There's just not really much to say about this. It's GWAR, it's Kansas.
I'm surprised that no one has yet mentioned the Easy Star All Stars. The odd thing is, some of their reggae/dub versions of songs by people like Radiohead and Pink Floyd actually sound quite good.
Can't forget about Dread Zeppelin. After they'd pretty much exhausted the Led Zep catalog, they started giving their special treatment to other classic-rock artists ...
Don't mind if use that as a sig for a while? Much better than anything I could have come up with.
Funny, the song's not that bad. I didn't expect it as it's GWAR.
Carry On My Blood-Ejaculating Son - JKL2000
Intentionally comical is a apt description. I think. In all the subgenres of Metal there's a GWAR category and they are the only band in it. While not musically adventurous they are a wild visual treat onstage, if you can handle hundreds of midgets and others in very odd costumes telling stories that only they understand to a heavy metal soundtrack. Oh, and a singer wearing a three foot schlong plus copious amounts of fluids thrown on the audience.
To be totally honest I've never been able to figure them out. The only tune I'm familiar with is Maggots, which holds a special place for me as it used to get played a lot on Z-Rock's Headbangers Heaven show BITD. I think they take it seriously but I don't know if that means anything.
GWAR doing Kansas is like Pat Boone doing Ozzy or Dio...Oh, wait......Nevermind
In regards to the SOTW cover, we could do a thread many many pages long of just covers of that tune. I tried to check them all out and had to stop as there's just too many. One can only listen to Smoke so many times before one goes insane.
Carry On My Blood-Ejaculating Son - JKL2000
This one made me go WTF? but in the best possible way. An amazing Doors cover. Nice nylon stringed guitar work. Vocally, the Arbors take this to a new level.
"The Bill of Rights says nothing about the freedom of hearing. This, of course, takes a lot of the fun out of the freedom of speech." - Pat Paulsen
My Art- http://www.facebook.com/rabidrenfro -My Life
Carry On My Blood-Ejaculating Son - JKL2000
Define "Take it seriously". THey once appeared on the Jerry Springer Show, the deal being that if they did his show, Springer had to make an appearance at one of their performances. So Jerry gets onstage, looking horrified, and they feed him to one of their pet monsters. It was hysterical!
Even funnier was the band's appearance on Jerry's show. When he introduces them, they try running out onstage, but whichever band member it is, gets stuck trying to go through the doorway, because his costume blocks his rapid entrance.
Then they appeared on the Joan Rivers Show (one of the rare times she's ever actually done anything worth watching). She asks, "So why do spew fake blood at the audience?!". Whichever band member it is says, "What do you mean fake blood?! That stuff is real!". Joan says, "Seriously...", the band member replies, "Seriously!".
It's obvious the whole thing is a joke, and they're totally hamming it up for the sake of having fun. As if it wasn't obvious enough when the group first appeared on the national scene, and of their subordinate characters was the band's "manager", former Senator Sleazy P. Martini, who wore an obviously plastic hair piece that gave him a foot high pompadour. I also remember seeing them on MTV, when one of the band member says introduces himself thusly, "I AM BALSAC! B! A! L! S! A! C! With two little dots over the A's!". There's no way they're taking this "seriously".
I've hung out with GWAR at DragonCon years ago. They are all fairly normal, nice guys and they are absolutely tongue in cheek about the whole thing. How seriously can you take a band that feeds its audience to a monster at the end of a show?
I read about the Springer and River's shows on their Wiki page but there wasn't much detail and I didn't see more than a short clip on youtube. I didn't look that hard though. I should have. Funny about him getting stuck in the door. Also not a bad idea to feed Springer to a monster it's just too bad it wasn't a real monster.
I read years ago they used to go out in public, in costume, in character, for menial tasks. Which seemed like they took it a little more serious than maybe they really did. Up until I saw that video and looked into them a little bit, I really knew not much more than that old Penguin video I saw. That had me confuzzled years ago to begin with.
Carry On My Blood-Ejaculating Son - JKL2000
Yeah, back in the late 90's, VH-1 did a piece on them, and they were interviewed sans costume, and as you say, they're very normal folks when they're not "in character". They were even talking about how the girl (I forget her stage name) does this thing where she shoots sparks off of her fingers onstage, I guess using a Van Der Graf Generator or whatever, and one of the guys is like "I don't even want to be near her when she's doing that!".
I seem to recall also seeing a video clip from a show around the same time, we're talking 1999-2000, somewhere around there, where they disemboweled a Britney Spears lookalike onstage.
Impera littera designata delenda est.
Sadly the lead singer for GWAR since their inception, Dave Brockie (Oderus Urungus) passed away this year at 50. Big shocker throughout the metal community as he was much revered.
For my cover in honor of Oderus, let's just Breathe ....
Duncan's going to make a Horns Emoticon!!!
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