Dave Brockie (reportedly) dead at 50

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http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/gwar-frontman-dave-brockie-a-k-a-oderus-urungus-reportedly-dead-at-50/

 

What a lovely way to start the week.

[Justin877]

I woke up to that as well.  Hoping it is hoax but not sure that I am going to be so lucky

[HumanChessgame]

I've seen rumors about this all night but had it confirmed by people I know in RVA who knew the band.  Total bummer.  He was an incredibly creative guy and a real innovator.  

[Brandon Bones]

Shit shit shit.

 

 

Shit!

[Justin877]

I would like to thank for the sake of the band and the fans that GWAR could evolve like they did with the death of Corey Smoot years ago, but without Dave as Oderus Urungus.  I just don't think it could happen

[Big Fresh]

I've never heard a GWAR song in my life. But I loved Oderus Urungus's regular appearances on Red Eye. So much. This sucks.

[Big Fresh]

Didn't he wrestle a "Loser Leaves Planet Earth" match against Tracey Smothers a few years ago too?

[Tromatagon]

Man this is about a year from when my friends and I saw him on the Holliston panel at Monsterpalooza. Saying he was the highlight is a huge understatement and that will always be one of the best times shared with a group of friends that doesn't get together like that anymore due to geography.

[Babylonianfrost]

Godfuckingdamn it.  I was fortunate enough to first see them in a rat's hole in Knoxville in 1989 (I recall it being prior to "Scumdogs...") and then again a few times here and there over the passing years, and always managed to come away from the shows with a great time & stories to share.  I know that to a lot of people out there in the mainstream, GWAR was some kind of lowest-common denominator shit-and-baby-rape joke but they were always funnier and a hell of a lot smarter than that.  And damn it, they wrote some great songs in the old-school (forgive me here, but I always heard it) Dictators/Twisted Sister mode amongst the catchy thrash.  Hanneman earlier and now Oderus.  It's stupid to say that another big piece of my musical younger years is gone, but - and forgive the maudlin crap - it really is.  Best to his friends and his family.  Brockie was a consummate frontman.  RIP

[DEAN]

I knew him a little.  I wasn't actual friends with him- though he was friends with a lot of my friends. I met him back when we were at VCU in 1984.  He was always really funny when he was in Shafer Court talking about stuff.  I vividly recall him talking about how awesome the band Raw Power was because they were so Italian.  I was better friends with people who ran in the same circles- band people, D&D people, art people- as everyone in Richmond basically knows everyone.  There is a saying about Richmond that everything spins around like SIX people.  He was one of the six for a long time.  I always thought of him as the head of the Richmond fringe element- comix, punk rock, RPGs- back when it was far from as accepted as it is now.   It was good to know he was around when every one was taking heat from the normals- even those of us that could pose as normals when we had to.  Last time I saw him, my friend Andy's band was opening for the Dave Brockie Experience and I noticed how old he looked- then I realized I remembering what he looked like 27 years prior.  

[Greggulator]

This is legitimately awful news.

 

I can't even begin to express the influence GWAR had on my life.

***

 

I saw them at the Stone Pony when I was 18 or 19 or so. It was batshit. At one point, all these Jersey Shore weirdos hopped the railing to fist-fight GWAR! A GWAR show in and of itself is nuts but this was next level chaos.

My buddy knew one of the kids who were fighting GWAR. He asked why he was attacking them.

"Because they're trying to conquer earth!" was his answer, which is the best answer to any question ever.

 

***

 

My friend Justin was my most metal friend and introduced me to GWAR in 8th grade. I immediately thought it was the greatest band ever because it was so completely ridiculous and hilarious. Love of GWAR spread to a bunch of my friends.

My 8th grade reading teacher Mrs. O'Connor was the best. The class was filled with smart kids who had given up on life already so we were still taking reading classes while other kids were in Spanish I and the like. I couldn't even imagine to guess how hard it must have been to teach this class -- seriously, we were some of the smartest kids in the school and did not do any work whatsoever.

Anyways, she called an audible halfway through the year. There were like eight of us in this class and a bunch of us were really into GWAR and obsessed with Jeffrey Dahmer and serial killer trading cards and all that dumb stuff. So she went from making us read stuff like Johnny Tremaine and instead put her lesson plans all around tragedies and horrible public behavior and utter crap.

Our daily lesson or so was to put vocabulary words in a sentence. I mean, that's as boring as it gets and there's no way I would have done that assignment. But she devised this system where we would give each other points based on usage of the vocabulary word in the most bizarre, fucked up way imaginable. I can't even imagine this would begin to fly now, because like 95% of these sentences were about killing classmates and the slaughter of animals and the like.

I came up with a sentence that involved someone carving the phrase "Slay The Hicks" with a knife into the rotting corpse of a dead mountain man.

The next year in high school, I was dicking around with my good buddy Mike and we were talking about how we should make a GWAR-type band. He was in this class with me and the name "Slay The Hicks" immediately came to mind. We (and the aforementioned Kris and our buddy Eli -- probably the kid I was closest to who gave into his depression after college, still the saddest day of my life when I heard that news) wrote anthems -- yes, ANTHEMS -- like "Cockfight Anthem" and "Rage Of The Executioner." The great joke of the band was that anyone who wanted into this band could have been in it, so we had something like 65 members. I cannot for the life of me remember my name -- it was something like "GORAX: The Master Of The Chickens Who Bleed."

Anyways, I was kind of in the marching band junior year (long story -- I pretended to play an instrument) and Cohen and our other friends were all super into GWAR, too. Everyone's favorite GWAR song was "Have You Seen Me" and we'd sing this song on rides to football games non-stop. I still have it committed to memory.

We had a joint Battle Of The Bands with Livingston, our rich kid neighbors (hometown of Chris Christie!) and sworn enemies of all West Orange kids. We recorded a bunch of songs in Cohen's garage on his boombox. The marching band kids could all play some instruments. I had no musical talent whatsoever and was just going to provide death metal vocals. However, whoever we were going to get to play drums flaked out. I was thus recruited to play drums, using spackle buckets (like some kids outside of city mass transit stations) and I believe kitchen equipment (but it might have been some tree branches).

Needless to say, we didn't make the cut to get into Battle of The Bands.

We thus swore revenge. One of the bands from Livingston was called "Crunchy Lettuce." Someone sort of knew one of those guys and described them and they were truly horrible sounding in the way 90s rich kids into alt-rock were terrible. So we all pooled our money and bought all sorts of produce and other food items to throw at Shop-Rite. We first lured them in by presenting them with lettuce (which had been wiped in certain body orifices first) and then just pestered them with food products. We also kept silencing them with "SLAY THE HICKS!" chants while holding up all these signs touting our band's supremacy.

 

This Battle of the Bands as also the last time I saw Leo Fitzpatrick, who I grew up with before he achieved mild fame as an actor (he played "Tully" in the movie Kids and was also Johnny, Bubbles friend in The Wire. My high school has produced a rather bizarre group of actors. Mike Pitt of Boardwalk Empire/Dawson's Creek fame was a few grades younger than me -- his sister broke my heart one summer. We also produced the legendary Ian "Steve Sanders" Ziering and Scott Wolf, who played Bailey from Party Of Five. And, oh yeah, my brother Chris is on that list, too.) I never liked Leo. He was always nice to my face but a total bully around the presence of others. He was acting all nice to me (he went to some high school for troublemakers so I hadn't seen him in years) since I was one of the ringleaders behind all of this nonsense. He, naturally, was with some dumb but really hot freshman girl. After we finished talking, I pelted him with some produce. Revenge is sweet.

These are all some of my absolute favorite high school memories. And it all spawns from my metal friend Justin telling me about GWAR.

Thanks so much, Oderous. You were truly an inspiration to me. That's not some b.s. ironic statement, either. That you could make a career out of doing stuff like pretending to rape and murder Jon Benet Ramsey on stage really made it possible for me to have the guts to later get up on comedy open mics and make dumb videos and all sorts of other nonsense.

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Didn't he wrestle a "Loser Leaves Planet Earth" match against Tracey Smothers a few years ago too?

 

Yep, and it was every bit as good as you might imagine.

[Curt McGirt]

I am probably the only human being on the planet to have walked out halfway through a GWAR show out of boredom (true story), but they were a pretty big deal to me when I picked up This Toilet Earth on tape as a kid. I used to have an autographed tape of Hell-O! as well, which I sold years ago. Say what you will about the music, the concept was more than inspired and Dave was a true punk and a crazy genius. RIP

[J.T.]

I was actually saddened yet pleased to see that all 804 news affiliates did interrupt local broadcasting this morning to break the news of Brockie's death.  Horrible news, but glad to see GWAR get some respect in their hometown by having the major stations break into local programming to make note of his passing.

 

I used to run security at the Canal Club and was there for a couple of the New Year's Evil shows where GWAR headlined.  I never got to meet Brockie, but I did get to talk to Corey Smoot (RIP) and Casey Orr.  They were solid guys that were really down to earth.  Dudes loved to talk about Godzilla movies.

[Justin877]

I really wish I had gone to their December 2013 show now.  Hindsight is 20/20.   I wonder if they will do a Memorial concert at The National like they did for Corey Smoot?

[Casey]

I'll never forget GWAR turning the mushroom fountain at Bonnaroo into "blood" and holding an impromptu concert.

 

RIP

[Old Goat]

This stinks. 

 

I remember how excited my high school friend was to do a phone interview with him.  I think this was shortly after HELL-O was released, so he didn't know what to expect. The excitement turned to mild terror as Oderus proceeded to bellow and command him in character for the length of the call.

 

HELL-O is still great.

 

RIP

[Big Fresh]

[clintthecrippler]

Shitty news to wake up to yesterday morning. GWAR was the 3rd concert I ever went to. Drove 3 and a half hours from my shitty hometown to Harpo's in Detroit with two of my best friends growing up. An amazing day, got drenched in the pit. Had to drive back after the show. Stopped at a gas station in Small-Town Nowhere, Michigan at 1AM. Dyes were changing color and running all up and down our clothes. A local gentleman asked us if we were up late painting a house.
 

An amazing night that no matter how many shows I've been to since, this is one that will always stay with me emotionally. GWAR was a big influence in both my developing metallic tastes, and a big influence to not take life too seriously in general.
 

I put some words together about GWAR and posted them to the LA Weekly website this morning. Probably not adding anything to the dialogue that hasn't been said already:

 

http://www.laweekly.com/westcoastsound/2014/03/25/why-gwar-is-important-and-why-metal-will-never-be-the-same-again

 

I am thankful that at various times I got the pleasure to interview both "Oderus Urungus" and Dave Brockie. "Oderus" was at entertaining as one would imagine, but Dave was incredibly chill and appreciative of everyone that had helped him throughout the years and definitely had a great passion for music, and took the art behind the spectacle very seriously.

[Casey]

Dave died of a heroin overdose

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God damn it.

[OSJ]

Bummer. I'm starting to get used to seeing my favorite musicians pass, Hasil Adkins, Lux Interior, and now Dave Brockie... At least Kid Congo Powers is still going strong... The really tragic thing is that I don't think you can have Gwar without Dave, just as you couldn't possibly have the Cramps without Lux.