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Shock rock: El Duce of The Mentors and Gwar on The Jerry Springer Show

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I love it when the audience feigns shock and disgust on The Jerry Springer Show, all the while poking their snouts in the dirt like pigs looking for truffles.

Gwar and El Duce of The Mentors gleefully push the crowds’ buttons as they discuss “shock rock,” which is the musical equivalent of taking a dump in the punch bowl of pop culture and political correctness.

Some might find El Duce’s “rape rock” crosses the lines of bad taste into something more vile, but I think it’s pretty obvious that Duce’s trangressions are a form of performance art in which he’s embodying the worst expectations of the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) and testing the boundaries of free speech. It may be crude but it’s effective.

Three months after this episode of Springer was filmed, El Duce (Eldon Hoke) died at the age of 39, which adds a bit of bittersweetness to the title of one of his classic love songs “My Erection Is Over,” the lyrics of which were quoted during the 1985 Senate hearings on offensive language in rock songs.

I want me a sleazy slut
Who can give a tongue bath to my butt
My erection is over…it’s over, it’s all over

It WAS all over when El Duce was crushed by a freight train one night in April of 1997. Some say it was suicide, some say it was payback for making claims he was hired by Courtney Love to murder Kurt Cobain. Maybe it was an accident. Whatever the case, it’s the kind of shit the denizens of Springerville love to their cluck their tongues over. 
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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10.23.2012
02:31 pm
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Thank you, God: Nick Broomfield makes a Sarah Palin documentary


 
I’m fascinated by the films of British documentarian Nick Broomfield. One of the pioneers of the “You get a documentary plus ME!” school in films like Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam, Kurt and Courtney and Biggie & Tupac, the button-pushing Broomfield’s almost libelous directing techniques are both hilarious and riveting. I would never miss one of his films, which can be good sleazy fun (there is of course, another side of Broomfield’s work in socially-conscious films like Ghosts, Behind the Rent Strike and Battle for Haditha which I’m not addressing here).

One of Broomfield’s oft-used narrative tropes that I enjoy the most is when he knocks on the door of a subject’s home and when they aren’t there or refuse to talk to him, this is seen as evidence that they are hiding something. But he never comes right out and says that (libel laws being what they are) he usually just asks some form of this question pointedly right after we’ve seen a door slammed in his face or a security guard leading him away, “But what is ____ trying to hide?”

Nick Broomfield can be a gleefully immoral documentarian, which is why I was so tremendously pleased to find that the latest target of Broomfield’s patented style of hit and run filmmaking is none other than that snowbilly grifter herself, Sarah Palin! Broomfield’s Sarah Palin—You Betcha! is set to join Werner Herzog, Jessica Yu and Morgan Spurlock’s new films at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

The film is supposed to examine Palin’s hometown of Wasilla, AK in detail and promises interviews with Palin’s parents, political associates and former brother-in-law. Broomfield told the Daily Mail:

“People are frightened to talk. Wasilla makes Twin Peaks look like a walk in the park. It’s a devout evangelical community – 76 churches with a population of only six thousand.”

And how many meth labs?

I’m just sorry that Broomfield wasn’t able to get El Duce on camera talking about Sarah Palin. (On a side note, about 20 years ago at a party for the Beastie Boys in Los Angeles, El Duce cheerfully told me that he had raped a friend of mine’s dog).

Below, in a clip released on YouTube, Nick Broomfield confronts Sarah Palin in public, in his signature Nick Broomfield style:
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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08.08.2011
01:36 pm
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The GG Allin Throbblehead Commercial
11.10.2009
03:41 pm
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“Take a pull off his tiny buttocks, and you will be transported back to one of his legendary scat-filled performances of yore!”  A few weeks back, Dangerous Minds brought you news of the GG Allin bobblehead.  Well, here’s a commercial for the toy.  Oh, and for you Meatmen fans, there’s a Tesco Vee doll, too.  Thanks Aggronautix, but I’ll reach for my Visa only when you show me an El Duce!

 
See also: Milo of the Descendents Throbblehead

(via TWBE)

Posted by Bradley Novicoff
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11.10.2009
03:41 pm
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