2.20.02

Hey! How’s it goin? Not too bad here. Can’t complain anyway.

Remember last time when I told you I was going to go see a band called GWAR, whose legendary stage shows were supposed to be the most offensive thing you’ve ever seen? Well, lemme tell ya about it. Oh, and as you might imagine, this entry ain’t gonna be pretty, so if you’re easily offended, skip it and I’ll just see you next week, ok?

Still here? All right then. You’ve been warned.

My friends and I got to the venue - Pops on the East side of St. Louis, literally in the heart of STL’s red light district - and were surprised to see that GWAR’s rabid STL fanbase was relatively normal. Ya see, we’d heard horror stories of people dressing up in outfits that would make a dominatrix blush, so we weren’t expecting a bunch of eighteen-year old kids in jeans, black t-shirts and as few as six piercings in their face. However, this didn’t make me feel so bad about wearing khakis (sorry, I don’t own a pair of jeans anymore), a shirt from STL’s own band, The Urge, and my Wrigley Field Cubs hat. I was still out of place, but at least I didn’t bring my pipe which would have warranted around four hundred questions of “Whatcha got in there, dude?”

The first band up was called, and no I’m not kidding, Goatwhore. These guys absolutely killed me. They were trying so hard to be goth and scary and rebellious and blasphemous, they ended up being nothing but a parody of the entire death metal genre. With song titles like “Nocturnal Holocaust” and “Invert the Virgin”, I couldn’t help but laugh at their weak attempts at being notorious. Worst of all, every song they played sounded the same. Sucky band all around.

Next up was God Forbid. Still going for that blasphemous, gothic idea, but not quite as absurd. I don’t know if they ever mentioned any of their song titles, but I think they would have been in sort of this same vein. However, I do have two positive things to say about God Forbid: 1) they were the most multi-racial death metal band I’ve ever seen. Two full-blooded black guys, including the lead singer, which is almost unheard of in these bands as far I know; one guy who looked like he might have been Latino; one guy who was mixed black and white; and finally a straight up white guy. Quite unusual, I think. 2) They actually had some talent and were trying to do something different in a genre full of the same ol’ thing. They had guitar solos and *gasp* - they changed tempos and octaves occasionally! I know! It was scandalous! So, of the bands of the evening, God Forbid was definitely my favorite musically, though that isn’t saying a whole lot considering I don’t like the genre much at all.

Finally, the moment we’d all been waiting for – GWAR hit the stage. Now, the whole premise of GWAR, apparently, is that they’re not human, that they’re visiting Earth from another planet…whose name I seem to have forgotten or, more likely, blocked out for the safety of my sanity. So to further this fictional idea, they come out in the most outlandish costumes and make-up jobs you’ve ever seen. Every one of them is wearing huge football shoulder pads with so much latex and foam attached they look like action figures (Ok, that is going to be my million dollar idea right there. I’m calling Hasbro tomorrow).

One guy looks like a deranged Viking from the shoulders down, but instead of having the traditional horned helmet, has a great, big, horned bear trap covering his head. One of the guitar players looks like a Roman soldier, but with a much bigger helmet and much bigger spikes. Yet another guitar player wears dinosaur skulls on his shoulders and has an entire “bone motif” going on throughout the rest of his costume. Finally, there’s the lead singer, who has a face that looks like Pizza the Hut from Spaceballs; it’s all torn up and bloodied and very demonic. Did I mention that he had on a huge, black, nasty-looking…ummm…let’s see…a PG-13 site I’m running here…uh…phallic…coming out of a black cod piece? Oh, and his bare ass was in plain view. Yeah, quite a special little trooper he was. All the while, there are guys in S&M leather gear and nothing else bouncing around on stage that are called “GWAR Slaves”. It seems their purpose is to play stage hands, bringing out props that I’ll get to here in a second. So imagine that scene if you will. Not an easy thing to do, huh? Well, it gets worse.

Apparently these guys are big into bloodshed and, let’s face it, who isn’t? So they spray a lot of red-dyed water all over the crowd during their performance, much like Elvis before he made it big. Where does this blood come from? Usually big, latex foam characters that seem to often waddle on stage - obviously some real person inside a foam facade. Well, the tour they’re on is called “Blood Drive”, a nice homage to the workers at Ground Zero I’m assuming, and they have some special celebrity guests that will be making donations this evening.

The first such character was Mike Tyson, with his huge arms that hung all the way down to the floor, his expansive chest that was at least four feet across and little dimply little legs. Well, Tyson starts talking smack to the lead singer and they end up getting into a boxing match, which was actually pretty funny. However, to end the match, the lead singer takes out a huge, plastic sword and cuts off Tyson’s forearms, spewing blood from his stumps all over the anxious crowd who, almost literally, licks it up. Next, Pizza the Hut takes his sword and cuts down the front of Tyson’s chest, exposing rubber, but pretty convincing, intestines that are, of course, pulled out spewing more blood all over the riotous crowd.

Once they clean up Mike, they bring out a hangman’s gallows and string up an effigy of Osama Bin Laden. In no time, Osama’s head has been lopped off and the GWAR slaves have torn out his insides, again, spitting red water into the onlookers. Ok, nothing wrong with a little patriotism, right? Uh…hold that thought.

I think it was now that they brought out a large gun that looked a lot like the second jaw inside the head of an alien in the Alien movies. If you’re not familiar, think a great big phallic symbol with teeth at the end. Anyway, this gun didn’t spray “blood”; instead it sprayed green water, which I’m assuming was to symbolize some other bodily fluid that I’d rather not think about right now.

Our next celebrity donor of the night is none other than George W. himself. They decide to strap him on a wagon wheel and proceed to rip his rubber intestines out to the hungry cheers of the crowd below. I might disagree with this kind of disrespect to our nation’s leader, especially in a time when we need to be unified and all, but I do have to say one thing: we live in a great country where someone can get up on stage and do something like that to a model of the President and get away with it. Freedom of Speech rules! By the way, they must have had some really high-powered pumps behind George because his “blood” hit us all the way towards the back of the room; hit me square in the face, actually.

After George, a latex woman was brought on stage, supposedly the lead singer’s girlfriend. I’m sure you can imagine what they called her, but just in case you’re a little slow today, they called her…Bloody, Bloody Mary. Yeah, sort of a forehead slap moment there isn’t it? Anyway, Pizza the Hut was happy to say to the crowd, “I know you think GWAR is just all about blood and violence, but we also find time in our busy schedules for rape, too.” Ahhh…the words of a prophet (at Riker’s Island maybe). So, here’s poor, latex Mary, strapped to some kind of hand truck, naked from the waist up, with chains attached to her nipples. Pizza rips the chains down, tearing off her breasts and, you guessed it, squirting “blood” all over the crowd. Wow! Well, there we go! I am offended! Ahhh…such a warm, cuddly feeling to be offended nowadays. It really was quite disturbing and my least favorite part of the show.

Finally, as if that weren’t enough, the Pope was brought on stage, cut in half with a plastic battle-axe and fed to a gigantic, stage-filling, latex Tyrannosaurus Rex. No, you read that correctly - a gigantic, latex T Rex. It was quite possibly the most surreal moment of my life. The T Rex was damn cool, though, I must say. Definitely won’t be seeing that again anytime soon.

To end the evening, GWAR played “Happy Death Day”. See, it’s a clever play on the word “birthday”. Riiiiiight. So, during Death Day, the GWAR slaves brought out huge, spinning, rubber buzz saws that spewed more red water blood over the crowd, as well as bringing back out the Alien jaw that shot out green…liquid.

Wow! Yes, that was the GWAR experience – warts and all. If you were offended just by reading it, imagine how it was seeing it live.

Taken too seriously, you could make a case for the band members as being severely self-repressed homosexuals. What with all the phallic symbols (spikes, swords, bones, horns, the Alien jaw gun, and that thing hanging off the cod piece - just to name a few), violence towards women and a fascination with dismemberment, it was like taking a tour through Jeffrey Dahmer’s mind for $20 a ticket. However, to be honest, it was all very hokey and seemed very tongue in cheek. As my friends and I discussed it on the way home, the whole thing felt as though GWAR was making fun of bands like Goatwhore that were trying to be nasty and blasphemous more than anything else; sort of saying “You think you’re bad, huh? Watch this!”

Yeah, there were a few things that I could have gone my entire life without seeing, but at the same time, it was an experience I won’t soon forget. Believe it or not, but I hear they’ve toned down their show a lot, after being arrested more than once for committing “lude acts” on stage. A shiver runs down my spine at the thought.

On the positive side, now when someone asks me, “What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever seen?” I have one hell of a good answer for ‘em.

Space Monkey X