To mark the fifth anniversary of Allin's promotion to glory, ROIR, with some help from Allin's brother Merle, has decided to re-release this 1987 cassette-only classic. This fake live show (some live material mixed in with studio recordings and answering machine messages), originally arranged and produced by Mykel Board, was for many young fuck-ups, myself included, a first taste of what GG Allin was all about. Word about Allin - that he was this subhuman, savage creature who put Iggy to shame - was just beginning to explode through punk rock circles. The bigger zines were starting to write about him, his arrests were making the news. Most all of us who heard this cassette, who heard songs like "Tough Fuckin' Shit" and "Needle Up My Cock" for the first time, were hooked.
For a (pre-mortem) career that produced some 20-odd releases on more than half as many labels, Hated in the Nation remains not only the best introduction to Allin but his best album as well. Especially given that most of those early albums, like those on Black and Blue Records, are so damned hard, if not impossible, to find on CD.
You find Allin at the crossroads here. The clean, tight pop-punk songs that characterized his early recordings are falling prey - as so many audience members did - to his stage antics. That's not a bad thing. There were hundreds of clean, tight pop-punk bands in America at the time, but only one GG. The GG on this recording is still a young man who's just beginning to make a music that's completely, unmistakably his own.
Hated features some of the best recordings he ever made of some of his trademark songs: "Drink, Fight and Fuck," "Blood For You" and "Bite It, You Scum." In fact, it wasn't until I opened up this new package that I realized his backup bands have featured folks like Mack Kramer, J Mascis, Gerard Cosloy, Wayne Kramer and Dennis Thompson. Pretty fucking amazing.
Another interesting thing about the package: For the first time, ROIR is listing the real song titles. Looking back at the original '87 cassette, it was clear they were trying to avoid something. So "Ass-Fuckin', Butt Lickin', Cunt Suckin' Masturbation" is no longer known as "Multiple Forms of Self-Satisfaction." And "Eat My Shit" will no longer be known as the rather motherly sounding "Eat My Leftovers."
One-20th of a century after his death, Allin's mythology is still holding up pretty well. A quick search on the Internet'll show you that. It's hard to guess where it'll go from here, though, if people will still be talking about him 10 years from now, or 15. He was more savage than Iggy and smarter than Sid. Looking at the useless little muffbuttons making music today: I don't see anyone stepping forward to eclipse him.
Jim Knipfel
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