So after working 11-6 and flooring it straight from work to Ybor, I wind up at the GWAR show at the Ritz. I change into my now 4th generation (show) what use-to-be white t-shirt which on the back reads “GWAR” in giant letters and on the front, appropriately reads “Take a Load” in giant bold letters (also coincidentally the only shirt in my entire wardrobe that is not black). I meet up with Mario and his posse, and we head in…and pretty much head straight for the bar. After Mario and I get our first round, we head down to the pit area to catch the first band, Mobile Death Camp. The Ritz was rather humerous in trying to keep its facilities clean, seeing as how they covered the entire area in front of the stage with carpet that looks like they pulled it out of a dumpster and duck taped it to the floor.
As the band started I noticed the lead singer looked strangely familiar, until I realized it was the old Beefcake from GWAR. Overall a very generic thrash band, but hey, at least their logo is cool (it’s a fucking tank). During their performance, a most unusual thing happened and Batman appeared. Now Batman is notorious for wandering around Ybor and hitting on chicks who are usually jailbait, but at a GWAR show? Cmon…it makes me glad that later on during GWAR some psycho flat out tackled him, just because he was wearing a cape, and then stole the cape. After Death Camp’s set was done, I decided it would be a good idea to grab a GWAR shirt now before the good bands start and I have to miss it to go get a shirt, so throughout the entire show I was wearing 3 shirts…how being a husky fellow, wearing all that, and being in a GWAR pit didn’t cause me to overheat still ceases to amaze me.
The Second band to take the stage was Infernaeon, who wasn’t half bad, though I couldn’t really get into them due to the fact that all they kept yelling was fuck god as the lead singer just kept pointing at the ceiling and then flipping it off, then preaching about how everyone should cheer about us keeping the metal scene alive in Florida. After their set I treat Mario to a second round via late birthday present, and we await for the next band to come on, The Casualties, whom both Mario and I were anticipating since he hadn’t listened to punk in forever and I had never seen a punk band live.
The band finally takes the stage, and after watching half the set, we concluded as to why punk had no longevity as an actual counter-culture. The most interesting thing by far about their show was easily their hair, which amazed me. The lead singer’s hair was spiked in every direction, while the lead guitarist had the traditional 2 foot tall Mohawk. The most ironic thing that this band did during their set was making the audience do the wall of death after finishing their cover the Ramones Blitzkrieg Bop (ironically also the only good song from their set).
Immediately after finishing their set, crowds if people wearing white shirts started surrounding the stage getting packed for the main attraction. At this time I decided to also stumble to the front with some other friends I ran into from Suggestion, only to be kicked by my other friend Kelsey for reasons still unknown to me. As we all stood around waiting for the show to start and feeling more and more like sardines as the time for the show approached, Kelsey decided she didn’t want to get wet, and left her friend Leile, who I just met and had never been to a GWAR show before, with me. Kelsey also asked if I would mind watching over her, so I said sure. Finally GWAR takes the stage, and as foreseen, violence, pits, crowd surfing, defecation, and molestation almost break out immediately.
For those of you who have no idea what a GWAR pit is like let me explain. You are packed shoulder-to-shoulder, and if your are about to fall over or pass out from heat exhaustion, you cant, because there is literally not enough room for you to fall. You will just be held up until you regain consciousness amidst the pit. People also like to do something at GWAR shows called pile-ons, where everyone pushes forward forcing everyone else on top of the people in the front, which inevitably causes a backlash, which usually knocks quite a few people on their asses when it heads backwards. These also happen side to side which, if you are the unfortunate fucker on the end of the pit, will sometimes make you go flying into a brick wall, which is really…really painful..like that expression hits you like a ton of bricks has nothing on actually running into a brick wall…that shit hurts.
GWAR as custom, sacrifices its first victim of the night, who is none other than Sarah Palin! As I attempt to take pictures of this and am holding my camera phone up, my tits are groped and my ass is smacked. When I turn around all I do is see some hot chick being dragged by a random guy through the crowd as she winks at me and licks her lips (god I should have followed, like a tool…). As the chaos ensues, a tall blonde wookie-like man who was at least 6’7” had become, like I stated earlier, incoherent. He could only headbang and fall the entire show and must have face planted at least 6 times during the course of the set. Lucky me, he was being shoved back and forth right in my area, and was a chronic problem.
As GWAR continued onto their second sacrifice, one of their very own slaves, another random douchebag takes his place next to me, and decides he wants my spot, and believes that if he holds his elbow into my ribcage, I will move. I tell him to watch it, he ignores me. I tap his shoulder and signal for him to knock it off; he looks at me, and continues to ignore me. So as GWAR starts up the next song and moshing ensues, I make sure to nudge myself in front of the guy, fly backwards on one of the backlashes of a pile-on, and watch him stumble back into the pit and get tackled by a random skinhead…sometimes I love being a douche.
As GWAR approaches the end of their set, they bring out my second favorite prop…the alien jizz bazooka! GWAR has their final onstage monologue, and begins one of their last songs, and Urundus uses my favorite prop finally, the cuttlefish (a giant alien cockpiece), and gives me a facial along with most of the front row, and I suddenly have a moment of clarity/zen, and am happy I am a metalhead. I also got some of it in my eye, and it fucked up my contact in my left eye, so I had to watch the last part of their set with only one eye (let the one-eyed willy jokes ensue…). They finally bring the bazooka to the front of the stage at that point and then start dousing the audience.
During the dousing, the slave blasting the bazooka looks around, and suddenly looks at me, reads my shirt, chuckles, and points the bazooka at me, and blasts….I officially became a cum-dumpster…sniff…After the show, half deaf and partially blind, everyone walked out, tainted red, and were proud. GWAR has yet to fail its audience in living up to their reputation of having one of the best liver performances around.
~Bane
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