I'm sitting here listening to a compilation I made of the studio versions of the GWAR songs used in the Ragnarok show, in sequence. These heavy speed metal thrash gothic horror movie themes have a way of growing on you. The catchy little numbers "MEAT SANDWICH," "RAGNAROK" and "SICK OF YOU" have been rattling around in my brain for more than a week now. Especially "SICK OF YOU."
Touring with GWAR was most... educational. I managed to videotape at least one severe mosh pit head injury in progress, and I gained a tolerance for dozens of new drugs and a couple of new sex acts. I got used to the smell of the band members' rotting flesh (I was right, they AREN'T rotting rubber suits), and I got a taste for Mace laced with Lysol and crack, The Sexecutioner's favorite combination. There were several moments each night when what unfolded before my eyes looked exactly like a Chick Christian Comic version of Hell. Devilacqua and I were plunged so deep into the "touring rock band" scene that we started speaking in the jargon, whereby "Bob" T-shirts and etc. are called "swag," and tattoos spontaneously grow like a fungus on our skin overnight.
I also learned how TRULY ELITE the SubGenius "audience" is. For years I've been complaining about how a SubGenius devival looks like a room full of geek boys with glasses. That was never totally true and in fact the average Devival crowd nowadays is more than half grownups and at least a third female. The GWARheads or Bohabs ARE however like our worst nightmare of an all-nerd-boy crowd. Worse, they're DUMB REDNECK NERDS. The single most telling aspect of our stint with GWAR, besides that the Bohabs can't listen to anything BUT thrash metal music, was the "SURE FIRE SELLING LINE" that Devilacqua developed on the last night we were with GWAR, in Louisville Kentucky. During the course of the shows, Steve had run the SubGenius concessions and had used or INVENTED every possible "short slick description of the Church of the SubGenius," and the ONLY ONE that WORKED AT ALL went like this:
"So what's this SubGenius thing, man?"
"It started in Texas and got big in California, and now it's what all the kids in Seattle are doing."
"Okay, I'll take one of those T-shirts."
I wouldn't even have TRIED SubGenius preaching at hardly any other current touring rock band's concerts, but the Sexecutioner I both hoped that maybe the GWAR audience would be susceptible to the Church message -- or at least the keen Church videotapes and Drs. 4 "Bob" music track that went with the preaching. After all, GWAR is basically a conceptual theatrical satirical troup that happens to use hardcore concerts as a medium. It's not just a band of 5 monsters; there're all these butt-naked slaves running around cavorting and putting on two or three sicko performance art pieces while the band plays, and the whole show is structured like a rock opera, with a plot and everything. Not to mention all the nifty monsters, huge swords, aliens, sperm extractors, etc. I mean, this is a HELL of a show. In the first 5 minutes, OJ Simpson gets decapitated and sprays blood all over the audience from his stump, then Jerry Garcia gets the skin ripped off his face and his guts strewn all over the stage. Oderus gets abducted by Greys who then impregnate Symenstra after her fire dance while putting out the fire with Oderus's sperm. Pregnant, she's crucified on a cross of nails and Sexecutioner attempts to rape the unborn fetus after extracting the hideous mutant baby by cesarian, but it bites his face off. Then the Catholic Robot Priests of Cardinal Syn arrive to battle GWAR and kidnap the baby. A comet which the band had promised would destroy the world turns out to be a 16 foot tall alien robot, Cardinal Syn, who, posing as God, started all world religions. At the end of the show, Sexy and the slaves toss live squirming female audience members into the maw of a gigantic worm, the World Maggot, as sacrifices. This IS the hardest working band in show business.
Neither 200 MOTELS, MOTHERS OF INVENTION LIVE AT THE FILMORE, nor SPINAL TAP contain even the slightest exaggerrations or distortions of the backstage rock and roll world.
The band, the slaves, the caterers, the technicians, and Pat the swag man were all real pros and most courteous to us. In fact, Devilacqua caught a disease, the Slymenstra Hymen virus, because she was so generous. There were two other bands on the tour, BRUTAL JUICE from Denton, Texas and NEUROSIS from San Francisco, and those musicians were all just plain folks and SubGenius-friendly, too. The grunts and techies at the various venues were generally worthy individuals.
It was the AUDIENCE that was the problem. The incredible DUMBNESS, the IMPENETRABLE CRETINISM of the audience. No wonder GWAR refers to them as maggots. That is exactly what a sea of them resembles when viewed from a balcony. GWAR closes every show with their signature tune, SICK OF YOU, which is dedicated to their fans and insults them thoroughly.
I collected some nifty tape moments. Devilacqua shot a home movie of our Chicago adventures and I videotaped four of the GWAR shows, of which the Chicago Halloween one is complete and decently shot. I'll be putting clips from it on a.b.s. and the website... then I'll make the bohabs on alt.music.gwar come to US for their bootlegs.
The Sexecutioner also gave me some pre-released misc. new GWAR videos, plus an amazing appearance by Oderus Urungous and Beefcake on the Joan Rivers show. She describes GWAR as "The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on LSD," which is not a bad smart-alecky description.
As for the SubGenius part of the shows...
The very first night of the tour, in Cleveland, was a TOTAL WASHOUT for me... coming on 3 hours into the evening, after 2 bands, with the audience drunk and wanting blood... well, it didn't work. I maintained my dignity quite well, I think, in the face of deadly missiles and intense hostility. I even managed to get in a "YOU'RE ALL GONNA BE WORKING FOR YOUR DADS IN FIVE YEARS!" before calling it quits. And I buttfucked the Sexecutioner on stage before allowing him to throttle Dobbs (a fake, of course -- Devilacqua in a suit and the Joe Riley Dobbsmask). But for the next five shows I was the FIRST THING UP, and by dumbing down my rant, shortening it to 15 minutes, and prostituting myself, I managed to make it work. Basically, I walked out cussing like a sailor, got the audience to chant GWAR for a minute right off the bat, to get it out of their systems, talked about all the drugs and blowjobs the band was doing backstage, promised violence and death, promised that everyone in the audience would die, promised that I wouldn't preach, burned money lit with a flaming sword in order to cleanse the hall of Normalcy, and then started sliding in Dobbs stuff... about how the guy with the pipe taught Sleazy P. Martini everything he knows, how he won't die for your sins but JUSTIFY them, how whe wants you to SIN MORE, then I'd say I was finished and start to walk off, then I'd come back and start in on the Conspiracy and how they were TRICKING you into thinking that just because you had a GWAR shirt on you were "COOL" and "FREE," but how you mustn't lose your HATE, then started to leave again, then came back and displayed the Bleeding Head of Arnold Palmer, booted it around, snuck in more preaching, told the kids the world ended TONIGHT so they might as well max out their parents' credit cards at the concessions booth on GWAR and SubGenius goods, insulted them all for being a bunch of dumb bohabs unable to comprehend anything but mindless thrash music who would all be selling out and working for the Con in no time, and finally quit the stage. Total was usually about 13 minutes (and when it sunk in to Oderus that I was getting $500 for each of those short rants, we agreed to all cut our losses while still ahead)... By keeping it short and acting like a dumbshit, I actually had the bohab audience in my hand at all but the Cleveland show and the last show, Louisville -- where my comments about Christians didn't go over real well. At each show I'd ask, "How many Christians are there in the audience tonight? (no response in most places)) I didn't think so. If you are a Christian, you'll probably HATE this show." Then I would use Sterno's old line, "Now... how many REAL DRUG ADDICTS are there in the audience tonight?" To which of course the whole place would explode in ecstacy and approval... sick... I also managed to work in the old line, "You CHRISTIANS like to drink the SYMBOLIC blood of you QUITTER GOD on the altar... we demand the REAL THING, and GUESS WHOSE BLOOD IT IS THIS TIME!!" plus the old "You worship a dead guy on a stick... we worship a chopped-off head that gets hit with a stick. CAN'T WE FIND SOME COMMON GROUND?" etc. The Louisville kids, who didn't even know what GWAR was, would hear stuff like this... AND STILL THINK I WAAS JUST A CRAZY CHRISTIAN PREACHER!! I mean, these Baptist kids think of CATHOLICISM as a weird cult, and have never even HEARD of any OTHER weird cults. Literally anything said by me, GWAR, or the other bands was taken by these RUBES at FACE VALUE. It made me wonder how Janor and Sterno have managed to survive at ALL in Little Rock for all these years.
When Devilacqua and I parted ways with GWAR just before the Columbus show, and drove back to Cleveland with all the swag, it was a TREMENDOUS RELIEF. And yet... and yet... that whole tour, as strenuous as it was, was a VACATION for me. No phone, no email.
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What else happened while I was gone? I hear Bob Dean showed his mug on alt.slack again to brag about some cable access show he was gonna be on in L.A. When Devilacqua heard about it, he made some calls. The people planning to sponsor those shows were SubGenii that Dean had misinformed. Dean's little cable access appearance has been cancelled. Devilacqua also called Last Gasp and let them know the background behind the BOB'S MEDIA ECOLOGY CD. Last Gasp agreed to pull it from their catalog. Last Gasp is also interested in reprinting 3 FISTED TALES OF "BOB."
Look starting this week for stories in the NY Times and on CBS about PAUL MAVRIDES' battle with the California State Tax Board. They picked the wrong cartoonist to fuck with. If Palmer wins, everything will continue as normal; he'll just be out the last 2 years of his time. If he loses, half the cartoonists in California will be put out of business, and you'll pay more for any illustrated book you purchase henceforth.
Another thing. It suddenly sunk in one night that, because there is NO FCC involved in Internet radio, we can finally start producing the X-RATED HOUR OF SLACK shows JUST for I-Wave broadcast. YES!!! From now on I can produce TWO VERSIONS of each show... or TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SHOWS, PER WEEK -- one all censored up for normal radio, one UNCUT and INDECENT for
http://www.upx.net/subgenradio/subgen.htm
This means we can now run:
PRANK CALL TAPES
RUDE COMEDIANS like Dolemite (Rudy Ray Moore, Bill Hicks etc.)
UNCUT DEVIVAL RANTS by pro cussers Legume, myself, etc.
SWINGING LOVE CORPSES, ZOOGZ RIFT, JOE NEWMAN and DRS. 4 "BOB" songs NEVER BEFORE HEARD on the radio
Face Fucking Bat Sperm Antidote Pudding instructions
etc.
I will get on this a.s.a.p.; I give the FCC maybe one more year before they wise up and outlaw the Internet, so we're probably cussing on borrowed time.
Watch SubSITE (and/or Kai & Kaz' Ultraplex site) in coming days and weeks for massive new injections of video clips, the BAD X-RATED Hour of Slack shows, GREAT new games from Robert Carr, new art, the complete Legume Resurrection and GWAR tour brags complete with nifty video frame grabs as illustration (plus Pope Lou's latest photos)... and I haven't heard from Doc Dynasor but I'll bet the "Portrait Gallery" can start now... Donna Kossy will hopefully have to move her NENSLO ART GALLERY to SubSITE since it won't fit in the Kooks Museum... Sternodox is preparing Sterno's Corner for SubSITE... we will finally get the Hymnal and especially the SCIENCE section done... I shall whup up the proposals for the CD-ROM, the CD-audios, the movie, the alt.slack BOOK, the 3-FISTED reprint, ETC., so we can get those shows on the road and some income happening, AND the STARK FIST in print, AIEEE KREEGAH BUNDOLO WE SHALL PREVAIL!!!
Meanwhile, CHECK THE SCATALOG at SubSITE, it now has new product WITH ILLUSTRATIONS of the Dobbshead cloisonne pins, the mugs, the MAGNETS, the shirts, GO FOR IT ALL!!!
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Oh yeah. The Legume Wake. My opinion. Disappointing attendance -- I'll bet half of the people there already knew Legume wasn't dead. Maybe 100 people? Only two real Legume Lookalike Contest Applicants. Lou DuChez didn't know but was able to GUESS that the guy in the home made ghost costume was Legume, even though that selfsame spectre SAT RIGHT NEXT TO KID GINSU MOANING without Ginsu ever catching on. But we're not laughing at you, Kid Ginsu. Well, we did, but... you KNOW that Legume DIED FOR YOU. Not JUST for your benefit, but you were the ONE PERSON who must be kept in the dark AT ALL COSTS. And from what I've heard, it PAID OFF and you have ascended yet MORE RUNGS and pretty soon you'll be so enlightened you'll realize that you should PAY LEGUME AND ME THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS for all the hard work we've done on YOUR BEHALF, you LUCKY IDIOT! Kid Ginsu's rant, incidentally, was very good, very honest and straight from the heart. Devilacqua proved himself an EXCELLENT auctioneer and MC, helped immeasurably by Rev. Genenia Grinder. Pastor Craig... well... I'm sure he had the best of intentions...
I have read ALL of the fallout on alt.slack about this hoax, the pros and cons. Legume made me lie for him but I'm glad I did. It caused some great "art" to be produced. However, I must admit that I was MOST impressed by those who loudly doubted not only Legume's demise, but that he had ever existed in the first place! After all, folks -- hardly ANY of you have so much as heard a TAPE of the guy. When he DID start posting on alt.slack, you didn't believe it was him. ALL MOST OF YOU KNEW about this guy was from stuff me and Ginsu and Craig and a few others SAID. On the INTERNET. On the CHURCH OF THE SUBGENIUS part of the Internet. Devilacqua, "Dr.4BOB"@aol.com (Legume) and I left MASSIVE CLUES CLUTTERING THE NEWSGROUP. I even was so bold as to say, "I swear to God that he's dead," which is the ONE SURE INDICATOR that I'm LYING MY ASS OFF.
As much of a liar and a bastard as Legume is, he HAS INDEED MADE A POINT, which is that the ONLY REAL REALITY is NOT accessible via the Internet, where you are TOO SAFE behind a DISTANT SCREEN, but is measurable only via the ONE REAL WORLD ANALOG BLOOD AND GUTS REALITY, the one where people really DO live or die, or not. And that's the only one you should even THINK about "believing." As Legume said right after his resurrection, while holding me 3 feet off the ground by my collar, "THE NEXT TIME SOMEBODY TELLS YOU I'M DEAD, YOU BETTER POKE MY CORPSE SIX TIMES TO MAKE SURE!!"
Original file name: GWAR/Legume report
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