999,935: GG Allin and the Criminal Quartet — Carmelita

Warren Zevon wasn’t prepared for this when he wrote “Carmelita,” but then, nobody was prepared for GG Allin, punk provocateur, to unleash a country record. Is it the aural equivalent of Allin shitting on his audience?

GG couldn’t come near a tune by court order by the time Carnival of Excess saw daylight, and would have been better suited to “Ballad of The Green Beret”-style spoken word country, but the spurting enthusiasm is undeniable.

The background singers are funeral mourners, while GG belts from the casket as it eases into the grave. In its simple, martial, almost incompetent arrangement, the wheezing accordion has more breath left than Allin, as he creeps us back through his day. He’s Lou Reed without the luck and the friends, and he’s unhinged where Reed would be merely detached.

Forget about sadness, this is the pain – the actual physical pain – of running out of methadone and being kicked off of welfare, living in a roach motel by the train tracks, with the radio slipping between stations. This is the sliding precipice of the valley of “What the fuck are we gonna do now,” when the world is swirling around the drain, but before it’s gone, and you realize that you sold the plug to buy something. What was it?

Carmelita - GG Allin