fails), and occasionally sings while the rest of the band looks casually disaffected and slightly bored. Truth be told, they played well and projected a cool rock and roll energy that's missing from our earnest, bubblegum scene. The carefully arranged set list showed the experienced professionals they are. The new songs were interspersed with crowd favorites. The periodic "woo-hoo's" of recognition came just as people were losing interest. The highest entertainment came from the crowd. One woman, who was clearly a fan, and did not look the part with schoolteacher hair and glasses, rocked out at the tables in back, singing along and bouncing in her chair. One gentleman in front of us was clearly perfecting his ape mating dance. Then there was the guy with dredlocks and the Guns n' Roses t-shirt. And the fifth of the crowd who were balding men in their mid-thirties trying to pick up chicks. Toward the end of the show, the crowd got "rough" and started a "pit." It was lame. There was one girl with energy, but her shirt got ripped so everyone basically stopped (including our two heterosexual friends from paragraph 3- NOT maintaining the proper distance). The balding mean all took a step back when the pit broke out, as if to escape imminent danger. I felt old. At one point, my monstrous sidekick put on her glasses to see the band better. She quickly reconsidered this move and put them away. This means she could only see the blurred features of the singer as he stacked amps and all of his mic stands in a heap, climbed to the top, climaxed, and fell onto the stage. That would have been enough for us (I don't think the rest of the band even noticed as they stared at the floor), but he tried to do it again, and fell down again. I was almost waiting for him to press his medic alert "I've fallen and I can't get up." |