People would never believe it, but Richmond, VA – the capital of the Confederacy during the Civil War, that only recently removed its many memorial statues to the “heroes” of that era, has long been the home to artists, bohemians, and musicians on the margins. Creativity flows through grungy old warehouses, even as the descendants of Confederate royalty are sipping their Juleps just across town.
In other words, it was the perfect place for the birth of GWAR, a band I’ve known about for more than thirty years (I was a TV weatherman/film critic in Richmond 89-91) yet couldn’t even tell you the name of one single song of theirs.
And you know what? They wouldn’t mind a bit. In fact, having just watched the documentary, This is GWAR, I still can’t name a song, but I sure enjoyed the surprisingly thoughtful, surprisingly moving story of these art geeks.
A BAND WHO SHOT FAKE BLOOD AND OTHER BODILY FLUIDS AT THEIR AUDIENCES ARE ARTICULATE GUYS WHO GET CHOKED UP ON CAMERA?
Well, yes. The founding members were art students at Virginia Commonwealth University; others were hanging out making art projects, drawing their own comics, cooking up weird sh*t in their brains.
Dave Brockie was lead singer with Punk band Death Piggy and Hunter Jackson had founded an art collective that hoped to make a low budget movie- the crazy costumes he designed for the actors in the ill-fated film project became the stage costumes for GWAR, which Jackson joined as a longtime member.
And the melding of these guys led to the birth of a band whose horror/cartoonish stage show featured severed heads, foreign objects being inserted into a giant rubber rectum and gallons and gallons of various liquids spewed throughout.
That’s why these guys didn’t mind if you knew every song—you were there for a legendary experience. There’s a whole (fictional) backstory about how GWAR’s onstage characters ( Oderus Urungus, Balsac the Jaws of Death and Jizmak Da Gusha, among others) came into existence, but the movie is right to devote more time to the interpersonal relationships and the business ups and downs of the cult band.
On that note, it must be said that there are an awful lot of bits that sound exactly like every episode of Behind the Music you may have seen, but that is not a criticism from me (I love those shows), it’s just a semi-familiar template at times.
What got to me was seeing guys who really were in it for art’s sake looking back from middle age, trying to hold back the tears, having never gotten rich and having lost good friends, through death, disagreements or just running out of steam. It may just look like ridiculous costumes to you, and they didn’t do a single thing without a robust sense of humor, but being in on the joke didn’t mean that they didn’t give their unique brand of performance art its own place in pop culture history.
The band lives on, albeit without any original members. Forget their early Punk morphed into Metal songs, and by the way, they really could/can play their instruments – just come ready to rage, and bring a t-shirt that you don’t mind leaving in the blood-soaked pit.
This is GWAR is currently streaming on Shudder
