This was G.G.'s last show for history. For that matter, nobody among the hundred-plus fans who'd forked out $7 for the chance to have G.G. throw fresh shit at them paid much attention to the Murder Junkies either. It was only G.G. who counted, and the wildest man of punk in his final epiphany did not fail, as he often had in the past - the last time I'd seen him he sang on song and promptly passed out - to deliver. And lots of video cameras were there to record (from a safe distance) this, the climax of the legend of G.G. Allin.
I hadn't meant to review this show - impossible to take notes anywhere near G.G. - but let it stand now as his obituary. The freaky New Hampshireman, who broke into the punk scene about 1980 and became ever more famous for his uninhibited stage shows, his prison and jail stays, and his promise to commit suicide on stage at CBGB's as the culmination of his "mission" - even as his obscenity-laden music went from tuneful to boring. G.G. sang about four songs (the last being "Look Into My Eyes and Hate Me") with the Murder Junkies while causing total mayhem and forcing most of his fans to evacuate the garage shed where the Murder Junkies played even before the three mikes went dead and the flunkies started carrying out the surviving equipment, but that hardly stopped his performance. The music was just a warm-up.
Naked, bloody, coked and speeded up, G.G. continued to storm about the Gas Station area, smashing things and people. I (dressed entirely in white) even got slightly bloodied myself (as well as kicked by a vicious bouncer). He shat and then threw the shit about as the crowd scurried to get out of his very unpredictable way. Possessed by demons or with calculated abandon, G.G. was magnificently wild as he swept out the Gas Station enclosure, chasing his fans before him (a nice reversal!), immediately encountered an M9 bus on Avenue B, and brought it to a dead halt as he lay down on the street in front of it, spreading his cheeks in contemptuous defiance. The cops came, but the naked punk was overlooked on the sidewalk next to the Gas Station.
While the befuddled fuzz went south looking for the cause of all this mayhem, G.G. went north and, turning the corner onto E. 3rd St., west, smashing things as he went. Like the Pied Piper he drew scores of fans after him (at a discreet distance, to be sure) to witness his continuing street theater performance. We followed him around East Village, south on Avenue A, and crossed Delancey with him, squad cars prowling the intersection trying to figure out what the hell was going on, until fans about 8 p.m. forced a cab to accept this dirty, bloody, naked demigod and take him to St. Mark's Hotel.
This personification of polymorphously perverse punk went to his friend Johnny Puke's apartment to party with a few folks at about 10 p.m. Having said "Johnny Puke, we have to do that spoken word tour!" our hero passed out and into the fields of glory about 1:30 a.m. on the 28th. His fellow partygoers took photographs of themselves with the sleeping man, then joined him in slumberland. But when Johnny got up at about 9 a.m., the legendary G.G. Allin, three months out of prison, was cold and stiff, apparently the result of a heroin overdose.
Looking thru my files, I found a 1991 letter from him in which he declared: "I will continue to be the fucking R&R terrorist until the day I die + beyond the Grave." Uh-oh! Sid, Stiv, Darby: you ghosts had better watch out!
DtP
"I always thought he was indestructible...I shudder to think as what's going to happen now with like, young hopefuls who are going to try to fill up those shoes." - Steve Martin, NLM Public Relations
"There was definitely a need for G.G. Allin...his attitude, and his performance, and his lifestyle, and his whole package, even his music. I suppose, just was so far from what the mainstream was doing that I think it couldn't help but drag everything a little bit that way. He inspired people to stretch the limits and not worry about commercial success and stuff. He was that far end of it." - Al, Flipside Fanzine
"Any time someone dies, especially someone who pushed people and challenged people like G.G. did, it sucks. You know? There's no longer a use for the word 'punk' now, you know? The term punk is obsolete now, GG's dead, so who's left?"- Greg Werckman, Alternative Tentacles
"I wish him well on his journey into darkness, and only regret that he didn't get to take a few of his critics with him." - Peter Steele, Type O Negative
"Now I'll have to go to the zoo to have shit thrown at me." -Lee Greenfield, Sound Views Magazine
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