The gospel of Itchy Wiggle Christ - Gregory-John McCormick, Ralf Dellhofen (best memoirs of all time txt) 📗

it was in august 2001, when i was working for a big pharmacy company in my hometown. i was working on a machine on three-shift system. it was not such a bad job and the work was easy, but also boring sometimes. especially the nightshift. so i fell asleep on nightshift very often. to avoid that, a good workmate lent me his sonic seducer magazine. like me, he came into the punk and wave-gothic scene in the beginning of the 80th. i was reading a small note, right on the first page of the magazine, that Gregory-John Mc Cormick, alias Itchy of the detroit punkrock band Shock Therapy, was incarcerated in a michigan prison since march 2000, for lit a fire on a pile of trash at an abandoned house. he had trouble with the owner of the house, for all i know. Gregory was set on parole and charged to rot in that prison for 5 to 20 years, with a chance for release on parole not before 5 years have passed. there were annual parole board hearings. i have known the band, i loved the band. i never was a fan from any band on this planet, but Shock Therapy and their music came close to what i would describe as one of my favorite bands. i have gotten my first ep-album of the band in 1986 thru an import from great britain, costless. my first own bought and paid album was "my unshakeable belief" in 1987.

i once met gregory and his gang at the "neumarkt" in cologne. it was like a small marketplace. a meeting spot for a bunch of punks, gothics, homeless, drugdealers and junkies. that was in 1994 or 1995. i cannot remember so well. he was walking with his gang towards the "neumarkt", wearing black leather pants, a black pullover, a black irish cap and very old chucks. i was on the way to my job in an office at the cologne job center and standing at the traffic light on an intersection with my black Vespa, when gregory and his gang passing by. i realized it was him and i said, "hey itchy!" and he turned his head and answered obviously astonished, "hey?". we shaked hands while i was waiting for the red traffic light to change. i told him my name and he forced me to take a sip from a cold bottle of sekt. i hate sekt! he was carrying the bottle like a pirate treasure. he then invited me to come with him and his gang to the "neumarkt" to drink some bottles of whatever alcohol comes floating by. i told him, that i would have no time to stay and that i am on the way to the work at the office of the local job center. he doubtfully looked over me, a black styled wave-punk on a black Vespa, who tried to tell him, that this guy, me, would have a job in an office? i promised him to come to the "neumarkt" later, once my work has been done, but after i finished, he and his gang wasn´t there anymore. too bad, because that remained to be the first and last time we have met in person.

now i was sitting at the nightshift in august 2001, six years later, and was reading this small note at the music magazine. i read, that nearly no one would send gregory a letter to prison and he is feeling very lonely. underneath the note there was an address, to which anyone reading this note could send him letters. my american-english started to rust a little bit. i was only "Hauptschüler" and only in that b-class of the school. b, standing for "bonkers"! but my english was good enough to write him a first letter. i received a letter back from gregory in september 2001. i remember i was proud to get the letter. i was constantly drunk, addicted to absinth and not in charge anymore, with the whole rotten humanity. at least not with my own german tribe. my opinions and feelings were, to better fight and die for the irish republican army, than for any of the corrupt german politics or any stubborn and selfish citizen of germany. and these are still my opinions and feelings for germany. i was listening to irish music and punkrock too. gregory liked that statement of mine, somehow! i never imagined, not in my wildest dreams, what would follow after that. our exchange of letters became something constant, his "to do list" for me, evolved more and more into a "tons to do" list. we exchanged letters to each other every second or third week. the airmail sometimes needed a full week before our letters arrived at the receiver. i still have more than 600 pages of letters, that gregory sent to me. and another handwritten book-script called "more apokalyptical shit of itchy wiggle christ". and i hold the copyrights for more than 80 of his paintings.

only one time, gregory and i have had real trouble with each other for a longer period of time. a crazy girl named "steffi m." sent loveletters to gregory in prison. he fell in love with that girl and was willing to give her more than 2000 euros. money, that we needed so badly to pay the first attorney. money, that gregory was given from frank d. a. as an "advance" for a cd-compilation. the girl disappeared with the money! only two weeks before that shit happened, gregory begged me to send flowers via fleurop to this steffi. and he also begged me to add a small and nice card to the flowers, with the words "these flowers are from gregory and ralf". i was jobless at that time and nearly totally broke. so i spent my last money and sent flowers to her. right after she received the flowers, she wrote a letter to gregory, and informed him, that i would try to "stalk" her!? i never stalked a girl and i surely never will!

gregory could have been insanely jealous. and the irish men are well known to be very protective. he was american-irish. gregory menaced to start legal actions against me, attorney-shit and police-bla bla. i wasn´t very impressed. i promised, to beat the shit out of him, once he is back in germany. and that was reason enough for him, and me, to stop our correspondence for more than a half year. after more than six months i received a very big letter from gregory, filled with words of excuses. he already noticed, that his "steffi" was only a bad egg.

we started writing to each other again. i sent money on christmas to him, so he was able to buy warm winter boots, chocolate chips, peanut butter and more. i sold all of the paintings, he created in prison, to collect money for the attorney. at that time i contacted more than 10.000 people all over the world. hundreds of bands from different music scenes, music magazines, TV channels, former friends and band members, relatives and buddies, a lot of message boards and internet communities. i never creeped in somebodies ass before, but i learned to do that for gregory. i have done it for a length of 7 1/2 years. very often i sat in my little apartment underneath the roof,with my lame internet connection, up to ten hours a day, six days a week, to help him somehow. and so much happened within these years. some of what i tried was a pure waste of time, other, at least, helped me to stick it out. often i was close to resign and quit all my efforts. gregory´s letters were full of suicide menaces, once i would quit my efforts to help him. on the other hand, his lists of "tons to do" became more and more extensive. i simply couldn´t quit helping him.

at that time i got unexpected help of ingrid knetsch, a close friend of shane macgowan and the band "the pogues". ingrid is managing the official shane macgowan website. she helped shane with an online-petition against an ex-management, shane was in trouble with. back in the beginning of the year 2000, i didn´t even know, what a petition is good for. i associate it with something political. i was able to open up a bottle of beer with my teeth and to puke on the roof of my apartment. i signed ingrid´s petition to help shane and ingrid helped me to start my first own petition to help gregory. the "free itchy petition" was born and caused me a lot of extra-business for many month. beside the good ones appearing in my petition to help gregory, there were a lot of idiots doubting the success of my petition or anything else i was doing to help gregory go free from prison. some of them even appeared in my e-mail account. they tried to criticize me for what i am doing. after i begged them to send me contructive improvement suggestions, they disappeared and never seen again. some people offered me to help, even so i never asked them for help. they all promised me to help and stay on my side for the next month or until gregory is freed. after they had calmed down their own inner conscience they disappeared too. i was more than proud to see, who signed the "free itchy petition". markus kavka of mtv, nearly all of the members of "the pogues", a hundred of bands from the punk and wave-gothic scene and many many more.

then i had the idea to start a benefit sampler cd for gregory. first i had the idea to do this with bands of the punk-scene. my idea was, to beg some bands to do coversongs of shock therapy music. a lot of bands sent me their demo-tapes and nice little gifts like their own cd´s, t shirts and little bottles of schnaps. it was manfred schiek, of dossier records, one of gregory´s old labels in berlin, who gave me the okay to produce the cd. it was the first i ever worked on. unfortunately manfred didn´t liked the idea to do the benefit-cd with bands of the punk-scene. so i selected some bands out of 30 bands of the wave-gothic and ebm scene and we produced the benefit-cd. i could fill a whole book with actions, me and my friends have done to help gregory go free from the prison hell-hole. some things fortunately happened, other unfortunately not. it was an inner fight with myself and it is a quarrel with myself, but gregory´s dad has done nothing to help his son out of prison. he gave him a call once a week and sent him a little TV set to prison, that´s all. i gave his dad so many calls over the 7 1/2 years. i don´t know why glenn acted like that and maybe i do him wrong, but there was nothing coming from gregory´s dad. while his dad was doing nothing, more and more people in germany, michigan and other parts of the world was willing to help me.

i wish to thank my best friend, fabian schlupp from arnsberg, who sent letters to gregory, encouraged me to stay strong, and who was always reliable. inka reitzel, a very good old friend of gregory and me, who met him several times. sven matzner of the band »nautilus 2« from goslar. raimund j. höltich (suicide society) who is a great artist from hamburg, germany. carsten klatte, founder of the german bands "lacasa del cid" and "widukind", former guitarplayer in "project pitchfork" gave me a call and has done a real good cover of an old tom waits song together with n.u. unruh of "einstürzende neubauten",