THE DUKE ON
GG ALLIN & THE MURDER JUNKIES
SAVAGE SOUTH 1992
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 centre-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.
Throughout this first show there’s a telly screen behind the band,
an interview with Metallica, Lars Ulrich yacking silently away as
GG dedicates Kill The Police to The Atlanta Police Department. GG
notices Lars now and again, asks something about “What’s this
fucking shit?”, but there’s plenty for to take his mind off it,
like the two almost-nude female dancers, for example, one on either
side of the drum-kit.
This first show is the least memorable of the lot, although it
still features plenty prime GG tomfoolery. The lighting makes it
impossible to see what the hell’s going on when GG bounds into the
crowd, returning a verse later with fresh blood on the jaw, the
bright-red underpants that bit further down his arse. Thankfully,
though, he tends to stay on stage most of the time, preferring to
take his rage out on his own skull, preferring to serenade the
female dancers, specifically the one stage-left, tiny thong not
concealing for a second an array of piercings in the nether-
regions.
GG sings to this metal-riddled hoo-hah plenty times, sometimes
sticking his head up into it, at one point doing so whilst the lady
bends so far back that the two of them tumble to the ground,
knocking half the drum-kit over in the process.
GG’s clumsiness is second only to his campness when it comes to
Reasons Why Savage South Is Hilarious. Look at that pout he’s got
going on! Look at how many times he feels himself up, striking
Morrissey-esque poses, by god, although I don’t know that Morrissey
would be so soaked in his own shit.
I don’t know that Morrissey ever assaulted a bible with the
ferocity GG approaches said act.
During the penultimate song, see, GG lifts a painting of Jesus that
he’s got hidden away someplace, and as a few roars of disapproval
rise out the audience, he first smashes the frame over his head,
flinging bits of glass and wood at anyone who happens to be within
flinging distance, then proceeds to smear his blood all over the
canvas.
“Jesus Christ sucked my fucking ass!” he announces.
Theologians will be aware that said event is curiously absent from
any of the four gospel accounts contained in the New Testament.
Maybe Dan Brown knows all about it, maybe it’s some conspiracy of
some kind, maybe the catholic church been utilising albino
assassins for centuries in order to keep the hideous GG truth under
wraps.
Whilst no end of hilarity is to be derived from the sight of GG
rubbing the painting into his groin, it stands to reason that what
he really needs to do is grab a bible and start tearing the pages
out with his teeth. He throws chunks of text at the audience, and
before long chapters chunked from out Job or Exodus are being sent
towards the stage anew.
Thankfully, someone reaches up the tattered remains of the book
just as GG realises his microphone has sputtered to its end for the
Nth time. Best to just smack the bible off his head instead, least
till another microphone appears.
The microphone business seems to cause GG no end of anguish
throughout the proceedings. He flings a malfunctioning one away,
gets a new one, smacks it off his head a few times, then barks fuck-
riddled at the roadies. What does a man need to do to get a
microphone that works, in this day and age? I seen Robert Johnson
smash a mic off his teeth fifty times before shoving it up the
sphincter of a passing horse, and that motherfucker was still
ringing out clear as day a week later.
Scarcely twenty minutes after he first took the stage, black robe
hung over him like he were a prize fighter, GG’s away again. What
more need he add? He’s sang to a ladies hoo-hah, he’s knocked over
the drum-kit and flung a load of cymbals into the audience, he’s
bounded on top a pool table and caused no end of ruckus, he’s torn
apart the bible with his teeth, what the hell else could anyone
want?
True, his underpants remained on throughout, barring a crowd-
pleasing flash of his arse, and an audience member’s request that
GG stick the microphone up his ass was sadly thwarted, and, perhaps
most disappointing of all, he didn’t lay a fresh shit even once.
Still, there’s two more shows for to get through. I imagine the
screen will be awash with GG dung before the night’s out.
The Second Of The Incidents;
DMZ, San Atonio, TX, 2/16/92
or
GG Versus Perm-Man
The first thing a fella notices when this second show kicks off is
that the lighting is infinitely better than in the preceding
soiree. Before the band take the stage, the camera-operator pans
around the audience, letting us see just what kindsa folks might go
check out a GG Allin performance of an evening. Two blokes are
stood face-to-face whilst a third grabs hold both of their heads
and smacks them into one another. Around them, folks stand unfazed,
drinking beer, smoking, that sorta thing.
Maybe it’s just cause the venue reminds me of the university hall
in Hated, wherein GG didn’t even get to play a song before a buncha
students were racing out the doors, terrified by GG’s mild-mannered
display of sticking a banana up the hole then flinging bits at the
punters. Maybe it’s just cause, thanks to the lighting, it’s fairly
obvious there ain’t no divide whatsoever between the audience and
the performers, but whatever the reason, The Duke felt a tinge of
fear creeping in.
Bad shit was gonna go down, both metaphorically and literally.
God in heaven, I was right as all fuck.
This show right here is easily the most violent I’ve seen. A
seemingly never-ending procession of revellers race past the stage,
jumping up for to take a swing at GG before running off again. It’s
like some kind of hooligan carousel, the same heads reappearing
every so often, the same fists flung in the hope of connecting with
GG’s bleeding yap.
Quite a few do.
One character in particular, a fella with a bizarre perm, gets in
more tangles than most. He’s there all the time, sometimes getting
kicked in the head by GG, sometimes smacking the demented goon
right the fuck in the teeth. At one point he hits GG, and, to his
surprise, our hero decides to run after him, dragging Perm-Man back
to the stage where he sits on him and pounds his head repeatedly.
At least twenty folks dive on top of GG and Perm-Man, and all the
while the band play on.
Merle, GG’s brother, only seems to get annoyed when the rabble bang
against his guitar, causing him to miss a note. Only then will his
disdain be apparent. Rest of the time, he’s just stood there with
the cigarette hanging out the mouth, the Elmer Fudd hat and Hitler
tache, the ludicrous sideburns.
Everything a man might reasonably expect from a GG Allin
performance is on evidence throughout this San Antonio shindig.
All the hits get an airing; Bite It You Scum, Expose Yourself To
Kids, Be My Fucking Whore, all manner of crowd-pleasing ditties.
GG takes a couple shits, also, which you’ll recall was so
deplorably absent from the Atlanta shindig. Also, he’s naked most
of the time. Right from the off, in fact, he’s got his willy out
for to be fondled by an adoring fan. By the time GG’s ran off-stage
for to punch a lass for no apparent reason (and she then takes
after him, causing him to flee with all sortsa haste), his
underwear has been eaten by the infamies going on all around. Who
knows where they ended up? Who knows how they remain so damn shiny?
Following the final scrum, with all challengers sent shit-soaked
back to their corners, GG stands victorious at the front of the
stage, hands on hips, before an uncouth gentleman leaps up to
thrust a fistful of knuckles into his idol’s mug.
GG has had enough. He flings all sortsa equipment in the direction
of this scallywag, including an amplifier stack the size of three
men, before storming off to the usual chorus of “You fuckin
suck!!!” and “I love you GG!!!!”
The performance is over in just under eighteen minutes or
thereabouts.
The Third Of The Incidents;
Cavity Club, Austin TX, 2/18/92
or
GG Versus Everyone
With Live 8 going on this past weekend, I couldn’t help but think
about how wonderful it would’ve been for to see GG up there, maybe
doing a duet with Coldplay. Maybe Yellow, throughout which GG might
take a cack and rub it into Chris Martin’s hair.
You’re such a scamp, Martin would announce. Maybe he’d write it on
his hand.
Perhaps GG could’ve come on in-between bands, even, a compere of
sorts, someone for to keep us all interested whilst Pink Floyd or
whoever get all tuned-up, GG flinging his bum-paste at Bob Geldof
and telling us all how “Geldof sucked my asshole” or whatever.
He could’ve led the crowd in a mass-singalong. Expose Yourself To
Kids. Roars of recognition. They all know the words.
“Do it now before they grow up and it’s too late!”
Smiles all around. GG naked and shit-caked, save for the white
wrist-band.
Alas, GG’s been dead and gone for over a decade, and so it was left
to, I believe, Madonna to keep things suitably debauched, cacking
herself with great zest on the Live 8 London stage.
However, whilst GG Allin’s physical presence sadly eludes us, thank
god there are Digital DVD Discs like Savage South, that we might
continue to bask in his legacy, his smelly, naked legacy of terror.
Any the hell how.
This third incident can’t hope to compete with the violent
onslaught of the previous outing, but it’s better than the first.
GG seems in good humour at the beginning of the show, giving a
cheeky grin to the crowd, taking his willy out for a fondle, posing
for his followers, doing a camp dance throughout Bite It You Scum.
A man might even go so far as to say Sir Allin looks half content.
He seems to be enjoying himself, he takes a couple obligatory craps
following Die When You Die, he feels himself up for another time.
Thank fuck he soon realises the error of his ways, coming to his
senses just in time for to kick a fella right the fuck in the face.
Thus begins a thoroughly depraved episode in the Life Of GG Allin.
He rolls around in the shit for a while, smears a good portion of
it over his chest, gets down on his knees, when next thing anyone
knows a middle-aged fella who looks like he just stopped in for a
quiet pint on his way to the golf-club, he bounds onstage, wrestles
with GG a while, gets force-fed a few handfuls of dung, then runs
off, smiling like a man possessed by only the most mentalized of
demons.
GG spends as much time off-stage as on, running around the venue,
chasing folks out the doors, getting in fights with biker-types. As
he bounds back to the spotlight, he’s showered with beer-cans and
bottles, resulting in a hideous river of shit and liquor sloshing
round about. He rolls around in it plenty. It’s only proper.
His theatrics reach a glorious crescendo when, at the shows end, he
stands centre stage, a hideous dancing antichrist, projectiles
bouncing from off of every surface, and then he’s off, with nothing
but the roaring and the wall-to-wall veil of shit for to assure us
all that yeah, GG Allin and The Murder Junkies most certainly
straddled yonder stage this eve.
Punk rock nihilistic faeces-flinging infamy.
For however much of a detestable misogynist cretin GG Allin may
have been, however unlistenable his odes to “Teenage Twat” and
“Cunt Sucking Cannibals” may have been, there ain’t a doubt in The
Duke’s mind that no one in the history of popular music has
assaulted themselves and every motherfucker round about with such
evangelical mania as GG Allin.
The man weren’t “performing” for a second. That right there is real
hate in those eyes, real blood round the gums, real shit dripping
from out his long-suffering anus.
Far as I can see, Savage South is nothing less than yet another
truly unmissable testament to the heights of decadence, debauchery
and scandal this goon made it his life’s work for to ascend.
A shite for sore eyes, is what.
Thanks folks.
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