The early days of punk were anything-goes times. The idea was to do virtually everything differently, especially you could be extra strange and provocative.
Enter The Cramps, a New York-based band that was a regular at the legendary CBGB. But their most famous show was with a San Franciso band called The Mutants. In 1978, the two of them journeyed to Napa to play a free show for the psychiatric patients at the Napa State Hospital.
The whole thing was captured on film and released as a 27-minute documentary called, We Were There to Be There. Why did they do it? To bring attention to government efforts to defund and privatize mental healthcare.
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