Playboy Buddy Rose and Portland Punk

"Matt Bourne - when I get done with you - you're gonna be so down under they're gonna have to air  mail in light." - "Playboy" Buddy Rose. 

Above image from Punk Business Manager (whadda weird blog name but if Barry Darsow can be a Russian, a member of Demolition and the Repo Man, why not?). This is a 7" single from Portland punkers The Cleavers (not sure if they're name after Beaver & Wally's family or the actual kitchen instrument/horror movie prop). The above link delves into a lot of Portland punk history and a bit about this 7"'s b-side - "Commie Symp". Former Cleavers member Jeff Warner said their overtly-right wing attitude was exaggerated for reaction (hmm....like an angle?) and "was done 100% to irritate the humorlessly earnest knee-jerk leftists of the early punk scene... 'We were in actuality no more right wing than we were the than we were the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, but it was a lot more fun to go against the grain than join the chorus."

I first heard of Buddy Rose when he was in the AWA which was first broadcast early Saturday AM on S.F.'s KTZO TV-20 under the banner "All Star Wrestling" and about a year later in Pro Wrestling Illustrated where he was in Pro Wrestling Illustrated complaining the fans in his then-current territory in Florida who " are all a bunch of geriatrics who eat cube steak!" At the time I had no idea what a geriatric or cube steak was but either way I was sold on Buddy Rose's versatile ways of insulting the fans. I thought "wow, this guy seems like a first-class jerk but he sure is funny!" 

I saw Playboy Buddy Rose in Oakland when he ballooned up to over 350 lbs (though he insisted on being billed at 217! He was known for doing behind the back pushups.and sit up aerobics in...Afrikaans?!?). However this didn't deter his ability in the ring - he would often refer to his He was part of a mostly solid card at the legendary (a term I DON'T use lightly) Henry J. Kaiser Auditorium. That night, Rose with his tag partner "Pretty Boy" Doug Summers, special 3-man tag partner Alexis Smirnoff (a bog standard Russian gimmick) vs. The Midnight Rockers (Marty Jannetty and Shawn Michaels) and Curt Hennig.  The Rose/Summers/Smirnoff team was managed by "Sensational" Sherri Martel on this very card. Wrestle-nerd note: they don't include the dark match or untelevised match between Brad Rhenginas and the Russian Boris Zhukov. It was in this match my friend Steve & I threw ice at Zhukov but also manage to hit Rhiengians. It was a dull match  and we preferred our Russians to sing the national anthem or have crazy American defectors as their friends. 

What were you expecting, the John Cena & Baptista? 

True to his name, The Playboy came out to the ring with women dressed as Playboy Bunnies (and his "Lefties are Better Lovers" tee). There's a great obit on Rose over at Can't Stop the Bleeding which has the first comment by "Leaping" Lanny "The Genius" Poffo (yeah, that's right in wrestling you can have more than 1 gimmick). It also has a great video from the early 80's Portland wrestling which is one of my favorite "read about it in the 80s but never saw it 'til YouTube" territories. Finally, here's the lo-down of all various places he wrestled and held belts in, an impressive list for sure. 

Random Image Goodness

                      Don't say "holy shit" 'cause Abdullah's gonna stab some guy's face off with a fork.

Freddie Blassie is a strummin'.

"Heavy Metal" Van Hammer (surprisingly not Jamie St. James from Black N' Blue).

Hey, Jimmy Hart that background looks familiar, 
you sure you weren't inspired by Death Metallers Possessed? 

with the Original Sheik on drums (and Sabu on air drums?)


Sting(s) together on bass. What do they have in common? They're both horrible on the mic. 

Raven Wreck Ramones

Sabu supports Brody's Militia. 

No idea who this band is but looks like that's George "The Animal" Steele on the cover. 

Who knew the bassist from the Doobie Bros had a (yacht) rock & wrestling connection? On a similar but different note, Alice Cooper was in Jake The Snake Roberts corner during Wrestlemania III. 

Hüsker Dü - with Bob Mould on the right in AWA shirt. 

Lemmy, cheesy fashion plate and Chris Jericho.

"Sickening Horror of Blood Matches" should be a Death Metal song. 

Kevin Sullivan's 1990's not quite as good as the his 80's face paint like this...

Why is not this on YouTube? It actually exists! (See January 1984)

Iron-on, self-proclaimed titles = eternal greatness!

Barry Horowitz is an "undisputed winner".

High Weirdness From Memphis:

Not so good character Ta-Gar from Memphis' USWA territory uses the intro to Ozzy's "Journey to the Center of Eternity" mixed with weird bluescreen effects and volcanic imagery.

                                  

   

 Next up is the crazy Southern Heavyweight champ Eric Embury fresh off his run in Texas' World Class (which merged with some of the Memphis territory in the USWA circa: the early 90s). Here Embry promos in near Death Metal style with "graves dug up...bodies dismembered" and then shows a clip from the classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This is turn promotes the Leatherface angle.

      

This Leatherface was a part of the short-lived tag-team with Ta-Gar (who was only in the territory for a few weeks). Ta-Gar, Leatherface and Embry also had Tojo Yamamoto (who was a legendary heel in Memphis), Judge Dredd (!?). Say what you will about "fixed", "fake" and "scripted" but a guy with a chainsaw running loose in a closed-in TV studio is doesn't have a happy ending. Hell, I should know I saw Stan "The Lariat" Hansen whup a bullrope only feet a away from my head at the Henry J. Kaiser in Oakland (June 1986). The dude was big & way scary and you DON'T fuck around with someone who was once tag champs with Bruiser Brody.

Getting back to the rock connection with all of this - we find Leatherface's FMW aka: Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling (Japan) federation theme which sounds very mid-period Megadeth to me - very riffy & heavy Oops - just discovered this is done by Bay Area metallers, Laaz Rockit.I wasn't much into them but this song's defo. one of their best. However, this appears to be cover with minimal lyrics with only the chorus in English. 

Anyway, I DO agree with one of the commentators the Ta-Gar clip. The worst of USWA angle or character is 1000x better than the some of the best stuff McMahon's WWE has come up with. Yeah, John Cena can wrestle but ideally, his character should have less heat than the Mulkey Brothers.

Lighting Beat-Man will suicida plancha your fake-garage rock ass!

I recently finished reading Eric Davidson (vocalist of the excellent garage-punkers, New Bomb Turks) great book We Never Learn - The Gunk Punk Undergut, 1988-2001  While the book is quite thorough with both the underground and overground of late 80's/1990's garage rock/lo-fi rock/whatever you call it, it's missing the wild and crazy lucha libre/Z-movie inspired Swiss weirdo, Lightning Beat-Man. Admittedly I've not heard a ton of LBM but I did read about him a bit in Maximum Rock n' Roll. He also has the right aesthetic for this here blog, if you wheel.* Here's a dirty 'lil number with some hazy stop motion lucha action. Think of it like a squared circle rudimentary rock version of a Ray Harryhausen film. Lyrically, it comes across like an even more stripped down & even more ridiculous version of the Dwarves but this ain't exactly a post-modern essay on fucking Radiohead!

 Now here's Lighting Beat-Man interviewing his inspiration, the Wild Man of West Virginia, the late, great Hasil Adkins.

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Here's what some of his records look like. Gotta love the slogan "The No Hit Wonder"

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Loads more info here: http://www.voodoorhythm.com/LBM.html

* Say just like "The American Dream". ** A plancha (suicida) looks like this.

Music Library Intro Themes

I just discovered this going 'round YouTube looking for more ring intros. Turns out Japan - particularlity the New Japan and All Japan Pro Wrestling has TONS of "music library" created themes. What I'd like to know is who the hell are the musicians that make this stuff 'cause as you'll see/hear a lot of this is really interesting and often quite good!

We start with this very riffy, rather solid metallic number that would be far from fitting on say a Jag Panzer record. It's current WWE grappler Evan Borne (who I seem to always mix up with Maniac Matt Borne who was the original Doink the Clown, however they're not related).

This concept was used in Japan but in an even more wilder and interesting way. Would would've thought that the insanely incredible duo of Stan "The Lariet" Hansen and Bruiser Brody would work with John Barry meets Issac Hayes workout of below? (Yes, I KNOW these are 2 covers of Fred Zep).

The "1997 NWO Wolfpack Sting meets 1985 Road Warriors (and a wee bit of Great Muta's) look from a grappler just called Hate (no relation to KPFA DJ Mr. Hate or the Polish Death Metal band) somehows mushes up mid-paced techno, electro-funk and some kinda Joe Satriani-ish shed guitar and somehow manages to make it work.

Back to Heavy Metal/Hard Rock, Billy Ken Kid's theme sounds really close to an instrumental that easily would've found it's way on a Dokken album or B-side. I mean this with respect as I friggin' like them for the most part and George Lynch's playing is actually quite good (albeit not someone I listen to a great deal these days).

If you'd like some cheese then check out Masahiro Chono's New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW) theme totally sounds like anything from Rhapsody of Fire (or really 99.9% of from their goofy label Limb Music). 

                                

Regardless of what you think, these themes are a LOT more interesting than a lot of the drek that WCW and WWE/F came up with over the years (save HHH's "The Game" 'cause that's by Motörhead  - hence, it's unfuckwithable).

Indie Rock and (sometimes) Indy Wrestling

Bryan Danielson who's one of the few actually interesting current-era grapplers in demonstrates a move I've never even heard of - the Guillotine. While that name is Metal as fuck - what follows in the 2nd part is a song by the Kimya Dawson-led band Antsy Pants. While I'm not a huge fan of Dawson's music it is an undeniably catchy tune and there's some at least interesting stuff going on in the song. Far more than I can say for much of what's supposed to be "indie rock" these days (bands with shitty names such as STRFKR and HTRK neither of whom I'd suspect are from the former Yugoslavia). 


Danielson like Dawson has worked with both the big time (WWE), the middle circut (Ring of Honor) and the indie federations (Chikara, Dragon Gate USA, and the current version of IWA). Dawson, as many know   was on the Juno soundtrack and has played everywhere from 924 Gilman to arenas and even collaborated with Turd Eye Bland. 

Another interesting 'lil bit is Bryan's K Records shirt 'round 3:38. K Records being the label for Dawson, Beat Happening, Tiger Trap and Jeremy Jay. While none of these are at the wrestler-rockin' level of AntiSeen they are all fine artists. And they sure beat dealing with a happy-go-lucky power-pop band called Let's Wrestle - who don't exactly make me wanna dream about fighting alongside Kevin "Prince of Darkness" Sullivan in some bizzaro world version of early 80's Florida.   If you wanna learn more of these type of grappling techniques then go here.

UWF-Mid South footage with plenty o' rockin' tunes

Clockwise: Sting, unknown, Missy Hyatt, John Tatum, Hot Stuff" Eddie Gilbert and Rick Steiner. AKA: World's Worst 70's Disco-Glam tribute act.

There was something truly great about the short-lived UWF which was in its earlier incarnation, the Mid-South promotion run by Cowboy Bill Watts. This like many Southern promotions, I had only previously read about in the 'ol Apter mags. However, my first trip to Las Vegas in Summer '87 I discovered the UWF (which debuted a year earlier) and hence an entirely new wrestle-verse from my then friend & bandmate, Tom. Tom introduced me to the UWF's cable show "Power Pro Wrestling" which we later got in the Bay Area on Saturday nights on San Jose's independent channel, Channel 36.

The UWF was Watts way to draw in some of the talent he already had an could mix in with current elements of NWA territories past & present: Memphis, Los Angeles, Florida, Mid-Atlantic, World Class, etc. This meant names that would later make for some major and minor but still classic angles in the latter part of the 80's into the early-mid 90s: WCW and WWF: Terry Taylor, Ted DiBase, Jake "The Snake" Roberts, The Junkyard Dog (who I Hacksaw Butch Reed, Jim "Hacksaw" Duggan, Terry Taylor, Eddie Gilbert, The Freebirds, Kamala: The Ugandan Giant, Shane Douglas, Rick Steiner, and one of my faves. Steve "Doctor Death" Williams.

This first clip has KISS' "Rock N' Roll All Night" (shortly after uh, Molly Hatchett?) that works OK but not anywhere near as well as one after (around 1:04) with their few truly great 80's songs, "War Machine" featuring Jeff Van Camp doing the oft-used gimmick Lord Humongous - which similar to Hawk and Animal was also influenced by The Road Warrior film.




Later in the clip the Midnight Rider who reps the Allman Bros. but this time surpinsgly ISN'T Dusty Rhodes but (SPOILER ALERT: Bill Watts).

Now time to get your energy dome on as UWF announcer Ressor Bowden serves up a "Good Thing" of prime mid-80's grapplin' action & DEVO. Don't forget to watch your guest seat, Reesor!



But..."don't you miss it" especially when they got beer in Texarkana


Finally, because I sometimes too much time on my hands, I also found this clip of the house comedian of the Grand Olde Opry, Jerry Clower doing a promo with the Junkyard Dog & Jim "Hacksaw" Duggan (who he calls "Doogie" or is "Dukie"?)


In summary, it's really facinating what and who made these decisions for using music in the UWF. No canned pre-made themes, just actual songs from acutal artists that are often fitting the action really well. As I'll show in upcoming posts funk, disco and electro (or really nearly proto-techno) sounds were used brilliantly for themes for the various terriories. Once again: territory system IS hardcore!

ENDNOTES: Manager Jim Cornette has some great stories about working for Watts in the Mid-South. Which you can read in his Midnight Express Scrapbook - which is VERY much worth your time and $.