Style Weekly
GWAR Dirty? Try Their Soap, "Dragon's Blood"
The intergalactic, gross-rock act GWAR plans to launch yet another tour in the fall. This time around, perhaps the most jarring spectacle won't be onstage, but back at the merchandise table. There, beside the usual T-shirts and shot glasses, the band will be selling herbal GWAR soap.
Michael Walsh of Row House Soaps, a natural soap and gift shop on Main Street, is making bars of what he plans to call Dragon's Blood soap on behalf of the band. It has a "South American smell,飼VbCrLf Walsh says. "Patchouli, cedar wood, very earthy,飼VbCrLf with a multicolored red and a purple swirl that makes the bars look "kind of like on fire.飼VbCrLf
Walsh connected with GWAR through one of his soap clients, Nichole Roberts, owner of the North Side flower shop Nicola Flora. When he found out that Roberts' husband, Brad, was GWAR's drummer, he superimposed the band's logo on a pastel background. "In very prissy writing I wrote, "Bath time with GWAR,飼VbCrLf he says, laughing. "The whole thing is so wrong it's cool.飼VbCrLf
The soap is still in early planning phases; there's talk of 3-D GWAR monsters on a rope.
The band is well-known for its fake fluids: blood, semen, a pregnant Monica Lewinsky giving birth to a space beast onstage in a flood of faux-amniotic juices.
Aÿ"After a GWAR show you've got to get clean,飼VbCrLf Brad Roberts says.
What the band is less well-know for is the serious artistic work members undertake to make the elaborate, spiked space armor they wear onstage. The band has pioneered certain plastic casting and mold-making techniques and occasionally lectures on the process at well-known art schools. The craft is similar to how shaped soaps are made.
Will Nicola Flora carry the GWAR soap? Not likely, Nichole Roberts says. "I'm not using GWAR as a flag to launch a business to sell flowers,飼VbCrLf Roberts says. "The two are pretty juxtaposed in their purposes.飼VbCrLf
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