Richmond - Alright folks, I’m going to say right off that I missed a big portion of the GWAR-B-Q due to my day job.  The party kicked off at noon, so before I got there Construct, Bloody Crackdown, Stuck Backwards, Meat Cleaver, Suppression, and Mobile Deathcamp had already played.  I also missed the Spew Olympics, which consisted of a single event where contestants used their noses to push an egg across the ground while being doused with spew from the bile driver.  Furthermore, I missed American A-Hole, the karaoke competition.

The moral of this story is you should tell all your friends to read this magazine so I can quit my day job, and bring you full coverage of these events.

Moving on, I found the entrance and got my smiley-face wrist-band secured, then ambled over to the tattoo tent. I was just in time to catch a girl getting the GWAR-B-Q logo tattooed on her very nice ass. The four artists from Brookland Park Tattoo offered $20, $50, and $100 sized GWAR-B-Q logo tattoos all day until the sun went down and there wasn’t enough light to tattoo by.

Once I’d eaten a delicious barbeque pork sandwich, I ventured out to see the music.  I was in time to catch Mensrea, featuring Cory Smoot of GWAR on guitar, and started working my way to the front to get shots of the band.  After stumbling in and then out of the mosh pit, I discovered there existed no barrier between band and fans, save the line of speakers on the ground. One nurturing fan fed the band hot dogs and beer, which they consumed without missing a beat.  The whole scene seemed to have a sense of childlike innocence and communal love despite being set to the sounds of heavy metal and fueled by beer and liquor.

After Mensrea, it was time for Cannabis Corpse.  Needless to say, they rocked.  They tore it up, and so did their fans.  I didn’t get a set list, but they played a bunch of songs about weed.  A few songs in, a guy dressed as a cannabis bud entered the crowd and much moshing awesomeness and laughter ensued.  The pit was really in full force, and despite being essentially a giant green target of moshing aggression, the guy dressed as the bud seemed to be the safest as the costume provided some cushioning against the concrete.  Driven by the thrashing beats, ripping guitar, and screaming lyrics, the marijuana mascot moshed, crowd surfed (and wiped-out), fell over the speakers, and hugged the lead singer.  It was an amazing performance.

As the sun began to set, it was time for the little prince of darkness to take the stage.  The band began to play, and 4’9’’ Little Ozzy entered from behind the drum set.  The crowd was thick with the sweaty and drunk, packed tight all around the stage.  Little Ozzy as a band doesn’t just play the music the way it was meant to be played, they put on an entire show.  Lacking a stage, Little Ozzy would climb a set of platform steps to stand above the crowd, belting out lyrics and shaking with passion during guitar solos.  He came prepared with a blood-and-guts-like mixture that he ate and threw into the crowd.  He would not divulge the ingredients to me except to say “I can tell you that the mixture was something even the guys from GWAR would consider gross!”  Also, during “Flying High Again” he produced an incredibly long joint, which got passed around the crowd and mock-smoked.  He even let a small girl from the crowd play tambourine during the last few songs.  The little girl rocked out so hard people in the crowd asked if they could adopt her.  By the time they got to “War Pigs” it seemed everyone in the place had squeezed forward, and the crowd was spilling over the speakers, several times causing the power cords to disconnect from guitarist Dave Runner’s pedal board.  Runner’s amazing solos and sexy moves proved to be more than some could handle, and toward the end of the show a girl rushed him, half falling and half tackling him to the ground.  Runner survived, but his pedal board wasn’t so lucky. If you missed this show, catch Little Ozzy and several other bands at the Little Ozzyfest on October 2 at the Old Town Civic Center in Petersburg.

Last up was RAWG (GWAR without costumes), who played a musical history of GWAR.  They started with the Death Piggy line-up, which was lead-singer Dave Brockie’s first band.  After switching up members a few times, they began to play with the original Scumdogs of the Universe GWAR line-up and played songs from the first GWAR albums.  They continued to switch members, playing favorites from different albums, until they came to the current GWAR line-up with Dave Brockie as lead singer, Mike Derks on guitar, Cory Smoot on guitar, Casey Orr on bass, and Brad Roberts on Drums.  With this set-up they played newer GWAR songs, including those from their newest album Lust in Space.  Though the sun had long since set and vendors were breaking down their tents, skaters were still ruling the half-pipe, and the crowd was still going strong, moshing and singing along to their favorite GWAR hits.  After eleven hours, GWAR-B-Q finally wound down, and the last of the fans and skaters wandered out of the Bike Lot.