Track of the Week - The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town
Posted: Mon May 14, 2012 12:29 am
In my humble opinion, you can’t begin to judge or understand this song without first understanding its back story, so consider the following to be a prerequisite to any discussion about this song. The setup for G.G. Allin starts at about 6:25 into Tales Facing Up in this recording of a solo Patterson show from November of 2009:
http://archive.org/details/pattersonh20 ... 184.flac16
The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town is the only DBT song in a robust canon of story-songs that tells a true tale about something experienced by the two principal band members. If you need to know what an incredibly sick, twisted bastard G.G. Allin was consult http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.G._Allin. It seems to me that for Patterson and Cooley, who were struggling to hang on to the sinking ship that was the fleeting success of Adam’s Housecat (and if you know anything about Memphis, you know that Mud Island is nearly always losing ground to the Mississippi, which makes a nice metaphor for the collapse of their fledgling music careers), knowing that Memphians would pay $12 for the privilege of having G.G. Allin’s feces slung upon them must have been particularly galling. This news would likely have rendered their ritual Sunday morning meat-and-three experience depressing, and intensified their hangovers, were it not for the old man and his wife at the next table.
I know the couple at the next table. They could have even been my parents, still getting dressed up for church, going out once a week for lunch, and quietly despairing in the decline of American morals and values. The song perfectly relates how the absurdity of the events that occurred at a G.G. Allin show, however head-scratching they must have seemed to a couple of 20-something guys in the music business, was magnified a thousand-fold to the unsuspecting elderly couple who picked up the free weekly newspaper while waiting for their lunch.
I like to think that without this song, DBT might never have been formed. I imagine Patterson penning the line about how G.G. started throwing his own shit into the crowd, and then having an ah-ha moment when he came up with the undeniably clever, “gone before the shit came down” line. It reminds me of something Cooley might have written, and maybe Patterson realized that too, and thought it just might set the hook and get them speaking again, ultimately re-energizing their musical partnership.
Someone wrote in another thread recently that it was really important for them to believe that the members of this band actually liked each other, were friends, and subsequently had a good time playing shows and recording records together. It’s important to me, too, and this song and its back story continue to convince me of that.
Behold:
We were bored, there was nothing going on.
Might as well stay at home and drink until we pass out again.
Then drink some more when the morning comes.
Memphis was sinking into the Mississippi.
We were doing our best just to ride it down.
Till the night G.G. Allin came to town.
"Honey, I dont believe this,"
the old man at Ferguson's Cafe kept saying to his wife.
As he read aloud The Memphis Star and their account of what went down that night
"It says he took a shit on the stage and started throwing it into the crowd.
But he was gone before the cops could come and shut him down."
Gone before the shit came down.
The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town.
The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town.
Antenna Club, Memphis, 1991.
Punk Rockers Paid $12.00 to be Shit On!
The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town.
The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town.
"It says he took the microphone and shoved it up his ass!"
The old man and his wife were aghast
The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town.
The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town.
Me and Cooley we just laughed so hard and both fell down!
The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town.
The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town.
http://archive.org/details/pattersonh20 ... 184.flac16
The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town is the only DBT song in a robust canon of story-songs that tells a true tale about something experienced by the two principal band members. If you need to know what an incredibly sick, twisted bastard G.G. Allin was consult http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.G._Allin. It seems to me that for Patterson and Cooley, who were struggling to hang on to the sinking ship that was the fleeting success of Adam’s Housecat (and if you know anything about Memphis, you know that Mud Island is nearly always losing ground to the Mississippi, which makes a nice metaphor for the collapse of their fledgling music careers), knowing that Memphians would pay $12 for the privilege of having G.G. Allin’s feces slung upon them must have been particularly galling. This news would likely have rendered their ritual Sunday morning meat-and-three experience depressing, and intensified their hangovers, were it not for the old man and his wife at the next table.
I know the couple at the next table. They could have even been my parents, still getting dressed up for church, going out once a week for lunch, and quietly despairing in the decline of American morals and values. The song perfectly relates how the absurdity of the events that occurred at a G.G. Allin show, however head-scratching they must have seemed to a couple of 20-something guys in the music business, was magnified a thousand-fold to the unsuspecting elderly couple who picked up the free weekly newspaper while waiting for their lunch.
I like to think that without this song, DBT might never have been formed. I imagine Patterson penning the line about how G.G. started throwing his own shit into the crowd, and then having an ah-ha moment when he came up with the undeniably clever, “gone before the shit came down” line. It reminds me of something Cooley might have written, and maybe Patterson realized that too, and thought it just might set the hook and get them speaking again, ultimately re-energizing their musical partnership.
Someone wrote in another thread recently that it was really important for them to believe that the members of this band actually liked each other, were friends, and subsequently had a good time playing shows and recording records together. It’s important to me, too, and this song and its back story continue to convince me of that.
Behold:
We were bored, there was nothing going on.
Might as well stay at home and drink until we pass out again.
Then drink some more when the morning comes.
Memphis was sinking into the Mississippi.
We were doing our best just to ride it down.
Till the night G.G. Allin came to town.
"Honey, I dont believe this,"
the old man at Ferguson's Cafe kept saying to his wife.
As he read aloud The Memphis Star and their account of what went down that night
"It says he took a shit on the stage and started throwing it into the crowd.
But he was gone before the cops could come and shut him down."
Gone before the shit came down.
The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town.
The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town.
Antenna Club, Memphis, 1991.
Punk Rockers Paid $12.00 to be Shit On!
The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town.
The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town.
"It says he took the microphone and shoved it up his ass!"
The old man and his wife were aghast
The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town.
The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town.
Me and Cooley we just laughed so hard and both fell down!
The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town.
The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town.
