Public Animal Number One

According to various friends and associates, I am the possessor of a truly rare and wonderful gift: the ability to totally charm and sweettalk notoriously prickly creative types to the point where they're damn near eating out of my hand, sometimes almost literally if I don't yank my hand away after they've grabbed hold of that particular munchie. (Admittedly, showing up at venues with homemade baked goods does tend to get you on most folks' good sides--nobody, but nobody doesn't like chocolate unless they're actually allergic to it, and all the others can be won over with blueberry muffins...I'm not the Purveyor of Quality Photographs and Fine Baked Goods (as my old business cards used to say) for nothing! :-)

It's always funny to hear people talk in hushed tones about So-and-So and just how horrible they can be, and then see the looks on their faces when I pipe up "Hey, I met them once, and they were pretty nice!" Case in point: I am, as you should have already figured out by now, a pretty damn hardcore Nine Inch Nails fan of 11+ years' standing (which boggles people right there if I'm wearing one of my homemade long print dresses--talk about the World's Most Unlikely Looking Ninnie...), and over the course of those 11+ years, I've seen them play 15 times and met Trent himself on three separate occasions, which never fails to get the following response from mundanes:

"Oh, wow...*tone of great trepidation*..."Um, so...what's he like?"

"Oh, very nicepolite, soft-spoken, witty as hell, awfully shy, but a total sweetheart, really!"

"*boggle*"

(You just know they were expecting something along the lines of Taz with Tourette's Syndrome...If I had a dollar for every time this particular scenario has played itself out--particularly when paired with "but YOU don't look like a Nine Inch Nails fan!"--I could afford to follow the entire tour instead of hitting just a few select dates, but I digress...)

I feel a little guilty following up Trent with two people he's no longer on speaking terms with (to put it mildly...), but...Courtney Love was a total sweetheart to me all the times I met her in the early '90s and dubbed me "the brownie lady" after learning I was the one who'd brought my semi-legendary brownies to the most recent Hole show in Athens (sure, so she flamed me on Usenet that one time for something I didn't even write, but I don't hold that against her...), and even Marilyn Manson was perfectly polite and friendly, although I did hear a nasty rumor that he ended up smearing his brownies all over his hotel room walls (BAD MANSON! NO MORE BROWNIES FOR YOU!). Then again, I'd have to say it was worth a smeared batch of brownies to be able to witness the following: Marilyn Manson, the God of Fuck, the Destroyer of Innocence, the Defiler of All That is Good and Pure and Holy, on the pay phone in the lobby of the Georgia Theatre in Athens, Georgia, calling home to his sweetie in Florida...

*high-pitched, cutesy voice*..."I love you too, honeybunch..."

Believe me, there is NO WAY IN HELL that I can EVER be able to take Antichrist Superstar seriously ever again after that particular exchange. *smirk* It even topped the time I saw one of the guys from Gwar (who at the time were driving the world's most fucked-up tour bus, a remodeled school bus they'd apparently "liberated" from the Road Warrior set before decorating it in their own inimitable style; long-dead creatures on the dashboard were only the beginning...), maybe even the mighty Oderous Urungus himself, on the 40 Watt Club's pay phone, looking like (*gasp*) a normal person, albeit on the scruffy side...chatting with his wife and asking how all the kids were doing. Granted, it's not quite on a par with seeing Mickey Mouse with his head off and revealing the sweaty, cranky teenager inside the fursuit, but as far as the indie rock scene goes, it came Pretty Friggin' Close.

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Back when I was still in school, one of my best friends senior year was a girl named Angie, who was more or less the Semi-Official School Punk/New Waver--she was possibly the world's biggest Adam Ant fan who had trained her cat to come running every time she called out "ADDIE!" (yes, really; I witnesses this firsthand), had dyed her hair fuschia (and nearly caused three traffic accidents involving unsuspecting rubberneckers while walking back from the salon as a result), wore disarticulated handcuffs as bracelets (which apparently makes it hard to moves one's wrists while taking care of personal hygiene issues, or so she said...), started her own unofficially frorority (fraternity/sorority) called Omega Nu Wava, and generally stood out like the proverbial sore thumb amongst the usual upstate New Hampshire types; so it shouldn't come as any kind of big surprise that Angie was the one who introduced me to the work of one GG Allin...

Now, if you don't know who GG was, then you might not get the rest of this piece, because I'm not sure if I can do the man, the myth and the legend justice in just a few lines, but here goes: He was born in way upstate New Hampshire to a religious nutjob who actually named him Jesus Christ at birth, but was rechristened Kevin Michael by his mom. Growing up in the boonies of Buttfuck, New Hampshire with no indoor plumbing and a freezedried wackaloon for a dad will apparently do quite the number on one's psyche, because this particular small-town boy grew up to be quite possibly the single most offensive musical performer of all time, or at least one of the top 10--Marilyn Manson only dreams he could be that fucked up. Let's see...defecation, coprophilia, urination, masturbation, assault (sexual and otherwise), sex with dead animals, drawing blood, setting himself on fire, cutting himself up with cans and broken bottles, inciting riots, knocking himself out...um, am I leaving anything important out? Didn't think so... (In case you need to know anything else, remember that Google is your friend; but you might just want to avoid that approach if you've got a weak stomach...)

Anyway, Angie had one of his earlier albums and I think some of his singles--I don't remember which specific ones, but "Drink, Fight and Fuck" was definitely one of the songs--and thought he was just great, partly because listening to him was guaranteed to piss off and offends just about everyone, but mainly, I think, because he was a Bona Fide New Hampshire Rock Star, which wasn't something we had a whole lot of of back then. (Sure, Aerosmith may have gotten started around Lake Sunapee, but this was long before the days of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Scissorfight, and homegrown rockers were few and far between.)

About a year later, I'd just moved to the Boston area when WBCN, the biggest rock radio station in Boston, decided to host the WBCN Rock & Roll Expo at the Bayside Expo Center in Dorchester, complete with live broadcasts, real live DJs up close and personal, and maybe even some Actual Musicians. Hmmm...sounded pretty good to yours truly, small-town girl who'd only just been to her very first concert within the past year (I had an incredibly sheltered childhood and adolescence, OK?), so off I went, lugging my backpack and my paperback Selected Poems and Two Plays of William Butler Yeats because I'd started collecting autographs in it--I think I must have thought it made me look more intellectual than your run-of-the-mill fangirl, God help me.

The Expo itself was lots of fun, and I even got a couple of new autographs for my collection, including Jimmy Miller of Rolling Stones' production fame ("Mick and Keith say hi" was what he wrote), so it had already been a pretty successful day for me when, out of the corner of my eye, I spotten an oddly familiar figure...a seriously scuzzy-looking, drugged-out, skinny guy with a sillyassed mustache/goatee combo, wearing an absolutely filthy denim vest and jeans, and sporting a crudely-done upraised middle finger tattoo on one arm...it was none other than GG Allin, Public Animal Number One.

What the HELL he was doing at something so seemingly middlebrow as the 'BCN Expo, I have no earthly idea, but there he was, big as life, wandering around aimlessly checking out some of the exhibits, and being given an exceedingly wide berth by all those in the vicinity who were all too aware of his reputation. I, of course, having no fear and being way naive to know what the hell I might be getting myself into, was absolutely delighted at the sudden opportunity to meet a real live musician, and marched right on over to him.

Picture this, if you will: The aforementioned Mr. Allin, looking the way I described, and yours truly: short, plump, shoulder-length curly dark hair, rosy cheeks and innocent brown eyes, wearing a navy-blue floral print cotton dress with puffed sleeves and a white, lace-trimmed collar, toting a large blue backpack, and carrying a pen and a handy piece of paper. Ponder this a moment, and picture the doubtless horrified facial expressions on any attendees close enough to witness what was sure to transpire...now hold that image a moment:

"Mr. Allin?"

"Yes?"

"Could I have your autograph for my friend Angie? She's a huge fan of yours..."

Surprise, and then a half-smile..."Sure!", as he took the pen and paper, scribbled away, and handed both back to me.

"Thank you!"

"No problem..." and then he ambled off, resuming whatever rounds he was making.

(Yes, I probably should have asked for one for myself, but then I wasn't the fan, Angie was; and I didn't want to waste too much of his time.)

Angie, of course, was thrilled when she got my letter and the autograph in the mail the following week, and I didn't really think about the whole business much until a few months later, when, while browsing through a stack of albums at Nuggets in Kenmore Square, I happened to glance up and noticed a familiar face looking back at me from over the shelves...

"Hey, Angie...how're you doing?"

Of course, it was none other than GG, somehow operating under the delusion that I was Angie, and remarkably chipper for someone of his usual mien.

"Oh, fine...and you?"

"Pretty good...hey, nice to see you!" And back he went to his record browsing.

I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and didn't try to explain to him that I wasn't Angie; but for the next couple of years, every few months or so I'd run into GG at Nuggets or Newbury Comics, and every time he happend to glance up and see me, he'd always say hi and be perfectly friendly and polite to me. (From what people say, I may be one of the only people on the planet who can honestly say that...)

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A couple of years ago, I was at home visiting my parents when somehow I happened to mention GG's name to my mom. "You never told me you knew him!"

"Well, I didn't really know him--we were mainly just friendly acquaintances..."

"If I'd known, I'd have saved that article from the Littleton Courier for you! They're having all kinds of trouble up there with people visiting his grave and making a big mess, you know."

You see, GG is buried at St. Rose of Lima Cemetary in Littleton, New Hampshire, about 20 miles from my own hometown (which I knew anyway, having seen the t-shirt printed with his death certificate while I was still living in Georgia), and over the past few years a whole slew of fans have been busy turning that end of the cemetary into the white trash punk rock version of Pere Lachaise--I don't know if there's graffitti on any of the tombstones with arrows pointing to GG's grave, as there are for Jim Morrison, but suffice to say that most of the visitors have been, shall we say, behaving in a manner befitting his life and death (that's a nice tasteful way to phrase it, isn't it?), and a hell of a lot of locals who also have loved ones buried there are well and truly pissed off and demanding that SOMETHING be done--I don't know if this means there are plans to dig him up and dump him somewhere else, the way the Pere Lachaise folks are trying to do with Jim, or what, but the last I heard he was still up there, one of the biggest tourist draws in the whole damn town., believe it or not.

Supposedly the cemetary caretakers aren't terribly friendly to anyone they think is there to visit GG, and they won't tell you where he's buried, either, but I keep thinking that one of these days I really ought to go up there to pay my (polite, well-mannered) respects to his memory and maybe even leave some flowers for a tortured soul who, for all his many faults, was always kind to me, and who's hopefully found at least some of the peace he never had in his lifetime.

(Of course, dollars to doughnuts someone's probably going to set the damn flowers on fire and then piss on them to put out the flames, but it is the thought that counts, right?...)