This is going to sound completely insane, I know. I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it for myself...
I went to the huntridge one night in the 90's to see GWAR. I didn't know what to expect. Some guys in costumes pretending to be a punk band. This should be dumb.
The first thing my buddy Gabe, my drummer Joey & I noticed is everyone going inside was 15 years old (aprox). The second was they were all wearing plain white tee-shirts. Ok, this is going to be messy...
We very wisely chose seats in the back of the general admission auditorium. Then GWAR took the stage. Now keep in mind, this is a show. None of this is real, but let me tell you a little about GWAR. The "Scumdogs of the Universe" (one of the monikers they use) are alien pirate crackhead trisexual borderline rapist criminal holigan slave owners who are going to conquer Earth whenever they get bored with laughing at our ineptitudes. The band wears oversized costumes made of some kind of foam rubber so they appear 9 or 10 feet tall (one even wears stilts for effect) The stage is littered with props, mostly foam rubber. Things like swords, guns, shields, etc.
Also GWAR has a plethora of slaves. They are actually stagehands, which are imperative to a production as epic as this one. Except these servants walk around in rags, some resembling diapers. At any given moment a GWAR member may reach over and slap one of them to the ground. After which the slave will get back up and continue on with whatever they may be doing at the time. They are treated badly in various ways as the evening continues.
The first song offered up is called "Penguin Attack". During said song, GWAR was attacked by...well, penguins. One of which was at least 12 feet tall. The offensive was quickly thwarted, finalised by the decapitation of the big bird. But instead of falling lifelessly to the ground, from the water fowl's neck sprouted a huge stream of blood resembling the stream from a fire house. For the rest of the song (3 or 4 minutes) the dying duck stumbled around the stage, soaking anybody and anything within 40 feet of the stage in blood (actually water with red dye). We were speechless...
Other events this evening included a huge crack pipe being passed around amoungest the Scumdogs, the accosting, molesting & eventual dismemberment of a Jean Beniot Ramsey lookalike, and sexual assault of one slave who was forced to manually ejaculate the lead singer's (Oderus Urungus) huge penis (it was a prop..i think, lol).
Also, it turns out, the show had a storyline. GWAR, our heroes (WHAT?!?!) were constantly fighting off the evil Techmo-Destructo (A man with a chainsaw for an arm, a metal patch on one eye, and a bad attitude). Just when it appeared that Techmo had been defeated, a beautiful half snake/half woman slithered out on stage. She was topless, with bodypaint on her chest (Yes, she really was) and from her hips down she was serpentine. Slimenstra I believe was her name. All of the music to this point was great, in my opinion, but she sang a showstopper that was outstanding- a caberet type ballad that was titled "I don't need a man", but pleaded exactly the oppisite.
Well, it worked. Our leader Oderus fell prey to the seductress. Once he was in her grasp, the show came to an end with Slimenstra opening her vagina an sucking him into it, and instantly defecating his remains as what resembled ground beef coming from the meatgrinder (I think they used actual ground meat, but not sure).
None of us had spoken for over an hour, just trying to digest what we were seeing.
At this point the lights came on, the band came back out, including Oderus (It's a miracle!) and they performed an encore finale, during which they invited all the younger fans (75% of the 4 or 5 hundred in attendance) to come onstage & fall through the vagi...I mean meatgrinder. Many dozen willingly fell, stepped or dove into the machine, which kept a steady stream of ground meat coming out the other side. (Ok, what really was happening is kids were walking up some stairs, lined with all those slaves to keep everyone safe, and they would go through a trap door which was a very cool slide that curled around and dropped them backstage. No one was injured and everyone was glowing with pride at being part of the show).
All of kids were now wearing tye-died looking shirts, because those white tee shirts were now multicolered, having been stained with blood, urine, semen, mud and whatever other liquids were spewed that day from the stage (Again, for those of you who are a little slow...all were dyed water). So in effect, they all had free GWAR concert tee shirts.
Friends, I have been to hundreds of concerts, and played hundreds more. This was the best, most surprisingly entertaining extravaganza I have ever witnessed. It was genius...nothing less. Dave Brokie plays Oderus, and is the mastermind of this and all things GWAR. If you have ever seen him interviewed it is almost always as Oderus, and he NEVER strays from his character. He answers as Oderus and never admits to any acting or props. He constantly laughs and scoffs at humans and how horribly destructive we are to our planet, our society and ourselves. Some people just don't get it (Joan Rivers) and continually try to get him to explain, and that's where the real hilarity lies...There is not part of GWAR that any normally functioning human should ever believe. Every part is exagerated, overblown, characterized and to have to explain that is so absurd that it is actually scary. Brokie is a genius.
But when I say is, I mean was...he passed away March 23rd 2014 at the age of fifty, one year before GWAR would have celebrated their 30th year. I don't think I have ever been so saddened by the passing of a someone I never met since Cliff. If you never saw GWAR, you never will. RIP & thanks dickhead.
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