Category: Touring

Half way. That’s about how my body feels at this point. Half way to the shitter.

It’s a lovely day off between Milwaukee and Grand Rapids. GWAR is off jet setting to play the Jimmy Fallon show, and I don’t envy them and their schedule in the slightest. For me, it’s time to reflect on the last few days. So, driving, rain, sweat on top of old sweat, more rain, and drive. Yup, that’s the gist of it.

Being on this tour has been rewarding and awesome, but fun? The term is relative. The lack of sleep, the tight scheduling, the onset of the cold in the air and in our bodies… all for < 30 minutes of glory in a molding costume. Yeah, it's worth it. We drove all night into New York to secure a parking place for us, which became securing a parking place for ETID as well, who showed up later. We’ve also been made to use their cabinets with some frequency now as the stages get shallower. That’s fine, but when I asked, “well, what are the Ohms of their cabinets?” I was answered, “it doesn’t matter, just plug in.” Ummm, bullshit. Unless someone wants to buy me a replacement NOS 40-year-old power transformer, those Ohms are to be checked. With a couple Marshalls at 16, two Oranges at 16, and a pair of Aguilar for bass at 4 each, ETID’s cab set up works fine for us. But I had to run my head at 2 Ohms to run both bass cabs, because, “two on the road, you half the load.” (tm & c Ross Sewage 2011) Or, it likely would’ve been safe running at the previous setting of 4 Ohms with just some lost volume, because, “up with tubes, down with solid state.” (tm & c Ross Sewage 2011) The show was sold out. Awesome, but I had to duck off to see my friend Laurie in another bar because we have less guest spots than members. That’s rough. Then we drove all night to Cleveland. No sleep till outta Brooklyn. We had a few hours with our pal Süree, slept for few after the show, then onto Toronto and Canada. Rain, rain, rain as we loaded in. We played, and then as we do every night, loaded directly out. About 100 people were still in line in the rain when we plowed our gear through them as ETID began their set. That line included my friends and guests Amanda and Kevin. Sorry, guys, it just wasn’t in the cards to see us. Instead, they got reach arounds from security just in time to see GWAR. We were given some beer and told to take it to our backstage: the van. As the openers, we get the last of the takings. Largely, our backstage has been our van. To be sure, the GWAR crew with Germ, Bob, Matt, and Gibby have been as accommodating as possible. They find space amongst their prepared props night after night for us to change into stage garb and make space for our schtick. The generosity and sharing on the part of the headliners of this tour has been amazing and noted. And then it’s out the door. Kevin and Amanda put us up for a few hours sleep and made us some amazing cookies that we ate while we waited in customs to get back to eating freedom in ‘Merica. It took about three hours, twice what we anticipated. In America, it’s guilty till proven innocent. We waited out in the cold while they X-rayed our van, presumably looking for all those Canadians we were sneaking in to work in the poutine fields.

That made us pretty late for our show in Grand Rapids. We made it just in time for our soundcheck. On this level of touring, I think we we are still seen as the fuck ups. Sure, I’ve been playing and touring since before half the tigers in the crowd were even born, but I guess I’m still more punk than punctual.

The show still went off and we had a good set. We’ve worked on our show a bit as we go, hugging our pander bear tightly. These crowds want more blood, so we are giving them more than when we started the tour. I don’t think they expect it from the first band: the crew at Irving Plaza certainly didn’t. Scolded for making a mess at a GWAR show? It beggars belief.

Our new favorite brand of blood is Ben Nye’s Mass Casualty. We got this from propmeister Scott’s pal, Jim Stramel. We stayed with him in Norfolk, VA after he did a great job as our robot killing monkey-man on stage. He had used the Mass Casualty blood in his movie, “Degenerates Ink.” (a rolling slaughterhouse of blood and ink). He also used it in a music video he did. After he shot the video, the blood left on the ground was so convincing the cops were called in. Fuck to the hella yeah. It’s a great powder mix, dilutes well, and IS NOT corn syrup. No more corn syrup blood! EVER! It’s the worst, corn syrup lobbyists be damned.

From this very blog, I had received an email from one Damian Master, who offered to put us up in Grand Rapids for the eve and fix us breakfast. Looks like all my tour bitching online has worked out to some much deserved pity! In all seriousness, Damian also plays music, and he understands life in the road can be hard. I think I might’ve heard that sentiment expressed in a song or 5,000. These oases of kindness are alway appreciated, and bands should always give these tigers swag. Also, his dog Mike ruled.

Now, after the leisurely break, we are off to Milwaukee to hang out with GWAR truck driver Jim and hopefully see The Thing. Not his thing, the movie. Then, back to it… the final half. As opposed to the second-to-last half.

“How the wheels keep rolling
And another sign post gone
Baby, can’t you hear me calling?
Like a sad whale song…

Sad whale song, baby.”

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

Location:S Lumber St,Chicago,United States

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

This is the point.

Here we are, and about fucking time! I’ve wanted to play the Obscene Extreme Festival for a damn long time, and we finally made it. Check out the lyrics of the love song “To Die For” on Mondo Medicale, because our lyrics are so cogent and relevant to a bunch of drunk headbangers. There’s a line about a gore hound (my lovely ex) being obsessed with the extreme and obscene. I’ve been making shout outs since 2002. It only took 9 years for it to all work out.

Obscene Extreme is a mostly grind core festival that’s been running since 1999 in Trutnov, Czech Republic. It’s steadily grown in size, but maintains the same ethos for a raging good time. Stage diving is actually encouraged here. There’s a good meter of the stage from the bands’ monitors to the front, dedicated for people to come up, dance a bit, and dive back into the crowd. There is security, but no barriers between the band and the tigers in the crowd.

Just a touch of history: the field that this fest has been held in all but one time (I think) is known as the Trutnov Battlefield. It was in 1866, during the Seven Weeks War between Austria and the Kingdom of Prussia, that the Austrians won a victory against overwhelming Prussian forces here that were in disarray after crossing the mountainous terrain. Prussia won the war eventually, though, which would lead to the confederation of the northern Germanic kingdoms into one. Austrians aren’t that good at winning wars, but they excel at body building and fighting Predators.

The actual town seems quite nice, though it is now beset by crusties and metal heads.

We arrived a bit late on the second day of the fest. The biggest bummer about that was for our friend Brad, who’d come using his many frequent flyer miles after working for Green Day the past few years. He came to hang and vacation after, and as a bonus, do our sound. Our plans had changed, though, so poor Brad arrived in Prague with no ride and no idea what to do. He bussed to Trutnov, and eventually via text we got him into the fest. He had no place to stay. There are campgrounds, but he had nothing. Curby, the main man behind Obscene Extreme, did his best dealing with everything else and then to help our poor friend. It was only after Brad stayed up all night drinking vodka with strange ozzies and poles that Curby could finally find him an open room at a hostel. Hopefully our ravaged friend would wake up in time for our set that night! Impaled, ruining lives since 1997.

When we finally arrived, we got sorted by our friend Curby as well. Passes, beer, vegan food, nice hotel… not to mention that this guy was dealing with the gazillion bands on this fest, but he had helped to set up our tour as well. It was the only way we could afford to be here at all. Hats off to you, buddy. We are happy to be in your operating theater.

The grounds are pretty enormous with lots of camping. That filled up, evidenced by crusties camping at the gas station across the way. We were able to nab a table on advice from Brutal Truth and just DIY our merch sales outside the main merch market. And, bully for me, the excellent Czech beer (my fave in Europe) flows like water and the food is all vegan!

I got to see a bit of the Varukers, some great punk rock, some of Skitsystem, and Rotten Sound. I watched Brujeria absolutely slaying the crowd from behind the stage as I practiced like a kid staying up all night before the S.A.T.s. They finally finished, and as I was walking up, they started up their version of “Macarena” over the PA, the entire crowd screaming “Marijuana.” About half the crowd joined them on stage and were dancing as I was setting up. Oi vey. It was funny, but now I knew we were more like a clean up crew for these guys. Oh well, we were still gonna rage it.

As I was setting up, the bassist from Brujeria says to me, “Good luck!” It sounded more ominous at the time than helpful. “Thanks, we’ll try,” I say. Hmm. This is Jeff Walker of Carcass playing bass for Brujeria. “Are you in Impaled?” he asks. “Yeah,” I reply, “and I guess I should thank you for all the riffs.”

Our set started kind of tame, frankly. At this point, I was hating that meter of space between us and the tigers, because it was empty. So we all just kept walking up to the crowd anyway between singing. I’d say about four songs in, we finally had them going. They started having a good time, really head banging and having fun again. I didn’t think it would be so hard for Impaled to win over a grind crowd, but I think we did okay.

Afterwards, I got to see some of Gronibard absolutely capturing the spirit of the fest by quite literally rocking out with their cocks out. The requisite dudes in banana suits at the fest danced wildly. I was particular to Interment who followed, however, who nailed the old school Swedish sound and jammed hard. Then it was my watch on the merch table, and we eventually packed it up to get some sleep for our next day at OEF.

A leisurely morning was had, followed by a stressful talk concerning finances. Summer touring in Europe during festival season is hard. There’s less shows to be had and the plane tickets are outrageous. We packed up our merchandise and headed to the fest in hopes of filling the hole a bit.

When we arrived, Mesrine was already on stage. We’d already missed 11 bands. This fest starts at 10 and ends at 3am… that’s a lot of grind. Mesrine rocked some good crust punk.

I walked through the non-band merchandise area to see what I could find. There was an antifa shirt with a pic of Schwarzenegger that they did not have in my friend Aesops’ size. Too bad. Then I saw the ugliest Dystopia bootleg I’ve ever seen. What the fuck. Was this an Illustrator trace of a 10k gif? Yipes. Get some pride, bootleggers.

Next was Visions of War, ultra leftist crust grind so far as I can tell. They called out a few other grind bands about them not being true enough. Factions against fascism. A break, and then I caught Instinct of Survival. I could imagine all my crusty friends in Oakland being super into this band back when drinking was more important than cocaine. The funniest part was when a dude mooned the crowd on stage and then back planted his ass crack on his friend’s head. Ah, the homoeroticism never ceases at OEF.

Inhumate is the kind of noisy, balls out, loose grind core that gets this crowd going. Everyone was on stage dancing. Funny the singer should complain that the crowd was not bleeding, but then gently warned them when they got on stage to look out for a bit that was broken so they should not hurt themselves. Hey, even anarchy can get TOO crazy.

For a bit more controlled anarchy, in the U.K. (see what I did there?) they have the Rotted (formerly Gorerotted). I guess they dropped the gore in their name because they were battered when Al and Tipper split. Now they deliver blistering grind core with a precise edge.

The rest of the night continued with the headliners like Lock Up and Brutal Truth, followed by some bad assery from Dropdead. Le Scrawl was a huge hit, getting folks dancing so late into the night. Then, I hit a god damned metaphorical wall after I was bought a shot of some local liquor that tasted like Christmas. I wish I could remember the name… or how I got back to the hotel.

Thanks, Obscene Extreme. And thanks to the Old World for once again hosting Impaled. Esprit de Corpse c’est fin.

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