The other day I was getting ready to go see a screening of the new documentary about the Mutants-Cramps concert at Napa State Mental Hospital, We Were There To Be There, when my old friend from San Francisco days, Michael Snyder called to catch up. The Vidiots theater is in Eagle Rock, near where he lives, so I asked him if he wanted to meet us there. He said he couldn’t make it but reminded me of something I had long forgotten. I had once written a story— “Moo Moo Mutants”— for a local rag about a Mutants show under the pseudonym Sue Hoo. Neither of us could remember which rag it was.
I used pseudonyms all the time when I wrote, mostly because I wrote so much I thought it would look weird if people saw “Howie Klein” articles everywhere they looked. I once wrote nearly a whole issue of Cream under 4 pseudonyms, though none were Sue Hoo. I only used that one time for that one Mutants story. Some of my other names, the regular ones I used to use like Jack Basher and Jack Badger, had their own fan bases. I used Sue Hoo because I felt funny about reviewing a Mutants show because I had a 3-song EP out by the band and it seemed a little conflict-of-interesty… albeit nothing like Clarence Thomas or Sammy Alito’s conflicts.
Anyway, Roland and I went to the screening. It was a little surreal because I was in the documentary and in a Mutants concert film that they showed as well. It’s weird seeing yourself— or your old self (this was from 1978)— on the big screen with a roomful of people. Afterwards there was a kind of Q&A that I did with Mike Plante, the filmmaker, Dino Everett, an archivist from PMRC, and Jackie Sharp from Target Video, the folks who shot the concerts originally.
Almost everyone there was old punk-rock people, like me. I ran into Chip Kinman from the Dils who I hadn’t seen in several decades, and other people who I recognized or who recognized me. It was the 45th anniversary of the original Napa State concert. You should go see it if it plays near you or if it’s on TV. It was good and not long… just long enough to make the points about why we were doing it and what a dickwad Reagan was for shutting down California’s mental hospitals.
Wait a second… this is the documentary, or an early version of it. I just found it on YouTube. You should watch it... it's really fun: