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October 28, 2014 10:25 AM   Subscribe

For their annual contribution to the AV Undercover series, GWAR has their way with Pet Shop Boys' "West End Girls". New singers Blothar and Vulvatron (the ass-kicking, blood-spewing-from-her-bosom new female face of GWAR!) then transition the song into a weirdly moving, personalized take on Jim Carroll's "People Who Died" in tribute to fallen comrade, Oderus Ungerus, aka founding member Dave Brockie.

Previously... in 2013, the band took on Billy Ocean's "Get Outta My Dreams (Get Into My Car) (by way of "Baba O'Riley")... and in 2012, they did their worst to Kansas' "Carry On, My Wayward Son."

Note: Vulvatron lays off the blood geyser boobs for this indoor performance, so her Heavy Metal-magazine kinda costume is as close as this gets to NSFW.
posted by DirtyOldTown (34 comments total) 34 users marked this as a favorite
 
Meet Vulvatron, a spiky purple Amazon whose massive (prosthetic) breasts occasionally shoot geysers of blood out onto her hapless audience.

Can... can this be love?
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:31 AM on October 28, 2014 [8 favorites]


One of the best things about GWAR is how cute they make mefites.
posted by srboisvert at 10:38 AM on October 28, 2014 [3 favorites]




Incidentally, Gwar just released a line of e-juice that's really tasty. I'm puffing on some Jizmoglobin right now.
posted by cazoo at 10:47 AM on October 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


Can... can this be love?

Look at this bio, those creds are intimidating:
Kim Dylla graduated from the University of Virginia with degrees in Art and Computer Science, and was awarded a graduate fellowship for Digital Art. She is currently employed at the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities as the Visualization Systems Operator and the Director of 3D Modeling for the Rome Reborn project, which has been featured in Siggraph, Google Earth, Newsweek, the New York Times, and other publications worldwide.
... and by night, fronts a comically grotesque heavy metal band while wearing huge prosthetic blood-spraying boobs. What a life.
posted by vanar sena at 10:50 AM on October 28, 2014 [22 favorites]


My goodness, until just this moment I had not realized how metal the lyrics from "West End Girls" could possibly sound. Amazeballs.
posted by Purposeful Grimace at 10:58 AM on October 28, 2014 [10 favorites]


This is frighteningly good, and almost comes out sounding like a good 80's hair metal original song.

My favorite part is the "WEST! END! GIRLS!" which sounds exactly like the riff in "BALL! ROOM! BLITZ!"
posted by mathowie at 11:00 AM on October 28, 2014 [5 favorites]


Hey, I know Vulvatron. She is a way fucking cool awesome bad ass chick. Like, you would not believe how fucking bad ass she is. She's a rockstar, a fashion designer, and she was one of the leads on the Rome Reborn project.

She is also a lot of fucking fun to just hang out with and drink beer and talk about music and technology and art and pretty much anything.
posted by daq at 11:20 AM on October 28, 2014 [3 favorites]


Oh, and I have gotten to hang out with her on many occasions when we both lived in Charlottesville, VA, and booked her to play my clubnight in Richmond, VA with her old band, This Means You, where she was one of the fiercest metal singers I have ever fucking heard.
posted by daq at 11:22 AM on October 28, 2014 [2 favorites]


Aw, I didn't think GWAR could make me tear up but they totally did. Also, holy cats they should always play West End Girls. As Purposeful Grimace pointed out, the words are metal as hell and GWAR plays the shit out of it. I write this as a huge Pet Shop Boys fan, too.
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:31 AM on October 28, 2014 [2 favorites]


GWAR has their way with Pet Shop Boys' "West End Girls"

Trying to imagine 11 words that would have made me happier this afternoon and coming up completely empty.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 11:32 AM on October 28, 2014 [11 favorites]


The fact that Vulvatron can't stop smiling and seems to be having a genuine blast just makes me love her more.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 11:50 AM on October 28, 2014


The Jim Carroll Band was the first-ever show I went to... at the age of 14, with my friend of the same age, her little brother, and her very conservative, religious mother. Fortunately the volume was so high that you couldn't hear all the f-bombs, or maybe it was the pot smoke in the air that kept Mom mellow. (Either that or Mom secretly got a kick out of her night on the town.)

Favorited for home-girl viewing later.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 12:00 PM on October 28, 2014 [3 favorites]


The lyrics of that song, which felt uncomfortably Emo and rather creepy in its original '80s New Wave pre-Techno format, actually work far better when black-metal bellowed*.

*I've been looking for the best word to fit that kind of vocalizing for some times. 'Bellow' works for me, how about you?
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:18 PM on October 28, 2014


Reading "The Hobbit" I always had trouble imagining what the dwarves singing at Bilbo's house would have sounded…but now that I have seen this video, all doubts are swept away. I mean, how awesome would "The Song of the Lonely Mountain" be if it was backed with those drums and GWAR's sawing guitar?
Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep, and caverns old
We must away ere break of day
To seek the pale enchanted gold.

The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,
While hammers fell like ringing bells
In places deep, where dark things sleep,
In hollow halls beneath the fells.
I guess that the smashed tables and thrown crockery would have to stand in -- lamely -- for fake blood, though.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:30 PM on October 28, 2014


The lyrics of that song, which felt uncomfortably Emo and rather creepy in its original '80s New Wave pre-Techno format, actually work far better when black-metal bellowed*.

To be fair, Tennant and Lowe practically wrote the songbook on the problems of sexual repression and economic class for sexually-ambiguous (later explicitly gay and ambiguous) English men. The creepy tensions between lyrics and glossy performance are baked into the work.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:55 PM on October 28, 2014 [2 favorites]


Do "Shopping" or "Rent" next.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:55 PM on October 28, 2014


Chrysostom: "Do "Shopping" or "Rent" next."

Absolutely Fabulous
posted by boo_radley at 1:10 PM on October 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


Seriously, anything from 1980s Pet Shop Boys, especially any of their singles, would be a pretty simple transition for GWAR it seems.

But I want to stress that I'm saying this as somebody who doesn't think GWAR had an easy job. They made the right choice lyrically (in a way that obviously surprised many at firsT), but what they did with is a goddamn work of art.

(I may be biased by the fact that I have probably, by virtue of it being a song I liked when I was 10, heard West End Girls maybe more than any song ever.)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 1:31 PM on October 28, 2014 [2 favorites]


I thought they were disbanding due to the death of the front....thing.
posted by thelonius at 1:56 PM on October 28, 2014


So that's what an Earth-shattering KABOOM sounds like.

Which is to say, wicked cool.
posted by localroger at 4:01 PM on October 28, 2014


Dave died alone in a chair in his room
Well he'd just turned fifty it was way too soon...
*goosebumps* This almost happened to me. Instead for my fiftieth birthday I got an angioplasty and a spiffy new stent.

*checks blood pressure again*
posted by localroger at 4:08 PM on October 28, 2014


I know ... well ... knew someone who was mentioned in the rewritten lyrics of "People Who Died." So uh. I'll just be over here crying for a bit.

I have felt ambivalent about some of the things GWAR has been doing since Brockie's death (I wouldn't say I'm a GWAR fan but being from Richmond, I'm protective of them all the same and I Have Opinions) but I'm on board with Mike Bishop being back as Blothar & I, of course, love Vulvatron (and in her non-GWAR life, she does seem like an awesome lady. If I had a few more bucks lying around, I'd buy some of her clothes). So I am on board with this. Long live GWAR!
posted by darksong at 6:50 PM on October 28, 2014 [2 favorites]


I love Blóthar's demon cow udders.
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 7:38 PM on October 28, 2014


My goodness, until just this moment I had not realized how metal the lyrics from "West End Girls" could possibly sound

Reminds me of when I played Judas Priest's cover of "Diamonds and Rust" the first time for my wife, who had a battered copy of the Joan Baez song. She realized in an instant that the lyrics were indeed quite metal.
posted by Ber at 9:16 PM on October 28, 2014


Look at this bio, those creds are intimidating

they dont let just anyone into GWAR you know
posted by Dr. Twist at 10:58 PM on October 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


My ex went to VCU in Richmond, 84-88. I came home on leave and she took me to see GWAR. The airline lost my luggage and I had to go to the concert in my uniform. It was a 15 block walk back to her apartment and I was soaked in fake blood. The looks I got from people were just priceless. The panhandlers left us alone.

Also, if you bleach your hair, that stuff will turn it pink.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 6:13 AM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


Damn, there goes my annual FPP. #tooslow
posted by Eideteker at 8:28 AM on October 29, 2014


That uddered manbearpig has some amazing diction! I'm geniunely impressed at how clear it is.
posted by boo_radley at 8:47 AM on October 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


Just a comment on the news coverage. It's a nice move by GWAR but haven't women been fronting different metal acts for a few decades now, with an entire style devoted to "beauty and beast" vocal arrangements? (With of course the usual definitional black hole of which metal is real metal.)
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 11:58 AM on October 29, 2014


Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep, and caverns old
We must away ere break of day


Possibly not coincidentally given Led Zep's LOTR hobby horse, but Immigrant Song works well as the melody for this.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 9:44 PM on October 29, 2014


GWAR produces amazingly tight music while wearing arguably the most cumbersome costumes and makeup in the business. Watching them gives me sympathy sweats in weird places.

West End Girls should always be performed this way. And I liked the original.
posted by kinnakeet at 1:27 AM on October 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


Almost as good as hearing this for the first time was thinking to myself as I got dressed this morning: "Why was I singing 'West End Girls' with that peculiar new cadence in the shower this morning?" and remembering it was the GWAR cover I was singing.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 11:44 AM on October 31, 2014 [2 favorites]


Can... can this be love?

Yes.
posted by homunculus at 5:41 PM on November 4, 2014


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