GWAR! Hurrr! What Is It Good For? etc...

Ever heard of GWAR? Their name reputedly stands for Grotesque, Weird Anal Reprobates which sums them up nicely. They wear peculiar costumes and have a back story about coming from another planet and being frozen under the Antarctic ice for some time. Imagine Norse mythology with a sci fi twist mixed with thrash and hardcore and you'll not be far off.

I first heard of GWAR in 1991 and I bought a copy of Scumdogs of the Universe from Tower Records in London. In fact all I spent my money on on the Celebrating Our GCSE Results Tour with my friend Mike was vinyl and a Budweiser t-shirt.

I played that record repeatedly and I of course copied it to a C90 cassette and wore that out on my Walkman (or cheap Dixon's knock off thereof). It didn't matter that the album's opener was about a character who wished to turn people into salami and it didn't matter that I had no idea who Yig was and why there was so much horror surrounding him/her/it, I loved it. The music was right up my street.

So when America Must Be Destroyed arrived in 1992 I was the first in line at a little record shop in Bishop Auckland, mostly because nobody else in Bishop Auckland or the surrounding area had the slightest clue who the fuck GWAR were.

And then I found out the band were going to be performing near me. In Middlesbrough. How odd.

But GWAR were too shocking for the North East, the papers said. Local religious groups urged those with “a good, Christian heart” to stay away from the show.

Fuck that.

Tickets were bought and a gang of us went to The Arena (is it still there? I've no idea). We arrived too early in our excitement, about two and a half hours too early. So we retreated to the pub next door. It was the kind of pub where pensioners cradled halves of mild for four hours at a time and dominoes was taken very seriously. We turned up and found the metallest stuff possible on the jukebox -it might have been Alice Cooper and Deep Purple, but I don't really remember. We knocked back awful lager and complained about the price of peanuts and we played darts. Deciding I needed the toilet I foolishly walked across the oche as a dart was launched and felt something graze my nose. Luckily I wasn't killed and we were able to poceed to the venue.

Once inside we got stuck into the Brown Ale and were suitably twatted by the time the band were to come on stage.

There was no support, despite rumours that a band called Cycle Sluts From Hell were to play with them (they hadn't played with them on any other dates so it's a mystery why we believed this). There was one of those screens people use to get changed behind on the stage in front of the drum kit and one drunk guy got sick of waiting and climbed on stage to “go and see what's going on”. He disappeared behind the screen and there was a smacking sound as he was punched in the face and knocked on his back by someone. He was escorted from the venue soon afterwards.

GWAR's live show involves a good deal of simulated sex and decapitation. There is a lot of fake blood and other bodily fluids squirted into the crowd.

The music was great, but it was all about the faux gore.

The new white long-sleeved t-shirt I'd bought was pink by the time we left. As were my trainers and my jeans had a reddish hue too. My skin was also covered in what probably turned out to be watered down food dye.

I have fond memories of being driven back along the A66 by Alan, both drunk and shirtless, freezing half to death in his shitty car with Ham on the Bone and Have You Seen Me? blasting out the whole way.

I got into so much trouble when I got home. Smoking, drinking and getting covered in fake blood were not the kind of things I should have been wasting my time with, apparently.

The next day I wore the pink t-shirt to college like a badge of honour, unaware that I actually just looked like an idiot in a pink shirt.

I'd do it all again though and GWAR are still as awesome now as they were then, even though Oderus is sadly now dead. Although I might stand at the back and avoid getting fake blood on my nice jeans next time.