The Cramps knocked the audience off its feet at the Odeon on Wednesday, Oct. 13 – literally, in some cases. With a long set in which each song got progressively weirder, more protracted and less musical, and a nearly crazed audience that danced like there was no tomorrow, the show was enough to leave this writer bruised, breathless and utterly shocked (in a good way, of course).

The opening bands were mediocre, but when the Cramps stepped on stage, an atmosphere of imminent mayhem filled the hall. From the opening number, a mutilated version of Tommy James & The Shondells’ “My Baby Does the Hanky Panky,” to the encore that eventually degenerated into a 20-minute orgy of noise and destruction, the crowd was dancing and loving every offensive minute of it. Lead guitarist Poison Ivy and the rest of the band seemed relatively unenthusiastic, but singer Lux Interior was in another world. With white powder dripping off his sweat-drenched face, black lipstick smeared by red wine, silver teeth flashing in the spotlight and one hand kneading his vinyl-clad crotch while the other threw mic stands left and right, he looked like Dracula on crack, or perhaps an androgynous Elvis risen from the dead after three decades of decay.

Lux was the physical embodiment of his lyrics, which dealt with monsters, drugs, porn and everything else your mother wouldn’t approve of. Between songs, he spouted insults at the crowd and occasionally gave advice on how to fight off anal-probing alien invaders. When the music was playing, he pranced around the stage grunting and screaming, leaning into the crowd to steal folks’ beer and cigarettes and sucking on his bottle of wine, his microphone and Poison Ivy’s glittering gold stiletto heels, spitting and twitching all the while; he was the model image of a madman. At one point, during the song “Dope Fiend Boogie,” he upended the mic stand and stuck the mic into his arm, pretending to shoot up. He then swung the stand around, smashed it into the floor, bent it in half and threw it offstage, bringing the total mic stand destruction count to seven or eight or so. Also, although being an avid punk show attendee has given me the privilege of seeing many penises on stage, I’ve never seen anything quite like Lux (who, by the way, is well into his 60’s), who broke the neck off of his second bottle of wine and used the sharp edge to cut a gaping hole in his skin-tight vinyl pants. He then proceeded to spastically jerk around and climb over everything on stage, including speakers, the drum set and other band members, and knocked things around, smashing the mic against everything he could find and flopping repeatedly onto the floor—all the while with his cock hanging out. Throughout this unbelievable spectacle, Poison Ivy and the band played lousy rockabilly on their badly-tuned and obnoxiously distorted instruments, and the crowd danced and danced.

Sometimes it is hard to believe that this act has been going strong since 1976, but seeing the Cramps play live made me really appreciate the vast gulf between old-school punk acts and those that are playing today. As the punk scene has evolved from cynical, nihilistic wallowing-in-Western-decadence-and-all-that-is-worst-in-pop-culture to a self-defined culture of its own, the scene’s members and celebrities have become far more tame, much less offensive and no longer focused on deliberately making the worst music they possibly can. Punk rock has become a musical genre, rather than a musical profanity. This comment is certainly not meant to degrade the contemporary punk scene—indeed, the increase in capable artists with real thoughts in their heads is a good thing – but I have to admit that punk rock bands today are nowhere near as much trashy, tasteless fun as the originals.