Category: Music

Question: why do I gotta see you guys at a GWAR show that’s soooooo expensive at $25? [average]

That’s a question that’s come up from a few downloading 1337 punks online as our sorry asses have been asked to be on this big tour. We normally play much smaller, cheap shows. The price is fairly commensurate with the quality of the show going experience we are able to put on. So why is a GWAR show so expensive? Ney, that shouldn’t be the question. Why is a GWAR show so cheap?

Here’s me and Matt Maguire, production head, slave, artist, performer, all-around amazing dude. This is around noon in Manhattan, the beginning of their day after driving all night.

Go-time o’clock: the crew is up and ready to go. They’ve got a rented truck plus a gigantic trailer attached to a tour bus to unload. Jim and Gibby… yes, hard at work.

The crew consists not only of Gwar slaves, but also hires locals from the club. Some of them seem used to it, others take quick snapshots with loose props.

Local crew member “Spider” is looking to get squished.

All these people will be working from noon until 2 am, approximately. Today in New York, the elevator inside Irving Plaza is broken. Sa-weet. Those are 300 pound steel set pieces holding guitar cabs. To quote Darth Vader, “Noooooooooooooo!”

Some crew will work much longer, cleaning. The entire club is covered in plastic and disposable carpet. I guess they don’t wanna be redecorated in fake-blood pink.

As the gear comes up, Matt and Bob Gorman (another long running and amazing Gwar slave / performer / artist) hang every band’s banner and set about assembling the stage themselves. Presumably, they are the only ones who can, as the directions are written in Antarctican.

Once it’s all set up, it’s a masterpiece akin to a Broadway show, except portable and way more durable. It’s also safe, quite unlike the Spider Man set.

This set has to be constructed over and over again, hold people, gear, and props, and be subjected to the rigors of blasts of liquid. And that’s just the fans cumming in excitement.

Speaking of liquid, slave / performer Scott goes about mixing that with a special pigment imported from France with water in giant canisters.

These will be pressurized with air by a large compressor. Physics finally used in real life. In this case to simulate 40′ ejaculation streams. The prof would be proud.

The crew then helps all the opening bands load in our gear. All on the dime of not us. Eventually the band, who also helps prep the stage, comes out around 3-5 for a decidedly ungory sound check with their sound engineers and tour manager. I assume these humans on stage to be the best local GWAR cover band around. After sound check, they are killed and eaten for their power.

By the time the attendees get to see the show, they hopefully enjoy a couple of openers like Sean’s Band and Every Time I Die. Then they blissfully witness an hour and a half or so of GWAR blasting them with blood and playing some ripping metal. The tigers think they’ve done all the hard work in the pit, making sure their white shirts are besmirched with pink fluid.

Never mind the incredibly hot costumes onstage and the amazing stench afterwards. There’s clean up and load out to do. Hopefully showers, too, lest the bus driver gets singed nose hairs.

It’s all in a day’s work for these scumdogs of the Universe. This doesn’t even factor in all the time designing and making the stuff back at the Slave Pit. So unquestioningly hand over your sheckles and feed yourselves to the world maggot, human. GWAR is in town.

Doktor Ross Sewage
www.doktorsewage.com
filling in at the Creepsylvania Hospital’s traveling burn ward

I needed just a small tour wrap up to get my head in order and remember the last week of my life in order.

After we finished up at OEF, we headed to Prague to the OEF after show and to where Jason and Sean’s flights would be leaving from. Before that, though, the Kostnice in Kootna Hora was luckily on the way. The Bone Church of Lore. Was I really going there a third time? My limited talent has really taken me to some cool places, and I finally got that band photo I’d wanted five years ago.

The OEF after show was cool, with some of the cool rock stars showing up for a laugh along with some good bands like Putrid Pile, Magrudergrind and Entrails. Entrails, with members of Birdflesh doing some sweet old school Swedish death metal. Actually, I’ve seen a lot of new bands doing old school Swedish death metal on the trip. Retro-retro thrash, look out.

Our friend Curby tool care of us again, wrapping up our business and making sure we didn’t have to lug home left over shirts. Thanks again, Curby! You rule. Curby had initially asked us to play the after show, but after a band vote we declined. I think we were afraid of running late and being tired and fucking up Jason and Sean’s flights. That was dumb, we should have played and had a good time. Sorry about that, Praha.

My friends Vlad and Stanislav of the Turbo Jugend Praha went out of their way to take care and lodge some wayward G.O.R.E. Corps soldiers. Always a pleasure to see them and share some Pilseners.

The next day we dropped off Jason and Sean and then Raul went with Brad, and me and Povey split off with Conny for some separate adventures. I’m still waiting to see Raul and regale in his tales. He can write his own fucking blog. For me, Dresden and my many cool friends there were calling.

There was a visit to a lake near the castle at Schloss Moritzburg, where I got to see more old German penises than I ever needed. There was the Dresden bombing and war remembrance memorial in Heidefriedhof cemetary, where some scheisskopf tagged “lie” in German on the column remembering the victims of Auschwitz. Never have I hated tagging more. There was good German food, a good grind core show at Chemie Fabrik along with their signature “ratte hirn” or “rat brain” drink.

The coolest was the Krautwald Fabrik art action that my friend and our driver was involved in.

This is an old, shut down factory in the Pieschen neighborhood of Dresden. I was here as they were starting to do the clean up, and now it’s a temporary gallery doing monthly shows. Tons of machinery was in here, and now it’s filled with art. To keep things cool with legal and insurance logistics, it’s been opened as a private club for art. No Feds allowed. How do you become a member? 1€ does it, you get a card, buy some cheap beer and look at amazing art.

Look out for the crab!

That’s how it’s done a lot of the time in Ost-Deutschland… they get an idea and improvise with whatever material is around. If you can make it here before they close in November, I highly recommend it.

Shortly thereafter, Povey left and I headed to Berlin. My father was here when they started the Berlin Wall in 1961, so of course I had to be a dumb tourist and pay 2€ to take a picture with a German posing as an American soldier.

Before that, I was having a lot of fun with my friend Fatima visiting the excellent Strychnin Gallery, which is like walking into an issue of Juxtapozed. This is another must in Berlin, they have great exhibitions, this one was robot related art. Meet Styrobot.

I also had a coffee and some grilled cheese in Cassiopeia, a huge squat in Berlin with a show spot, cafes, and rock climbing. I did not rock climb. I am not that kind of extreme. Then, I heard the thunder of techno and reggae rumble, and before you knew it, I was in a huge street protest against gentrification and Media Spree. It was a nice walking tour of the Kreuzberg neighborhood, courtesy of the police and Germans slathered in patchouli.

Back to Dresden using www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de, a super helpful website in German. It’s like the rideshare section of craigslist, but on steroids. I was a little afraid of my rideshare ending up as the doctor from Human Centipede, but it worked out and was way cheaper than a bus or train.

From Dresden to Prague, and another night with my friends in Turbo Jugend Praha, drinking the night away, trying to make us miss our flight so we could drink some more. They’ve excitedly told me how they are putting on the Prague show for my friends in YOB and Dark Castle September 25th. I’ll be curious to see who outdrinks whom when some real bourbon drinking Americans show up.

And that’s it. Back to real life again, making rock posters and paying the rent. Sometimes paying the rent. Mostly, I am not missing rent. Oh boy.

EDIT: and now I am missing planes. Rather, they are missing me. In what is becoming a regular occurence on my trips, my flight home has been cancelled. I am returning home a day later than I expected. Ah well, at least Raul and I got single rooms. I plan to lounge like a nudist and pretend I am rich while drinking cheap Branik beer. Rock star.

Doktor Ross Sewage
www.doktorsewage.com
The G.O.R.E. Corps Minister of Filth
reporting from field of battle: Europa