You want me mother fucker!?!? You got my cock tonight!
-G.G. Allin-
P’s Take: So, ostensibly, this is a review of a rare shitty G.G. Allin 7 inch we downloaded from a blog called bloodjunkies, a righteous website by the way… Basically the 7 inch consists of 3 horribly recorded songs from 3 distinct facets of G.G.´s career. The first is the title song, done with the his band the Jabbers in like ´82. It is some standard silly-ass politico punk, I think he took the name from some artsy 60´s radicals who used to rule the Lower East Side long before heroin and Skins. G.G. sounds like a punk rock Jack Tripper on this joint. This is even less complimentary than it sounds. The next song is a countrified acoustic guitar piece done in 1988. It´s about drinking and a-fightin on the road. Definitely shows his worship of Hank Williams on this one, but he still sounds like Jack Tripper. Its fuckin weird. The last one is with one of his later bands The Southern Baptists and he’s yelling about shit and suck and sounds the way we are all familiar with. It is all pretty dumb.
Back in the day Uncle T and me stayed out on Strong Island for a weekend with some very upper middle class jewish punk rockers. Yeah. And while we were out there we watched Hated, the documentary of G.G.´s life and death. I remember my reaction was fucking instant: I wanted this motherfucker dead. The throwing the empty bottles at hookers outside the Holland Tunnel (even Dee Dee Ramone couldn´t hang with it), piss drinking and stage shitting and woman beating fuckin’ absolutely disgusted me. I was punk rock, yeah, in a 15 year old way, but this…this shit was too far. This shit was twisted. I thought.
But I´m 16 years older now and it occurs to me, G.G. Allin, or somebody like him, is always necessary. To freak you the fuck out, to smack the fuck out of you if you’re getting comfortable. To eat your proverbial shit. Now, don’t get it twisted, I am still by no means a G.G. champion. I think his music was fuckin ridiculous. But, if nothing else he was down and mentally ill for Rock and Roll in a fucking literal way. Somebody has to be.
T’s Take: I’ve had this conversation before and I’m sure I’ll have it again. But is there any art to be found in G.G. Allin’s work? Is there any tragedgy to be found in G.G. Allin’s death? Is there any reason to listen to G.G. Allin’s music? Short answer…no, no, and maybe.
When I think of ‘ol G.G. I think of the scene in “Hated” where brother Merle Allin (who single handedly tried to bring back Hitler’s mustache as a relevant facial hair style) pays a hooker to piss on G.G. for his birthday. G.G. lays down as this chick squats over his head and proceeds to both drink her piss as well as his own vomit. Happy birthday you crazy mother fucker. But I think this speaks more to my point about G.G. and considering his body of work as art than anything else. And my point is this. G.G. wasn’t an artist. People will argue that smearing shit over your naked body, cutting yourself on stage, and violently attacking audience members is some sort of confrontational performance art. People will argue that G.G. was pushing the limits of good taste and audience expectation in the name of art, which in turn constitutes art. But here’s the thing, for one the audience already expected his actions and for two he wasn’t just doing these things on stage and in public, as is evidenced by drinking hooker piss in the privacy of his own home. Now granted an argument can be made that it wasn’t in the privacy of his own home because there was a camera rolling. And an argument can also be made that he was such an artist that his art worked its way into how he lived the entirety of his 36 years on this planet. But I still disagree. That mother was no artist. He was just entirely a batshit crazy asshole. I’m not upset he OD’d and I don’t think it was some final grand artistic statement either. In the twilight of his years he was a pathetic junkie and that’s usually how these stories end.
Okay, aside however from my feelings on G.G. I’m still willing to admit that I was pleasantly surprised by the music on this 7” (due no doubt to extremely low expectations I’m sure). All three songs are from different stages of G.G.’s “career” as P noted and each one has something different about. As much as I wanted to straight hate on it, it wasn’t all that horrible. The live stage banter in between tracks where G.G. implores fat female audience members to sell him their panties for $5 is mildly amusing as is him talking about how small his dick is. You won’t find this in stores as they only pressed 83 of them…in Canada…17 years ago. And the 83 people that actually own them are probably some Canadians you’d never want to have the pleasure of meeting in real life. But thanks to some German dude at FSS favorite bookmark “bloodjunkies”, you can download it for free and see if you disagree.
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I have never heard any of G.G.Allin’s music, and based on what I’ve heard about him, I don’t want to. I know him only through his “legend”, from what I’ve read and what people have said about him. But people say a lot of things… I think the best observation that I can make, is to agree with P., that there is always someone out there at the boundary, at the extreme, at the the EDGE. it’s scary as hell out there, and I wouldn’t want to live there, although I’ve visited from time to time, but people like G.G. Allin let you know where that boundary is, and that you better be prepared if you want to cross it, or even approach it.
I hate G.G. Allin. But this article brought me to think about what really constitutes “art”. Some make the argument that just about anything is art. Sure, one can say that and in many ways they would be right. But also they would be inviting someone to make the distinction between “good” art and “garbage” art. Some consider G.G. an artist, that’s fine, but he is a garbage artist. A simple nutjob. That’s all…It reminds me of those abstract paintings that you see in museums. The paintings only consist of random splashes of paint on a canvas. Lots of people think this is high art and pay a lot of money for it. I say that shit is trash.
GG Allin was the real deal. I’ve watched the documentary on him a couple three times and he was everything live in the flesh what everybody else was only singing about. He made concerts dangerous. He was nuts, ran amok and put out some wild tunes and an unequaled show…. rather a ‘real’ than a ‘show’.