BE GWAR
“The true story of the art collective known as Gwar may never be fully known but the 360-page tome Let There Be Gwar (Gingko Press) attempts to tell it anyway. Compiled by longtime Slave Pit member Bob Gorman and author Roger Gastman with a forward by Kurt Loder, it’s a high-end tribute for a band known for spewing fake bodily fluids from effigies like OJ Simpson, Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and Justin Bieber, just to name a few. The text mixes oral history and narrative from the band’s early art collective days through Grammy nominations, tabloid TV appearances, an ACLU-backed lawsuit, the deaths of members Cory Smoot and Dave Brockie, the Gwar-B-Ques and beyond… The photos and paraphernalia packed within prove the concept to be bigger than the music and more of an overall life experience.”
September 25, 2015
Also available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and elsewhere.
Perhaps the entire dichotomy of their long and shifting career is best summed up in a TED talk given by Dr. Mike Bishop, “the human slave of the Berserker Blothar.” He talks about violence, he talks about death, he talks about tobacco and slavery, he talks about how poverty in Richmond contributes to the formation and message of GWAR, and he tells us that "GWAR is about creative energy, it's about people coming together to create something."