You probably think there were some strange people in New Hampshire during Motorcycle Week - yes, I know there were - but wait until next weekend,
Next Saturday, June 28, 2003, will mark the 10th anniversary of the death of GG Allin, a little-known, one-time Littleton resident - he was Kevn Allin in that earlier incarnation - who has gained a macabre kind of cult status since he was found dead, due to a heroin overdose, in his East Village apartment at 29 Avenue B in New York City.
Allin's fame is celebrated on the ultra-extreme fringes of the musical genre known as punk rock, but truth be told, he is famous not so much for singing but because of the many things - beyond singing - that he did on the stage.
I'm talking about extraordinarily anti-social antics such as initiating fights with the audience, breaking bottles over his shaven head, grinding the glass into his skull, removing every stitch of his clothing and, at the risk of being indelicate, well...let's just say any sustained lack of fiber in his diet might have threatened his trademark on-stage finale, if you get my drift.
You still with me?
To commemorate the anniversary of GG's death, two of his former bands - thankfully, two band names I can use in print - are going to perform next Saturday at the Littleton Opera House, which happens to be located right across the street from his final resting place in St. Rose Cemetery.
One of the bands is GG's first group, the Jabbers, who became fixtures on the Manchester bar scene - during GG's tamer days - in the early 1980s. The other is his last band, the Murder Junkies, an ensemble that features his brother, Merle Allin.
However, if tradition holds, the audience will also be a part of the performance because that's the way GG always wanted it, as Merle acknowledged.
"He was by far the most outrageous performer who ever hit a stage,quot; Merle said, and by the way, Merle said that 10 years ago. That's how he was quoted in the story of GG's death, which made the front page of the New York Post.
I still have the clipping.
I've had it for 10 years because it's taken me that long to work up the nerve to write about a guy who was so far beyond the pale as to defy the ordinary conventions - as he defied every convention - of a family newspaper.
Where to begin?
With his 52 arrests for on-stage activity? With his four-year stretch at Jackson State Prison in Michigan for aggravated assault with intent to mutilate? How about with his oft-stated pledge to kill himself on stage?
How about his last performance?
This is from Matthew Flamm of the New York Post:
"GG Allin died as he lived," he wrote. "Backed by his band, the Murder Junkies, he had only gotten as far as the second song in his set at the Gas Station before he began fighting with audience members. Technicians turned off the sound, ending the show.
"According to witnesses," Flamm added, "the rocker was at one point thrown through a drum set and later smashed himself through a French door, emerging from the Gas Station covered in blood."
By morning he was dead.
He was 36.
Some are surprised he lasted that long.
"I guess we kind of saw it coming," said Chris Lamy, who was only a 16-year-old junior at Manchester's Central High School when he began playing guitar alongside GG with the Jabbers. "He was such a good friend, but even back then, it was easy to get a glimpse of his twisted mental landscape.
"The Jabbers broke up in 1984 because we thought GG was getting too edgy," he added. "He was just rolling around on the floor, taunting the audience. There wasn't any nudity involved; none of the stage antics he got into later, but I still always thought of us as New Hampshire's embarrassing little secret."
Talk to folks today, and the Jabbers weren't such a secret.
That makes Chris laugh.
"If as many people saw us say they saw us," he said, "we would have to have been playing the Verizon Wireless Arena instead of The Casbah or Club Merrimac."
The Jabbers got bounced from both.
"Sometimes we had to bill ourselves as the Orange County Boys," Chris said, "because if the New Hampshire State Liquor Commission heard we were playing, we'd get shut down before we got on the stage. We just played the Ramones and Iggy Pop, but I guess we had this perceived bad-boy image."
It wasn't a perception when GG got to New York.
As bad boys go, he was the worst.
"When he was alive, people were afraid of him," Merle said when I caught him by phone last week as he was cleaning his pool in New Jersey. "They were so afraid of him and his music that when I'd go into stores and try to peddle our records, the shop owners looked at me like I was diseased.
"They were like, 'We don't want this garbage,' and now GG has his own section at Tower Records. I knew that once he died and it was more safe and acceptable to be into GG, that people would come around. Now every major record store carries GG."
Smaller stores do too, like The Music Connection in Manchester, where owner Richard Gesner still has GG vinyl, plus CDs, buttons and videos.
"A lot of guys come into the store who were with GG's band in the early days," he said, "but some of them could only stand it for three or four months. The guy was just too intense. Everywhere they played, they'd sell out, but the concert always ended in a riot. They just couldn't take it."
Money notwithstanding, they just couldn't take working with the guy that SPIN magazine recently called "The sickest, most decadent rocker of all time."
GG would have loved that.
"There's nobody like GG," Merle said. "When Kurt Cobain died, Nirvana broke up and there were 50 other bands that sounded just like Nirvana. Not to take anything away from them - they were huge - but when GG died, no one could take his place.
"Then Marilyn Manson came along and stole all his ideas, but he made it safe so he could remain commercial. Not GG. He was doing that stuff 10 years ago and he kept it real. I just think he was 10 or 20 years ahead of his time."
By this time next week, people will be gathering in Littleton.
The anniversary of GG's death always brings out his most hardcore devotees - the biological tributes they leave at his headstone incur the wrath of the Littleton Police Department and the keepers of St. Rose Cemetery - but for this, the 10th anniversary, fans are coming from as far away as Sweden.
Officially, the show starts a 2 p.m.
Chris Lamy will be there at the Littleton Opera House, reunited with GG's first band, the Jabbers. Merle Allin will be there too, ready to take the stage with his fellow Murder Junkies, including Dino Sex, William Weber and new vocalist Jeff Clayton - (no relation, I swear) - as well as special guests Jonee Earthquake and The Rydells.
It's 10 bucks a head for a show that's being billed for "all ages," but whether you're 18 or 88, I'm thinking it will not be a show for the faint of heart.
"The police are concerned," Merle conceded, "and I think there are women's groups that are ready to call out the National Guard, but I think they're blowing it a little bit out of proportion. GG is dead, so he's not going to be there doing things people expect might happen.
"I know there's going to be problems with some of our fans and the cops," he added, "but I'm just hoping that everyone can keep it together long enough for a good show and not ruin the whole reason for going up there. It's a tribute to my brother."
John Clayton
(John Clayton's latest book is a collection of veterans-related stories entitled "New Hampshire: War and Peace." His web site is www.johnclayton.net)