No Reason to Ban Rap Concerts Yet : Violence: The Anaheim City Council should not overreact to shooting outside Celebrity Theatre.

The gunplay is over, but the smoke has yet to clear from last week’s shooting during a rap concert at the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim.

Several serious questions need to be addressed, and theater officials promise to release a statement today with some of the answers that have been too slow in coming.

They also are scheduled to meet with city officials, who have been anxious to salve the worries of Anaheim residents, who are justifiably upset that a young rap fan was hospitalized with a bullet wound he sustained outside the theater, where throngs were waiting to go inside to hear rappers Ice Cube, Too Short and others.

As of Tuesday, the only official comment out of the theater came from James Woodin, a trustee for the nonprofit foundation that leases the building to Celebrity Theatre operators. Woodin also acts as liaison between the facility and the city.

“I’ve been in communication almost daily since Friday with several members of the City Council,” Woodin said. “We have talked, we fully understand their position, and they understand mine; I think once we all sit down. . . , we’ll be able to make everybody happy.”

But it would be a mistake for the council to seek an outright ban on rap--something Mayor Fred Hunter is pressing for--or to revoke the Celebrity’s beer-and-wine license, thus crippling the theater’s ability to turn a profit on any future shows.

Celebrity lawyers probably would prevail in a court challenge to such a sweeping, perhaps even racist, response as a total ban on rap. And it’s hard to see any direct connection with the facility’s beer-and-wine license, since the shooting occurred outside, before ticketholders got anywhere near the bar. And the brawl that took place inside the theater later may have had as much to do with absence of security guards, who were pulled away from the stage to handle the crowd outside, than with excessive consumption of alcohol.

A more important issue, though, is that all rappers do not unleash gang violence, any more than all pro football games incite stadium brawls or all country singers promote alcoholism and divorce.

That theorem surely was proved just two nights after the Ice Cube concert, when teeny-bopper rapper Vanilla Ice drew a markedly different, and peaceable, audience to the very same theater.

Instead, the violence that erupted last Thursday demands reasoned reactions from the city (which scored high marks earlier this year for not capitulating when some residents wanted 2 Live Crew banned from the city), as well as from the Celebrity’s booking agents, rap performers and the fans themselves.

If it could be shown that rap concerts were plagued by violence, an outright ban might be the only option. Yet the Celebrity has held dozens of rap shows over the past two years without serious problems.

In that time, it has developed into an important career steppingstone for local rappers who have outgrown small clubs but aren’t yet ready for mammoth concert arenas and amphitheaters.

In any event, the city should not overreact to a single incident. This is the same city, after all, that is steaming full speed ahead--over the complaints of many Anaheim residents, it might be noted--to build a multimillion-dollar sports arena in partnership with the Nederlander Organization, which books numerous concert facilities and theaters around the country.

It has been acknowledged that even if the city does land a professional sports franchise to inhabit the arena--a gamble that is far from a sure thing at this point--Nederlander is planning to supplement any sports activities with periodic rock, pop and, yes, probably even rap, concerts.

Today, there are more and more rappers, i.e., M.C. Hammer and Vanilla Ice, who are hitting the sales in the multimillions that make them capable of filling such arenas with mainstream pop fans, not just inner-city kids with gang ties.

What they sing is music not only to the ears of their fans, but to those cities and businesses that benefit from the revenues generated in ticket sales, concessions, merchandising and parking.

What happened last Thursday still isn’t fully known, but it’s becoming clear that the combative Ice Cube--who is from Compton and whose records chronicle, some say glorify, the brutality of gang life and mores--is too hot to handle in his own back yard. Some of his previous Southern California performances have been marred by fights in the audience.

Ironically, Ice Cube and Too Short appeared in Oakland over the weekend without incident at the first rap show in a year in that city, where violence had prompted the 1989 moratorium. And Ice Cube himself successfully stopped a fight that broke out during one of his concerts in Hollywood last year.

Still, if violence continues to accompany Ice Cube’s live performances, he may have to forgo them, at least in Southern California.

As for the future of rap at the Celebrity, it behooves theater operators to beef up security for acts that have a history of altercations during performances. But no amount of private security or police buildup can eliminate all possibility of an incident like last Thursday’s--Anaheim officers, after all, stood only a few yards away when the gunman fired.

So Celebrity officials would do themselves, their patrons, the Anaheim police, the City Council and neighbors a favor by being more selective with their bookings. They also could cut ticket sales short to avoid overflow crowds--like the one that showed up Thursday--and cut off alcohol sales early.

City officials may also want to make theater operators responsible for damage due to vandalism. And if it is turns out that, despite their best efforts, violence proliferates at rap shows, only then would a blanket ban be considered.

For rap performers and fans themselves, it should become painfully obvious by now that if they aren’t going to make every effort to quell the troublemakers, government officials will be more than happy to do it for them--permanently.

Lead them not into temptation.