Bingo Beats
In 1978, punk band the Cramps played
a gig at a mental institute. Iain Aitch witnesses an
extraordinary attempt to re-create it. At most theatres,
the interval affords the audience the opportunity to
drink a G&T, powder their nose and swap opinions on the
first act. Not so at the theatre in London's ICA. At
least not today. One member of the audience is throwing
up in the corner bingo beats, while another is asleep
near his feet and in imminent danger of being engulfed
by the rising tide of bile. Thankfully, someone rouses
him just in time - by emptying a glass of lager on his
face.
The performance they're all here to see is the latest
historical re-enactment from artists Iain Forsyth and
Jane Pollard. Re-enactment, traditionally more
associated with weekend Roundheads and Crimewatch UK,
made a splash as an art form in 2001 with Jeremy
Deller's film The Battle of Orgreave. Forsyth and
Pollard have been working in the area for some time:
their last re-staging bingo beats, 1998's A Rock'n'Roll
Suicide, minutely reconstructed the flamboyant final
concert of David Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust persona.
Their new work is far less controlled and far more
controversial. File under Sacred Music is a re-enactment
of a gig by New York punks the Cramps at the Napa Mental
Institute, California, in 1978 bingo beats. And the
audience drinking, sleeping and puking its way through
the interval at the ICA is largely made up of
psychiatric patients.
The Cramps' Napa concert has achieved near-mythic
status, thanks to a poor-quality bootleg video that
still changes hands at record fairs and on eBay. The
shakily shot, one-camera film shows patients swinging
their arms at the side of the stage, grabbing the
microphone from vocalist Lux Interior and even ignoring
the whole spectacle in favour of reading a newspaper.
Despite the degraded footage, you can tell that the gig
had a raw, untamed energy bingo beats, of a sort that
the ICA hasn't seen since someone attempted to chew off
Shane Mac Gowan's earlobe to the backing of the Clash in
1976.
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