Month: February 2017

The first time I heard “Bite It You Scum” by G.G. Allin and The Murder Junkies, I was standing in the dungeon-like basement of The Barfly Lounge somewhere in the bowels of Philadelphia’s less then desirable south side, which was the only venue that would host a G.G. Allin and The Murder Junkies show. I was with my two work partners in crime Mike (a photographer) and Chuck ( Event liaison) who had found out about the concert the previous month while visiting Chuck’s sister who lived on South Street in Philly. This was the pre-internet era so the only way for unsigned bands to promote their shows was papering every free surface with flyers up and down the street. They also relied heavily on the power of word of mouth. It was one of those flyers, tacked to a telephone pole, that Chuck saw as he was walking down the street on his way to buy a pack of cigarettes. We decided it was a show that was a once in a life time chance not to be missed. So Chuck had approached our editor Vincent V. at “Grind Spine” magazine where all three of us were currently working while taking some time off before college.
We had made the hour long drive over to Philly from Gitsville NJ in Chuck’s car which in all due favor was a complete junker. The driver’s door shook so bad you thought at any second it would pop open. The speedometer was not to be trusted. There was a hole in the floor board. The radio only got one AM station, and the car seemed to have a front head light that was eternally out. When we arrived at the bar there was no appropriate parking so we had to park on the street four blocks away and walk. The corners were inhabited by hookers and drug dealers. The streets were lined with litter and more than a few homeless panhandlers. This was the type of neighborhood that if you drove through it you wouldn’t stop at red lights. Finally, we got back to the bar unscathed and in one piece, and then the door man (who looked to actually be a local biker) barely glanced at ID’s before letting us in with the stern warning “You guys don’t start any shit and I won’t have to beat the shit out of you.”
After such nice parting words from the doorman, the three of us shuffled single file through the narrow doorway of the bar. The Barfly Lounge was a small and rather cramped 500 square feet with an L shaped bar to the left. The right side of the room hosted a motley crew of tools, chairs, and wobbly tables. The only apparent patrons in the bar looked like a small group of local regulars from the surrounding neighborhood most sitting hunched over at the bar, a beer clutched tightly in one hand, and either a lit cigarette or shot glass in the other. The lighting in the bar was well beyond dim as the few spare lights that hung from the ceiling were enveloped in a thick pungent cloud of smoke that hovered like a smog cloud over Los Angeles. The thing I will remember most about The Barfly till the day I die was the overwhelmingly putrid stench, a vile smelling mix of stale beer, body odor, cigarette smoke and what we all assumed to be vomit.
“The show is in the basement. The door is in the back, next to the restroom.” said the bartender in a deep gravely voice reminiscent of Tom Waits. We slowly made our way to the back of the bar trying to see where we were going in order to avoid tripping or worse, falling onto the cesspit of a floor, and as we walked by a few of the weary down trodden customers lifted their heads just enough to stare at us as we passed. The door to the basement was a hideous dark green and had a thick greasy coat of nicotine . We cautiously proceeded down the bare concrete stairs I couldn’t help thinking that I had seen plenty of horror movies that started like this. We entered the gloomy basement which smelled so heavily of mold and mildew you had to wonder how being in this environment could negatively affect your respiratory system. We had come to far to turn back. The only light in the dank basement were the stage lights which were actually quite intense with a white light that almost felt like when you stared into the sun as a kid. Rusty exposed pipes hung from the ceiling several had been patched with duct tape and were in various stages of deterioration. There were only a handful of people lingering around waiting for the show to start in growing impatience. There was a thin lanky man about six foot two who looked like he weighed 160 pounds soaking wet and was no doubt a junkie, but he was a junkie selling 16 ounce cans of Budweiser for $3.00 a piece out of a couple of dirty igloo coolers at his feet to fund his heroin habit. Suddenly the The Murder Junkies (G.G. Allin’s last backing band before his death in 1993)  wandered lazily onto the stage where the bassist and guitarist plugged in their instruments and did a quick tune up. The drummer came out completely naked fully having earned the nickname Dino The Naked Drummer (who played naked so while drumming his clothes wouldn’t chafe his skin) and sat down behind the drums looking a bit lost as usual. It was then I became aware as I was watching the cliches and stragglers about fifty people or so had piled into the basement behind us, but were standing at the back of the room the farthest they could from the stage. The band all of a sudden launched full tilt into one of their signature songs “Bite It You Scum” and the crowd went feral. A young man who identified himself as Unk asked if we had been to a G.G. Allin show before and we said no we hadn’t. Unk went on to tell us he had found the safest place to be at G.G. Allin shows and that was behind him. No sooner had Unk finished speaking than the man referred to as the most spectacular degenerate in rock-n-roll history took the stage.