Scraps of a God

OFFICE OF THE MEDICAL EXAMINER
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

REPORT OF POSTMORTEM EXAMINATION

NAME JESUS CHRIST ALLIN       CASE NO. ME1993-0867

AGE 36         RACE WHITE     SEX MALE

DATE DEATH PRONOUNCED   JUNE 28, 1993      

EXAMINED BY   LEONARD H. MURRAY

CAUSE OF DEATH HEROIN OVERDOSE

NOTES SUBJECT ALSO TESTED POSITIVE FOR ALCOHOL AND COCAINE.  IN ADDITION, SUBJECT’S STOMACH CONTAINED SIGNIGICANT AMOUNTS OF HUMAN BLOOD AND FECAL MATTER. 

From the journals of Merle Colby Allin, Sr.

August 30, 1956

More visions last night while the children slept and Arleta gave birth in the tub.  Fuller this time, since I buried all our gaslights like He said for me to do.  His face came right out of the cabin walls covered in blood and [illegible]. Tells me it’s a son Arleta was bringing.  Tells me God is in the boy, the boy is a messiah, the boy will bring into the world a new unbound [illegible]. 

Tells me the boy’s name. 

Jesus Christ Allin Jesus Christ Allin Jesus Christ Allin[…]

Excerpt from Dr. Winslow Garfield’s 1998 book-length essay, “How Post-Hegelian German Philosophy Influenced Late 20^th Century Punk Rock Music”

GG Allin is best understood when viewed as contemporary culture’s apex expression of the Dionysian artistic impulse to generate chaos that Nietzsche first posited in his 1872 book The Birth of Tragedy, and which exists in opposition of the Apollonian impulse to establish order.

Transcript of an audience member’s filmed account of GG Allin’s 1990 performance at the RC Bridge Lounge, courtesy of Skinny Nervous Guy Productions.

I’d always heard about this crazy punk motherfucker that wore a Nazi helmet and took shits onstage and vowed to off himself during a show in front of his fans, so of course I was curious.  

The venue was this small basement below a burger joint that gave the place a cruddy deep-fried stink on top of the mildew.  It was a packed house that night and I could tell right away that the crowd was pretty much split in two.  In one camp were the no-bullshit punks with metal studs all over their jackets and faces. I’m talking about the sub-underground here.  The kind of people that you’re not sure really exist outside of punk shows. In the other camp were people like me: those that showed up to see some crazy shit, to watch the freakshow, to report the debauchery back to the real world—like what you’re asking me to do right now. 

So here’s what happened. 

First the other band members took to their posts.  They looked like your average hardcore punk nuts, apart from the drummer who paired John Lennon shades with a Hitler moustache, which I guess was supposed to mean something, who knows.

Then GG came out.  I wasn’t expecting him to take the stage completely naked.  Sure, I suspected that at some point clothes might come off, but I thought that would be at like the peak.  To start the show off like that—I mean where can you go from there?  Well he fucking showed me. 

Right away he jumped offstage.  See there isn’t a mosh pit like you’d expect at a punk show—instead there’s like this pocket of space in the crowd centering on GG that sort of ebbs and flows based on his erratic movements. Of course, since he wasn’t up on the stage, you couldn’t really see what he was doing unless you were right at the edge of the pocket, and what was I there for if I couldn’t even get a look at what was happening?  So I elbowed my way to a spot near the edge where I could see and there he was, hurling himself around, beating his face with the mic, and I was like fuck yeah, you know?  Then in the middle of it all and without really drawing attention to it, he just started pissing.  Like, you ever see a cow just chewing hay or whatever and then it starts pissing or shitting where it stands?  It was like that.  Then some guy threw a bottle at him but missed and it hit the floor at GG’s feet and shattered.  Right away GG jumped into the air and slammed himself down on the broken shards and rolled around in the mix of piss and glass.  When he got up again, his back and chest were all cut and bloodied and I could see glittering bits of beer bottle still stuck in his flesh.  That’s when he started attacking the crowd.  He took the mic stand from the stage and swung it around hitting this one chick real heavy square on the side of her head.  Some people flung themselves at him for a fight but barely lasted more than a few moments before getting reabsorbed into the crowd.  I guess I was so busy watching the drama of it all to notice how everyone around me had retreated a couple feet, so instead of being a part of the pocket that surrounded GG, I was now inside the pocket, which I guess GG took to be some kind of challenge.  He ran at me like a charging bull and before I could react, he grabbed a fistful of my hair, tugged me to the ground, and planted my face right where the glass and piss and GG’s blood all came together.  He held me there just screaming into my ear over and over: “Respect your fucking god.”