My Education of GG Allin

BLOOD IN BLOOD OUT A typical GG Allin show

CALL ME WEIRD, BUT GG Allin was the real deal. What Jim Morrison taunted in his infamous Miami debacle, Allin fulfilled it with blood and guts. Morrison was the Old Testament; Allin was the New World Order. He did not only sing about rock or punk or what have you, he embodied it unlike anything since Ozzy Osbourne and his bat meal. We were amazed at how Keith Moon allegedly decorated his hotel room with human excrement, or Sid Vicious intentionally cutting himself in front of the camera; Allin, on the other hand, went even further, like eating his own shit or running around naked and in broad daylight with blood dripping all over his body. 

You would think that this guy is no longer a member of the human race, a rock 'n' roll anomaly, or a disgrace to the music industry. And though far from being a musical inspiration to the kids out there, GG Allin, Jesus Christ Allin in real life, was definitely a man after his own bile, someone who had it all figured out before any of us could.

Allin is already dead; we’d be surprised if he’s still at it. And I think he is more popular now than when he was decades ago, cutting, hurting, and throwing himself on stage. GG, who played with a number of bands in the late 80s, was probably famous for his association with the Murder Junkies, originally a Texas based underground punk rock band he helped formed. 

Allin’s performances was anything but trite, an interactive outburst between a sadistic audience and a masochistic Allin. Scores of self-mutilation, sexual perversion, coprophagia (consuming his own feces), and other homicidal tendencies could be unleashed in a typical GG Allin concert, earning him at one point as "the most spectacular degenerate in rock & roll history". A website dedicated to the Allin myth even named him as “The True King of Rock-N-Roll”, along with a list of his exploits from the amount of blood spilled on stage to a litany of Allin expletives only he himself could probably handle.

But I don’t do Allin that much, I only listened to a few of his songs out of curiosity, much less dig into his discography (or life) to generate an interest in him, but I like “You Hate Me and I Hate You” among a few of his (brutal) songs. What I’m particularly curious about is not Allin himself, not even his songs, but his bloodlust, gut-filled responses to his audience. 

He simply hated everybody. I mean that to me should be the attitude of rock or punk for that matter. If you look at his concerts, you would notice that there is a scheme (would you believe?) behind all the obscenity and violence that is going on stage, like Allin is giving us a taste of what it is to live in a real world, where beautiful and bestiality could go hand-in-hand. And this is where my education of GG Allin started.

3SOME With then girlfriend Liz Mankowski (middle)

THE “FURY IN YOU” ALLIN once talked about is more than just rock ‘n’ roll. If you happen to be in a GG Allin concert (unfortunately for now you can’t because Allin is 20 years dead) and compare it with what’s happening outside, I mean the self-righteous society he deliberately attacked in his performances, you might be in for a “little bit” of surprise. 

There’s not much of a difference, really. More than anything else, Allin was a reactionary figure. There’s nothing original about him or his music. He only acted out his fury for all to see, an unbridled anger and hate that can be so disturbing once it is laid out and performed on stage. It is an affront, in the first place, against the established order, a potentially violent and insensitive government probably responsible for giving us, well, GG Allin, who grew up in a bereft environment, with nothing but a very few lease in life. Perhaps it is only fitting that Allin did what he’s supposed to do, “Rock 'n' roll has to be destroyed and rebuilt in my name if it's ever gonna accomplish anything,” he said.

I was watching an old footage of Allin on the Jerry Springer Show, and I was amazed at how Liz Mankowski, an Allin fan (an incidentally his last girlfriend), embraced Allin coolly when she said that everybody deserves to be degraded. Unlike Allin though, Liz grew up in a decent middle-class family, a far cry from that of Allin’s, who had a poor and violent upbringing, which enabled Liz’s father to conclude that her daughter’s obsession with the singer puzzled everyone in the house. Not that it was unusual, but I could probably sense, knowingly or unknowingly for Allin, that his act was actually influencing the innermost core of human feelings, the Id (that dark, inaccessible part of our personality---Freud). 

Liz appeared to be a normal teen who has had her own share of rock idols plastered on her bedroom wall, but when deliberately induced by the sordid sounds of Allin and his Junkies, those dark demons inside her will probably go out. Thanks mainly to Allin, his genius could be attributed to the way Liz and all the other teens in America at that time (and until now) reacted to his own brand of rock ‘n’ roll.

Now I’m going psychological on this, but there’s a lot of GG Allin in us. We might not have the courage to admit it because there are certain norms that we need to upheld, but suffice it to say, it’s in there, hidden, waiting to be unleashed at a proper fury. It’s so happen that in the early 90s Allin was bold enough to unleash just that, the fury, the frustration, the feces, the foulness of a society insensitive to the needs of a disparate few, like Allin himself. 

He showed us that when we totally succumbed to the innuendos and fetishes of a repressive and crooked government, we’ll only end up beaten, bruised and bloodied like him on stage. He was a mirror, an alter ego, the Yang of George H.W. Bush’s geopolitical Ying Allin somehow reviled in his performances, in his lyrics, and even in the way he presented himself, belligerent, unruly, an enemy to the people, including perhaps to his fans. He somehow represented the darker version of our social and political ideals.

EULOGY A fan paying homage to a god

THOUGH THERE WAS NOTHING POLITICA about the way Allin dealt with his issues. And I wouldn’t recommend it to someone else, let alone follow his unusual panache of confronting it, head on, as if it’s the only way out. He alone might be the only one who can do that. But by merely looking at him, he deliberately used himself to an equally unusual cause, “to defend yourself at all times”, because if you do, you won’t be able to experience the blood and guts he received while performing on stage. That alone is so mind-boggling to an unsuspecting Allin fan, who probably went to his concert to listen to some good old fashioned punk rock, but was given a performance that was anything but good old fashioned. 

But his counterfeit style, no matter how gory it may seem under the lights, is not altogether counterproductive. You can actually see the good side in you, highlighted even (the one society wanted you to project), unraveling, while laboring the brutality of a GG Allin freak show.

When Jesus Christ, Allin’s namesake, offered his “flesh and blood” to his disciples on his last meal in “remembrance of him”; Allin, not to be outsmarted, offered his feces to his followers. He used this to back up his claim of being a "god", a sort of a government himself away from that superficial one, and his feces coming out as a communion between him and his loyal fans. But as a counterfeit measure, you have to defend yourself against the onslaught of that "holy shit". 

You have to shield yourself away from the incursion of what this government has to offer, yes, including that poo poo. If he were alive today, you could almost hear him saying, “This is the only thing your government can offer you. So deal with it!” The message Allin wanted to give, aside from his feces, of course, was rather divisive, but somehow it never failed to make an impression despite the emanation that followed.

Allin was a rarity in rock business. He claimed to have no money at all, at least from the confines of a conventional rock star. He said he couldn't even bail himself out of prison, and might not be able to pay his hospital bills if confined. If what he said was true, or maybe just a gimmick to garner enough support from his uncanny brand of punk and politics (he even threatened to commit suicide on stage), but by his own admission, Allin was deliberately living a life most Americans are still painfully living it right now, and not just solely Americans but those outside of America as well. It's pandemic. A suffering brought about by constantly embracing everything on its path without considering its unlikely source and its oftentimes problematic consequences. 

Nancy Laura Pittman, aka Brenda McCann, a member of Charles Manson's infamous cult, The Family, probably has this to say about the phenomenon of GG Allin, "We are what you have made us. We were brought up on your TV. We were brought up watching 'Gunsmoke,' 'Have Gun Will Travel,' 'FBI,' 'Combat.' 'Combat' was my favorite show. I never missed 'Combat.'" Allin might have been a good and faithful servant for Manson, who might be too willing to carry out what Manson (and most of us) had in mind when that Id is finally unleashed. 

Allin was the son of a generation, a by-product of an era, an era who proclaimed to be doing the right thing, but pursuing the opposite instead. He simply showed what most of us tried to hide when we are trapped, betrayed, confused, disappointed and disgusted. He was the image of our invisible Id, a looming figure at the back of our heads. And if some of us find it difficult to acknowledge that, not necessarily accept it in it's own terms, but at least consider a few of its inaccessible parts, then this society is probably what Allin thought it was---hypocritical.    

(photo credits: spin.com, theotheratheists.net, vice.com)