Dave Brockie

Dave Brockie - Quick Facts

Profile Overview of Dave Brockie

David Murray Brockie (August 30, 1963 – March 23, 2014) was a Canadian-born American singer and musician. He was the lead vocalist of the heavy metal band Gwar, in which he performed as Oderus Urungus, and he was a bassist and lead singer in the bands Death Piggy, X-Cops, and the Dave Brockie Experience (DBX). He additionally played the Oderus Urungus character in the comedy horror TV sitcom Holliston. Brockie died of a heroin overdose in 2014.

This profile of Dave Brockie covers Early Life and Family Background, Oderus Urungus, Backstory, History and 1990 arrest for obscenity.

Early Life and Family Background of Dave Brockie

David Brockie was the younger of two adopted sons of William and Marion Brockie, both of whom were originally from the United Kingdom. David's older brother, Andrew, died from complications of AIDS in the early 1990s. While born in Canada, at age 3 his parents emigrated to the United States. David grew up in Fairfax, Virginia.

He attended Oak View Elementary School and graduated from James W. Robinson Secondary High School in 1981. David's interest in playing music began in high school. David was a huge fan of Monty Python's Flying Circus and frequently impersonated their skits with friends. He possessed a vivid imagination and was creative throughout his youth, contributing comics and artwork in 1983 to Nihil Obstat, a Richmond, Virginia-based fanzine.

Oderus Urungus of Dave Brockie

Brockie portrayed Oderus Urungus, Gwar's lead singer, from Gwar's inception in 1984 until his death. Oderus appeared as an intergalactic humanoid barbarian with devil horns and a meaty-looking face, and carried a long sword named "Unt Lick" and a cuttlefish around his loins.

Backstory

According to the character's backstory, Oderus Urungus is 50 billion years old, and was assembled on a planet called Scumdogia in "Syntho Womb 5" after pieces of his moldy war frame were found scattered throughout the galaxy. His only true companion was his cuttlefish, though lost for a short period it returned to its true resting place, strategically placed over his loins.

According to interviews, Oderus's father was a supercomputer, and his mother was a petri dish. During a reading of Goodnight Moon, Oderus revealed that he was born into a gladiatorial arena, during which time he was given a sword, and battled an onslaught of "slowtards" who were trying to rape him. It is suggested in the lyrics of "Fire in the Loins" (from RagNaRok) that Slymenstra Hymen is his sister, but this is never fully explained.

History

Oderus Urungus was the only character to have existed throughout every incarnation of Gwar until his death, having started as a guitarist, then moving to bass, and finally lead vocals.

Like all of Gwar's characters, Oderus underwent several design changes since his inception. He first started out as a relatively normal-looking character with a papier-mâché helmet with spikes that appeared to be made out of aluminum foil. This eventually progressed into a rubber wig. In the late 1980s Brockie, along with Chuck Varga, created the now-famous original design mask.

After Hell-O!, he added large shoulder pads. These remained relatively unchanged (except for materials used) until 1994, when Brockie experimented with a new style - the left arm resembled a mutated tentacle. The change did not last, and by the year's end, the design returned to the World War I-era German helmet-shaped shoulder pads. This version can be found in the "Saddam A Go-Go" video from the "Rendezvous With RagNaRok" movie.

In 2001, after the filming of "It's Sleazy", Brockie redesigned the shoulder pads to feature two skulls with longer, more blade-shaped points. The disfigured face remained relatively unchanged since 1988, with slight additions made in 2001 (the redesign of Oderus was in collaboration with the medieval violence-themed Violence Has Arrived album, released in November of that year) – two horns, roughly six or seven inches (150 or 180 mm) in length.

For the Beyond Hell album and tours both preceding and succeeding said album, Oderus's mask was once again redesigned. It appeared more decayed and distorted than the previous masks, and there was exposed flesh on the forehead and the mask had a lighter color to it. The beard was fuller and larger and had red and green highlights in it. The most recent Oderus mask had longer horns and cheek bones that stood out more.

As the front man for the band, Dave Brockie was the most interviewed among the group, alternating between himself and Oderus Urungus. All of Gwar's major television appearances included Dave portraying Oderus.

Oderus appeared semi-regularly on the late-night Fox News talk show Red Eye w/Greg Gutfeld as the Intergalactic Correspondent from July 8, 2009, to September 30, 2010.

On April 3, 2012, the television sitcom Holliston had its world television premiere on the FEARnet cable television network. Created by horror filmmaker Adam Green (Hatchet, Frozen), the series starred Dave Brockie in his "Oderus Urungus" character as series lead Adam Green's imaginary alien friend and guardian angel who lives in his closet. In each episode, whenever "Adam" faced a personal problem, "Oderus" would come out of his closet and dish out advice that was both hilariously and terribly misguided, oftentimes causing "Adam" to have even worse problems.

A second season was green-lit the morning after the second episode had aired. The second season of Holliston began airing on television on June 4, 2012. Brockie toured and appeared with his castmates as "Oderus Urungus" at many live performances of Holliston across the United States in 2012 and 2013. Green appeared on stage with Gwar several times when the band had him introduce their encore performance. The full Holliston cast was murdered on stage and fed to both Gwar's world maggot and meat grinder at several US shows.

A third season of Holliston was being scripted by Green when Brockie died in March 2014. When asked in interviews about how he would address the loss of Brockie and whether or not Holliston would indeed continue, Green stated, "I am too heartbroken over the loss of my friend and brother to think about that right now." Green says he will be focusing on his other upcoming film projects until he is emotionally ready to turn his attention back to his TV series and that "it will take me however long it may take me."

Green joined Jello Biafra and Randy Blythe on stage as one of the speakers at Brockie's public memorial in Richmond, Virginia in August 2014 where he delivered a 15-minute eulogy to the crowd and posted a public eulogy in his blog on www.ariescope.com that included the full audio of Brockie's final voice mail to him. In the voice mail message, Brockie calls Green from Gwar's tour in Australia simply to say, "I miss my Holliston family and I love you… like a little motherfucking little brother. I love you much."

In 2012, he joined the 11th annual Independent Music Awards judging panel to assist independent musicians' careers.

Source: adapted from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Brockie), text available under CC BY-SA 4.0.