Shit, man, it's been just too long.
How many DVD's been in and out The Duke's DVD player, how many documentaries been observed, how many live shows witnessed, and none of them featuring anything that a fella might mistake for the sight of GG Allin squatting center-stage and taking a shit right there, then maybe picking some up and throwing it at some malcontent down front, maybe chewing on some for a second, maybe rolling around in it for a time.
It's been almost a year since I last sat down with Hated - GG Allin & The Murder Junkies, or GG Allin - Raw, Brutal, Rough & Bloody. I was almost starting to forget how hilarious those camp poses and dances were, how incredible it is to see a fella kick folks right in the teeth in the middle of a tune, how tiny that ever-present sex-limb really was.
Thank all that's holy, a DVD arrives in Mondo Towers, a Digital DVD Disc by the name of GG Allin & The Murder Junkies - Savage South: Best Of 1992 Tour. I could hardly hold the damn thing in my hand without blacking out with the anticipation. What nonsense would GG get up to herein? How many shits would he take? How many fights would he get into? How many times will he play "Cunt Sucking Cannibal"? How naked will he get?
Plenty shits, plenty fights, plenty naked, plenty "Cunt Sucking Cannibal". Who in their right mind would expect anything less?
Savage South presents three performances from the tour of the same name, three shows from February 1992, being shindigs in Atlanta, San Antonio and Austin.
It seems only just for to take them each one as a separate incident, each one bursting at the guts with demented scandal.
So then;
The first of the incidents;
Wreck Room, Atlanta, GA, 2/14/92
or
GG Versus Jesus
As with all the shows on Savage South, the quality here is bootleg-level, both with regards visuals and audio. A time stamp, lots of shaking around, plenty periods of prolonged black when GG dives into the audience and the camcorder can't cope with the lack of light. God knows what he's singing or what the songs sound like, since for the most part a cacophonous garble is all a fella can hope for.
Now and again a quip seeps through the mire;
"We lost our drummer last night because the motherfuckers arrested us", for example. Plenty other gabbling about "motherfuck" and "fuck you".
It hardly matters, mind. Who gives a pink yak's piss what GG might be ranting about, who can hope to decipher a word since the microphone stops working every couple minutes owing to the number of times he smacks it off of his skull? The blood's pissin down his mug ten seconds into the first song, the mic gets thrown someplace, another appears, GG batters it into his head and it dies like the twenty-nine others.
Article comments
1 - Lono
Ah Duke, another classic rendering. Your first GG Allin review remains the best thing put to page since HST typed out Fear and Loathing almost 20 years ago.
I must experience this GG phenom, I wonder if Netflix carries any of this. Probably not, but worth a shot.
2 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
Glad you liked it, Lono.
Hated should be easy enough to uncover, i would've thought. A finer doc about a fella sticks bannannas up his arse before a paying crowd you will never in your life witness.
3 - Lono
Good news, I think. Netflix carries all three of these movies. I have 'Hated' in queue and should be reviled by the end of summer at the latest!
4 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
fantastic!! Hated, i dunno if you know or not, is the first flick by none other than Todd Phillips, director of such wonders as Old School an Starsky And Hutch. quite a tone-shift, is what, even though Hated is still horribly funny at times.
5 - HW Saxton
It's too bad you never got to see Iggy
in his wilder days, your Dukeship. Akin
to seeing GG at his wildest but Iggy had
actual talent for with to verify all his
on-stage shenanigans and a band that
rocked to no fuggin' end.
I saw GG play in a sweltering hot-assed
warehouse in Las Vegas in the summer of
1982.This place had NO,I do mean NO,air
conditioning. The temps inside the dump
were easily hovering above triple digits
I kid ye not lad. GG went running into
the crowd, slipped on a sweaty and beer-
saturated concrete floor and busted his
head open about three songs into his
set.He then was set upon by a bunch of
Nazi skinhead types who were waiting to
beat him up after the show (about 20 of
the skins to 1 GG, that's how all skins
fight over here) as he had grabbed the
breasts of one of their girlie-friends
earlier.They got their chance early as
it turned out.He was actually CRYING for
them to stop.Which they strangely did.
Not his best show.A little too real for
me I guess. I hate to see masochists in
action. It made most folks there pretty
repulsed as was partially his intention
I'm sure. That's my GG anecdote. Great
review though by the by, guv'nor.
6 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
god almighty, HW, what a thouroughly depressing spectacle. that's somethin these live discs have over Hated, is that you can take them as nothin more than demented abandon. Hated is a much more distressing affair.
what a great, horrible story. thanks man!
7 - HW Saxton
Duke, 'Twas an ugly scene at that. That
can be laid to blame largely on the skin
head contigent. They seem to cast a long
and ugly shadow over any gig they show
up at. Starting fights and head butting
people in the mosh pit, tossing up beer
bottles in the air and trying to break
them with their fists on the way down.
Which usually didn't work and someone
else would get hit or if it did work cut
by flying glass. Right out of the charm
school,those guys.
G.G. was good in the short time that he
played though. He dropped trou,told off
the crowd,told everyone at large to blow
him and accosted a few girlies before he
slipped and busted his head open.Not bad
for being onstage for about 10 minutes!
8 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
thats the thing, man. GG is barely onstage 15 minutes in the second show on the DVD, and yet holy shit, what an array of scandals in so short a time!!
mind-blowing, for sure. and the hilariously disinterested band-mates just make it more so. Merle, especially, is a hoot.
9 - HW Saxton
His brother Merle was in another band
called "The Cheater Slicks" briefly.
They were a fucked up and noisy sounding
band from Boston or somewhere up in that
basic vicinity.
10 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
ha! my god, they can only have been the best band in the universe. tonight, i think i'll dream about a concept record concerning Merle's sideburns.
11 - Bryan McKay
I have to question your sanity for continuing to watch this repulsive-sounding garbage, Duke, but if it continues to spawn such continually brilliant writing, I say bring on the trash!
Man sounds absolutely insane though. I'd try watching one of these films if I thought I could stomach it, but I'm not sure I'd make it through even five minutes.
12 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
thank you Bryan, and rest assured i question my own sanity plenty.
The stomach thing is interesting... i've never been disgusted, as in physically sick, by any of GG's tomfoolery, even the, um, cack-rolling and such. i've cringed plenty, for sure. this is strange, though. plenty fictional things get a fella feeling nauseaus, and yet here's a grown man rollin in his own filth, and it's hilarious. i worry bout me...
13 - Jim Danger
Pleasure to read your reviews of GG's filums and stuff. i noticed the question of whom "Jim" is, in "Hangin Out With Jim". Someone gave the standard "Jim Beam" answer, but if you listen to GG's remarks about the song on "Antisocial Personality Disorder", it's obviously not about Beam. It's about me, GG's friend, associate and wheelman from 1980; i "hung out" with him '80 - '83, and we were really into each other, i have letters from him from that period as well as his latter period; he wrote to me on his last day in prison in '93. i Loved GG and still do - and "Hangin' Out With Jim", the only song i know of that he wrote about a human being other than himself, was based on me, not Jim Beam. i drove that "death ship" - which was a '72 GMC van, used to transport he and the Jabbers to CBGBs, various Boston and NH gigs, as well as to the studio many times to record "Is, Was & Always Shall Be". Very few are aware of it, perhaps no one's CERTAIN of it, but i am the Jim of "Hangin Out With" fame. i Live!! and i Love GG very much, and always will. Love/Hate, Jim Danger {now living on Gulf Coast of Mississippi, 46 y.o. - and still recording music of my own}.
14 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
Jim, it is a total honour to meet the "Jim" GG so memorably hung out with. thank you, sir, for taking the time to say hello and to clear up the mystery! A gentleman, you've revealed yourself to be.
15 - HW Saxton
Duke, Merle played Bass briefly with the
first incarnation of The Cheater Slicks.
I don't think that he has ever recorded
with them though. They had dropped the
bass from the band opting for a twin git
and drums line up by the time they went
into the studio to start recording on
thie first LP back in 1989. You might
just like the band anyway. HIGH VOLUME,
noisy as all fuck drunken noise is what
they're all about.