Gordan England and the Murder Junkies
Gordon England, former General Dynamics executive, two-time U.S. Secretary of the Navy and current Deputy Secretary of Defense, with wife and daughter - my one and only college girlfriend - on top of an M1 Abrams tank. He once rode shotgun and wisely out of sight for the world's worst photo op.
VSL does the GG Allin today. That means it's time for an annoying look-at-me-I'm-cool anecdote, right? Thouht so. Some of us who were actually in college during a portion of the 80s (ha, that's right kiddies, I said "kiddies"! - and damn, I only made it by one semester) will remember when music was dangerous. I wish HTML allowed me to explode those letters and ooze real blood on your monitor. Oh sure, getting a mud pie thrown in your face at Woodstock II during a Green Day set seems pretty rough, but I'm talking knife in your gut while listening to Gary Numan's "Metal" or being black at Altamont. I was one of the few who showed up at an early 90s GG Allin show at the old 9:30 Club in DC on Halloween night because it was rumored he planned to kill himself on stage. Hey, what's the harm in being in close proximity to a suicidal maniac on the freakiest night of American Pagan customs? We were gonna be a part of history! Perhaps too literal. Well, it was canceled, of course. I headed back to campus in College Park (this was before the fancy Green Line extension when you had to drive drunk for Capital adventures), found my right-wing Kappa girlfriend at an outdoor party and made out with her on the grass.
Years later, after the little Reagan Youth transfered to TCU and I was once again single, free of at least one contradiction but still penniless, I saw the GG documentary at The Biograph in Georgetown (before it was closed because weekday porn screenings don't exactly pay the bills for an art house mission). His brother Merle, often sporting a Hitler 'stache, would continue to tour with the Murder Junkies and my friends caught his show at Memory Lane (man I miss that place) where they videotaped him in front of the club yelling into the camera, "Krucoff, you fuckin' pussy, get your ass back to Baltimore!"
::: "You Hate Me and I Hate You" from Hated in the Nation, the one GG Allin album you need to have. (Want more look-at-me-I'm-cool? I felt pretty bad ass when I bought the ROIR cassette from the Tower Records near GWU.) The music is pretty good, bringing to mind the Dead Boys at times. Oh, good night Lee Hazlewood.
The timeline, not the facts, of these events has been distorted to make it flow in several directions. Also, by mentioning Gordon England and GG Allin in the same blog post, I have guaranteed government surveillance of Young Manhattanite. Please, don't kill us. We're harmless peace punks just looking for the next good buzz.
