A Breakdown in the Discourse: Police Teeth's Real Size Monster Series, 12 Years Later

Do you remember the spreadsheet that you wrote up way back in 1993?

Nobody ever says that changed my life, nobody says "that inspired me"

Now i'm happy to make a living but there's one thing that my boss will never know

There is a mountain of difference 'tween a good day of work and a record or a show

- "Bob Stinson Will Have His Revenge on Ferndale"

In a fit of nostalgia and missing my friends, i threw on Police Teeth's 2009 slab, Real Size Monster Series, on the drive to work the other morning. It was released in February of that year, so it recently just passed its twelfth anniversary, which means i missed the chance to do a ten-year retrospective on it by two years. Which is appropriate, since "just a couple years too late" is probably a good summary for their music, their six-year run as a band, and pretty much the entire grip of loud-ass freewheeling rock 'n' roll bands they associated with. Man, there was a time there when i really thought Police Teeth would be the band that saved us all--not that i really knew what i meant by that, but it had something to do with their unique blend of PacNW Wipers-meets-Superchunk style riffs, their blue-collar everyman roots, and their brutally acerbic laughing-in-the-face-of-despair lyrics. Oh, and our shared amusement at the inherent ridiculousness of the music business.

Back in 2009 my own band was pushing a similarly themed work, a record built on concepts of fame vs. infamy and the desperate depths people could sink to while chasing the twin dragons of fame & fortune. A friend had invested his own money in putting our disc out on his record label and a promo campaign to push it on the populace, and we felt obligated to do everything obnoxious in our power to hype it, lest our buddy lose his ass (which he probably did). Of course, the amount of hustle one can afford in between work days can only take you so far -- touring two weeks out of the year on vacation days is no way to build an audience. But we still felt an obligation to try, because outside of the monetary investment, well, that's just what you do when you're in a band, right?

My musical generation is one that came of age in the wake of the 1980s Alternative Nation and the Great Nirvana Explosion of 1991/92. It was a time when Warner Brothers gave Faith No More three albums to grow into their own skin, and then threw money at Mr. Bungle because they were related. Shit, Warner threw money at The Boredoms. A Japanese noise band that utilized neither melody nor English. What? bands like Jawbox and Shudder to Think(!) got major label deals because the record companies were chucking water balloons full of cash at any group with weird haircuts and a girl bassist, trying to unearth the next Kurt Cobain. So yeah, it didn't seem out of the question that a willfully obtuse noise-rock band from Wisconsin could grab a wider audience between 8-hour shifts. 

Young and dumb, what can you do.

Hugs Via Satellite: PRF Virtual Thundersnow 2021

Banner by Christopher Williams

I've been trying to get a handle on my thoughts and feelings about how PRF Virtual Thundersnow went down and went over with our PRF family. By any metric, it was a hit: we put together a great mish-mash of musical performances and videos made by our friends, with lots of random nonsense sprinkled into the mix (Japanese rabbit cartoons? Local Escanaba news features about Dobber's Pasties? Sure, let's go nuts), and everything was received warmly, with heart emojis and friendly laughter. On Saturday the Twitch channel for Thundersnow registered almost 600 individual viewers (even assuming on the low end that everyone at some point streamed from multiple sources, that still exceeds the 150-to-200-person average of your standard in-person Thundersnow). New friends were made as several bands and artists made their PRF debuts. It was a good time.

But also, it wasn't Thundersnow. As the next morning reared its head and Dixie and i sloughed off our blankets in anticipation of yet another cookie-cutter pandemic work week, the reminders of that were clear. No Monday morning brunch trip to the Swedish Pantry. No stop at Dobber's to fill up a cooler with pasties to take home to Milwaukee. No three-and-a-half-hour road trip back home. Just the grey promise of cubicle walls. We really should have taken a day to decompress. 

Don't get me wrong -- the weekend was lovely, and it was great to see everyone's faces, even if they were in a weekend-long Zoom meeting or on the Twitch feed. But it also served as a stark reminder that it's been almost a year since the last time i hugged someone that wasn't my wife. 

A One-Sheet for Zeroed Hero's Love Letters to a Mannequin

Y'all, I've got a bone to pick with the late-stage rock and roll world of the early 21st century, and it can be summarized as thus: for a music genre ostensibly born out of poor, working-class country and blues, we as a culture sure seem to focus on artists about as far removed from “working class” as possible, don't we? It seems like somewhere in every rock and roll “success” story these days, the rags before the riches are a curtain hiding some sort of Wonderful Wizard/Svengali/what have you holding the purse strings. How compelling is the musical journey of a young country songstress when daddy buys out a share of the record label that signs her (sorry, Taylor)? It's easy to spend years honing your craft when your modeling industry magnate papa's got the safety net strung (am I right, dude from The Strokes?). I propose that we jettison those nonsense narratives and cushy, coddled rock stars and focus on the real rock and roll success stories out there – that we drop these “heroes” and lift up the supposed “zeroes” who are doing the real heavy lifting out there in the musical world. As luck would have it, I'm writing this because I've got some for ya, and – hey, what a coincidence! – they're Madison, Wisconsin's Zeroed Hero.

Let's get the full disclosure out of the way – the main dudes of Zeroed Hero, Dean Kesler and Chris Franczek, go back with me almost 30 years now. We played ridiculous classic rock covers in high school, as you do when you grow up in a tiny farming town like Who Cares, WI, worshipping the dudes on the cover of Guitar World. (We had those first three Black Crowes singles on lock, yo.) So I feel like I have a unique perspective in telling the story of these two rock and roll lifers. Yeah, “lifers” is the term I'd use, even though most of those lives have been taken up by the supposedly un-rocking pursuits of family and boring-ass day jobs. I'm making a point here. See, “real life” in the traditional sense doesn't leave a lot of room for dreams of rock 'n' roll stardom, so whatever time does get dedicated to music has to be for the love of the game—and these two love the game like few others. As adulthood became marriages, kids, careers, and the grind, the dream of putting out an album took hold and sat just under their skin like an invisible rash that festered for years. Finally, once a series of personal losses skinned Kesler's soul raw, that rash finally exposed, our heroes could finally scratch.

Love Letters to a Mannequin sprung from a series of journals written by Kesler as letters addressed to those who had left, made corporeal with riffs informed by the hard rock that's fueled both Kesler and Franczek since those farmboy days. In a world obsessed with genre-splicing and overly-hip categorizing, Mannequin focuses squarely on populist, blue-collar guitars and hooks. This isn't indie rock, alterna-bluegrass, alt-folk, or post-black-metal ska-core – the opening chords of “Precipice” proudly announce that this is straight-up, 70s/90s-styled, no-bullshit hard rock. It's technically a debut album, but these songs betray some long years honing some serious chops. Backed on record by guitarist Dain Di Mattia and Paul Kennedy keeping the beat, tracks like the driving “The Physics of You” crackle with energy and maturity far beyond your typical debut, with moody but triumphant lyrics to match. For all the pain that kickstarted this self-funded, completely DIY project (take that, “Kickstarter” bands!), the thrill of creation by far overshadows the angst. (The live band boasts scene vets Steve Truesdell on guitar, keyboardist Alison “Little Margie” Margaret, and drummer Tony Kille.)

And that's the real triumph here. In a world that foolishly gauges artistic success in dollars, cents, and units moved, isn't the existence of art in and of itself the real success? For every one of those conveniently bankrolled rock stars, there are thousands of supposed nobodys out there clawing through the grind of ordinary, everyday life in order to fuel something extraordinary, something fueled by love and the pure desire to create and to friggin' rock. Love Letters to a Mannequin is just another kickass, well-executed independent hard rock disc, and dammit, that's what makes it special. If that's not the definition of zero as hero, I don't know what is. Blue-collar rock 'n' roll for anyone and everyone...courtesy your friendly neighborhood Zeroed Hero. 

"I never claimed to be different, I only said I was bored"

Image by Wikipedia user goongunther (cc)

Those that know me know that I count Faith No More among my favorite bands of all time, neck-and-neck with Brainiac for the Universal Championship. Angel Dust, my all-time favorite album, took the tiny little room in my brain that contained my concept of what was possible in rock music, and blew its walls to hell with its unapologetic rejection of the mainstream’s expectations for a follow up to their breakthrough album, The Real Thing. “Oh, you liked ‘Epic?’ Then you’re gonna hate this!” they exclaimed, unleashing a glorious mish-mash of an album that was simultaneously ugly, beautiful, confounding and exhilarating. Angel Dust remains a unique species of untamed beast to this day; to listen to it now and remember that there was a time when something this original could exist on a major label is almost mind-bending in retrospect.

But before there was the purposeful, counter-intuitive originality of Angel Dust, there was the pure dog-in-a-science-lab “we have no idea what we’re doing” punk/funk/metal/goth mish-mash of the early Faith No More releases, We Care A Lot and Introduce Yourself, two gloriously raw see-what-sticks splatters of meat on a day-glo kitchen wall. And before Mike Patton lent his vocals to FNM’s breakthrough hits and emerged as one of rock’s best-ever vocalists, the fevered originality of the band was personified in a bouncing ball of manic beach bum energy named Chuck Mosley.

Even after falling in love with The Real Thing, going back to discover the Chuck albums in my teen years elicited a solid “huh?” when sliding the tapes into my double-cassette stereo. There’s certainly a degree of charm in any set of first albums from a band that congealed its vision with later releases—think Pretty Hate Machine, Bleach, Smack Bunny Baby, or any other slabs of protomatter that only hinted at the stars that would blaze bright with later, fully-realized energy. But with Faith No More, the difference between Chuck and Patton cast the band’s evolution in stark relief. While Patton entered the band with a fully-formed, calculated mastery over his dynamic range, Chuck Mosley’s vocals on We Care A Lot and Introduce Yourself were haphazard, off-kilter, and untamed. Whereas Patton has often copped to approaching lyric writing as an exercise in sculpting phrases based on how they sound, Mosley was less focused and more sincere, vomiting heart and soul onto tape via his endearingly out-of-key howl. No time to nail that melody on the head, gang—someone’s trying to charge Chuck 95 cents for a transfer, maaaan.     

Fortunately, back in my younger days we all were more apt to give new, weird music multiple spins to let it sink in and process, to decide whether or not it was our thing, and Introduce Yourself grew on me like a tapeworm. To be real, it carried a lot of similarities with The Real Thing: where TRT featured the metallic dirge "Zombie Eaters," complete with melodramatic synth-and-vocal intro, Introduce Yourself's "The Crab Song" followed the same formula. And it's hard to argue against the connective tissue linking "Epic" with Mosley's signature performance on "We Care A Lot," a song that existed in a pupal stage on the Mordam Records album of the same name before getting reworked for the major label IY. In all honesty, the primary barrier to a true appreciation of FNM's first two records is acquiring an appreciation for Chuck. Once Chuck Mosley clicks with ya, the rest is neon gravy.  

To be sure, there are hits and misses on both albums--they're by no means flawless works. The original version of the song "We Care A Lot" drags compared to its update on Introduce Yourself, and a few of the songs on the first album have instrumental stretches that sound less like musical breaks than places where Mosley couldn't think of any lyrics. Roddy Bottum's keyboards have always enjoyed a healthy dollop of 80s symphonic cheese; on We Care A Lot, they're dramatically goth almost to the point of parody. But when it all works together, like on the theatrical classic "As The Worm Turns" or the nihilistically triumphant "Mark Bowen," those traits are a strength instead of a hinderance.

And that's what's beautiful about Faith No More with Chuck Mosley on vocals: with music this daringly original, unevenness is to be not only expected, but welcomed, because when it works, goddamn, it works. By 1985, Faith No More had gone through a litany of vocalists and a few other lineup changes, and it's not hard to imagine that the revolving door introduced a myriad of ideas and stylistic influences that the band was trying to mix into a final, cohesive stew. Once upon a time, it was expected that a band might need to take an album or two in order to develop and find their groove; in this age of shortened attention spans and increased access to anyone and everyone's catalog online, there's less patience for artist development or evolution.

This is the life lesson i took from bands like Faith No More and Brainiac (whose lead singer, the dearly departed Tim Taylor, once told me "we just try to come up with stuff that's original sounding more than anything"). Sure, there's something to be said for genre exercise -- there's a consistency and prolificity to be had in sticking to a formula, and it's produced some great bands. But it's in taking chances where the real thrill of songwriting lies for me. Sure, not everything attempted pays off, and lots of ideas get trashed, but those moments when you stumble across something that is 100% unapologetically unique to the personalities involved? That's magic.

Chuck Mosley died last week at the age of 57, and his passing makes the world a less weird, less unique place. But at the same time, the world is much weirder for him having been in it--not just for the music he left behind, but for the weirdos he inspired to be the most outlandishly unique versions of themselves, no matter how unvarnished, unfiltered, or even out of tune. No musician should tire of their uniqueness.

HEY!
WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT?
HUH?!

Oh nothing, just wondering what it is you're doing...
Why it is you're doing that whatever it is you're doing
Oh yeah?
WHY? WHY?
I dunno
It just doesn't seem like something you'd be doing
I mean, you of all people, ha!
Know what I mean?

Yeah I know it's been bugging you since the day I was born, huh?
I asked my friend Anne about it
I said
"ANNE, ANNE, ANNE, what am I supposed to do, huh?
It's been bugging them since the day that I was born."

She said, "Do whatever the hell you want to do!
Now is the time where you can do anything!
Everything you do, anything is still gonna turn out great
I mean, you've got the world at your feet."




P.S. One of the last recordings Chuck Mosley worked on is embedded below. Check it out.

WWE Network World Tour: Survivor Series 1997

BONUS 20TH ANNIVERSARY COVERAGE!

The Undertaker dropped the WWF World Title to Bret "Hitman" Hart at SummerSlam '97, thanks to an assist from special referee Shawn Michaels, who swung a chair in Bret's direction and hit 'Taker instead, forcing Michaels to count the pin for his sworn enemy. It was a moment that kicked off a fresh chapter in the ongoing feud between the two men, as babyfaces and heels blurred alignments all throughout the WWF. It was the "gang warfare" era of the World Wrestling Federation, as groups like the Nation of Domination, the Hispanic Los Boriquas, and the biker-styled Disciples of Apocalypse tore through the WWF's midcard and each other. And at the top of the company were Bret Hart's reformed Hart Foundation, now consisting of not only Hart and his tag parter, Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart, but also his brother Owen, the British Bulldog, and briefly Brian Pillman before his untimely death in October 1997. They were reviled anti-American heels at first, until they began waging a full-scale war with D-Generation X, the new stable consisting of Michaels, his buddy "Triple H" Hunter Hearst Helmsley, Chyna, and their bodyguard, the returning "Ravishing" Rick Rude.

Alignments began to blur for a few reasons. First, as Michaels and Helmsley's behavior became increasingly sophomoric and crude, their in-ring behavior began to include more blatant rulebreaking, which alienated the fans that still respected competitors that tried to win the right way. (That said, DX was building a loyal fan base of horny teenaged Beavis & Butt-Head fans from the first time the Hitman called them "degenerates" in the first place.) Meanwhile, reality was creeping in to the on-screen kayfabe world of the WWF for perhaps the first time. With the explosion of the Internet in the mid-90s, wrestling fans banded together online and smartened each other up to the backstage mechanics of the carnival on a level not previously seen. As the Monday Night War with WCW escalated during 1996 and 1997, Internet wrestling fans followed every rumored contract negotiation, every leaked piece of backstage drama, with relish. Finding out how the sausage was made was every bit as interesting as consuming the product, and it began to enhance the "smart fan's" enjoyment of the business.

So when it was rumored that Bret Hart was about to be let out of his 20-year WWF contract to jump ship to WCW, the Hart/DX feud gained a fresh, unique wrinkle. WCW had been poaching WWF talent like crazy, and the nWo storyline had set the wrestling world on its ear, destroying the WWF in the ratings on a weekly basis based on, well, the former WWF stars Kevin "Diesel" Nash, Scott "Razor Ramon" Hall, and "Hollywood" Hulk Hogan taking over the power structure in the WWF's rival company. It was widely perceived that the reeling WWF wouldn't be able to recover if their longest-tenured star, Bret Hart, were to jump ship. As rumors flew online, it became evident that the looming Survivor Series showdown between Hart and the now-European Champion Shawn Michaels (who had defeated the Bulldog for the title) would be Bret's last WWF Title defense and last match in the company. Thus, fans became divided--several accusing the Hitman of selling out (despite the simple fact that Vince McMahon couldn't afford his contract anymore), and some choosing to cheer and thank the Hitman for his years of service. By November 9, those fans were beginning to take over as Michaels and DX behaved more and more like heels. (All this despite the anti-American, pro-Canadian act the Harts were playing out during the Spring and Summer.)

With the fans divided and Bret's fate, along with the fate of the WWF World Title, in the air--would Hart drop the title to Shawn? Would he successfully defend the belt, then relinquish it on Raw the next night?--the WWF descended on Montreal, Quebec, for a Pay Per View event built around gang violence, but with an emphasis on the drama surrounding the two individuals who would square off in the main event.

(I tried really hard to just start in with WrestleMania XIV after the last recap, but it became painfully obvious that it would be impossible without using this show to point out how radically the landscape of the WWF had shifted between 'Manias. Plus, this is maybe the second-most infamous PPV in wrestling history aside from Over the Edge '99--frown--so it's hard not to spend time on it, especially with its 20th anniversary looming. So here we go.)

Lardo calls it quits in thrilling Cactus Club Debut

Back in my college days, my friend Josh stumbled across a random, inconspicuous slice of vinyl buried in the library of WRST in Oshkosh, the college radio station where we were tag teaming an overnight freeform shift and looking for random odd finds in the back room to take a gamble on at 3:30 in the morning. On this night, Josh found a humble, beat-up sleeve labeled “The Cardboards: Greatest Hits Volume Two,” and the back cover photo of four awkward looking nerds futzing with a bunch of cables somehow convinced him to throw it on. What we had discovered was a lost, nearly forgotten DEVO-esque new wave punk group from Pittsburgh that managed to get this five-song EP released before falling apart and disappearing into obscurity. The discovery of something so randomly awesome and unheralded hit us over the head with way more force than anything the labels and magazines were trying to jam into our earholes at the time, and it could be argued that the Cardboards had as much or more an impact on our first bands as Sonic Youth or any of the other Alternative Nation poster children of the time. Of course, now that we're a couple decades deep into the Internet Era, a cursory Google search will pull up plenty of information about the Cardboards, but without that one eye-catching flip through the record sleeves buried deep in a college radio library, we wouldn't have known to even search their name.

But even today, in the era of blogs and PR firms spamming our eyes and ears with the latest career-minded trend-hoppers looking to get their Kickstarter funded, it can be those short-lived, hot-burning obscurities that still pack the biggest punch and excite music lovers the most. It's almost cliché at this point to say that there are more bands out there than ever, and for every Hep New Thing that catches fire through some combination of luck and timing, there are a hundred bands that are just as good or better that flame out before anyone cares to notice the self-released, unsold stacks of vinyl collecting mold on their merch tables.

Which bring us to Chicago's Lardo. A part-time concern formed in 2013 by serial band-starter Brian Pennington (Radiant Republic, MegaMaul) and Nick Minor, Lardo is a thrillingly virtuosic no-wave informed post-punk trio layering bit-crushed, synthesized guitar heroics over a bare-bones rhythm section straight out of 1990s Touch & Go Records. Their recently-released debut, Gunmetal Eyes, is a minimalist mindfuck of dark, scary noise-rock as creepy as it is exciting, as sparse as it is heavy. It's an incredibly unique and messed-up work that deserves loads of attention. It would be a phenomenal opening statement in what you'd normally think would be a future full of possibility, but Lardo played what may well be their last show ever at the Cactus Club on Saturday in front of a room full of stoked and swaying attendees.

The band ran through Gunmetal Eyes in its entirety during their runaway train of a set, barely pausing for a breath as they ran nearly every one of the record's ten tracks together. Minor, standing stone-still, stoically delivered cynically snarky vocals (“Everyday's the same/Things are gonna change/I can play this game/'Cuz things are gonna change” from “Another Day in the Life”) while Pennington violently flailed all over stage left, repeatedly slamming his body into the wall while laying down dizzyingly bendy guitar lines in between fixing the pedals he kept accidentally unplugging. It was an exhilarating juxtaposition, although it probably wouldn't be lying to say that all the attention in the room was focused on the shredder with the synthetic-sounding licks. That undivided attention came from a fairly full room full of excited, flailing headbangers, many of whom came up from Chicago to see their local heroes call it quits (come back soon, everyone!).

So now does Lardo fade into memory? As is the case in so many bands that die before their time, real life is butting in, as Pennington is moving to North Carolina for the usual work/family reasons. But he hasn't closed the door on Lardo, reminding a few of us at Cactus that there's no telling the future. After all, the internet has made long-distance practice and file-sharing more rule than exception for some. In the meantime, who knows, maybe a copy of Gunmetal Eyes ends up in some kid's hands in a discount bin or college radio library somewhere in a few years, completely unheralded, and that kid gets their mind blown into next week and immediately starts a band so they can get their guitar to sound as fucked up as Lardo's. I bet the Cardboards would approve, wherever they are.

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the bill, three other bands stepped up to the plate to deliver excellent sets along with Lardo—most notably Chicago's The Terrible News, a brand new noise-rock outfit playing their second show. Their brand of bluesy Steve-Albini-and-The-Bad-Seeds skronk absolutely leveled the Cactus faithful, including a downright punishing version of Cher's “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” that was equal parts beautiful and downright ugly. The show was bookended by local favorite Heavy Hand, playing a few new tracks including a new singalong winner about malfunctioning Big Muff pedals (“This Big Muff is fucked up/And all our shit is broken!”), and Gauss, who brought an interesting Elephant 6 take to their brand of noise (although maybe that was just the trumpet). Hopefully every one of these bands gets the time to develop a full discography before one of their members gets dragged to Missoula for work or some shit.

WWE Network World Tour: WrestleMania 13

Wrestling historians tend to point to WrestleMania XIV as the beginning of the "Attitude Era:" that oft-romanticized period of unprecedented profitability for the then-World Wrestling Federation during which competition with WCW pushed Vince McMahon & co. into new, more adult-oriented (read: high school male-oriented) creative arenas. Most wrestling fans prefer to remember the Attitude Era as a time when raunchier storylines were accompanied by a marked increase in hardcore wrestling styles and a continued uptick in in-ring workrate that began with the ascension of Bret Hart during the "New Generation" era of roughly 1993-1998. (They either prefer to ignore the rampant sexism and outright misogyny or insist that it wasn't a big deal because of the target demographic, but inches upon inches could be written about the more problematic aspects of having "Attitude.") But let's be real here--the Attitude Era started long before "Stone Cold" Steve Austin's ascendancy to the WWF World Title. By March 1997, there were plenty of cuss words and middle fingers being thrown around...to say nothing about the pistol "Loose Cannon" Brian Pillman threatened Austin with in an infamous segment of a late 1996 episode of Raw:



So if we're going to use a WrestleMania as a signpost to the beginning of the official "Attitude Era," i suggest we use the moment where Steve Austin, the next face of the company, transitioned from the despised villain that broke into his former friends' homes to the authority-cursing antihero whose hell-raising antics caused more audience glee than consternation--the WrestleMania 13 Double-Turn. (If nothing else, this 'Mania was the turning point that caused the ramp-up to what was probably the real beginning of the Attitude Era: the Montreal Screwjob at Survivor Series '97, which, if you're actually reading this and don't know what that is, demands your attention be directed to this phenomenal Radiolab episode.)

Man, have i been waiting for this one. Not for the main event--the WWF World Title picture in Spring 1997 was a complete mess and that it shook out into Undertaker vs. Sycho Sid was pretty unfortunate...but it did free up Bret Hart and the rapidly ascending (and already super-popular despite his status as a "heel") Austin to settle their burgeoning blood feud with one of my favorite 'Mania matches ever: their semi-main event submission match.

OK, here's the story: Shawn Michaels held the title he won at WrestleMania 12 all the way until the 1996 Survivor Series, where he lost the title to Sid after the big man cleaned Michaels' clock with a TV camera. Shawn won it back at the Royal Rumble in January '97 by delivering a taste of Sid's own medicine courtesy another camera, but before the February pay-per-view, Michaels ended up vacating the title. The reasons why are left to the speculative lens of history; the storyline involved a knee injury and Shawn's need to "find his smile again," while more nefarious theories point to Michaels choosing to forfeit the title rather than lose it back to Bret Hart in a scheduled rematch at WrestleMania 13. 



So regardless, the title was vacant and thus, a four-way elimination match was booked at In Your House: Final Four featuring Vader, Undertaker, and the final two Royal Rumble competitors, Steve Austin and Bret Hart. Austin won the Rumble under controversial circumstances that prolonged what was already a growing feud between Hart and him, and at Final Four, as the Hitman eliminated Austin en route to winning the match and his fourth WWF World Title, Austin refused to let it go. (Somewhere in here Austin's guaranteed title match at WrestleMania was conveniently forgotten about--probably because he got a shot at Final Four? I guess?) The next night on Raw, Bret defended his new title against Sycho Sid and Austin interfered, leading to Sid's victory for the title and a fresh layer to the grudge between Austin and Hart. If that wasn't enough, after Undertaker/Sid and Hart/Austin were set for WrestleMania, a cage match for the title was booked for the March 17 Raw between Hart and Sid, which could have affected which match actually ended up being for the title. After Sid won again due to interference from the Undertaker, Bret launched into an expletive-laced tirade as he complained about the WWF being out to "screw" him.



So...got all that? Shawn Michaels gives up the title and goes bye-bye for a spell, the title changes hands twice in 24 hours, and Bret's growing frustration with the company, which started during the build to WrestleMania 12, was boiling over as more and more people were slowly beginning to cheer for established "bad guys" like Austin. How can you argue with that buildup? Hell, you almost don't even need the undercard--although, who's gonna argue with Rocky Maivia vs. The Sultan? Wait--don't answer that. Let's just watch the damn show.

Ten Latest Flame Records Releases You Should Hear

On Thursday Milwaukee Record ran my feature article on Latest Flame Records closing up shop after nearly 13 years of kickass releases. It was really difficult to write that piece without injecting lots of personal asides and, admittedly, sour grapes and snarky butthurt feelings about Dan's decision to close up shop, which is why i'm hopping over here to do that, naturally. Make no mistake--i fully support Dan's decision to stop setting his personal income on fire in order to allow his favorite bands to have something to sell at shows. But the day i got the email from Mr. Hanke breaking the news, i felt like a family member had died.

To me, Latest Flame Records and the bands that recorded for it during its noisy second act were family. Having become aware of punk rock and independent record labels beginning with a mind-expanding summer between my senior year of high school and the onset of college in the early 90s, i was immediately drawn to the romantic notion of record label as symbol of quality and community. If i bought a Touch & Go Records release in the 1990s, i had a pretty good idea of what it sounded like before breaking the shrinkwrap--it was going to be loud, it was going to be abrasive, and it wasn't going to sound exactly like anything else available. And i was probably going to love it. Just as importantly, i had a pretty good notion that each of those bands were likely to play shows together, tour together, hang out together. Eli Janney of Girls Against Boys recorded Brainiac's Hissing Prigs in Static Couture. Blond Redhead opened for Shellac at the Congress Theatre. And so on. It quickly became a dream of mine to be a part of something like that. Dan shared that dream and made it happen with a stacked roster of aggressive and off-the-beaten-path-yet-completely-accessible-if-you-give-it-a-chance rock tunes from the likes of Police Teeth, Waxeater, Trophy Wives, Nervous Curtains, his Like Like The The The Death, and my own IfIHadAHiFi and Body Futures.

Music, like any art, is deeply personal and subjective, of course, and that the Latest Flame roster never exactly set the world on fire is by no means an indictment of its quality....of course. It's the same story that scores of labels that have come and gone have endured over the years. But when you're sinking the amount of money that it takes to release a record or a CD into something in which you believe, it's hard to not be frustrated when those efforts aren't validated by the outside world. We are only human beings, after all, and human beings are inherently social creatures seeking outside validation. But make no mistake: almost every time i get on stage with Body Futures or IfIHadAHiFi, and every time i throw on one of our records, i feel completely validated in that we've produced music that i would want to listen to and would be stoked about even if i wasn't in the band, and that's all anyone can realistically hope for. As my friend John Dykstra has often said to me, we should all be thankful for living in a time where we are able to make music and press records with our pals in the first place; should anyone else actually enjoy it, that's a bonus.

Still, being able to cover costs would have been a nice bonus.

In the spirit of celebrating the diverse Latest Flame catalog, here are ten Latest Flame releases that everyone should hear. Dan was kind enough to document it, so dammit, it should be heard. This stuff is all over the map, from new-wavy power-pop to wiry post-punk to brutal riffage, and it all deserves to be remembered. I hope you take some time to check them out if you don't know about them already. And thanks, Dan, for helping all of us live that dream of being part of a musical family with a sense of real community and belonging, just like those indie labels of lore. What a gift.

In more-or-less chronological order:

The Starving Artists of the 1%

I haven't done a ton of music-related writing in recent months. There've been lots of reasons for this--my day job saps my energy (the most consistent blogging i've ever done here took place while i was unemployed four years ago--go figure, eh?), all my available writing time has been taken up with WrestleMania liveblogging--but mostly, i've been in a rut of non-enthusiasm fed by a feeling that most people just aren't interested in reading about the bands i want to write about. I mean, who would want to hear about Motherfucker or Le Butcherettes or Hungry Man when stuff like this is out there in the world?



This sub-twee nonsense is a New York band called The Prettiots, and they live in a world that is almost completely removed from the musical universe populated by my peers and friends. I say "almost" because sometimes the two universes crossover like a Marvel vs. DC one-shot, although it's really more like Marvel vs. Achewood or DC vs. your local indie cartoonist who gets stocked at House of Heroes because It's Important to Support Local Art. One of those world collisions happened earlier this month, when The Prettiots traveled to South By Southwest in the hopes of getting "discovered" and "making it," a trek chronicled in part by a piece in the New York Times:

Weaving down from New York to Austin, Tex., in a minivan will cost the Prettiots about $1,000 in gas, plus $3,000 to rent the van with insurance. Hiring someone to manage the tour will be $1,500. Cheap hotels along the way: $500. And once the band members arrive at the music marathon on Tuesday, they will stay at an Airbnb accommodation, which will run them another $2,500 for four nights — the going rate, as the city is overrun by thousands of visitors.

All told, with incidentals and a $15 per diem for the musicians, the trip will cost the unsigned group nearly $10,000, said Asif Ahmed, the Prettiots’ manager, who is fronting some of the cost himself. “When you’re a band this young, it’s a necessary evil — spending money to eventually make it,” he said.

The article's point is valid on its surface--SXSW, as everyone knows, is crammed with "starving artists," in the Times' words,  playing for little to no money while hoping to catch someone's attention. But how starving can a band be when they have access to $10,000 to blow? In a spot-on response to this article, Deerhoof's Ed Rodriguez astutely observed, "The people they chose to speak with were so unlike any musician I’ve encountered in the past 20 years that I’m left wondering, where do they find the sources for these stories? Is this your realtor’s son’s band? Did the famous movie director you spoke with for your last interview have a daughter who recently recorded a demo?"

WWE Network World Tour: WrestleMania XII

For a guy who won five WWF World Heavyweight Titles, Bret "Hitman" Hart really got the shaft when it came to being the standard-bearer, the "face" of the company. His second title reign in 1994 saw Hart exclusively defending his title on the undercard of pay-per-views headlined by The Undertaker and others. And of course, everyone who follows wrestling knows how his final title run ended in 1997. After Hart ended long-running WWF Champ Diesel's 358-day reign at the 1995 Survivor Series, it quickly became apparent that the Hitman was simply keeping the belt warm for the guy whose popularity was quickly reaching a fever pitch among the WWF faithful--"The Heartbreak Kid" Shawn Michaels. After his defeat in the main event of WrestleMania XI, Michaels dropped off WWF TV for a short time, re-emerging as a babyface and beginning a year-long road to redemption for his past evil ways and a push that would, around the time of the Royal Rumble, start to focus on Shawn's "childhood dream" of winning the WWF World Championship.

At the same time, Michaels' backstage crew of wrestling buddies, the "Kliq" consisting of Michaels, Razor Ramon, Diesel, the 1-2-3 Kid, and recent arrival Hunter Hearst Helmsley, were beginning to exert influence in booking decisions and the WWF's creative direction, much to the consternation of pretty much anyone on the roster that wasn't those five guys. (At the In Your House: The Great White North PPV, Michaels forfeited the Intercontinental Title to Shane "Dean" Douglas after Shawn was legitimately beat up in a bar fight a few days before and unable to compete. Douglas then immediately lost the title to Razor Ramon in the same night. Standard WWF development, or Kliq-influenced booking?)

Still, no matter how large a part backstage politics played in the rise of Shawn Michaels, the bottom line is that during the 1990s Shawn developed into a premier in-ring performer, able to work matches with nearly anyone the WWF would throw at him (he's really the only reason the title match with Diesel at WrestleMania XI was at least watchable and not straight-up clunky, finish notwithstanding). The fans recognized this and it's to Vince McMahon's credit that he listened to his fanbase, moving away from the Diesel experiment and his knee-jerk instinct to push the largest dudes in the locker room and finally letting two "smaller" in-ring technicians headline his flagship event.

But with Michaels' star on the rise, the Hitman was quickly becoming an afterthought, and after Michaels won the 1996 Royal Rumble to earn the chance to achieve his boyhood dream, there wasn't a single WWF fan that watched the build to the event, the training vignettes, and didn't realize that Michaels' victory was being telegraphed for weeks.



Bret's not being pushed as a heel just yet, but look at the juxtaposition of these two fan favorites--the music gets darker and more dramatic when Bret begins to speak, and after a quick concession to Michaels' growing fan base, he proceeds to spend his time criticizing Shawn's personality and ring antics. "This isn't dancing, this is not a dance marathon--this 60-minute iron man match is going to be the biggest fight he's ever had." Sure, we purist Hitman fans will respond to that, but the majority of the WWF fanbase were sure to see that as sour grapes or jealousy, and it just rallied more fans to Michaels' side.

And how about that choice to give an entire hour of the biggest event of the year to two "smaller" guys? It's almost like Vince McMahon, indignant that the fans wanted to see two natural-looking technicians tear the roof off instead of the lumbering larger-than-life supermen Vince preferred, spat "they want wrestling? Fine, we'll give 'em more wrestling than they can stand! And they can't leave their closet until they've smoked every last cigarette in the carton!"

Well, hey, thanks for that, Vince. After last year's bullshit, a solid hour of one of the best main events in WrestleMania history is gonna be a long, deep breath of fresh air.

WWE Network World Tour: WrestleMania XI

The years immediately following Hulk Hogan's departure were a weird time for the WWF, who were trying to promote their "New Generation" of stars led by the Undertaker, Bret "Hitman" Hart and the "Kliq" of Shawn Michaels, Razor Ramon, Diesel, and the 1-2-3 Kid. I wasn't following very closely at this point because, while the WWF made amends in 1994 by putting the title back on Bret Hart at WrestleMania X, the storylines and characters outside of Bret and Owen's adventures weren't very compelling (to say nothing of the WWF's positioning of their world champion as a mid-carder playing second fiddle to the Deadman--something to which i'm sure a certain CM Punk could relate). The WWF in general had doubled down on cartoonish, overly colorful characters in order to sell to kids, and the fanbase that had grown up with Hulkamania were hungry for something new and more grown up. While the WWF would finally capitalize on this desire with the Attitude Era (thanks in no small part to ECW's influence), there were some pretty thin years between the boom periods.

One of Vince McMahon's weaknesses, during thin times or fat, is an over-reliance on celebrities. McMahon has always seemed obsessed with wrestling's sports entertainment's legitimacy, and this obsession has often resulted in a questionable desire to insert famous actors, musicians, and athletes into his storylines during 'Mania season. When it's something as simple as Alice Cooper at ringside for Jake "The Snake" Roberts, it's fine--it's a fun glitzy addition to the business' premier annual showcase. But as soon as those celebrities get into the ring, it never ends well (when the closest example you can get to a legit crossover is Mr. T, you know it's slim pickings).

Considering the state of pro wrestling's mainstream popularity at the time, using recently-retired New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor in the ring in a heavily-promoted match against Bam Bam Bigelow stank of desperation (especially when you consider Taylor's substance abuse problems and the stain McMahon's steroid trial had left on the WWF). Everything about the match--its hype, its placement on the card, and the way it was booked--was meant to attract mainstream media attention, but ironically, it only served in every way to discredit the very art form it was meant to promote. On top of that, the WWF's champion at the time was its latest attempt to push a bigger-than-life superman on the fanbase, "Big Daddy Cool" Diesel (aka the future nWo's Kevin Nash), a 6'10", 300-plus-pound beef slab that got a rapid-fire monster push the year before that hadn't been seen since Hogan's immediate placement at the top of the card 10 years earlier. In the span of one calendar year, Diesel went from Shawn Michaels' non-wrestling bodyguard to tag team champ (with Michaels), Intercontinental champ, and finally the World Title, three days after Bret Hart shockingly dropped the belt to an aging Bob Backlund at the 1994 Survivor Series. After a 35-minute submission match that ended with Owen Hart convincing his mom, Helen (who was at ringside in the Hitman's corner) to throw in the towel and do Bret's submitting for him (shades of Arnold Skaaland throwing in the towel on Backlund's behalf when he lost the title to The Iron Sheik in 1983), Backlund immediately dropped the belt three days later to Diesel in an 8-second house show squash:



Lots to unpack in this sequence of events: in 1983, the WWF wanted Backlund to turn heel in order to drop the belt to Hulk Hogan; he refused, leading to the need to use the Iron Sheik as a transitional champ, losing to Hogan at Madison Square Garden. In 1994, Backlund, working as a heel, became the transitional champ between another smaller, technically gifted titleholder and the muscled superman the WWF preferred as their standard-bearer--losing the belt in Madison Square Garden. That the legendary manager-throwing-in-the-towel gimmick was incorporated shows that the similarities were not lost on WWF creative; what they had not yet grasped though, was that the WWF audience was getting tired of the same old same old, and were desperate for something new.

Well, they didn't get it at WrestleMania XI, even with Shawn Michaels in the title match against his "former" buddy. But hey, let's recap it anyway, since we're here.

On The Book-Burners' outstanding Christmas record, The Ghosts of Christmas Past

I work in customer service, so believe me when I say that for some of us, the Christmas season is a war of attrition. It's long hours, stress, and human beings who've forgotten to acknowledge humanity in others. Lots of “where's my stuff?” and “you ruined our holiday” and the like. But it's also camaraderie, cooperation, and the bonds forged in the pressure cooker of the Christmastime call center between co-workers and those customers willing to let themselves be helped, to work together to make this season the ideal everyone hopes for as the calendar is turned past Black Friday.

But mostly, the attrition thing.

As I write this on Christmas Eve, my newly-minted wife is chopping onions & garlic for rolling meatballs to slow-cook for the friends we'll watch Home Alone with tomorrow while noshing on dips and cookies and laughter and relaxation. She loves Christmas and does me a great service in reminding me that the day is separate from the season, and that it's worth all the trial to get to the food, the revelry, and hell, even the music. Not that I've ever been big on Christmas songs, especially with how vapid they've gotten in recent years. “Christmas Shoes?” What the hell, man.

But that's why The Book-Burners, a collective of friends surrounding our Great Lakes, convene every year to produce a new collection of original Christmas music that shies away from all that cloying faux-sentiment and gets to the real goods. Curated by Burners Bradley R. Weissenberger (late of rock band .22) and Isaac Turner (also of Kalamazoo's Minutes), The Ghosts of Christmas Past was released today as a free Bandcamp download, in true egalitarian, share-and-share-alike Book-Burners fashion. They're very much about the people, you see, and it comes through on Christmas Past, as Brad and Ike have recruited comrades from Minutes, Small Awesome, The Family Ghost, and the rutabega to join them (and regular Book-Burners Jon Terrones & Eliza Rohr) in a triumphantly ambitious collaborative effort. Files have been shared, tracks have been swapped, and the end result is 14 tunes (“but Bandcamp says 13!” Ghosts, y'all) of haunting, meditative, and joyous reflection on a holiday that is equal parts celebration, contemplation, and consternation—cheesy movies, slow-cooked meatballs, hot-tempered customers.

Songs like “The Book of Love” and “Brothers and Sisters” take stock in relationships lost while looking forward to the next year's possibilities, while “Kindness” is a collective cheer for a forever friend that went through life's pressure cooker and came out shining like a diamond on the other side. This one's a standout, by the way—just about everyone who plays on it sings, and the chorus is as close to church as you'll get on this collection. (That being said, the rutabega's Josh Hensley contributes three instrumental versions of traditional Christian seasonals that somehow manage to revitalize them while playing 'em relatively straight. Think you've heard enough versions of “Away in a Manger?” Think again.) Some of the tracks borrow from pre-existing material (“Book of Love” features lyrics from “American Pie” while the fuzzed-out “The Departure” re-appropriates from Kafka), driving home the universality of the subject matter while expanding the Christmas sourcebook with new, re-contextualized traditionals.

There's ambient noise all over these tracks, and I don't mean that in an incompetent lo-fi way, even though there's a distinct “home recording” vibe to the whole collection (“The Book Of Love” is an iPhone demo with vocals layered on top, after all). No, what I mean is that when you put on a pair of headphones and let the ghostly slow burn of “Brothers and Sisters” drape over you like a sheet, you can feel the room it was recorded in. You don't hear it so much as feel it, and it's organic and welcoming and warm, and—seriously, can we talk about this song for a minute? There aren't enough synonyms for “haunting” and “beautiful” to fully convey the exquisite aching of this track, so let me just say it's haunting and fucking gorgeous. If one of these songs deserves inclusion in the Great American Christmas Song Pantheon, it is this one—the tape loops and backing vocals from Faiz Razi push this over the edge into would-be-classic territory.

Like I said before, it's been a rough Christmas season, this December Twenty-One-Four. It's positively healing to hear a band of Midwestern snow-bound scruffs put together a collection that captures the sting of the December air while wrapping you in a blanket by the fire. It's Christmas Eve and I can hang up the phone, put away the grumps, and hang out with my lady while The Ghosts of Christmas Past dance in our heads. As gifts go, this one arrived just in time. Thanks, friends.

Ranking the top ten matches of the first ten WrestleManias

So, we're a third of the way through the history of WrestleMania at this point. I can guarantee you i won't make it to WMXXX before WMXXXI comes along, but i still see getting through the first 10 as some sort of accomplishment, albeit one that doesn't come with any validation other than my own sense of accomplishment. Not a lot of people are reading these and that's ok, because i'm having a great time doing this. But for those who are following along, WrestleMania X seems like a great time to take stock and look back at the matches we've seen so far. Here's a list of my top 10 matches from the first 10 WrestleManias. Huzzah. (You'll notice by some of the bottom entries that overall, we've dealt with more bad matches than good. I have a feeling the top 10 for WMXI thru WMXX will be stronger overall.)

WWE Network World Tour: WrestleMania X

Can we talk more about my unabashed Hart Family fanboy-ism? After the debacle that was WrestleMania IX, my wrestling viewing stuck almost exclusively to WCW when i happened to be in front of a television, only hearing occasional channel-surfing updates or news from the Apter mags about how Yokozuna took back the WWF Title from Hulk Hogan at the first King of the Ring PPV (because, it's been rumored in later years, that Hogan refused to drop the title back to Bret "Hitman" Hart at SummerSlam, claiming that Hart's size made a victory over him improbable to his precious fanbase). After Hogan left the WWF to retire to television, filming a cheesy crime-fighting beach show called Thunder in Paradise, the WWF attempted to turn "The Narcissist" Lex Luger into a patriotic babyface and, they hoped, the future face of the company. This led to a goofy "body slam challenge" on an aircraft carrier on Independence Day, where Yokozuna declared that no american athlete could bodyslam him...until Luger completed his face turn by standing up for his country's pride by bravely slamming the evil Samoan Japanese grappler. Meanwhile, my man Bret Hart was given the consolation prize of winning the titular King of the Ring tournament at the same PPV where Yoko regained the strap, setting off a bitter feud with Jerry "The King" Lawler that lasted the remainder of 1993 (how dare the Hitman declare himself "King of the Ring" when Lawler was the real king of wrestling? I mean, logically, wouldn't Lawler's beef be with the WWF promoters who named the tournament? Eh, that would have made sense, and this is wrestling we're talking about). In addition, a grudge was starting to develop between Bret and his brother Owen, who was becoming resentful of living in his older brother Bret's shadow.

So as WrestleMania season 1994 rolled around, the top two babyfaces in the company were the corporate-anointed face of the company--muscle-headed "patriot" Lex Luger; and the guy who, thanks to consistently putting on entertaining matches with anyone he was put in the ring with, refused to step aside as the fans' true favorite--Bret Hart. Which man would go to WrestleMania X to face the diabolical Yokozuna for the belt--the guy ostensibly standing up for his country, or the guy who got screwed out of the title last year and still had unfinished business with the sumo giant and his devious manager (who, if you'll recall, threw salt in Bret's eyes to cost him the title)?

Well, that's what the Royal Rumble match is for. The storyline angle of the Rumble winner earning a shot at the WWF World Title at WrestleMania was a hit with the fans in '93, and proved so compelling in subsequent years that every Rumble winner since has left the PPV with the title shot in their back pocket. In 1994, though, the Rumble ended in controversial fashion, when the last two men in the ring--Luger and Hart--fell out of the ring together, hitting the floor at the exact same time. Shades of Hogan-Orndorff in the steel cage on Saturday Night's Main Event!

 


These days, the WrestleMania main event would immediately be booked as a triple-threat match between all three wrestlers, but this was 1994, and the triple-threat had not yet entered the WWF consciousness. So it was decided that both men would receive separate title shots during the show, with a bonus match added to ensure that Luger and Hart each wrestled twice. A coin was flipped; if Hart won, he'd wrestle Yokozuna first, and the winner would then face Luger later in the night. Luger would, in turn, wrestle Crush earlier in the show. However, Luger won the coin toss and got the first title shot, meaning Hart would open the show against his brother Owen, who turned on Bret after their tag team title loss to the Quebecers at the Royal Rumble pay-per-view.

So heading into WrestleMania X, the big question was: who would end the night as WWF Champ? No heel had yet emerged victorious from the final match of a WrestleMania (although Yoko came closest), so would it be the all-American, company-approved muscle man, or would it be the smaller technician--the better wrestler of the two? (If this storyline premise sounds awfully familiar to this year's main event storyline, it makes an interesting coincidence, doesn't it?) On with the show--we have a friggin' Bret/Owen match to get to, so we already know this show is gonna be worlds better than last year's! Also, there's something about a little ladder match between Shawn Michaels and Razor Ramon that should be at least watchable.

WWE Network World Tour: WrestleMania IX

Before we get into this, it's important to note that Bret "The Hitman" Hart became my favorite wrestler sometime around the dissolution of the Hart Foundation and the beginning of his solo career. If i were to pinpoint the exact moment when i became a lifelong Hitman supporter, i'd probably go with the closing seconds of his Intercontinental Title win against "Mr. Perfect" Curt Hennig (who was getting ready to take time off to recover from myriad injuries) at SummerSlam '91. Hennig drops a second leg on a prone Bret Hart, who blocks Perfect's foot and reverses the legdrop into a sharpshooter out of nowhere, getting an instant submission victory. Still one of the best finishes in a match i've ever seen.

 

During his two IC title runs, Bret continued to have stellar matches with anyone the WWF would put in front of him (including his WMVIII title victory classic over Roddy Piper), eventually dropping the WWF's secondary belt to his brother-in-law, "British Bulldog" Davey Boy Smith, in yet another brilliant performance at SummerSlam '92 in London's Wembley Stadium. I was bummed that Hart had lost in such an obvious manner (the IC title match headlined SummerSlam that year because the home country hero, Davey Boy, was in the match, so duh, yes he was going to win), but what Bret was being groomed for was something beyond what i had even expected him to be pushed toward.

In October 1992, i was visiting an old hometown pal when we were watching WWF Wrestling Challenge, which we joined in progress. Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan were discussing Ric Flair and the WWF Title, and Heenan sounded perturbed, if not downright angry. It became plainly obvious that they were discussing Flair losing the title (he had only regained it one month earlier immediately after SummerSlam by taking advantage of a beatdown that Razor Ramon had laid upon now-former champ Randy "Macho Man" Savage) at a house show. When i heard Heenan say, "when i get my hands on Bret 'Hitman' Hart..." i embarrassed myself by having what today would be a viral YouTube freakout in my friend's living room. I was ecstatic. My man Bret was World Champ! Unreal!



Things were looking up in the WWF as the calendar turned to 1993. While Flair lost a loser-leaves-town match against his ex-buddy Mr. Perfect and left the company, a scientific ring master was still World champ, and after WrestleMania VIII, Hulk Hogan was scarcely seen on WWF TV. Monday Night RAW had recently premiered on the USA Network, and as Hogan was becoming de-emphasized, the major storyline beats were shifting from the Saturday morning shows to prime time on the USA Network. Eventually, the Hulkster made his way back to television in February to join forces with his hanger-on buddy Brutus Beefcake in a tag team feud against champs Money Inc, but he was no longer in the main events, and as WrestleMania IX approached, that suited me just fine. The Hitman was preparing for a title defense against the first man to ever earn a 'Mania WWF title shot by winning the Royal Rumble, a gargantuan "sumo wrestler" by the name of Yokozuna (actually a Samoan named Rodney Anoaʻi, a member of the famed wrestling family that has produced the Wild Samoans, The Samoan Swat Team, Umaga, Roman Reigns, the Usos, and their cousin Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson). Unfortunately for me, i was in my first year of college and at the time had no access to pay-per-view, making WrestleMania IX the first 'Mania that i missed live since number V.

Now, before we begin, it's important to note that as i write this, i have still never seen WrestleMania IX. If you know how it ends, you might understand why hearing the result of the main event caused me to quit watching WWF wrestling for a full year. If you don't know how this show ends, well, sit back and relax as i brutally hate-fuck my way through a steaming shit-pile that nearly everyone considers one of the worst WrestleManias of all time. We're about to witness first-hand proof that while God exists, he's a cruel asshole that loves tormenting hardcore wrestling fans. 

Also, Doink the Clown is in this shitshow somewhere. Strap in, assholes.

WWE Network World Tour: WrestleMania VIII

After the 1992 Royal Rumble, the pieces were set into place for the wrestling nerd dream match of the century. Hell, for a hot second, the WWF looked like they'd even pull it off, too, as they aired a fake "press conference" where fake WWF President Jack Tunney named Hulk Hogan as the #1 contender to Ric Flair's newly-won WWF World Championship. For once, Hogan's incessant need to headline every goddamn show he was ever on was working to my advantage, as i wanted to see Hogan/Flair as much as anyone. WrestleMania VIII was going to be MINT.

Hey, wait.

So....about that. If you venture out into Internetlandia, you can find myriad reasons for why the WWF quickly reshuffled their WrestleMania VIII plans. Hogan and Flair had been wrestling at house shows and the reactions were tepid (not that they were built up as anything more special than "Hogan's fighting this guy this month"). Vince McMahon decided the match was "five years too late" (well, whose fault was that, Mr. Drain-The-Territories-of-all-Their-Talent?). Vince didn't want to push Flair as a champion on Hogan's level (which is a ridiculous assertion, as they built him up as a "real world's champion" with an acknowledged pre-WWF career). Whatever the reason, what we eventually got was a "double main event" of Hulk Hogan vs. Sid Justice (who thought that, as the last man eliminated in the Rumble, he should have been #1 contender, and thus took his frustration out on Mr. I-Headline-Every-'Mania Hogan, which...understandable), and Flair ended up defending his title against Randy "Macho Man" Savage, which was sure to be a better match than Hogan/Flair anyway. I mean, if you're going to pair these four dudes off, let the two real workers put on a clinic while the two muscleheads punch each other for 12 minutes elsewhere on the show. This makes sense. So yes, let's make up an angle where Flair produces doctored photos of himself hanging out with Miss Elizabeth and have him claim that "she was mine before she was yours, Savage!" Because, let's be honest--that's pretty fucking funny. Flair's ladies' man character going full heel, unable to handle the fact that for once his opponent is the one with the stunningly hot lady at his side, and not him! His ego cannot process this, for he is Space Mountain and there is not a female alive that does not want to strap in for the ride! He will refer to said lady as property and exhibit questionable sorta-misogynist behavior, for he is a dastardly heel champion (and knows that Savage has a famously jealous streak when it comes to Liz to boot, so it's a brilliant psychological strategy as well)! Honestly, it's hard to argue with the WWF here; this really probably was the right call. Throw in an Intercontinental title match with Roddy Piper defending against Bret "Hitman" Hart, and we have at least two potentially stupidawesome matches to watch here. So let's get on with it! 

Raise Our Fists Up: The 2014 PRFBBQ

My friend Thom came to his first PRFBBQ last weekend. He's heard a few of his friends--mostly members of my two bands--raving about the Chicago getaway that happens once a year during a weekend in late June several times over the years, but i don't think he ever seriously considered attending until this year, when his Seattle band Seminars played. His bandmate James played three of the festivals with his currently slumbering band, Police Teeth, and so Thom (who met James through us after he moved there from Milwaukee--this is important) got dragged along back to the Midwest for this annual collection of Internet nerds that also happens to be the most exhilarating, wall-to-wall excellent DIY festival you'll ever hear about.