DVD Review: G.G Allin And The Murder Junkies - Terror In America
Published March 19, 2006
But look at that terrifying rage in the furthest corners of his eye-holes. Think ye not that a shitless stage means a tame ol' G.G.
When our pal wakes up from out his shallow slumber, when he danders downstairs and, finding nothing better to do, flings on Terror In America again, knowing what he knows about the absence of dung, poop, messy, he'll find himself staring with unfettered glee into the very gaping willy-hole of pure nihilistic abandon.
Show One - Angry G.G
Asbury Park, N.J.
Bruce Springsteen made a fine ol' debut album all about Asbury Park. Greetings From Asbury Park, he mumbled, telling us bout how he "burst like a supernova" and "combed my hair, it was just right." G.G Allin, fresh out prison and playing live with the Murder Junkies for the first time in 15 months, he ain't got no time to worry 'bout hair or collapsing stars. Stalking the stage with what looks like a surgical coat covering his white y-fronts / thong get-up, he gets to quoting from a magazine article, some observations on G.G from out Mondo 2000; "If you are a young gun waiting to go off" he hollers, "G.G Allin will help you take aim and fire. So that's what I say to you. Take aim and fire."
Take aim and fire. At what? At G.G, seems to be the crux of the crowd's understanding.
Still, ain't no crowd in the here or there could mess with G.G any worse or with any more vehemence than G.G messes with G.G. Throughout "Bite It You Scum," "Look Into My Eyes And Hate Me," "Take Aim & Fire," and "Outlaw Scumfuc," G.G slices his chest with a crushed can, smacks said aluminum off his head a couple dozen times, climbs the speaker stacks, hangs from the rafters and head-butts the very damn roof.
Blood gushes from the wounds in his scalp, horrible black globs trickling down his jaws.
The audience applauds every thud of the microphone 'gainst teeth. G.G just glares, those eyes burning holes in that carved-up skull.
What's going on in that carved up skull, a fella gets to thinking?
Even with the slashing and battering and the flailing, see, even with the hollering and barking on 'bout "I fuck all the prostitutes I know / They tell me I smell like raw sewage," even still, G.G seems oddly restrained. Maybe that time in prison done shook him up a tad with regards the old "action / reaction" shindig. Maybe he's contemplating the legal consequences of a kick to the face of a stranger or a gobfull o' shite spat at a lady down front.
Even Tiny G.G has remained behind that fetching undergarment, save for a brief flash of pube (a fairly distressing development, considering how clean-shaven Tiny G.G usually appears).
- DVD Review: G.G Allin And The Murder Junkies - Terror In America
- Published: March 19, 2006
- Type: Review
- Section: Music
- Filed Under: Music: Punk Rock, Music: Video, Video: Music
- Writer: Duke De Mondo
- Duke De Mondo's BC Writer page
- Duke De Mondo's personal site
- Spread the Word
- Like this article?
- Email this
Save to del.icio.us
Comments
Stewart, chances are quite a lot of folks do. Or at least they miss the thought that going to see a gig could be a chance for something more unexpected or extravagant than "oh, they played a b-side, i was SHOCKED". GG was most likely a deplorable, wretched, misogynist, nihilistic mutt, but nonetheless, at least it wasn't an act. At least the folks who saw GG Allin of an evening KNEW they had experienced something, foul or life-affirming or whatever. When was the last time you felt like a gig changed your life? I'd say for a good portion of the audience at these shows, in some meanginful way their lives were changed.
maybe not changed in a way you or I would wanna be changed, but still. it was raw and real and dangerous, and who DOESN'T want that of an occasion?
thanks for the comment, also!
I'd not know of the GG if it weren't for something called Mondo Radio! Great stuff as always, Duke.
Glad you liked it, Sir Berlin! And gladder still that I in some way helped open your guts to the GG.
Yeah Aaron I'm sure the Jews who died in Nazi concentration camps " KNEW they had experienced somthing," too. Would you like to start waxing poetic about the unseen benefits of the Holocaust and Hitler?
Anyone who had thier lives changed in a meaningful way by G.G. Allin are either completely useless as he was or had thier lives changed for the worse.
There's nothing wrong with being unique but everything I have learned about G.G. has led me to believe that he had nothing at all to offer humanty but contempt and violence.
Good riddance! The world is a better place now that he is no longer in it.
If the DVD's as entertaining as that screed then it must be a corker (I believe that's what they say in..I dunno, Cork or somewhere).
I bet it would be a hell of a contrast to the G3 DVD I just viewed, if only Steve Vai took a shit on stage in between giving mad faces and playing with his whammy bar...
Sir Fleming, thank you! You know Vai's got SOMETHIN goin on with all that face-pullin...
Stewart, i dunno if that's altogether fair, the holocaust comparison. Folks who went to see G.G Allin & The Murder Junkies went so out of choice, for one thing. they enjoyed it, hard as that may be for us folks to fathom. I don't wanna be shit on anymore than you do, but for some folks, that kinda visceral mania was just what they needed.
And anyroad, isn't rock n roll SUPPOSED to be dangerous?? aren't the critical types supposed to scratch their heads and say "what's that all about, anyroad??" till at least three decades after the fact? still, i've said before, in this time and place when folks like eminem are being marketed as dangerous and uncompromising, it does a man good to see something truly dangerous and uncompromising going on in the name of rock n roll. diabolically awful rock n roll, perhaps, but rock n roll nonetheless.
as a person, G.G Allin appears to have been a wreckless demented hateful bastard, but my good lord was he ever fascinating. For all the flaws in his character, of which there are numerous examples, there was still some sense of integrity, of attempting to wrestle the ghost of rock n roll from out the hands of the patronising major labels. For that, if for nothing else, he has at least some wee corner of my respect.
also, there's the fact that here is true spectacle, with a budget size of a cigarette-end and production values you'd find in the corner of a vagrant's teeth. and yet what a show!
In all the words above, I didn't see much of an indication that G. G. Allin's music was worth listening to 13 years removed from his being alive.
This DVD sounds like the Rock and Roll equivalent of "Faces Of Death". Musically, what's the point? Allin was nothing more than an in-your-face performance artist.
Sure, rock and roll is supposed to be dangerous and anti-social. I agree that Eminem yelling "Fuck" in a crowded theatre hardly makes the grade by this measurement. And yet, rock and roll is also supposed to be listenable, isn't it? Rock and roll became much more dangerous when the music and message began to get mass acceptance and led to changing the way we as a society see the world.
G. G. Allin was a sideshow. You pay to see the bearded lady or the armless-legless man once, and you're done. Allin simply didn't have it musically, so he made up for it by eating his own feces. Nice footnote, but his records aren't flying off the shelf since he OD'd.
Duke, well done review here. I had not been real familiar with GG Allin. I don't know what the fuck to make of him. I do know I probably don't have the stomach to watch the DVDs.
DJ, thank you sir. to be sure, t'is an acquired taste, the old GG frolics. If'n you ever muster the stomach for it, though, i'd heartily reccomend HATED - GG Allin And The Murder Junkies, one of the finest rockumentaries you'll ever encounter. Directed by Todd Phillips, who went on to make, um, Starsky And Hutch, Old School and Road Trip. Who'd a thunk it?
J.P, you make a staggeringly good point there. "G. G. Allin was a sideshow. You pay to see the bearded lady or the armless-legless man once, and you're done. Allin simply didn't have it musically, so he made up for it by eating his own feces."
The music these folks produced is, for the most part, horrendous. Derivative, repetitive simplistic toss for the most part, with a few exceptions (quite a lot of You Give Love A Bad Name is gleefully catchy, as is Hanging Out With Jim, for example). Certainly i don't have a terrible lot of interest in listening to his records. But releases like this, well, as i said over and over, i'm fascinated. Probably there IS something goin on along the lines of "FACES OF DEATH of rock n' roll". It's spectacle, horrible spectacle. probably that IS the point, and to experience these things properly you need sight AND sound.
(not the popular British film journal, although probably they could wax for hours about GG punching a surfer)
Stewart I have to comment on the fact that you're knocking something you haven't yet tried. Which makes your opinion on the subject completely useless. And comparing him to the holocaust can only be described as silly and desperate...


The Duke (Aaron McMullan to his parents and the clergy) is a Northern Irish writer, performer and insomniac currently residing in London. He is the creator of 







Does anyone actually miss this loser?