GWAR, Me, and the Onrushing Grip of Death: Part 18

February 12, 2010; 2:00 PM • by Dave Brockie

Cops finger Brockie after local pothole mishap

Local dickweed quoted from MCV bed…“Others are to blame!”

It is a typical day. I am up early, lying in bed, in the hospital, idly fiddling with myself as I plow through a sleeve of Pop-Tarts. I am still recovering from my accident, which involved driving into a barn-wide pothole on the Powhite. They didn’t find me for minutes, so I had to eat my car’s upholstery in order to survive. The only reason they did find me is because I drove through the EZ-Pass lane illegally, and the ticket-robot had caught me, as well as video of my car disappearing into a crater. They actually made me pay the ticket before they would admit me to the hospital.

But enough of that bullshit, here comes Mongo! Or better yet, Part 18 of…

GWAR, Me, and the Onrushing Grip of Death

It was a crucial time. Somehow I had to defeat my nemesis, Asshole, a transplanted NOVA art fag who was getting hotter chicks than me.

Death Piggy was starting to “wob-out.” Buddha was getting more into his studies (and, alarmingly, a dorm-room goth project that involved moaning and shaking chains), and the ever-berserk Bam Bam was playing in like five bands at once while trying to have constant sex with a steady stream of hot chicks, who he would get all fucked up on this horrible crank he made out of Clorox and ephedrine inhalers. It was a real handful! Fucker Fatass stealing all of our money hadn’t helped either.

But we still had a chance. We had a huge show coming up opening for Suicidal Tendencies at the old 9:30 Club. I needed a way to have a great show where everybody loved me, yet somehow at the same time humiliate or at least neutralize Asshole. I conceived a bold plan. I was had started throwing weird fake “opening bands” into Death Piggy’s set, bands like “The Nazi Jews.”* But I had a new idea, one I had stolen from Techno. I would drape the costumes he was making all over Death Piggy, and create a barbarian band from Antarctica called “GWAAARRRGGHHLLLGH.” We would play a couple horrible “songs” and then bail out, returning as Death Piggy. People would love me!

But I had an extra wrinkle on my crinkle…I would get Asshole involved in the whole thing, absorb him into MY world, and in working with him on MY project, somehow control or nullify him.

Plus, getting him on-board would also give me an extra body to drape armor on –Techno and Sexy had made a shit-load of costumes!

I had been hanging around the Slave Pit for a while now. Here I learned the ways of the “cloth and glue” and the ways of the “sit-around-for-hours-and-later-take-credit-for-other-peoples-work.” The place was filled with a huge set depicting the engine room of a Scumdog Warship. It was about halfway done when I first saw it, and it seemed to stay that way forever, even though people were working on it all the time.

This was the Slave Pit, and on its front door was a simple edict.

“DON’T TALK ABOUT IT DO IT.”

Techno lived by these rules, just as I lived by their opposite creedo…

“DON’T DO IT JUST TALK ABOUT IT.”

From the very beginning it was tough to get people into those costumes. I tried first with Death Piggy and ended up with me wearing ALL off the costume pieces. Bam Bam thought the whole idea of GWAAARRRGGHHLLLGH was stupid and insisted on taping feathers all over himself instead. And for some inexplicable reason Buddha had rejected the armor in favor of becoming “Mr. Magico,” a guy who did really bad magic while wearing a wizard’s hat with little cut-out penises all over it.

So the stage was set. I suggested an alliance and Asshole agreed. He would play bass for Death Piggy, and thus GWAAARRRGGHHLLLGH, and therefore be forever in my thrall. But I should have sensed he was onto my plan. As soon as he had accepted my invite to join the band(s), he proceeded to tell me it was a stupid idea, that I couldn’t play guitar, and Death Piggy was better without him in it. And he was right!

I was trapped. If I had agreed with him and kicked him out (which I should have done), I would have been perceived as a complete dick and idiot. I hadn’t realized at that stage of my life that people already felt that way! But if I kept him in, I ran the risk of falling victim of whatever snare he had laid for me…

I realized, with horror… I was becoming part of his game.

This whole damn thing was falling apart!

The day came. When we went by Asshole’s place to pick him and his gear up, I noticed that he had none. He seemed strangely unconcerned and I assumed everything was under control. So off we went, and a couple hours later we found ourselves in the rat-infested alley behind the 9:30 Club, the same one that John Wilkes Booth had fled down after putting a mini-ball into Abe Lincoln’s brain. We were planning on opening the show with a stupid skit that made no sense that, then rush offstage, become GWAAARRRGGHHLLLGH, who would play about 5 minutes, slicing open a hobby horse (do you know what that is? do kids still do that or have those?), which was full or Karo-syrup and red dye. Then finally Death Piggy was going play for about 20 minutes and it would be over. I didn’t know how right I was!

Right around this time I realized Asshole hadn’t brought any equipment with him. Not even a bass. When I asked him about it his face went a blank. Finally we have no alternative but to ask Suicidal if we can borrow their shit. And they said no! But Asshole didn’t tell me that part, so when our set starts, he went ahead and used the Suicidal’s dude’s shit anyway, even though he had been told not to!

Things were going ok until I noticed the clubs monitor dude crouching at the side stage, glowering at me. This guy was huge and feared and was focusing double stinkeyes on me. I had no idea why, until I looked around and saw Asshole playing dude’s bass! His usually blank face is now adorned by a huge grin.

Asshole!

I looked back at the furious monitor dude, who was joined by a member of the Suicidal crew, who immediately began making slashing motions across his throat, staring at ME!!!!!

But they didn’t stop us, and we powered on. “Maybe we are going to get away with it,” I thought.

I saw the hobby horse come out, held aloft by Manitis, a kitchen knife in his hand. He slashed the guts of the thing, which exploded in a shower of Karo syrup. I used a lot, and a great glut of goop poured directly into the cone of the floor wedge which was part of the brand new monitor system the huge dude had just installed the day before… destroying it.

We didn’t get our asses kicked, the punishment was far worse. We were shunned. Nobody would talk to us. You have to remember we were up in DC, and they never missed a chance to slag Richmond. Death Piggy having success there was a coup of sorts…until then.

The next day DC Space cancelled our New Year’s Eve gig, where we had been set to headline for the first time.

As usual, I blamed others…

NEXT TIME : Don’t know! I’m sick of telling you what I’m going to write about and then not writing about it! So fuck it! But one thing I will tell you…it will definitely be Episode 19 of GWAR, Me, and the Onrushing Grip of Death.

IN TWO WEEKS!

*Jewish Nazi’s who lived to kill the Russians, one of my more obscure musical projects. We would wear football helmets and Nazi-style armbands sporting the Star of David. We had three songs—“Kill the Nazi’s,” “Kill the Russians,” and “Kill,” which we would play as Sluggo and myself banged our helmets into each other repeatedly.

(Confused? Get caught up with Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17)

Dave Brockie is the voice behind Oderus Urungus, bellicose lead singer of GWAR, Richmond’s most lethal export next to tobacco. Check out his website at www.oderus.com and keep up with GWAR at www.gwar.net