REVIEW

DVD Review: G.G Allin And The Murder Junkies - Terror In America

Written by Duke De Mondo
Published March 19, 2006
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G.G and Surfer Lad got a weird connection goin' on. Sometimes the Messiah anoints the Disciple's face with The Red, shoving his bloodied scalp into the enraptured reveler's yap. Sometimes G.G punches him, and Surfer Lad retaliates, but it's more flirtation than anything else, a thread carried to some sort of conclusion when the two passionately kiss for a moment, G.G then grabbing his bud's hair tween his teeth and tugging at it like a wolf tearing the bollocks out a dead bull's scrotum.

But for all the biting and kicking and punching, G.G has no desire to hurt these people. Make them bleed and poke their eyes, certainly, who wouldn't? But without these folks he's just that gabblin' hillbilly stood front that town hall audience way back when, as can be viewed in Todd Phillip's blindingly brilliant Hated - G.G Allin And The Murder Junkies. Back then, nobody gave much of a gypsy's wank about this lunatic, this deranged schizo spouting on 'bout "You cunt!" and "Fuck you!" and so on and so forth, there was nothing dangerous about him, or at least no more danger than a man might find in the actions of coked-up preacher stood naked in your kitchen with a knife the size o' Venus in his grip.

Here, though, with the likes of Surfer Lad and Leather Jacket Man hangin' on his every obscene sprawl, G.G means something. The whole violent parade, it's like sex-crazed stags butting heads 'gainst one another. For sure, they're ramming skulls, but they're the same, those stags. They both got the same goal.

The audience shout "Fuck you!," but they'll also shout "You're God!"

He'll ask them to hate him, but he's not beyond making a wee quip now and again for to give them a chuckle.

"Jesus sucks dick!" one fella shouts.

"Well he fucked me in the ass, so you're lucky" comes the click-clack response from the stage.

G.G's on the verge of taking whatever it is he does that bit closer to the throb of popular culture. He tells the crowd all about how they'll be hearing a lot from him in the next few months, how he's gonna be on Jerry Springer soon.

(The Jerry Springer episode in question would've been a glorious addition to this release, but, alas, no. The sight of Springer chastising G.G for calling the audience "cunts" remains one of the finest moments in all televisual history.)

This sense of purpose in his every shambling thrust, this sense of anticipation, of something about to occur, it rises in sheets from the gashes in his chest and has a man forgetting that G.G didn't even take a shit.

Who can notice anything of the sort, when our man's all yacking off along the lines of "This is not Lollapalooza!" and "This is the real Rock N Roll underground! Not the frauds, not the phonies, not the majors. This is a small crowd but we're all winners cause no-one else had the balls to come."

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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 Mondo Irlando, wherein his scribblings and hollerings can be found. He is currently working towards the completion of his first novel, and his debut "punk / country / folk / whatever" album has recently been released by Ex Libris Records . You can also pop by His MySpace Page and maybe have a coffee and a biscuit.
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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
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Comments

#1 — March 19, 2006 @ 13:48PM — Stewart

Does anyone actually miss this loser?

#2 — March 19, 2006 @ 13:59PM — Aaron, Duke De Mondo [URL]

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!

#3 — March 19, 2006 @ 20:45PM — Eric Berlin [URL]

I'd not know of the GG if it weren't for something called Mondo Radio! Great stuff as always, Duke.

#4 — March 19, 2006 @ 20:56PM — Aaron, Duke De Mondo [URL]

Glad you liked it, Sir Berlin! And gladder still that I in some way helped open your guts to the GG.

#5 — March 20, 2006 @ 14:42PM — Stewart

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.

#6 — March 20, 2006 @ 16:18PM — Aaron Fleming [URL]

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...

#7 — March 20, 2006 @ 16:59PM — Aaron, Duke De Mondo [URL]

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!

#8 — March 21, 2006 @ 11:21AM — J. P. Spencer [URL]

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.

#9 — March 21, 2006 @ 12:02PM — DJRadiohead [URL]

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.

#10 — March 22, 2006 @ 13:58PM — Aaron, Duke De Mondo [URL]

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)

#11 — January 15, 2007 @ 12:08PM — Alex S.

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...

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