The Way I C It 10.15.07: Music to your Ears

Oh yeah, hi everybody! Apparently, TNA held a pay per view last night, and actually built it up pretty well, much better than previous ones. Also in the news, Punk hates Atlas, Teddy Hart hates money, I hated No Mercy, and hospitals suck. I spent 4 hours in one Friday night waiting for Lansdell mark II to get stitches. He’s hardcore!~ It would seem, too, that more of you than I thought possible (read: more than just me) actually want to see the music in wrestling column that postponed. So, without further ado for those of you on eleventerhooks (which of course is worse than tenterhooks), I give you:

The Way I C Music in Wrestling

Glass shattering. A car screeching to a halt and crashing. “Oh God Shawn!” “Are you ready?” “You think you know me”. The instant you hear any of those, you know who’s coming down the aisle. Not to mention the distinctive guitar riffs of Hogan, Batista and Bret. Check out the explosion towards the end of this video (6:20 in, to be precise, but listen to the whole promo, it’s gold) for an example:

(for what it’s worth, part 2 of that promo has an equally good pop)

Most of my friends and acquaintances who are wrestling fans pay little to no attention to wrestling entrance themes or PPV “official songs”. I can’t understand that attitude. To get the full effect, the full experience, of a wrestler, everything from his outfit, to his expression, to his music are needed. Just ask the Hidden Highlights guys. But there’s so much more to it than that.

Moreso in promotions with limited exposure (RoH, PWG and so on), actual songs by well-known to obscure artists are used for themes. This is not generally the case in WWE and TNA, because as soon as you broadcast or go on pay per view, you start having to pay royalties over and above what the venue has built into a performance licence. This is why, on RoH pay per views, very few guys are using their “regular” entrance themes. Those that are (Briscoes, Morishima and Danielson spring to mind) are either using older songs by now-defunct artists, or generic music (although Morishima’s theme is rather good). Royalties are expensive. Just ask Vince how much Metallica wanted for Enter Sandman to be used on a regular basis (reportedly into 7 digits). It never fails to amaze me why smaller bands don’t push their music at TNA and WWE to be used as entrances, at a lower rate, simply because of the demographic that wrestling hits and the exposure it would get them. More on that later.

The Sandman example is the best one I can think of regarding how the right theme can make or break a wrestler. So much of his appeal was his entrance to an iconic metal tune, and his interaction with the crowd screaming along with it. Same goes for RVD and Walk by Pantera, Final Countdown by Europe and Bryan Danielson, and possibly even CM Punk’s old RoH theme, Miseria Cantare by AFI. Without them, these guys have not seemed the same. Especially Sandman.

The big reason I am a proponent of good music in wrestling, though, is that most of my favourite bands and songs were discovered through wrestling: 30 Seconds to Mars, Mercy Drive, AFI, some of Saliva’s stuff, Glassjaw, Earshot, Breaking Benjamin…all from wrestling or wrestling video games. I can’t be the only one who has gone out and bought albums (well, downloaded from Puretracks) based on hearing a song or two on a wrestling event. I own all the WWE Theme CDs, for example. What do I like right now?
WWE: Gregory Helms, CM Punk, Batista, HHH, Elijah Burke, MVP, Jonathan Coachman, Kane, Matt Hardy, Randy Orton
TNA: Christian, Kurt Angle, LAX, AJ Styles
ROH: Dangerous Angels, Nigel McGuinness (NEW CHAMP!!!1~!!one!), Jack Evans, Davey Richards, BJ Whitmer
All of these themes have good, uptempo beats and start off with powerful stuff, perfect for firing you up before a day at work or a workout at the gym. Whatever a gym is.

While I’m on this topic, allow me to help out Mr Cook from Ask 411 Wrestling, who this week was asked about the same music the longest, and he responded with Ric Flair. Although he is mostly associated with Also Spracht Zarathustra, in his first WWF run, his music bore little if any resemblance to it. That’s without pointing out his Horsemen runs, because if we don’t stick to singles wrestling we’ll never get a good answer to this question. I’m also sticking to wrestlers in the promotions they are in now, or were in last, because if we have to go back to WCW and ECW days, my head will explode. The answer, by the way, is probably Kane. He has, on one-shot deals, used music from the latest WWE CD release, but always came back to Slow Chemical by Finger Eleven. Other contenders would be Scotty 2 Hotty, Funaki (STILL EMPLOYED!~), Mick Foley and Jeff Hardy. I almost included Val Venis, but I remembered his runs as Chief Morley and an ice cream salesman, I mean in Right to Censor.

The Way I C No Mercy

I actually paid money for a non-Wrestlemania PPV. And I wish that I hadn’t I had a nice, long review of this farce ready to go, but my dog ate it. Actually, the boss’s email did. Let me see what I can remember…

I must have screamed “WHY??!?!?!?!!!?1?!!?/!!” at the (52″ plasma) TV at least a dozen times. Punk-BDV, the WWE Hot Potato, a bonus match when you cut a match, no Jericho, HHH with a belt when he lost a match with a stip saying he would never get another title shot…
The Last Man Standing match was the only good part of the show, well that and Batista being Spiderman, but it was utterly nullified and cheapened as a win by HHH wrestling 2 other matches that night.
The women’s match would have been good with another 2-3 minutes.
Finlay-Rey wasn’t bad, but the non-finish ruined it for me.
I worked it out: $0.2219 Canadian, or $0.2308 US (HA!) per minute based on a 180-minute show (and it came close). That means Vince wasted $4.44 of my time awarding the belt (weak sauce!!!).
On the topic of wasting: $3.33 for that pizza crap. And why did Tazz host it?????
Lansdell: So Larry, where do I send my cable bill for the reimbursement?
Csonka: You really want me to tell you where to put your cable bill?
Lansdell: You’re going to tell me to berry it somewhere, aren’t you.
Csonka: He’s new, but he’s learning.

The Way I C the E

Orton is holding again. Got that one wrong, albeit by default. I mean, who else was it gonna be?
Punk and Atlas had a little altercation. I’m a huge CM Punk fan, but even were I not, you gotta back up the Straight Edger here. Atlas was being pompous. Wonder how long before they work this confrontation on air?
Morrison came back and beat Punk. I don’t think they should go back to this feud yet, but who else do you feed to Morrison to keep him strong? Balls and Dreamer are busy, and nobody takes Richards seriously. Colt Cabana!!!!~
I slept through Smackdown. Doesn’t look like I missed much.
Don’t look now, but both brands are starting to get something resembling a tag division! At least until the post-Mania house cleaning…
HBK-Orton is a better feud than HHH-Orton, which we’ve seen before. Besides, HHH has unfinished business with Umaga Joe.
Carlito is looking healthy. Must be all the berries HHH has been feeding him.

The Way I C the T

This is going to hurt: Impact was good this week, built to the PPV, and showcased more original talent. I might even watch Bound for Glory, which would be the first TNA pay per view I watched live. Ever.
Although the build for Steiners-Dudleys has been great, I wish it could have happened 10, even 5 years ago. Watch the match on fast forward.
Petey Williams needs to do more than try and hit the Destroyer every match. And TNA hyping how awesome it is might work better if they let him hit it once in a while.
Amazing Kong is just that: amazing. Not often they announce a woman wrestler’s weight and height. I probably would have put her over Tracey Brooks to keep Gail Kim looking like a threat, but this worked.
Dear Rikishi: More K-Drillers, less ass-shaking.

The Way I C RoH

Darn RoH, ruining my rhyming scheme.
Yay! McGuinness has done it! He’s one of the most over guys in RoH, and he’s signed to a contract, and he can talk, so this is a step up from Morishima in every way. Shame Morishima had to bury everyone in the upper midcard while holding the belt though.
The inevitable McGuinness – Danielson matches for the belt promise to be great, but Nigel needs to go over at least twice. In fact, I think he should beat Danielson, hold off a few more challengers, then drop to Castagnoli.
Ari mentioned it this week in his column, but Age of the Fall are really not RoH style. I presume what they’re trying to do is draw in some of the old ECW crowd who think a match needs juice to break ****.
Aries-Danielson is great. Just great.
We want more Quackenbush.
I think it’s a bad thing to bring in Misawa, and not have him fight any RoH boys. I can almost guarantee it’s because he refused to put anyone over, and to fight anyone below main event level, which makes RoH look like chumps. That said, a first-time-ever dream match like Misawa-KENTA being on an RoH show is [start DDP] a GOOD THING [end DDP].

Game, set and match boys and girls. Props to Rajin who was the only person to find the hidden message in last week’s column. Keep the feedback coming, I appreciate it. Next week, I’m going to tackle something almost as dear to my heart as music: people being dropped on their heads.