DVD Review: G.G Allin And The Murder Junkies - Terror In America
Published March 19, 2006
G.G, however, has balls. Or one, at least, as is evidenced when he starts tugging at the thong through "Kill The Police" and a nut gets tangled up in the fabric.
G.G even comes back for two encores. "It's against my better judgment" he says, "But it is our first show in fifteen months." He gives an a-cappella version of "I Live To Be Hated". "The band's not here, who the fuck cares?" Not these folks, that's for damn sure. Still, The Murder Junkies return to do it properly, G.G flashes Tiny G.G a time or two, everyone cheers.
"We all stand as one!" someone announces.
"Will we" G.G muses. "I wonder..."
After all, weren't none of these fools sat in that prison cell.
Show Two - Randy G.G
Atlanta, GA
In 1970, Kate Millet produced a piece of art called "The American Dream Goes To Pot". What it consisted of, you'll be aware, was a cage housing a toilet, which in turn played host to an American flag. Millet was angry and disgusted and saddened by what she saw going on round about her, and did what any sane individual would do. She flung a flag in a toilet.
In 1993, G.G Allin was thinkin' much along the same lines. He arrives on-stage wearing nothing save for a bandana and an American flag draped over Tiny G.G. Throughout the set, he'll pull at the flag, set fire to it (even with Tiny G.G cowering underneath) and, by way of extravagant finale, shove it right the hell up his arse, right up, till nary a star nor stripe remains. Fumbling around up there for a minute, he retrieves said item, waves it around and then tries, unsuccessfully, to tear it in five.
This show, recorded on the fifteenth of May 1993, is by far the most entertaining of the trio presented in Terror In America.
G.G hasn't even crossed the stage before he's punched someone in the head, one of those punches has a fella recoiling from the screen on account of the sickening crack done coughed out the speakers. Later, he'll hit someone so hard with the microphone that the venue actually gasps as one, stunned by the gut-troubling thud.
A man might be shocked out his teeth, if G.G wasn't such a lovable scallywag.
Look at him there! All finger on lip and lookin' over the shoulder like some Hollywood starlet in a 1952 comedy concerning folks getting into trouble in the workplace.
"Why you...," you might say, shaking a finger and trying to hold back that urge for to give the scamp a big ol' hug.
Or maybe shove a groin in his face, as Gothed-Up Lassie stood stage-right decides during "I Wanna Rape You". G.G starts singing to her boobs, licking and fumbling away, never missing a lyric, then heads down south for to serenade the hoo-hah, as is almost traditional for the performance of the number in question. She dances on, waving her arms in filthed-mad delirium.
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.
- 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 on this articleComments
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...
Add your comment, speak your mind
(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/45190)
Does anyone actually miss this loser?