DAVE
BROCKIE EXPERIENCE
by Christine Natanael
LINKS:
Ever wondered just exactly who or what is underneath those costumes when you go to see the band GWAR? Well, when not being the big bad beast from Antarctica named Oderus Urungus, he’s just a crazy slapstick comedic punker named Dave Brockie. The Dave Brockie Experience is the side band that he does with a couple of his GWAR co-horts. Their last release, Songs For The Wrong, is just that. Absolutely and totally politically incorrect humor par excellence.
I got a chance to get the man on the phone and ask him anything that came
to mind….so here goes another one of my absolutely-no-concrete-destination-in-mind-stream-of-consciousness
interviews…
CHRISTINE NATANAEL: So you’re in Concord, CA right
now?
DAVE BROCKIE: Naw, I’m in Fisherman’s Wharf, hanging out, drinking beer and eating seafood.
CN: I wish I was doing that. I’m fighting with my fucking computer right now.
DB: Aw, too bad.
CN: Yeah, isn’t it though?
DB: You need a masters.
CN: That’s the difference between having been a musician and still being one…
DB: Yeah, I can’t believe it. It’s only been like, 20 years or something like that, and we’re still going strong, so...Somebody pinch me.
CN: Yeah, right? Well I first came upon you guys probably in the late 80’s, when GWAR was starting to be pretty big.
DB: I think I remember you.
CN: We came to your hotel room, and oh my God, there were all kinds of strange fluids and smells emanating from that hotel room and your costumes.
DB: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s one of the greatest things about being on tour with DBX is that it’s not as smelly at all.
CN: Yeah, right? Isn’t that nice?
DB: It’s pretty smelly, but the overall mass of collective smell is hopefully not as bad.
CN: Well, I remember, it was like the New Music Seminar or something, and we came up to your hotel room, and I was just like, ‘Dude...’ But you use a lot of fluid and stuff on stage combined with sweat and whatnot, so it’s like…
DB: Yeah, it’s just that that stuff is so hot, then when you sweat into it just a little bit, it kinda just like, sets it off.
CN: Yeah, I always wondered, you know, when you’re doing the huge penis on stage that shoots and jets the cum, what the fuck do you use to make the fluid?
DB:. I don’t care to reveal the secrets of the pack of our slaves who labor ceaselessly, patiently all year jerking off—so we use nothing but 100% real jizz. And when we run out of that, we use pig semen.
CN: There you go, 'special sauce,' so they say.
DB: Special sauce.
CN: You have, what, three guys in the band with you now?
DB: Yeah, I’ve got Brad Roberts, who plays drums for GWAR, and Mike Derk who plays guitar for GWAR, and we’re like, this little comedy punk rock band. You know, it’s not a big bus tour. We’re just trying to ride it out in a van and we’re absolutely having a blast.
CN: I missed you when you were here in the city at CB’s because I was just swamped with work. But I really love Songs For the Wrong. I love songs like that.
DB: That’s kind of what this band is all about. I tend to write a lot of those songs, but they don’t fit with GWAR, they kind of like, pile up. Once I have an album’s worth of them we’ll sit down and we’ll do another DBX record.
CN: There you go. I had someone say to me, you know, I had a writer come to the house that was looking through the cds and he says, ‘That looks like the Dead Kennedys logo.’
DB: Yeah, I totally ripped them off. Of course I did.
CN: Has Jello said anything to you about it?
DB: I wish he would. I’d get all kinds of free publicity, but nope, so far, not yet. Hit by Jello Biafra…that would be cool.
CN: How long did it take you to compile the songs that you have on this record?
DB: Actually, not very long. Probably about a year or so. The first DBX record, uh, those were probably like a five year period because I wasn’t really thinking they were gonna end up on a record. I was doin’ ‘em for fun. And it took a while to write that first record, but finally I was like, ‘God, I’ve got all these songs. I’ve got to do something with them.’ So we put out Diarrhea of a Madman and ended up doing pretty well. We had a lot of fun on the tour, so we’re like, ‘Well, shit. Let’s do another one.’ So, yeah, it probably took about a year to get all the material together.
CN: Now, your influences on this…where did you come up with “The Chinese Eat No Cheese,” I mean, even though it is true…
DB: I was in a Chinese restaurant, and I realized, ‘There is no cheese in here.’ And I thought I’d write a song about it. And it struck a chord, cuz every night when I sing that song, everyone’s like, ‘Oh, my God! He’s right!’
CN: It’s so true.
DB: I may have started a cultural revolution here and make people demand that Chinese restaurants feature nothing but cheeseburgers.
CN: Well, I don’t think we have cheese in the ones here in Manhattan, but you can get almost anything fried. That’s for damn sure. Maybe even some local rat, who knows… So…”Should the Ugly Girl Blow Me?”…
DB: Oh…
CN: Love that song.
DB: It’s so rude. It’s really an anthem of our times, isn’t it? Anybody who’s spent time on the road can definitely relate to that song.
CN: Hey, a blowjob’s a blowjob.
DB: I guess you could close your eyes and pretend it’s Heidi Klum.
CN: There you go. Where do you record the stuff?
DB: Uh, we recorded the record in, uh, the luxury of the Slave Pit studios in Richmond, Virginia. We do everything ourselves. The GWAR record we did that way, and the DBX album before this that way. We’re definitely, uh, you know, we like the whole do-it-yourself attitude. We think we get the best results this way. We don’t see the need. We don’t have the money, and we don’t see the reason why we should spend tens of thousands of dollars for some producer to come along and tell us how to sound. You know? We’re not signed to a major label. We’re just basically trying to amuse ourselves and our fans, and learn as much about the music-making process as possible. So, we already know how to write songs and play ‘em, so it only makes sense that we would move on to production at some point. And now that we’re doing it ourselves it’s saving us a lot of money and also, you know, we’re producing other bands and we actually get a much better result.
CN: That’s the way to do it, though, because you have no guarantee with a producer, except you’re guaranteed to lose a lot of your cash to him.
DB: Yeah. You never know what these guys are gonna do. I mean, you might be locked out of your own mix-down. They might not want you to go to mastering. They may throw you mixes of songs that you don’t like. You know? They might end up doing a shitty job. You might end up not showing up at the studio until five in the afternoon, hanging around for an hour and then go back to the hotel. I mean, I’ve known all kinds of producers, and I’m not saying they were all bad experiences. Some of them were really good, and I learned a lot from some of these guys, but, uh, also, they can be incredibly flaky as well as being incredibly expensive, so, you know. We just wanted to learn how to do it ourselves.
CN: Yeah, I don’t blame you. So, what’s your favorite song on the record?
DB: Oh, I don’t know. I guess I’d have to say like, what my favorite song to perform was. I never listen to my own shit, so... I mean, I listen to it every night when I play it live. I like playing, “…Blow Me” a lot. That’s a really fun song. I like the songs that get a good reaction out of the crowd. “The Chinese Eat No Cheese” gets a big laugh every night and that’s another favorite. They’re all really fun to play. “Hard for a ‘tard” is really fun to play. It freaks people out. The whole album is really fun to play, I guess.
CN: Well, you’ve got to have balls to be totally and politically incorrect.
DB: Yeah. Pretty much, yeah.
CN: Well, you’re from Virginia. I’m from the Carolinas. We Southerners do have a penchant for that shit, you know.
DB: Oh, yeah. And it’s just like, we grew up in one of the most conservative states in the United States. I think that inspired me to be as naughty as possible.
CN: You’re a potty-mouth like I am.
DB: Totally potty-mouth and just love to rub people’s faces in it.
CN: All right. I just have to know, and this is the rudest question, but you put it in the liner notes yourself, so…who took the picture of the dick?
DB: I took a picture. That’s my dick. I took the picture.
CN: I could tell by your hands, you know, that it was you.
DB: It was me sitting in front of my computer. If you look in the background, you can see that’s a keyboard. It’s pretty foul. My girlfriend wasn’t very happy with that. And the other guys in the band were like, ‘Oh, we’ve got to make t-shirts out of that and stickers.’ And I was like, ‘Nobody’s gonna buy that.’ Truth be told, it’s the best-selling t-shirt of the whole tour.
CN: It reminds me of the logo for Low Meato. Do you remember that band Low Meato?
DB: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
CN: Felix, that was in that band, is the President of Blue Grape Merchandising now, but they had some great ones. I have some limited edition posters and one of them is like—you know how a skeleton has a rib cage and a skull and everything? They did a skeleton, but it’s in the shape of a penis and balls. It’s really good.
DB: (Laughs) Yeah, I know. And those guys didn’t even have Photoshop to work with. Now you can make anything look real and really freak people out because they can’t figure out how you created the image.
CN: Right.
DB: They’re just deeply disturbed by it.
CN: Yeah, well, you know we had to do cut and paste back in the day.
DB: I remember. I remember. But hell…Photoshop…way to go…
CN: What kind of gear are you playing these days?
DB: We just got sponsored by ESP, so they just sent me some basses, which is really awesome. I’m playing this bass right now I call the “butter bass” because it’s like, butter-colored. It’s really cool. Derks is playing, I think he’s still playing his Fernandez. I’ve been playing out of the same bass rig for fuckin’—my Nemesis bass rig for five years now. Man, it’s like, really funny. We load our equipment into the clubs a lot of the times, and a lot of the times these opening bands, these little skinny punk rock bands will have like, all brand new shit and we’ll be loading in the same cabinets we’ve been using for GWAR for like, 15 years. They’re all beat to shit with holes in ‘em and stuff. But they sound good. You’ve got to wear that shit in. Keep it real.
CN: That’s true, you know. Like, I remember going to a studio once, and the guitar player (Alex Skolnick), had like 3 or 4 Marshall heads but he had different tubes and things in each one to get the tones he wanted. With punk, it’s a little easier, though.
DB: That’s really cool when you know what you’re doing, but a lot of the times a lot of these people will be all—especially out here in San Francisco—these people will be all tweaked out on speed or whatever, convinced they know how to rebuild their Marshall head, you know, in a better way. And they end up with a big pile of parts on the floor, passed out in it. A big gearhead town, too—people were always tearing shit apart and rebuilding it again.
CN: You know, musicians trying to take apart their amps are kind of like guys in the South that buy a Harley and in the winter time they want to take them apart. They have it in their kitchen. They take it all apart. And they put it back together, and the shit never runs right again.
DB: Yeah. It’s like, ‘Leave it the fuck alone.’
CN: You know people like that, don’t you?
DB: Oh, I know tons of ‘em like that. And very, very few of them actually know what they’re doing.
CN: Yeah. Of course. So, what’s next for Dave Brockie Experience?
DB: Uh, we continue on this tour until we’re done, then I think I’m going to do my very first completely solo album. It’s gonna be a lot of stand-up and a lot of spoken word. I’m gonna call it Dave Brockie Spoken Turd, and I’m gonna do a solo tour to back that up. But while we’re working on that, we’re also gonna be working on the new GWAR album. And that should be out in 2004, and we’ll hit the road to support that. So, we are very, very busy.
CN: So you’re gonna put all the stuff back on, all the make-up and slime…
DB: Yeah. It’s weird. You can actually miss it if you go too long without doing a GWAR tour. Plus, everyone’s continually giving me shit about it. ‘When are you going back out with GWAR?’
CN: Yeah, but you just did a record with GWAR, what, last year?
DB: Yeah. We just went out last year. It’s good to wait a while and let people miss us and appreciate it and let it build up and wait until the new album’s out and then hit the road again when the time is right. I don’t---now that we have, like, lots of other side projects going on, which is really cool, we don’t have to concentrate on GWAR all the time. And that actually makes it a lot better because when we do GWAR we tend to appreciate it more.
CN: Yeah. I always wondered if, in doing GWAR you got tired of the theatrics and stuff. I mean, you guys were drama students, origianally, right?
DB: Yeah. But we thrive on the theatrics, and we love it. But, we also love just to play music as well. You know? Have people listen to the music rather than just be awed by the performance aspect of it. And that’s why DBX is really important to us. Some people might go, ‘Oh, you should do GWAR all the time.’ They don’t’ really understand that something like DBX actually makes GWAR stronger, because it makes us more interested in doing it. You know? Between DBX and GWAR and being a member of both bands, it’s a very well rounded experience. And what one project lacks, the other project makes up for.
CN: Well, they’re also two different kinds of genres. I remember the first GWAR record I got, oh God, it was on vinyl and it was ’87 or ’88 and it was red…
DB: ’88 and on vinyl…that thing’s worth some money…
CN: I don’t think I saw you guys live until probably ’90. I mean, I was always into the music. I discovered it—I was at my editor’s house and picked up this record saying, ‘This is bizarre.’ I love comic art, and stuff like that, so I was like, all into the design of it. I was like, ‘Oh, I gotta see what this sounds like.’ You know? So, I came to it that way. Most people come to GWAR because somebody brings them to a show as a GWAR virgin.
DB: Right. It’s like, a right of passage.
CN: Yeah. I never—I mean, I know you guys work a lot on the theatrics, but I’m an auditory person.
DB: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
CN: And if that doesn’t hold up, then all the theatrics in the world aren’t gonna fuckin’ help you.
DB: Yeah. GWAR’s fans and the people that buy our records and are really familiar with us, they know that we are—that I had some very talented songwriters and musicians in my band. And plus, if the music didn’t have merit to it by itself, we never would have lasted for what, 9 or 10 albums. It’s really established itself as a dynasty, and I think we can do it from now until forever, as often as we want. I would love to see GWAR become Beatlemania or something, where in the future performers could portray our characters or create new ones in the GWAR pantheon. But GWAR could, quite literally, be a band that could last forever.
CN: Like Menudo…replacement parts…you’re underneath the masks and stuff, so who’s gonna know who’s really in there? Even better, as you age you don’t have to worry about liposuction and facelifts because you have the masks….
DB: Yeah, I was thinking about…breeding replacements, basically. Ah, crap. My fucking phone might die here any second. It’s making that horrible beeping noise. I’ve been doing this all day today, and I knew I should have charged my phone. If it cuts off unexpectedly, that’s why. I’m not being rude. Well, if you want to continue it later, I’m getting ready to go to the hotel, pick up my charger and load in. So, if you want to give me another ring later this evening and do part 2 of this, that’ll be fine.
PART 2
CN: Are you in the van right now?
DB: We’re driving right now.
CN: That’s what I figured.
DB: Yeah. I just got a little bit lost there, but uh, I think everything’s back on track.
CN: That’s cool. So, I just wanted to ask you a few more questions.
DB: Okay.
CN: …basically about how you got started in music—how old were you?
DB: I guess the first thing I ever did was, I think I was 4 years old, for show and tell, and I sang this song I wrote called “Boner,” which also eventually became a Death Piggy song, and we’re still playing it with DBX. I claimed that I saw this band called “Boner” on tv and kind of did a rendition of the song that they had. It was a total lie, though, but it was a good song.
CN: When did you get your first band together?
DB: My first band was a band called Nuclear Dogshit, and I guess it was about 9th grade in high school. And we were like a, you know, punk rock band, and of course this was like 1978 or something like that. We didn’t know what the fuck punk rock even was, but that’s what we decided we wanted to be. We just had one song, which was our theme song, “Nuclear Dogshit.” Our only gig was, we auditioned for the talent show. At the end of the audition, we threw a dead fish at the teacher. And uh, they didn’t like that, so didn’t get in the talent show.
CN: You just like to be a troublemaker, don’t you?
DB: Of course. It’s way better than following the rules.
CN: I agree with that one.
DB: Ah, I mean, I’m not so bad. Usually the mayhem is in good fun. I’m not a malicious troublemaker, but I can still understand why the lady was mad when she got hit upside the head with a dead fish.
CN: I could see where that would probably piss her off slightly.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. I was so mortified by us not getting into the talent show that walked around school all day with a trash can on my head.
CN: (Laughs) You just like to act out.
DB: I was a sick child.
CN: Was?
DB: Well, not physically sick, just demented and definitely vandalistic, manipulative, demonstrative—all these things—smelly, loud…
CN: (Laughs) A mother’s dream…
DB: Actually, my brother was a lot worse than I was, so you know, I kinda was left to run wild.
CN: Which can be pretty much fun, considering where you grew up.
DB: Oh, it was way fun. I mean, back then, skateboarding was just starting to happen again and hardcore was just kinda startin’ to come out, and the Ramones were in their prime, and The Clash was still together…It seems like a million years ago, but that was really an amazing time to be involved with music and to be a young person.
CN: Right. Yeah, that’s about the same time period I got involved. I guess you’d say we’re probably—similar experiences just different geographical locations. I was a little further south than you.
DB: I grew up in the D.C. area, so I was pretty fortunate to have lots of good bands there, lots of good clubs. When I moved to Richmond, it got a little, not quite as many good bands, but I liked the attitude a lot better because the people were a lot more open-minded there. It was definitely an environment to thrive in, and so, that’s when GWAR started getting together in, like, the mid ‘80s.
CN: Well, you know, people from places like that don’t have ready-set entertainment like an urban center or city does, so we had to make our own fun.
DB: Yeah.
CN: When I moved to New York, people here constantly told me, ‘You need to calm down. You’re gonna get arrested.’ And I’m like, ‘This is fuckin’ New York. It’s supposed to be fun.’
DB: Yeah, but it’s a lot more…you know, there’s a lot more rules.
CN: Not only that, even at the punk shows and stuff, people just stand there.
DB: Right. Right.
CN: I paid money to come in and have fun…sorry…I guess that’s against the rules, you know?
DB: You can’t even smoke there anymore. No smoking anywhere. I could understand California, but when New York City did that, I was just…’Uh…’ That’s the worst part of the 9/11 fallout.
CN: That’s the mayor. The guys raised taxes by $3 a pack on cigarettes, and then made it illegal to smoke them anywhere.
DB: Yeah. That’s ridiculous. I live in Richmond, VA, so it’ll never happen to me. I don’t even know why I give a shit, because I don’t smoke.
CN: So…after Nuclear Dogshit, how many other bands did you have?
DB: Oh, there was a profusion of bands… I was in a band called The Sub-Urbans. We played all Ramone covers. That was pretty cool. For some God-awful reason we added a girl lead singer and an extra guitar player and started playing Led Zeppelin, so I quit. Then I was in a band called The Rock’N’Roll Priests. That was like, my first costume rock band. We dressed up like priests. We had a couple songs: “Rock’N’Roll Priest,” “Born To Preach.” It was horrible. We never even played. I don’t think we ever had a single practice. And then finally, I got into Death Piggy. Death Piggy was kind of the real band I was in that actually went out and played shows and did stuff and got me laid and stuff like that. So, that was cool. And that kind of actually grew into GWAR, but there was a whole bunch of other ones kind of in the mean time. Arm Pits was one; Conglomo was another one. Gams on Wheels, I believe was another one. A whole profusion—literally thousands of bands, and they’ve almost all sucked.
CN: Well, at least all that sucking got you to the point where you don’t suck so bad, now…
DB: Oh, no. My sucking finally started to end somewhere around ’85 when I realized that people actually seemed to give a shit about the music we were making. So, we tried hard to keep sucking, but it just didn’t work out that way.
CN: Yeah, practice’ll do that, ya know? Practice’ll just ram that sucking right the fuck out of ya.
DB: (Laughs)
