Killing Kids in America 6

Doktor Ross Sewage2 Comments

Question: why do I gotta see you guys at a GWAR show that’s soooooo expensive at $25? [average]

That’s a question that’s come up from a few downloading 1337 punks online as our sorry asses have been asked to be on this big tour. We normally play much smaller, cheap shows. The price is fairly commensurate with the quality of the show going experience we are able to put on. So why is a GWAR show so expensive? Ney, that shouldn’t be the question. Why is a GWAR show so cheap?

Here’s me and Matt Maguire, production head, slave, artist, performer, all-around amazing dude. This is around noon in Manhattan, the beginning of their day after driving all night.


Go-time o’clock: the crew is up and ready to go. They’ve got a rented truck plus a gigantic trailer attached to a tour bus to unload. Jim and Gibby… yes, hard at work.


The crew consists not only of Gwar slaves, but also hires locals from the club. Some of them seem used to it, others take quick snapshots with loose props.


Local crew member “Spider” is looking to get squished.


All these people will be working from noon until 2 am, approximately. Today in New York, the elevator inside Irving Plaza is broken. Sa-weet. Those are 300 pound steel set pieces holding guitar cabs. To quote Darth Vader, “Noooooooooooooo!”


Some crew will work much longer, cleaning. The entire club is covered in plastic and disposable carpet. I guess they don’t wanna be redecorated in fake-blood pink.


As the gear comes up, Matt and Bob Gorman (another long running and amazing Gwar slave / performer / artist) hang every band’s banner and set about assembling the stage themselves. Presumably, they are the only ones who can, as the directions are written in Antarctican.


Once it’s all set up, it’s a masterpiece akin to a Broadway show, except portable and way more durable. It’s also safe, quite unlike the Spider Man set.


This set has to be constructed over and over again, hold people, gear, and props, and be subjected to the rigors of blasts of liquid. And that’s just the fans cumming in excitement.


Speaking of liquid, slave / performer Scott goes about mixing that with a special pigment imported from France with water in giant canisters.


These will be pressurized with air by a large compressor. Physics finally used in real life. In this case to simulate 40′ ejaculation streams. The prof would be proud.


The crew then helps all the opening bands load in our gear. All on the dime of not us. Eventually the band, who also helps prep the stage, comes out around 3-5 for a decidedly ungory sound check with their sound engineers and tour manager. I assume these humans on stage to be the best local GWAR cover band around. After sound check, they are killed and eaten for their power.


By the time the attendees get to see the show, they hopefully enjoy a couple of openers like Sean’s Band and Every Time I Die. Then they blissfully witness an hour and a half or so of GWAR blasting them with blood and playing some ripping metal. The tigers think they’ve done all the hard work in the pit, making sure their white shirts are besmirched with pink fluid.


Never mind the incredibly hot costumes onstage and the amazing stench afterwards. There’s clean up and load out to do. Hopefully showers, too, lest the bus driver gets singed nose hairs.


It’s all in a day’s work for these scumdogs of the Universe. This doesn’t even factor in all the time designing and making the stuff back at the Slave Pit. So unquestioningly hand over your sheckles and feed yourselves to the world maggot, human. GWAR is in town.

Doktor Ross Sewage
www.doktorsewage.com
filling in at the Creepsylvania Hospital’s traveling burn ward

Killing Kids in America 5: Killbot

Doktor Ross Sewage1 Comment

Creepsylvania ISP
Incoming RSS archive
Src_Transmission: z3r0
user: Grand_Basilisk

Hear your leader, cult minions! The salvaged homunculus dubbed “Killbot” by it’s brilliant, handsome, and departed inventor the Ghoul Hunter, is in need of an upgrade to continue it’s mission… kill Ghoul!

Yes, the mechanized cyborg was rebuilt from the remains found at the ruins of the Ghoul Hunter’s castle following it’s first battle with Ghoul. Our cult scientists added chain guns, pneumatic claw, titanium-steel armor, and the brain of the most power-hungry bastard and anti-Semitic jerk in history… Walt Disney! With this power, Killbot defeated Ghoul and their pig-faced pathetic piece of shit lackey. But Ghoul escaped back to their accursed catacombs.

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Killing Kids in America 4

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Knoxville was a blast. Our friends Andy and Emily from Argentum Astrum really hooked us up with a cool warehouse spot to play along with some excellent non-pizza type food.

The venue itself was in an old storage facility and called Fireproof Gallery. It hopefully was, because while we played the entire floor was littered ankle deep with crumpled up pieces of paper. At one point, someone set them on fire. Good decision, what with only one exit. The crowd did their best to shut us down by moshing on top of pedals and such. But if life hasn’t destroyed us by now, these tigers don’t stand a chance.

We drove all night to meet up with Gwar after Mr. Somese rustled us up some spaghet on his camping stove. When we finally showed up in Charlotte to meet Gwar, slave extraordinary Bob Gorman informed us we wouldn’t be needed until more like 4. Thank fucking God, we won’t be loading in at noon the entire tour. Time to celebrate that and Merch King Povey’s birthday.

We had an okay show at Amo’s, though we decided our set definitely needed to be changed. To much mid pace, not enough thrash. We also have to load out immediately each night to make room for Gwar. That’s a little hard, but even harder when Charlotte decides we need a torrential downpour to help lubricate our load out. Good thing I demanded road cases for as much of our gear as possible.

Dino didn’t even want to bring drum cases. I demanded it. Square guitar cases are also preferred when I’m packing. And for the first time, we got amp cases. One is an SKB, one is the case I bought in Denver, and mine is one I pieced together myself.

Two days before tour, I again found myself at Urban Ore, local Bay Area salvage store, looking for something. What I found was two old steamer trunks. Perfect.

I bought some trunk case handles from Home Depot along with some 3/16″ pop rivets of different sizes.

I marked the holes and drilled the case. Pop riveting is my new obsession, so I got to work happily. I added washers, because the wood in these cases is rather thin.

I bought 1/2″ polyethylene foam, the standard foam for road cases, from local supplier Bay Rubber. No jokes, please. This was the most expensive purchase for the project. I had to cut the pieces in multiple and glue them together to make the walls thick enough to fit the case snugly. Another option would’ve been to use a cheaper foam on the outer layer and one layer of polyethylene for the inner layer.

I used 3M 90 spray adhesive to put the layers together and then line the case. I did two layers for the sides and bottom, one for the top, and three for the back and front. I also cut a bit of foam and wrapped it around the handles with some duct tape so it would be more comfortable to hold.

All the riveting, cutting, and gluing was done about an hour before we were suppose to leave for tour. I was so proud, checking the lid latching over and over again… and then the rusted hinges broke. FUCK! I panicked, and then found some fence hinges on my workbench. They were curved, so I bent those back to a straight shape with my vice. A couple quick pop rivets and I had new hinges.

It was all done in time for that first disaster with our trailer to set us back an entire day. Oh well. Now my wonderful Ampeg V4B is protected from the elements. I was not as I got soaked playing tetris with gear in the rain. Hopefully I don’t get all muppetty and catch pneumonia.

Killing Kids in America 3

Doktor Ross Sewage1 Comment

Funny thing about heading east, you lose an hour when you least expect it. Such was the case when we showed up as the first band was finishing in Kansas City. Twelve and a half hours in the car since 8am, and we were still late. Oops. Let’s see how these 12pm load-ins with Gwar go.

We showed up at the Aftershock Bar & Grill and quickly rushed our load-in. Our friend Jeff Sisson, FX artist and general man-about-town, was putting on the show with his band Troglodyte. I guess that’s why I found bizarre Neanderthal skins lying around in the back.

Troglodyte was awesome, brutal death metal with tons of guitar sweeps all while the members wore these movie-quality masks. Basically, they made us look like shit.

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Killing Kids in America 2

Doktor Ross Sewage1 Comment

Ad Astra Per Astrum. I just took a piss inside the Kansas welcome and information center (in a toilet, ye bastards) and that is printed on the state seal. Being it was an infomation center, I asked for info on the slogan. It means “to the stars through difficulty.” That seemed perfect to describe our first show of the tour.

We drove all day and night and day to Denver. We arrived at the venue, the Blast-O-Mat, an awesome punk house / venue that Sean and I had played before on the Impaled / Phobia tour in ’08.

When we parked, our ragged asses stumbled out and stretched to find we’d sheared the new wiring for the trailer by having it hang too low. Son of a… does it ever end?

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Killing Kids in America 1

Doktor Ross Sewage5 Comments

I’m too old for this shit. The Sean Band, in all our covert costume glory, is going on tour with Gwar.

van and trailer

First day of tour, and stuff is already fucking up. I’ve already had to sew a bunch of masks all night, then it was time for my DIY road case in the morn (more on that in a future post). Forget packing, paying bills, etc. The show must go on! At least, someday.

I’d planned a whole post about trailers. Considering this was the day mine failed, why not now.

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Death After Live: Low End Theory 1

Doktor Ross Sewage4 Comments

DI boxes. I didn’t like them. I didn’t understand them. I’ve invested in this refrigerator size cab and monster amp spewing forth fuzz and ass-end frequencies. Then, some sound guy comes along and puts a DI box before the amp and cab, negating the EQ on my amp, and cranks fuzz sans bass. Now it still sounds like ass, but not in the good way. Why can’t they just mic it?

Or maybe even Mikey it?
Or maybe even Mikey it?

I’ve had this argument against DI boxes and pro mic’ing bass for awhile now, until someone more knowledgeable than I finally asked, “Do you bring your own mic that can actually capture full bass frequencies?” Oh. Hadn’t thought of that. I don’t know shit about mics. I don’t know shit about bass frequencies. I don’t know shit about shit, apparently.

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Another VH – One Four Woe

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Someone commented that they’d been looking for one of these amps after I posted about the last alteration of mine, but couldn’t find any without “issues.” That seems to ring true here.

Today’s problem; the “high” input jack on my VH-140C that Dan Randall uses with us in The Sean Band. It cut out when the cord was jiggled. After almost 20 years of dedicated 1/4″ plug holding, the PCB mounted jack was failing to hold the 1/4″ plug tightly. It needed replacing.

First off, the high input and low input are confusing. Different manufactuers, including Ampeg, use different terms for dual inputs like this. With this amp, “high” is for more gain / sustain and guitars with passive pick ups. “Low” lessens the input and is for more cleans and guitars with active pick ups. I always thought it would be opposite. In this case, the high input ain’t working, so less is more. Less-on over. Les Nessman.

I don’t like these PCB mounted jacks because the metal contacts always wear out in the same way and cannot be bent back into shape. In the age of machines manufacturing machines, however, they are ubiquitous, like Hunter-Killers and Terminators. Unfortunately, their styles are not.

Upon opening the amp, I found this jack. It looks like a standard Cliff brand PCB jack, but it has L shaped legs for the PCB mount. A kind with straight legs will not fit correctly through the faceplate of this amp. That’s fine, but I can’t find anyone that sells these! They do exist on the website of the manufacturer, CHK Electronics, but they don’t sell from their site. They have yet to respond to my email about where to acquire ’em. Fuck. (update: They totally responded a few days later and even offered to sell me a “small” amount… still waiting on the purchase, but go CHK for an actual customer service response! That’s better than Ampeg can say.)

Luckily, the effects loop on the front of this amp uses the same jacks, and Dan doesn’t use the effects loop. He doesn’t use effects, because he has two left feet. Literally… it’s quite freakish.

Some desoldering, a quick swap, and the amp inputs are working fine. If I ever decided to sell this amp, it’s very unlikely they’ll test the effects loop. Shhhhh…

UPDATE 2-8-2012: The amp continued to have problems, cutting treble in and out… eventually, after I tried bypassing the effects loop with a cord, I found the moved problem jacks were still causing problems. I eventually ordered the S4-1308 replacement jacks from Cliff USA and so far, so good. So what.