Excrement, blood, and nudity: GG Allin’s most shocking show
GG Allin really is proof that the only difference between punk rock shock tactics and media baiting attention seeking is the presence of human shit, isn’t he?
Because that’s all he was at the end of the day, right? He was barely a musician, let alone a good or great musician. He wasn’t a great live act in the way that many punk bands are. He didn’t have anything cogent to say about the state of the world other than “sure is violent, eh?”. No one talks about his songwriting, or his vocals or anything other than his ability to debase himself onstage. He was little more than a performing monkey with a death wish. Complete with lots of thrown faeces to match.
There’s a good reason why he’s not often talked about in the same breath as other punk rock heroes of the 1980s like Henry Rollins, Jello Biafra and Siouxsie Sioux, because he wasn’t really a punk rocker. He was a musician in the way that Johnny Knoxville is an actor, by virtue of their vapid bullshit being propagated via the same medium that real artists were operating with at the same time. Those “legendary” shows that saw him do all the puerile antics that he’s famous for? They very rarely ended.
More often than not, he’d decide that he was bored with all this music lark, jump into the audience and provoke someone into punching him in the face. More often than not, via the medium of punching someone in the face. It’s very telling that the most infamous record of Allin in his, err, prime, is a sort of live album called (in)Censored. I say it’s a sort of live album because it was never released as an actual album, only as a DVD in 2011.
Because who the hell would ever want to listen to this (literal) crap?
What happened at the craziest GG Allin show?
The DVD covers four shows recorded during Allin’s Terror in America tour, and the first one comes from Chicago, Illinois… This show might have been the most intense in Allin’s whole life, and ironically, it comes from the fact that the venue tried really, really hard to stop him from doing his shtick – the venue itself is a lot larger and swankier than the dive bars that normally booked Allin and his backing band, The Murder Junkies, and it looks like they only discovered what sort of show they’d booked after they couldn’t get out of it.
Right from the off, Allin and the audience are separated by a large wooden riot barricade and a fleet of security staff. All of which swarm on Allin every time he tries to leap into the audience. This lights a fire underneath Allin and, perhaps because he now actually has time to do stuff before the venue cuts him off, he makes the most of his time on stage. Starting off strong by giving himself an enema with a water bottle. One wonders whether said security team got a raise from working this show?
Allin then proceeds to go through a hyper-charged version of his usual act. He shits and pisses on an American flag and a bible at the same time, the talented little sausage. Speaking of little sausages, his dick is obviously all the way out the entire show. He sticks the microphone cord up his arse and sings into the mic, strange behaviour since obviously, no one can hear him sing! That’s what we’re all here for, GG! Clearly, all the gross stuff got old because then he settles for cutting himself open with a glass bottle and rolling around in the shards.
How this man died of a drug overdose and not, like, tetanus will be a medical mystery for all time.