GG Allin My Prison Walls
Book Review

GG Allin has always been an easy target. For most, he was just the nutball who ate his own shit. The world at large knew him only as a complete scumbag, a dirty secret, from the underbelly of society, here to steal your teenage daughter and burn your house down. Some of that is true, actually most it is true, but its only part of the GG Allin appeal. Whether complete rock n’ roll rebel, or master pitchman, the real appeal of Allin was what he represented. Prior to his untimely death, GG Allin was the closet thing we had to the living embodiment of uncontrolled rock excess.

In the civilized world, no matter how rebellious our rock stars seem, GG Allin was the next evolutionary step. He didn’t care, at least not about the common idea of musical debauchery. In music, art, or spoken word, Allin seemed to care mostly about taking the train off the rails. Everything needed to be a speeding Mack truck, with no brakes, rocketing towards a busload of orphans. However, as much as Allin exposed himself (see what I did there) we never got to step inside his brain and walk around for a while.

Cue My Prison Blues, a gorgeous new hardcover from Aggronautix. Within these pages, is something that brings us closer to the GG Allin thought process, than anything since the documentary Hated. Prison does strange things to a man, and Aggronautix has complied what it does to Allin. Through journal entries, drawings, letters to his brother Merle and a correspondence with John Wayne Gacy, My Prison Blues strips a lot of the legend away from Allin, and leaves us with just the man and his thoughts.

Don’t get me wrong, those thoughts are fucked up. Allin doesn’t suddenly profess a love for puppy dogs and ice cream. That isn’t the point. Here, Allin isn’t in front of an audience, he’s not near a camera, or talking to some random fan. There’s no performance here, just Allin’s thoughts as he sits behind bars. Best of my knowledge, these pages were never meant for any publication until this book, so Allin had no reason to be anything but honest.

I suppose reading about getting a new prison uniforms, trading food for smokes, or worrying about a non-present lawyer doesn’t sound as interesting as watching GG Allin throw crap, or punch a girl during a spoken word show, but if you’re looking for that, there’s plenty of other resources out there. My Prison Blues is really for the hardcore GG Allin fans, and those who are just getting into the performance artists work.

Some of the most telling stuff here are GG Allin’s drawings. For the most part, these aren’t the scribbles of some random rock star biding his time in jail. Allin was a solid artist, he had a real understanding of form and shading. Granted some of that talent is used for a demon getting a blowjob, stabbings, violence, and more standard GG Allin fare, but the rest are just great pencils. A portrait of a blues artist, drawings of a female playing up-right bass, and a group shot of GG Allin performing in a blues setting, those are all top-notch drawings that tell more about who GG Allin was beneath the madness.

The back and forth with John Wayne Gacy is fascinating to read, but also disturbing. I’m not big into lionizing child killers, but the friendship is part of Allin’s mental process. I found the letter where Gacy explains his pricing list, oddly normal for a man who lived to slaughter children. Outside of that, unless you have some giant thrill with serial killers, the Gacy stuff is less interesting than the rest of the book.

My Prison Blues is a must have for GG Allin fans. It should also be mandatory reading for anyone looking to rediscover the faint pulse of rock n’ roll. We live in a pre-packaged, drive-thru world, Allin’s writings and art remind us that there is a spirit of the insane still in music, we just need to find it.