Happens to us all, man, each and every one. At some point, in day-to-day life, for whatever reason, everyone gets to feeling like they're fed the fuck up, truth be told.
Maybe a fella's been ignored a few more times than usual by the lasses all gathered 'round the fag-machine. Maybe his joke's been getting even fewer laughs. Maybe the woman he's been busy falling in love with just ups and offs and skidaddles out his life by way of the American Idol voting public.
Look at him there, all weepin'. "She didn't even get to finish her song."
Maybe work's been suckin' the color out his balls and nobody gives a rancid wank about some book he's been writing on his breaks from yonder labor.
Maybe he's got Jenny Lewis in the ear-holes, those words all a-quiver with frustration and resignation.
Maybe he's sat on a park-bench watching the neon spray all whisperin' from twixt the legs of some bar cross the city, some red-lit revue all sophisticated decadence, some slosh-fest he'll never be part of.
And he's thinking; What I oughta do, what would make me feel alive again, if only for a second, y'unnerstann, if only for half a moment, what I oughta do is just take a big shit and then grab the shit in my fist and then throw the shit at the face of some surfer just happened to be there at the time.
Maybe I'll wrap a flag round my nuts and then take it off my nuts and then, and only then, take yonder flag and shove it right up my arsehole till the fabric's ticklin' my liver.
Maybe I'll sing a song about "Bite It You Scum" to the hoo-hah of a lady all gothed-up and high on the filth-fumes round about.
Or fuck it, maybe I'll just grab Terror In America - G.G Allin & The Murder Junkies Live 1993, maybe I'll just fling that in the ol' discy-spinner-boxeroo and watch as G.G does all that so I don't have to.
He'll be a tad disappointed, our hypothetical friend, he'll be mumblin' himself to sleep all about "he didn't shit even once" and "not a drop fell out from G.G's anus!"
Who knows why, who knows what crazy maniacal concepts led to the decision, but for whatever reason, not once during the three shows collected on Terror In America, flung shelve-wards by the wondrous folks at MVD, not for a second does G.G decide to squat for a bit and take a big ol' cack right off the stage.
Article comments
1 - Stewart
Does anyone actually miss this loser?
2 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
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 - Eric Berlin
I'd not know of the GG if it weren't for something called Mondo Radio! Great stuff as always, Duke.
4 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
Glad you liked it, Sir Berlin! And gladder still that I in some way helped open your guts to the GG.
5 - 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 - Aaron Fleming
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 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
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 - J. P. Spencer
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 - DJRadiohead
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 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
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 - 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...