GG Allin is Hated
I’ve been hearing about the infamous GG Allin ever since I got into punk in my teens. But because of the obvious limitations of the 80s when the internet was just a pipe dream and the ability to buy albums and films from another country was just too difficult and time consuming I never really got to sate my curiosity aside from the occasional short features I would read in magazines.
I finally got to a taste of what GG Allin had to offer a couple of years ago when I listened to some songs from his album with the Murder Junkies. Listening to your first GG Allin song is akin to the feeling you get when you see your first porn — you feel dirty, you feel maddeningly curious, you feel a bit violated, and more importantly, you feel that some part of your innocence has forever been lost. GG Allin is subversion personified and listening to his music is like being caught in the maelstrom of his mind and his personality — you get the feeling that you have been sucked into his controlled, deliberate madness.
Hated, Todd Philips’ documentary on GG Allin, should be a must -see for any music fan who wants to get a glimpse of the tortured artist and want to experience the chaos, the brutality and the depravity of a typical GG Allin set. The first time I saw the unedited footage of his show at The Gas Station in New York City (if I’m not mistaken the last show he did before dying of an overdose), I had to fast forward in some parts. It’s like watching a horror movie where you just could not stand not knowing what will happen next. It’s that feeling of losing control and relinquishing that control to Allin that makes his show so visceral and so in-the-moment.
He may have been considered as one of the most hated men in rock, but there is no denying the fact that he also embodied rock at its most hard core.
GG Allin, The Gas Station, Murder Junkies
February 28th, 2008 at 10:42 am
For such a long article you put in quite a lot. A good one…