layer that caused us to bake like Eskimo Pies and brought us back to life
Almost simultaneously, rock mogul, organized crime figure and ex-US
presidential aide Martini, on the run for tax evasion, crashed his private
helicopter in Antarctica and discovered the groggy Gwarriors. The gears.
clicked, he got them addicted to drugs, zonikecam out on MTV and GWAR
became THE FUTURE OF ROCK N ROLL
"It is funny," Oderus, bemuses. What you humans consider rock concerts we
prefer to call cannibalistic death orgies. We have found that under the tutelage
of our manager Storzy P. Martini, rock and roll is the best way to draw
together mindless moronic masses of earthlings to the one spot where they
can be most easily destroyed, their corpses dragged beneath the stage, tiny
robotic arms taking even the fillings from their teeth.
full-blown entity in its own right. With little idea
of the cult status to follow, they forged a more
permanent line-up, which included Michael
Bishop (Beefcake the Mighty) on bass and ex-
White Cross/Unseen Force guitarist Dewey
Fatus Maximus) Rowell. Costumes,
characters and a full-blown mythos followed.
GWAR's bloody mess visual spectacle/punk
metal quickly caught on.
"In the beginning." recounts Hunter, "we were
losing money right and left. A lot of our early
blood formulas would screw up our equipment
"And if you bring us your mother or father's head, it's two bucks off at the and the club's mifcrophones and monitors....
door
The truth of the matter is that GWAR was really spawned about four years
ago in the quiet collige town of Richmond, Virginia. Much like San Francisco's
"Vat scene of the early 80s, the Richmond underground centered itself
around the Richmond Dairy, an abandoned dairy built the shape of two
gigantic, free-standing milk bottles in the rapidly declining industrial section of
town. It was there that artists like filmmaker Huren Jackson, alias Techno-
Destructo, allied themselves with the last yestiges of the Richmond hardcore
scene which included the bands, Unseen Force, White, Gross and Deat
Piggie, all of whom contributed members to GWAR. Adopting the naming
credo of Slave Pit Enterprises, initially to make the ultimate cult
Scumdogs of the Universe, GWAR was born multi-medoutlet for
Richmond's young, energetic and severely frustrated artists.
"We grabbed the best people we could says Dave Brockie, enthusiastic and
amiable out of his Odens armor and makeup. "We came out of the last gasp
of the hardcore scene; all the good hardcore bands were getting really lame or
breaking up plus the shows were starting to suck. We were so bored of the
stuff we were seeing we were forced to create an alternative to keep
ourselves amused."
"GWAR was something a lot of different people were attracted to says
Jackson explaining the Slaver Pit Concept Alot of us found that we had
many of the same goals concerning our art on it only made sense to work
together and throw our ideas into a big melting pot.
"And the glob that came out of it was GWAR," snickers Dave
Initially GWAR formed from a union of Death Piggie, who Brockie sang with,
and Hunter's twisted cinematic vision.
Jackson: "In the early days, when we first started out, me, and some of the
other people were just working on props and costumes for this cu film of the
century. Death Piggie was the most theatrical band in
town and they had the best attitude they weren't a
bunch of cool guys in leather jackets trying to be
cooler than thou and telling the audience, "Yeah, I can
take more drugs than you. Your girlfriend
wants to do me, blah, blah, blah." They were
just into having fun."
Brockie: "We were more into pouring.
mayonnaise down our pants..
With a revolving mem-
set.
bership, GWAR's earliest gigs
were little more than a few
songs tacked onto a
Death Piggie
GWAR quickly grew
more popular, eclips-
ing both Jackson's
cinematic and
Death Pig-
gie's musical
ideas, evolv-
ing into a
at we'd have to pay for. The earliest shows
were mess at best, paper maché rock
costumes that would never dry and stick to
you. It was a nightmare to be in GWAR."
Still is," affirms Brockie, "but in the beginning
there was a lot of groping, a lot of flailing
involved. Props that exploded, caused death
and injury, all of that. We're basically self-
taught by now. I remember when cloth dipped
in glue and stuck on styrofoam was a big
innovation for us. We learned a lot from
looking in horror movie books, movie-making
magazines. We eventually learned how to do
latex and rubber. Now our costumes are
incredibly strong."
At the core of matters, GWAR's fierce, "do it
yourself" ethic can be taken as a direct
reaction to the stodgy, art-school traditions
that the University of Virginia tried to cram
down many a Gwarrior-to-be's throat.
Hunter: "For me, GWAR is rebelling against
that school. My art work was never accepted
by the teachers there and GWAR was my way
of saying, 'Fuck you, this stuff will work,
people are interested. They were always
saying, 'Well, what audience are you aiming
at? What they couldn't understand is that
people do want to see GWAR there are
people who want to see this stuff."
Brockie: Art school was just trying to fill our
heads up with this garbage this eseteric,
intellectual bullshit All we wanted to do was
throw down and make stuff with our hands. To
this very day there are so many snobby,
intellectual types who won't get into what
we're doing-probably because they're
terrified of it."
GWAR have had their critics-the pompous
rank who have termed their wanton blood-
feasts "juvenile," "sexist" or "just plain stupid."
Without over-intellectualizing or detracting
from their simple cathartic pleasures, the
denizens of the Slave Pit lend GWAR a lot
more credence than a plain and simple gore.
show. "If you bother to look closely enough, to
dig deep enough, you'll find a lot more levels
to GWAR," insists Jackson.
Brockie: "Even if you want to look at it in a
real stupid way, a character like Techno-
Destructo can represent the (Continued on page 84)
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