(This has loads of swearing, stupidity, and sleaze in it, so be warned, innocent net reader abroad...)
I've meant to do this one for a while, but just never got round to it. So anyway...
...aye. Anybody who knows me knows that I am a long-term fan of GG 'Jesus Christ Kevin Michael' Allin. I first read about him in an issue of Film Threat (which used to be the coolest underground film mag out in the 80s/early 90s) from 1989, when I was going on 20. I just dug it out to photograph it and stick it up here:
Being an extremely angry young man in my late teens/early 20s, this sounded intriguing and great to me, for obvious reasons. But it wasn't until 1991 that I saw and heard GG, through a bootleg live DVD (never forget some guy at the end crowing to the camera, as he held up his hand: "That's GG's shit on my hand!" Proud moment!) my pal Scanny had gotten for me on the bootleg VHS circuit.
I loved it.
The madness in the video (which had multiple performances on it, if I recall correctly, of the same sort talked of in the review above) fit right in with a couple of years of fun wrecked youthful craziness from my Falkirk friends and I, the Wallace Street crew: Davy, Fraser, Richie, a couple of howling buckled other comers-and-goers. In 1993 the Film Threat Video Guide put out Hated, the GG Allin doc by Todd 'Big Shot Until Joker 2' Phillips, and that instantly became one of my fave films. I have watched it literally hundreds of times. The drumming and howling start, the instantly impactful beginning where a naked GG clocks some cunt in the New York audience with the mike and knocks them out, him shitting and smearing it on himself...the pure stinking raw rage was absolutely fucking amazing, and I still love and regularly rewatch it to this day.
...aye. Anybody who knows me knows that I am a long-term fan of GG 'Jesus Christ Kevin Michael' Allin. I first read about him in an issue of Film Threat (which used to be the coolest underground film mag out in the 80s/early 90s) from 1989, when I was going on 20. I just dug it out to photograph it and stick it up here:
I loved it.
The madness in the video (which had multiple performances on it, if I recall correctly, of the same sort talked of in the review above) fit right in with a couple of years of fun wrecked youthful craziness from my Falkirk friends and I, the Wallace Street crew: Davy, Fraser, Richie, a couple of howling buckled other comers-and-goers. In 1993 the Film Threat Video Guide put out Hated, the GG Allin doc by Todd 'Big Shot Until Joker 2' Phillips, and that instantly became one of my fave films. I have watched it literally hundreds of times. The drumming and howling start, the instantly impactful beginning where a naked GG clocks some cunt in the New York audience with the mike and knocks them out, him shitting and smearing it on himself...the pure stinking raw rage was absolutely fucking amazing, and I still love and regularly rewatch it to this day.
It's an acquired taste, I suppose, one I suppose anybody who is reading this far also shares. If not, you might as well scoot, cos it doesn't get any better.
With the invention of the net, it obviously became progressively easier to see and hear GG stuff. As anybody who knows his work will attest, he has a huge musical back catalogue, cramming an incredible amount of record releasing in between drinking, fighting, fucking, shooting up, and prison terms. Some of it I love, some of it I hate. All depends on the band and how well it's recorded, a lot of the time. Personally, I love the first and last albums: Always Was, Is And Always Shall Be, and Bloodshed & Brutality For All. The guitar on them is incredible, from, respectively, Rob Basso, and Bill Weber. In 2015-2016, my last year of the Hell that was my life in America, Bloodshed was practically the only album I listened to.
Not a good year.
But how can you argue with, say, Bored to Death, where GG does his best cheesy Mick Jagger impersonation, capturing poetic lines (no, he was no poet, don't get me wrong) like "I am bored to death/I don't care where the world has been/I am bored to death/and I dunno where it's headed to" along the way? Fucking stunning:
With the invention of the net, it obviously became progressively easier to see and hear GG stuff. As anybody who knows his work will attest, he has a huge musical back catalogue, cramming an incredible amount of record releasing in between drinking, fighting, fucking, shooting up, and prison terms. Some of it I love, some of it I hate. All depends on the band and how well it's recorded, a lot of the time. Personally, I love the first and last albums: Always Was, Is And Always Shall Be, and Bloodshed & Brutality For All. The guitar on them is incredible, from, respectively, Rob Basso, and Bill Weber. In 2015-2016, my last year of the Hell that was my life in America, Bloodshed was practically the only album I listened to.
Not a good year.
But how can you argue with, say, Bored to Death, where GG does his best cheesy Mick Jagger impersonation, capturing poetic lines (no, he was no poet, don't get me wrong) like "I am bored to death/I don't care where the world has been/I am bored to death/and I dunno where it's headed to" along the way? Fucking stunning:
In 2016, when I ended up for eight or nine days in fucking Cook County Jail for no reason - I have no criminal record, it's a long boring cunty story - my anthem after it was Shove That Warrant Up Your Ass after I got out, which was shortly before I aborted the whole hotel fire of a near-11-year American life experience and came back to Scotland. I couldn't scream "CHICAGOOOOO!!" along with GG loud enough:
Here's the poem I wrote in that fucking utter shithole, who still owe me two fucking bucks for working in the kitchen:
http://www.athinsliceofanxiety.com/2022/12/poetry-today-by-graham-rae.html
So I have a lot of memories for a lot of years bound up in GG's pained, psychotic, hilarious, deeply damaged frame. What do I get from it, how do I regard him? I don't believe in catharsis, think there is no such thing: there's just positive and negative reinforcement. GG's work and worldview are definitely negative reinforcement, but...so what? Who cares? He fucking rocks and rules at what he does. I look upon him as a kind of fascinating space case, where punk meets true crime.
He's a tragic case, really, but oddly inspiring in his own personal twisted, confused attempt as living free as a sometimes-wings-clipped jailbird. He was a childhood sexual abuse victim who took out his eternal rage on himself and others, sadly, shitly, musically, disgustingly, shockingly, hilariously, and pathetically.
He was a moral cunt, at heart. In Hated, he says he would probably have been a mass murderer if he had not had the stage to take it out on. So he attacked people who wanted and deserved and needed it, in a weird sadomasochistic braindead ritual that got worse and worse over the years until his inevitable early demise. No point in saying "It's a pity this" or "It's a pity that" - what's done is done and dead and buried. Like the man himself.
Well, maybe not entirely buried. In fact, maybe not buried at all. I have noticed over the last year or so that there have been people popping up all over Youtube with their tales tall and true of their lives intertwining with GG's stateside, and it's been utterly fascinating. This whole wee article is just to list a few of them, really.
First one I saw was the clickbait-titled 'Jabber talks about sleeping with GG Allin' which, of course, I jumped onto, because I had never really heard (m)any stories about GG and what he got up to. What I got was a funny story from Steve Spenard, who was in GG's first band The Jabbers. He played on a few Jabbers releases, although not all of them; he was not on the Always Was album:
http://www.athinsliceofanxiety.com/2022/12/poetry-today-by-graham-rae.html
So I have a lot of memories for a lot of years bound up in GG's pained, psychotic, hilarious, deeply damaged frame. What do I get from it, how do I regard him? I don't believe in catharsis, think there is no such thing: there's just positive and negative reinforcement. GG's work and worldview are definitely negative reinforcement, but...so what? Who cares? He fucking rocks and rules at what he does. I look upon him as a kind of fascinating space case, where punk meets true crime.
He's a tragic case, really, but oddly inspiring in his own personal twisted, confused attempt as living free as a sometimes-wings-clipped jailbird. He was a childhood sexual abuse victim who took out his eternal rage on himself and others, sadly, shitly, musically, disgustingly, shockingly, hilariously, and pathetically.
He was a moral cunt, at heart. In Hated, he says he would probably have been a mass murderer if he had not had the stage to take it out on. So he attacked people who wanted and deserved and needed it, in a weird sadomasochistic braindead ritual that got worse and worse over the years until his inevitable early demise. No point in saying "It's a pity this" or "It's a pity that" - what's done is done and dead and buried. Like the man himself.
Well, maybe not entirely buried. In fact, maybe not buried at all. I have noticed over the last year or so that there have been people popping up all over Youtube with their tales tall and true of their lives intertwining with GG's stateside, and it's been utterly fascinating. This whole wee article is just to list a few of them, really.
First one I saw was the clickbait-titled 'Jabber talks about sleeping with GG Allin' which, of course, I jumped onto, because I had never really heard (m)any stories about GG and what he got up to. What I got was a funny story from Steve Spenard, who was in GG's first band The Jabbers. He played on a few Jabbers releases, although not all of them; he was not on the Always Was album:
Steve's a pretty damned cool, funny, laid-back, laconic guy. He has some decent Jabbers stories about hanging out with pre-'GG' GG. He recounts being at GG's funeral, shocked by the condition of his once-friend and bandmate, and it's poignant and sad. He really doesn't post all that many stories on drastically Reduced, his channel, but what he does, including about playing guitar and going to early shows by the likes of Black Flag and Dead Kennedys, is always worth watching. Salute, Steve.
After Steve, it seemed like more people were coming out of the woodwork with their tales of GG. I don't know if this is just me thinking this because my algorithm of riot act chaos I watch brought them to me, but the next one I came across was PONK Media. This guy, Mark Robinson, knew GG well, and his vids are always worth a view. He tells some great stories about GG being at his house, them getting wasted, and how they recorded the classic GG outlaw country album Carnival of Excess. GG's biggest hit, Carmelita, comes from that recording:
After Steve, it seemed like more people were coming out of the woodwork with their tales of GG. I don't know if this is just me thinking this because my algorithm of riot act chaos I watch brought them to me, but the next one I came across was PONK Media. This guy, Mark Robinson, knew GG well, and his vids are always worth a view. He tells some great stories about GG being at his house, them getting wasted, and how they recorded the classic GG outlaw country album Carnival of Excess. GG's biggest hit, Carmelita, comes from that recording:
"Hey Rockers!" I also discovered Scottish heritage punk Bloody F Mess's channel Bloody F Mess Official. This is the guy whose videos I have watched the most of, and I really enjoy them. He actually has interviewed both Steve Spenard and Mark Robinson in the past, so I guess that the GG crew - who all seemed to like a heavy bevvy, and sometimes more, back in the Manchester Madman's heyday - all know each other to some degree or other.
Bloody is great, a real raconteur. He's stoned before or sometimes during making his videos, an amiable character, with an incredible host of GG and American life-in-general tales to relate. He's clearly been deeply involved in the punk scene stateside for basically his whole life, and seems to know everything and everybody. He knew GG well for years. He'll give us a tale about hanging out with GG recording one minute (he put on the first ever show GG shat at, at a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in Illinois - it's a totally fucking hilarious, raucous story), then about grave robbing, or drugs, or meeting Jello Biafra's parents, or getting wasted going to see a Jimmy Buffett concert with his wife Tracy the next.
Mess (whose real name is McLeod, but I don't know his first name) comes across like a walking encyclopedia of American punk. Listening to him is like getting an alternative lesson in late 20th century cultural history, both underground and more mainstream, and it's utterly fascinating. The stuff he talks about is all scenes I wish I could have seen or been in when I was young; there was certainly bittersweet fuck all going on in my old home town of Falkirk back in the 80s or 90s, anyway. He's been doing it for a while now, and the stories just keep pouring out of him at all hours of the day and night. He calls his life stories his "book", and that's a perfect analogy. I would still buy paper pages from this man, though, and can't recommend his channel enough:
Bloody is great, a real raconteur. He's stoned before or sometimes during making his videos, an amiable character, with an incredible host of GG and American life-in-general tales to relate. He's clearly been deeply involved in the punk scene stateside for basically his whole life, and seems to know everything and everybody. He knew GG well for years. He'll give us a tale about hanging out with GG recording one minute (he put on the first ever show GG shat at, at a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in Illinois - it's a totally fucking hilarious, raucous story), then about grave robbing, or drugs, or meeting Jello Biafra's parents, or getting wasted going to see a Jimmy Buffett concert with his wife Tracy the next.
Mess (whose real name is McLeod, but I don't know his first name) comes across like a walking encyclopedia of American punk. Listening to him is like getting an alternative lesson in late 20th century cultural history, both underground and more mainstream, and it's utterly fascinating. The stuff he talks about is all scenes I wish I could have seen or been in when I was young; there was certainly bittersweet fuck all going on in my old home town of Falkirk back in the 80s or 90s, anyway. He's been doing it for a while now, and the stories just keep pouring out of him at all hours of the day and night. He calls his life stories his "book", and that's a perfect analogy. I would still buy paper pages from this man, though, and can't recommend his channel enough:
So anyway. You get the idea. I just wanted to give a few pointers to some channels I have found over the last year or so. I have seen other channels here or there with the odd story, but nothing major. I saw the post below at the start of the year. This guy, Malcolm Tent (cheesy nom-de-punk), recorded with GG, and apparently knew him a bit. I can't say I was 100% impressed with his pop psychological analysis of GG's psyche, but if you're needing something to watch it might be a half-decent way to kill a couple of hours:
This cunt's a fucking halfwit; GG in a twelve-minute clickbait soundbite:
This guy tells a less-than-complimentary story about GG and seems to think that anybody gives a fuck, or would have their illusions about a deeply mentally and emotionally unbalanced man ruined:
There are a million more vids on Youtube and elsewhere about GG, good and bad and ugly, true, untrue, mythical, cunty, hateful, poignant, stupid...as...shit. Seen a few mainstream clickbait "World's craziest rocker!" steaming piles of keech advertised that I won't even watch. The man seems to be a kind of Rorschach test, where people read what they want into him. Bottom line, to me: he was in pain, he rocked, he destroyed himself in a blazing self-feeding inferno, and people remember him for all the wrong reasons. He did some absolutely fucking incredible tunes, some of the best punk songs I have ever heard. Some of them were too funny and over-the-top to take seriously. Some...weren't.
But he's always going to be remembered first and foremost as the nutcase who shit onstage, ate it, attacked his audiences, did prison time, cut himself up and died young of a drug overdose. No avoiding that. No word for three years on that shitey biopic that was announced by Jonas Akerlund. Maybe he realised what a waste of time it would be. It's not exactly something you can sell to the mainstream, or really cover correctly, as so much of GG's myth is pure fiction or half-fiction, vague truth, the half-truth, and everything but the truth. So let's hope that biopic never shows up, because Lords of Chaos was pretty bad.
Anyway. Just wanted to lay down a few thoughts and point people in the direction of three decent Youtube raconteurs they may not have heard of. Enclosing below a few links of GG reviews I have done over the years. Also an interview with Sami Saif, director of the excellent 2017 documentary The Allins. That's pretty much it. Catch youse later. Keep rocking and ruling out surrender.
https://filmthreat.com/uncategorized/hated-special-edition-dvd/
https://filmthreat.com/uncategorized/gg-allin-and-the-murder-junkies-terror-in-america-dvd/
https://web.archive.org/web/20060525144342/http://www.laurahird.com/newreview/iwasamurderjunkie.html
https://diaboliquemagazine.com/mothers-day-sun-conversation-sami-saif-director-allins/?fbclid=IwY2xjawOT4w9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEenNoA8q-UdO1oQbhDwkoiGYXr9_IsNleiqxxtWJvaBIvxx3rbTivk6_YFTcw_aem_OkxOgn_RjrPeFPt4BGc9oQ
Bonus GG tune for the fuck of it: "I've been looking at the ground/but I ain't getting any higher..."
But he's always going to be remembered first and foremost as the nutcase who shit onstage, ate it, attacked his audiences, did prison time, cut himself up and died young of a drug overdose. No avoiding that. No word for three years on that shitey biopic that was announced by Jonas Akerlund. Maybe he realised what a waste of time it would be. It's not exactly something you can sell to the mainstream, or really cover correctly, as so much of GG's myth is pure fiction or half-fiction, vague truth, the half-truth, and everything but the truth. So let's hope that biopic never shows up, because Lords of Chaos was pretty bad.
Anyway. Just wanted to lay down a few thoughts and point people in the direction of three decent Youtube raconteurs they may not have heard of. Enclosing below a few links of GG reviews I have done over the years. Also an interview with Sami Saif, director of the excellent 2017 documentary The Allins. That's pretty much it. Catch youse later. Keep rocking and ruling out surrender.
https://filmthreat.com/uncategorized/hated-special-edition-dvd/
https://filmthreat.com/uncategorized/gg-allin-and-the-murder-junkies-terror-in-america-dvd/
https://web.archive.org/web/20060525144342/http://www.laurahird.com/newreview/iwasamurderjunkie.html
https://diaboliquemagazine.com/mothers-day-sun-conversation-sami-saif-director-allins/?fbclid=IwY2xjawOT4w9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEenNoA8q-UdO1oQbhDwkoiGYXr9_IsNleiqxxtWJvaBIvxx3rbTivk6_YFTcw_aem_OkxOgn_RjrPeFPt4BGc9oQ
Bonus GG tune for the fuck of it: "I've been looking at the ground/but I ain't getting any higher..."
Thanks for the cool compliments & for being fair in your assessments of what you covered. I have to agree with mostly all that you said!!
ReplyDeleteIts nice to get acknowledged & its a pleasure to share my memories with those who care.
I was supposed to be in the HATED film & other GG documentaries etc but certain parties made it known that if I were involved. That THEY wouldn't be involved
Uncool as hell
But life isn't fair & I have been telling my tales in BLOODY F MESS OFFICIAL on YouTube.
Thanks Rocker! I appreciate you & all that dont take silly ass "sides"
Life's too short 4 grudges & passive aggressive games..check the videos section of my channel for many GG true tales & more coming.