A Connecticut Dandy in King Gwar's Court
or, To Steal A Title From David Foster Wallace - A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
by Julian Vanderbilt
"Show me the way to conformity, try to be different but it's always the same, end up playing someone else's game." - Descendents
Take a look at that picture.
If I had to sum up my GwarBQ experience in one image it's this. Me, dead center, in a suit, drinking a terrible beer someone has handed me while two people who look like they could literally be roadies for Motley Crue -- if only they both had shirts! -- ask if they can hang out with me and take a picture with me and tell me I have taken things "next level."
If there's one thing Gwar is about -- and their Barbeque by extension -- it's about people dressing very oddly with comparison to a given normal standard of dress. Part of the appeal of Gwar has always inherently been about the costumes. It is part pure, unadulterated spectacle, but it is also, most definitely, about a rejection of a social norm. This is not some groundshaking idea. The very rise of the metal scene has always, on some level, been a rejection of social norms; I'm not the first person to figure that out. I totally went into this thing with an article about that in mind and planned to write it. This is not that article.
Because along the way, an off-hand comment I made as part of this idea -- "I should wear a suit for the entire day" -- became an actual thing I decided to do and the entire thing changed 180 degrees. Yes, part of it changed because as those of you who followed the live feed know, it was in the mid-90s and I was outside for the better part of 9 hours drinking alcohol until I literally got so hot I stopped sweating and fell into a pile on the ground, at least 3 times, but by someone else's count 5, and my photographer literally refused to continue covering the event out of protest because things had gotten dangerously out of hand. I could write an entire article about that, but this is not that article either.
No, the most dramatic way wearing a suit fundamentally changed my GwarBQ experience was it took the costume appeal of Gwar and flipped it entirely on its head. In the one place where cosplaying a Gwar-fantasy was the social norm, I completely rejected it and said, unintentionally, "no, it is I who am now the counter-culture today, not you." In essence, by wearing a suit and going "full-on Julian" to everyone I met all day, I was "not giving a (bleep)." And much to my surprise, 99% of the people I met that day absolutely got that immediately in a way I did not at first and they absolutely loved it. These are people who value the "no (bleeps) given" ethos far more than the general public. The elitist, loudmouth Julian shtick goes over like a lead balloon at Pitchfork Festival; at GwarBQ, I was the least (bleep)-giving of all the no-(bleeps)-given. I did not have to ask to pose with anyone, people wanted to pose with me. In a theater of the absurd that involved fake blood and dudes announcing they were from "Creepsylvania, USA" while wearing bags on their head, I stumbled into being the most ridiculous thing there.
The people loved it. They ate it up with a Gwar-branded spoon, which could be purchased at the merch booth for $12. Everyone had to get a photo drinking with me. Everyone who had managed to sneak in liquor insisted on me doing a shot with them. (You will be surprised to learn GwarBQ had no hard liquor for sale at all and the only beer selections were $4 PBRs and $6 Oderus Ales, a beer I reviewed by a lake as being "bad, even by beer standards," a review I maintain.)
A guy dressed in an intricate killer clown costume who had paid $299 for a VIP pass told me I was "insane, dude. . . craziest thing I've ever seen at GwarBQ."
*******
"There was a stage and a PA up in Western Massachusetts, and the kids came from miles around to get messed up on the music." - The Hold Steady I showed up at 9:30, after brunch, at Hadad's Lake a 1970's "water park" a few miles east of Richmond. On-site parking was already almost entirely full and we queued up in a sizeable line waiting for gates to open. I first noticed a massive Henrico County Police presence, we counted in one clump 15 cop cars in a row. The second thing I noticed was the inevitable, "whaddaya wearing a suit for" from two topless guys walking by who were in no physical shape to reasonably think it was meritorious to display their torsos to others. I responded "this is how one dresses for a barbeque where I'm from; get back to me with your comments when you buy shirts." And with that we were off.
GwarBQ was massively understaffed to handle getting the initial run of people through the gate. The first band went on promptly at 10, it was probably 10:20 before I got in. I wandered around for a bit trying to get a lay of the land and figure out where everything was and eventually found myself meeting up with MC Chris on a leather couch near the backstage area. We chatted for a bit about the massive police presence, what his expectations were for the GwarBQ but our conversation eventually got cut short because we were inundated with people who wanted to get photos with one or both of us.
The GwarBQ is a three stage set up where the mainbands play the two far stages in shifts so everyone can see all of them. In the middle was a tent stage whose noise bled over between bands. I drank an Oderus ale and eventually met two guys named Jeff and Steve who had come from the recent Faith No More concert at Merriweather. We discussed the unusual funding for my trip and they were glad to review the Cigwars which were $35 for a three pack during Valkyrie, a Raleigh based metal band's set.
MC Chris was the first act I actually intentionally made it a point to see and I yelled heartily "play the song on the radio," "play the song from Adult Swim," and "I like music!" between songs in hopes of fitting in further with the crowd. He eventually yelled back "shut the (bleep) up, Julian" at me. I did.
I continued to drink free beers people handed me during much of the early sets and got a lovely photo with some cos-players who told me they had spent nearly $800 and 20 hours of craft time designing their costumes. I still do not understand how that entire ensemble couldn't be done at a cool $150, but it's been a while since I've priced out quality, professional costume-level meathooks.
I took in the band Ringworm with "GWAR's blood technician," which was kind of a "we are not in Kansas anymore moment." I asked if he was considered a full member of Gwar and he said his job was more on the level of lighting or sound-guy but made sure to tell me several times that the show just wouldn't be the same without him. I agreed. He was asked for autographs at least ten times during Ringworm's set. How was Ringworm, you ask? It was music, in the same sense that water-logged, moldy cat food is "food." The songs were entirely indistinguishable. There were times they were playing, and there were times they were not. No other distinctions could I draw.
I know one of the great fascinations of the board was me to discuss with Ghoul their thoughts on Morrissey's oeuvre. Despite my best efforts to reach out to their management, they declined all interview requests so I decided to get to their stage early so I could be in the front row and yell Morrissey requests at them. They declined to play Last Of The Famous International Playboys, Suedehead, and America Is Not The World. I wondered sadly if they could hear me despite the fact they were wearing burlap sacks on their head. I decided if Ghoul would not embrace The Julian Experience, it only meant I needed to embrace The Ghoul Experience twice as hard. Obviously, the strategy was moshing for the next three songs where I did my best attempt to recreate the work of an offensive lineman dutifully keeping my quarterback clean. I tell you humbly, despite the obvious movement limitations of the suit, I attacked the situation with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind and I held my own.
(I considered it my most sincere joy several hours later when someone tapped me on the shoulder and told me that my requesting "random" songs then moshing in a suit was the "the most surreal thing" he had seen in his "years in the band." Then he walked off before I could respond or my cameraman could start taping. Since he no longer had a burlap sack on his head, I cannot verify for certain it was an actual member of Ghoul. I want to believe it was. Ghoul's official Instagram page liking a snippet of me moshing we uploaded a few hours later made it easier to do so. Game respects game, Ghoul.)
*******
"Here we go again to stage the greatest show on heaven and Earth. Come on, get your money's worth." - Bad Religion I saw little of GOATWHORE, a band whose name is offensive for multiple grammatical and common-decency reasons, and Cro-Mags and tried to take in more of the ancillary events at the Gwar-BQ during their sets, knowing full reviews of Descendents, GWAR, and Clutch were going to take up my time later and I had a small window for insuring I experienced all the ephemera Gwar-BQ had to offer.
There was a haunted house that basically seemed to consist of twink-looking shirtless men hanging off meat hooks, like some sort of horrorsexual Walkonby wet dream. It was the highest concentration of thin people I saw the entire weekend. Later on in the weird haunted house I was told it was a birthday party and I was supposed to find a party noisemaker in my face frightening. I finally just started yelling, "for the love of God, just cover me in fake blood already" until the coup de grace at the end where I was covered in fake blood. I cannot express how disappointing the entire experience was.
Now that I was freshly coated in fake blood, I felt I had more in common with my fellow guests and wandered over to the water park events. Truly, I wanted to bring you a full review of the entire event but sadly, you all ponied up nowhere near enough money for me to feel obligated to get into the liquid bacterial frappe that was that lake. Fake blood, body hair, and fat people intermingled in the most depressing lime-green pea soup looking body of water I have ever experienced. I remember once, several years ago, reading of a website called Habbo Hotel which is some sort of GUI-enabled world which basically serves as a giant chat room for millions of people, a disturbing percentage of which turned out to be child molesters. Apparently, one time a group of hooligans coordinated an attempt to block the virtual hotel's pool entrance for hours and would tell anyone who approached "the pool is closed! The pool has AIDS!" I thought of that looking at that water.
The Spew Olympics featured people doing and eating increasingly ridiculous things for Gwar-branded prizes of questionable MSRPs. I saw a man eat a lamb placenta. That sticks with you. That's the sort of thing that haunts your dreams, even when you're awake. There was a BMX area and a BMX event was prominently advertised and yet, at no time, did I ever see any of this event actually take place. I am not sure if it was cancelled or what.
The highlight of this part of my day was getting a food bowl and moving over to the table area to eat. I turned up sharing a table with two couples who were interested in my reviewing of the Gwar-BQ. I asked one of the ladies, who was dressed in traditional American garb, had a BMI around 22, and no visible tattoos or cropped hair if she had ever been to the Gwar-BQ before. She said no and I asked what brought her out and she said her boyfriend liked it. I asked how she was liking it and she said, "you know, it's been pretty cool. A guy in Gwar asked me if I would like to be eaten on stage by one of their monsters."
"You're so lucky," the other girl commented. "He didn't offer me to get eaten!"
I commented, "Well, it's funnier if she gets eaten, you know?"
"No, why," the larger, metalhead girl asked.
"Well, she's more traditionally. . . good-looking, I guess. It's funny to see a preppy girl like that get eaten. You're in a Gwar shirt, its obvious you're in on the joke you know?"
"Oh, so I'm ugly now, huh?" Before I could respond, her entire PBR was thrown in my face, its cup bounced off my head, and she stormed off. Her boyfriend attempted to give me a beer ticket to make up for her throwing one all over me. I declined. She was the one person I met who gave a (bleep). In retrospect, I probably had it coming long before I ever sat down at that table.
*******
"We stick to our slow motion memory. It's 1 in the morning and 90 degrees, and though now it is hovering darkly over me, it'll look just like heaven when I get up to leave." - Waxahatchee I finally got to our three ostensible headliners. Clutch was up first and buzzed through an hour-long set that was the first of the day where getting up to the rail (or a person or two off the rail) was a legitimate impossibility. I turned up with a man named Harry who wore a large hat and a too-small shirt he could not button if he wanted to. The first thing he does is hand me an Oderus Ale and yells "this guy! This guy (bleeps), I just know it! I know a guy who (bleeps) when I see one." I assured him, under the right circumstance, I just might. He insisted on sticking with me the rest of the day and told random passersby "this is the party, right here! Ol' Harry and Julian! Two guys who (bleep)!" I remain 95% certain he kept yelling that out of some catch-all that betrayed a lack of formal education and was not for some vaguely homoerotic reason. Regardless, Harry was my de facto concert guide the rest of the day.
Towards the end of Clutch, a band I'd seen before and didn't particularly enjoy, it became clear to me "the event" was coming up momentarily, the band that put the Gwar in Gwar-BQ. Harry and I decided to move to the other stage with about ten minutes left in Clutch's set to ensure being as close to the front as possible. In the 30 minutes before Gwar's start, I would estimate 30% of the total attendance actually showed up at the concert. Add to that the tent city and other events clearing out and it was clear, Gwar was the show.
They came out and did a bunch of things I'd seen in videos on the internet, feeding people to fake monsters, blood and semen cannons we were out of the range of. Gwar is half band and half horro-vaudeville act. It's pure spectacle and, to their credit, the ?show? will make you laugh if nothing else. The ?lyrics? were all uniformly terrible, retrogressive, immature, and misogynistic. What I could decipher were a walking testament to an absolute refusal to come into the 21st century; it's a musical retort to polite society about on the emotional call-and-response level of a 6-year old going "I know you are, but what am I?" repeatedly.
Gwar also constituted the first time all day there was a collectively large enough crowd to constitute something on the level of other "festival shows" I attended. About 35-40 minutes into it, I told Harry, "hey, man, I really need to get a water, how about we go to that tent back there and grab one real quick." He agreed. I never made it there and collapsed in a heap about 20 yards before the tent.
When I came to Harry and my photographer had me sitting up and were pouring water on my head and insisting I needed to lose the suitjacket the rest of the day. Out of pure respect for Hunter S. Thompson's idea of gonzo journalism I said there was absolutely no way I was going to do that and that the purpose of life is not to leave a pretty corpse but to go screeching towards the finish line in breakneck fashion. We had 80 minutes of event left, and I came to review it in a suit. The suit coat was staying on, I would chug water the rest of the day and pour some down my shirt, but I was covering this thing as I had intended.
I lasted two minutes at the back of the pit for Gwar before kissing the dirt again. When I came to this time I was told in no uncertain terms that my photographer was refusing to participate on a moral objection and that this needed to end immediately. Harry nodded in agreement. I meekly acknowledged I was being outvoted and we started to leave. I woke for a third time in my car a few miles down Osborne Turnpike being told I basically had to be carted out to my car and could not get in the passenger seat on my own power without falling backwards into some dude's truck. I spent the better part of Saturday evening and the overnight hours feeling as though I was burning up with an uncontrollable shake I can only liken to shivering.
I'd like to think I conquered many things that day. I crawled through 8 hours of drunken filth, the likes of which you cannot imagine, and came out clean on the other side: that's the review I wanted to write. This is not that review. The Slave Pit remains undeniably undefeated.
*******
"And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you take is equal to the love you make." - The BeatlesThe Gospel of John is -- ostensibly, putting one's theological beliefs aside -- one man's account of the craziness he witnessed. When he got to the end, he found himself, much as I do, apologizing for the inefficiencies of his storytelling, acknowledging the insufficiency of his recorded history. This is not a comprehensive collection of all the people I met, all the stories I was told. I adapt the final verse of John's account for my own when I acknowledge: I did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written. Some things, regrettably, are left out.
Like why I am hugging this fattie.
