Music/Musician – Page 8

I Was A Teenage Murder Junkie Part 2: Concert Of Carnage

G.G. Allin strode out on stage from behind Dino the Naked Drummer with a look of hateful disgust contorting his face. G.G. was wearing a pair of unlaced combat boots that kept tripping him up (it didn’t help that G.G. appeared to be severely drunk or drunk and high perhaps.). G.G. was sporting his token jock strap with “EAT ME” written in black sharpie on the front. Lastly G.G. had on a tattered tan trench coat that had been tagged by a black Sharpie which was used to scrawl “G.G. Allin & The Murder Junkies” down the back. G.G. made his way to the front of the small stage which in reality was more of s slightly elevated platform, and paced back and forth like a enraged tiger that had gone insane from captivity. G.G. grabbed the microphone from the stand like it owed him money and started singing ,but it was more or less yelling his lyrics at the top of his voice making the words hard to decipher at times. The 40-50 person crowd that had piled in behind us at the very last minute became electrified with a combination of fear and absolute awe. I then remembered what Unk had said about the safest place at the show being behind G.G. and thinking whatever happens we’re proper fucked. Due to the crowd forming behind us now Mike, Chuck and I had effectively moved forward into the front of the audience putting us on the front lines. By the time G.G. and The Murder Junkies ended the first song “Bite It You Scum” I was hooked, I had to see for myself what all of the hype was about first fucking hand.

To say G.G.’s reputation proceeded him would be the understatement of the millennium BUT thats another story all together so I digress for now anyway.

After the song ended G.G. tore off the duster like a wounded animal and addressed the crowd. “Did you miss me?!” asked G.G. like a demented drill sergeant “Yeah the fucking pigs, the goddamn pig judge those motherfuckers locked me up, they tried to break me, but they didn’t know shit, I’m fucking unbreakable!!” he continued angrily. By now the crowd had backed up forming the body of the audience into a U formation leaving a wide berth in front of the stage. It was in this vacant space that a couple of young fans in black metal t-shirts and torn jeans were slam dancing. G.G.’s tyrannical rant continued “I’m here and I’m really fucking pissed, you’ll being hearing a lot about me in the next couple of months THATS for sure!! Look into my eyes and hate me!” as the band started banging out the G.G. fan favorite “Look Into My Eyes and Hate Me”

I was in shock, frozen like the preverbal deer in the head lights with my eyes wide open fixated on G.G. ,and remembered a quote I had heard that said G.G. Allin was his own one man version of a freak show. How true those words rang now deafening in my head. It was then that some drunk kid with a shaved head did something to piss G.G. off who responded by bounding off stage onto the show floor. G.G. damn near ran at the guy who didn’t see G.G. coming because he was aimlessly spinning in a circle, and once G.G. reached the kid he hauled off and punched in the kid in the face. The startled kid swung wildly in self defense as G.G. continued to punish this kids discrepancy with his fists. After a minute or so a couple of other fans stepped in and dismantled the mayhem as one fan grabbed G.G. around the waist, swung him a 180 degrees, and then shoved him words the stage. G.G. jumped back on stage and picked up the microphone which he had dropped before getting into the fight with the shaved head kid. G.G. picked up right where he left off ending “Look Into My Eyes and Hate Me” flawlessly. Little did I know that the chaos I had witnessed was just the beginning as this engine of insanity was just warming up.

The next 15 minutes of the concert I can sum up by song:

“Die When You Die”- during this popular G.G. anthem G.G. poured a pitcher of cheap beer over his head, slammed the microphone repeatedly into his head until he bled, and left the stage this time to writhe on the filthy cement floor flopping around like a fish out of water that was set on fire.

“Legalize Murder”- during this particular song G.G. played with himself several times, ran out into the audience crashing into fans like a drugged out bumper car. G.G. then returned to the stage where for the rest of the song he cut his chest with a crumpled up beer can while flailing around like a man possessed by demons during a Meth binge. At the end of the song G.G. took a few minutes to ask where the sluts and whores were at as he quickly drained a pint of Jack Daniel’s, and asked the audeince who of them likes to drink,fight and fuck before finally playing the next song in the set.

“I Wanna Fuck Myself”- G.G. look a leak in the corner, played with himself repeatedly, had another fist fight this time with the beer junkie over G.G. helping himself to a couple of beers with no intention what so ever of paying. G.G. slammed his head violently against a pipe that lined the east wall of the venue a couple of times, and G.G. throwing garbage cans into/at the audience all the while bleeding like a stuck pig his face a veritable crimson mask.

“Shoot, Knife, Strangle, Beat and Crucify” was the next song during which G.G. ditched his jock strap and ran completely naked through the crowd and around the perimeters of the basement the show was being housed in. G.G. stopped singing intermittently during his manic antics some times never finishing the song as The Murder Junkies played on not missing a beat.

“Gypsy Motherfucker” was highlighted by G.G. throwing the mic stand into the audience, shoving a female fan to the floor, a Microphone malfunction, and more of G.G.’s ranting this time over the microphone’s failure.

“What kind of dive bar piece of shit is this? Bunch of goddamn bullshit, can’t get a decent cocksucking mic, who do I have to kill to get decent gear really? Cuz I’m about to find that fucker and murder them!” G.G. asked aggressively to no one in particular.

This served only to incite the crowd into further rowdiness as fans yelled out their support for G.G. with a growing angst and enthusiasm. G.G. got off stage for the umpteenth time to wander around the concert venue pounding beers along with cocktails he grabbed out of the fans hands as the microphone issue wasn’t being addressed. The Murder Junkies stood around loitering on the stage in some state of confusion as G.G. handled his complaint. Finally some rail thin greasy looking stage tech scrounged up a back up microphone from the bowels of the bar. G.G. snatched it from him immediately and plugged it in as if he was trying to murder the mic by stabbing it with the cord.

“Alright now we’re talking, what the fuck was that bullshit fucking unprofessional assholes” G.G. announced mumbling to the crowd as they became yet more frantic by the minute. You could feel the energy escalating, higher and higher as the adrenaline was flowing freely kicking in the intensity of the fight or flight principle. Tensions were so strained that at any moment it seemed the room could erupt in a full on, full blown riot of biblical proportions.

“Now we’re going to play is what the fuck I am a Son Of Evil!” G.G. snarled in a low growl of sorts. 15 seconds into the song the lights went out. Mike, Chuck and I were now standing side by side in total blackness, not darkness mind you I’m talking black like the finality of death itself. The only lights as I’ve mentioned were the stage lights which now had become enveloped along with everything else in the pitch black of the bar’s basement. The stunned crowd started chattering like a swarm of locusts as people tried to deduce what had happened or what had possible just happened to cause the black out and so suddenly at that. Several minutes passed as the questioning crowd grew more irritated than fearful over the total lack of light. The sounds of frustration started to ring out, the breaking of glass beer bottles, the loud and violent yelling ( “Lets fuck shit up!” “Fuck this shit!” “Burn this shithole down” “Fuck this I paid 5 bucks for a fucking ticket and I get this bullshit! “Hell fucking no!” are a few examples of what I heard.) and other various sounds of impending destruction all around us.

As the crowd wound itself up to a fevered pitch I had a reoccurring thought.

“If anything happens we’re proper fucked.”

I Was A Teenage Murder Junkie Part 1 of 2

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.

Hijinks At Hellfest

Editor’s Note: For this piece I’m going to break protocol and I HAVE NOT changed any of the names, but you don’t have to believe me these names and places can be Googled. Now I return you to your regularly scheduled program.

The Key Players:

Mr. Glen Benton: The Vocalist/Bassist and infamous front man of the Death Metal band called Deicide (who are considered one of the founding fathers of Death Metal). Deicide’s frequent practice of dunking their faces in a bucket of Sheep’s blood before taking the stage in the early days of Deicide’s career quickly earned them a reputation, and with their extremely brutal form of Satan Loving, Bible Hating Death Metal (littered with violent occult imagery) soon made them a Death Metal Fan Favorite. Deicide’s infamy has only grown over the years as front man Glen Benton burned an inverted cross into his forehead, placed a 9 foot inverted cross in his front yard, and Benton occasionally dousing the audience with animals internal organs (Benton has also eluded to, but NEVER confirmed rumors of animal sacrifices), but its safe to assume they were bought from a local meat market butcher or a grocery meat department. Bottom line here I suppose is Deicide is down with the Devil, know for having gruesome live performances, and being extremely Anti Christian.

Hellfest: There are in fact numerous Hellfests held around the globe yearly be they for Heavy Metal or Hardcore Punk the point being many Extreme Music Genres use the unlicensed name Hellfest for various different shows. . The Hellfest that I am talking about is the highest attended concert that is put on annually (June 16-17-18th) in Brittany, France featuring top Scandinavian, European Black, and Death Metal acts. Such acts have included Cradle of Filth, Mayhem, Bloodbath, Cannibal Corpse, Lamb of God, Venom, Obituary, Enthroned ,and Life of Agony over the years just to name a few.

The Controversy Begins: Back in 1995 Deicide released their new album titled Once Upon The Cross and promptly launched a tour in support of it. That year Hellfest contacted Deicide and Invited them to play, but for undisclosed reasons Hellfest then contacted Deicide again two weeks later and this time officially Uninvited them. This more than enraged Glen Benton to absolutely no end. Benton announced to the press (he believed) that Deicide had been shit canned because Black Metal Bands heralding from Scandinavia through Europe hate American Death Metal with a burning passion. Benton went on to proclaim the reason (again he believes) Black Metal Bands have such a vile disgust, rabid contempt and distain towards Death Metal was due to the fact they felt America took their musical style ,and shit all over it transforming it into an second rate, dumbed down inferior version.

The Unofficial Reality and Reason: After Hellfest announced that they had indeed added Deicide to Hellfest 1996 local Decide fans went on celebratory vandalism rampage by scrawling Deicide’s song title “When Satan Rules His World” on tombstones in surrounding cemeteries. This was never offered as any sort of official (or unofficial reason) for Hellfest’s cancellation of Deicides performance. Though it seems painfully obvious to see this was in all reality the real reason. You can’t rightfully blame the promoters of Hellfest that year I mean if tombstone vandalizing started by just the initial announcement of Deicides participation, but just imagine what they must have thought would happen when the actual band showed up to play.