Beat the Champ

"This right here is an album about professional wrestling," writes John Darniell in the liner notes of Beat the Champ, and he's not kidding. This is a concept album about nostalgia for wrestling, long before the days of the WWE.

Darniell is the main member of The Mountain Goats, who recorded the album, but Darniell is the lead singer and sole composer. I wrote about another album of theirs (his), All Hail West Texas, but Beat the Champ has worlds better production values, with a lovely array of woodwinds, brass, and strings, as well as old-fashioned rock and roll. They also feature Darniell's astounding lyrics, but he is also an accomplished novelist.

The record plays like a novel, in fact, with the opening song. "Southwestern Territory," a prologue of sorts, with a middle-aged man on yet another business trip tries to remember simpler times;

"Climb the turnbuckle high
take two falls out of three
blackout for local TV."

The rest of the album then explores the various facets of the glory that was pro wrestling in the '60s and '70s. Before Vince McMahon came along and made it a billion-dollar business, pro wrestling was largely a marginal affair that had a local presence. Darniell watched in Los Angeles, but I watched in Detroit, usually on Saturday mornings. I still remember the wrestlers: Tony Marino and Flying Fred Curry were good guys, The Sheik and Killer Brooks (who had a metal plate in his elbow pad) were bad guys. My brother and I faithfully watched and would re-enact the matches.

Darniell remembers all this, and those who saw the film The Wrestler will recognize some of it, too. He name checks a few real wrestlers, like Chavo Guerrero and Bull Ramos. In "The Legend of Chavo Guerrero" Darniell basically explains the appeal:

"Before a black and white TV in the middle of the night
I'm lying on the floor, bathed in light
telecast in Spanish, I can understand some
I need justice in my life. Here it comes"

Essentially, pro wrestling was like the world of superhero comic books--there was good and evil, and it was simple course in morality for pubescent boys.

In "The Ballad of Bull Ramos" we get the story of the retired wrestler:

"And the doctor recognizes me
as the operating theater grows dim
aren't you that old wrestler with the bullwhip
Yes sir, that's me, I'm him"

The songs are an eclectic group. There's the danceable "Foreign Object," with a funky sax line that has the catchy verse, "Gonna stick you in the eye, with a foreign object," the speed-metal "Werewolf Gimmick," the romantic "Luna," and the best song in my opinion, "Stabbed to Death Outside San Juan," which is like a film noir, with screeching strings and a pulpish lyric that I'm confident is the only one in the world that refers to the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. (I had to Google it).

This is a remarkable record, even if you've never watched a pro wrestling match. But if you have, and you're of an age similar to Darniell and myself, you may be washed away in nostalgia.