RIP ODERUS URUNGUS

On a lazy summer afternoon

whilst home from college

my best pals drove up to my house and shouted,

GET IN!

When I asked obvious questions like 

WHY 

and 

WHERE ARE WE GOING 

they replied with one word:

GWAR

I eyed them quizzically.

I say, good fellows...

What, pray tell, is a GWAR?

But they wouldn't say.

And we drove all the way into Philadelphia

with nary an explanation.

Eventually we ended up at a club called

The Revival.

Ah... music!

We got there in time to see

TAD

A Sub Pop band 

I liked a lot.

So that was cool.

But afterwards

 the stage became thick and choked with smoke.

An unholy heavy metal racket erupted 

from within and

ENORMOUS

HULKING 

CREATURES

stalked out from it's depths.

They were legion.

Some had instruments.

Most bore giant cartoonish weapons.

Some just leapt around in a less-than-half-naked state.

And it was only a matter of minutes before 

someone/thing was decapitated in a hail of 

fake blood, latex and 

EW...

was that raw meat?

This was

GWAR

They were loud.

They were violent.

They were offensive.

They were funny.

And they were so over-the-top

in so many ways that you could't help but 

admire the lengths they went to entertain.

I saw them play many times afterwards.

Sometimes on tiny stages

and other times in venues large enough 

to be attacked by

a crack addicted dinosaur named

Gor Gor:

They were ALWAYS being attacked by something.

A giant robot sent from the Vatican

A Government Superhero Morality Squad

A Cybernetic Dead President

You name it.

Nothing was sacred.

Nothing was too ridiculous.

And they made fun of themselves even more than

they did everything else. 

So you could see why I thought they'd be 

perfect for an episode of

Codename: Kids Next Door.

Well...

not perfect.

I could't let this band of 

ultra-violent 

intergalactic 

perverted 

drug-addicted 

weirdos

ANYWHERE NEAR

a kids show.

But I could use their music.

I had the idea of taking two of their songs,

stripping out the lyrics

and rewriting them

to make a KND rock opera.

So I approached the band about getting the rights to the music for

THE PRIVATE PAIN OF TECHNO DESTRUCTO

and

GOR GOR

And they agreed!

Even with the stipulation that 

we could only credit them as 

RAWG.

Great, right?!

Except no one in the band knew 

where the master tapes were.

So what'd they do?

THEY 

RE-RECORDED 

THE SONGS FOR US!

I'm still kicking myself for not 

making the time to fly down 

to Virginia to see them record.

Once we got the songs,

I doodled up a sooper rough board for

rock star storyboard artist 

Kim Arndt.

She promptly threw it in the trash 

and made something better.

And thus

OPERATION: FOODFITE

was born!

And now I hear that 

GWAR

founder and lead singer

Dave Brockie

(aka Oderus Urungus)

has passed away.

I got to meet him once when he was 

in NYC for a GWAR art show.

 He was very nice,

very funny

and a great storyteller.

Sorry to see you go,

Oderus.

You made heavy metal fun!