2 Live Crew’s O.C. Reception Likely to Be Differnt : Pop Music: The controversial rap group attracted anemic audiences in its last Southland appearances, but its new reputation, though, may change all that this time around.

The last time members of controversial rap group 2 Live Crew performed in Southern California, they couldn’t get arrested.

But that was well before a national furor erupted over the raunchy language on their “As Nasty as They Wanna Be” album. The reaction could change when the rappers return to the Southland next month for concerts in Anaheim and Reseda, now that the U.S. Marines and a conservative Orange County minister-activist have joined the campaign against the group.

U.S. Marine Corps officials have pulled copies of 2 Live Crew’s “Nasty” album off the shelves of base stores in Camp Pendleton and El Toro.

In addition, the album, which was declared obscene on June 6 by a U.S. District Court judge in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., is also reportedly no longer being sold at Marine base stores in Yuma, Ariz.; Jacksonville, N.C.; and Beaufort, S.C. Spokespeople for those bases, however, could not be reached at press time.

Chief Warrant Officer Randy Gaddo at Marine headquarters in Washington said, “Under Marine Corps regulations, if material is X-rated or if it doesn’t fall under generally accepted moral standards, the material is not suitable for sale on (base) shelves.” He said that each base makes its own determination. “It’s not as though it’s the government that’s doing this,” Gaddo said. The officers at the bases “are making the same determination as any other retail store manager would make in the civilian sector,” he said.

Master Gunnery Sgt. R.L. Yohe, a Camp Pendleton spokesman, said on Friday that Lt. Col. G.C. Schoppe, who made the decision to pull the record off base shelves, acted after reading news accounts of the 2 Live Crew obscenity case. He reviewed the record personally, Yohe said, then decided that it should not be sold at the base.

Base officials are now reviewing an album by controversial comedian Andrew Dice Clay, whose work also includes sexually explicit material, to see if it should be removed from shelves, another spokesperson said.

News of 2 Live Crew’s upcoming shows in Anaheim and Reseda prompted a note of concern from the Rev. Lou Sheldon, a self-styled crusader for moral causes who recently has drawn attention for his campaigns against gay-rights measures.

“We are looking into it. You know it, man,” Sheldon said Friday after learning that the group will be playing just a short walk from his Traditional Values Coalition’s Anaheim headquarters.

Sheldon said he had contacted Anaheim City Atty. Jack L. White as the first step in determining whether the group’s material meets the state’s legal definition of “obscene.” White could not immediately be reached for comment.

With all the extra governmental and media attention on the embattled rap group, its return to the Southland for concerts July 25 at the Country Club in Reseda and July 27 at Anaheim’s Celebrity Theatre figures to attract more ticket-buyers than last fall, when it played to one-third-capacity crowds at the same facilities.

Tickets go on sale Monday for both shows, the first 2 Live Crew shows in the area since the group’s “Nasty” album was declared obscene June 6 by Judge Jose Gonzalez in a U.S. District Court in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

An Anaheim police spokesman said Friday that the department was focusing no special attention on the concert, but would provide extra protection at the event if theater officials requested it. “It’s just a simple matter, really. If there’s a problem, they call us and we respond,” Sgt. Ken Brott said.

Celebrity Theatre officials declined comment on any aspect of the concert.

As for the group’s Country Club show, “the only thing that we would be concerned with, strictly from a patrol standpoint, would be public safety,” said Officer Tom Kidd of the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Valley Division. “As far as the content of the performance, that is probably not going to be a concern of ours.”

The reactions from law enforcement officials are in keeping with a statement released earlier in the week by the Sacramento district attorney’s office, which did not find the “Nasty” album obscene as judged against a “statewide community standard.”

The state penal code defines “obscene matter” as that which, taken as a whole, “to the average person, applying contemporary statewide standards, appeals to the prurient interest, and is matter which . . . depicts or describes in a patently offensive way sexual conduct; and which . . . lacks serious literary, artistic, political, educational or scientific value.”

Sheldon, however, has already made up his own mind on that matter.

“They have stepped over the line of what is decent and what is standard,” he said. “This does not have redeeming social value.”

Sheldon claimed that he is not trying to block the 2 Live Crew show, but wants to make sure that the group will “clean it up” and perform material that is acceptable under state standards. He said he intends to find out “what songs they are going to sing. They may have cleaned up their act.”

“I don’t think we want to deny their right to come here,” he added.

Sheldon, who took an active role last November in supporting Irvine’s Measure N, the initiative that successfully stripped gays and lesbians from protection under the city’s human-rights ordinance, said he was unswayed in his opinion of 2 Live Crew by the group’s frequently anti-homosexual lyrics and remarks.

“That has no bearing at all. We are not anti-homosexual as individuals,” Sheldon said. “I think this is a big point to prove, that Lou Sheldon loves the homosexual, but doesn’t believe he was born that way, and he can be helped.”

The “Nasty” album was declared obscene June 6 by a federal judge in Broward County, Fla. Later, two group members were arrested on obscenity charges after a performance, and a third was subsequently served with a notice to appear in court on similar charges.

2 Live Crew performed without incident at Anaheim’s Celebrity Theatre last September, before the controversy broke. Sheldon said he had not heard of the group at the time of that concert.

According to County Club general manager Scott Hurowitz, 2 Live Crew played the Country Club last December, but, due to what he described as poor promotion of the event, only 300 people attended the show in the 900-capacity club.

“I’m a real believer in free speech,” he said. “I have no problem whatsoever with 2 Live Crew performing in my club.”

In another development, Davania Branch, 23, announced Thursday at a press conference in Miami that she has filed a palimony suit in the 11th Judicial Court in Dade County against 2 Live Crew leader Luther Campbell, alleging that he is the father of her 2 1/2-year-old daughter.

Branch pronounced, among other things, that she had blood tests to support her claims and that she had filed the suit because Campbell, who, she says, started his record label in her mother’s garage, had stopped paying her child support in January. Campbell could not be reached for comment.