Over this weekend, Frank and I made the journey from New York City to Richmond, VA to pay our respects to Oderus Urungus, and his personal butt-boy Dave Brockie. Unfortunately, ridiculous traffic on I-95 thwarted our efforts to arrive for the viking funeral, but I have spent all morning finding every video available of the event and it was beautiful.
Gwar know how to do a sendoff, and you can see above, that Oderus' full outfit was propped up in a boat, with his cuttlefish fully erect and they burned that motherfucker to the ground. Randy Blythe was one of the people who spoke at the memorial, and he really put it in perspective with this Instagram post:
“Tonight we sent Oderus home in a fitting manner at the public memorial for Dave Brockie. A blazing Viking ship with Oderus laid out in it, the cuttlefish pointing proudly straight up. Watching my friend Dave‘s costume go up in flames in front of a thousand fans was so much more intense for me than the private memorial for friends & family we had April Fool’s Day.
I spoke at both of them, as GWAR asked me to, & both times as I spoke I was sad. But watching his alter-ego burn tore me up way more than the first memorial, maybe because there was Dave, the human who was my friend who just “left us”- I never saw his body- & then there was Oderus, who was something entirely else. To watch his stage gear burn was like watching part of my life literally go up in flames.
I was sobbing my eyes out as I took this photo. It was just a super-intense moment. Very beautiful, but overwhelming. Fly free, Oderus- you are missed.”
Everybody I talked to at the GWARBQ the following day had nothing but positive things to say about the memorial.
Update: Here's GWAR's full performance the next day at GWARBQ.
Here's a bunch of video of the speeches and the actual viking funeral:
We'll have plenty more GWARBQ coverage all week long!
