Cheap Wrestling for Cheap People 05.04.06: The Musical
Posted by Ryan Byers on 05.04.2006
Marvel as I manage to sneak a music review in to the wrestling zone! If you can't marvel at that, look at how cool the date is! 5-4-6! Never again in our lifetimes! EXCLAMATION POINT!
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Cheap Wrestling for Cheap People. As always, I am your party host Ryan Byers, and I've got some explaining to do up front. This week should be a week for celebration, as May 2 marked the one year anniversary of Cheap Wrestling for Cheap People right here on 411 Mania. Yes, it's been a full 365 days since I first started making sarcastic observations about wrestling and revealing to the world that I spend entirely too much of my income on DVDs. I had a special anniversary type column all planned out and ready to go in my head, but this wound up not being the week to pull the trigger on that one thanks to any incredibly busy personal schedule. However, be sure to tune back in NEXT WEEK, when we will celebrate a year of Cheap Wrestling in style. You bring the champagne, and Steve Cook will bring the pork rinds.
Here's one last "regular" column before the big celebration, though.
Cheap Wrestling Tip #37: It Ain't Just Tapes
Throughout the course of this column, I've focused on finding cheap wrestling tapes and DVDs. However, I felt the need to note that they're not the only things floating out on the interweb at a fraction of their normal price. Oh no. If you go through the archives of this column and apply just about any one of the tips that I've mentioned, you should also be able to unearth a world of wrestling t-shirts, video games, clocks, toys, waste baskets, fishing lures and much, much more. This week, I decided to pay homage to those oft-neglected forms of wrestling merchandise, hoping that you the reader would enjoy the change of pace. (And, honestly, hoping that I could pound out something quick here and get back to the insane shifts they've been feeding me at work.) So, without further adieu, please enjoy the following.
Title: World of Wrestling Rocks (Music CD) Released By: K-Tel International Release Year: 1999 Run Time: Too Long Found At:eBay Price: Ninety-nine Cents (plus shipping)
During wrestling's late 90's boom period, lots of companies tried to cash in any way they could on the craze. The recording industry even got caught up in the insanity, though at least they didn't go as far as releasing the album of Barry White-esque ballads that El Dandy recording in between Monday Nitro tapings. They did do something else, though. At least three CDs made up of knock-offs of wrestlers' entrance music were released, and most of them were pulled from the shelves soon after said release thanks to WWF/E legal threats. World of Wrestling Rocks, released in 1999, managed to survive and made it in to the hands of several buyers, and now there are several copies regularly floating around on sites like eBay.
The CD was released by K-Tel International, a company that I've never heard of, and all of the songs are performed by the Magnificent Tracers, a band that I've never heard of. A google search seems to reveal that their career consisted of nothing but crappy cover songs, so you could almost say that we've got a fake band putting out an album about a fake sport. That album is a mix of entrance theme covers, covers of popular songs, and original work by the Tracers. There's also five tracks on the album that are just five to six-second snips of dialogue which are supposed to be commentators covering an imaginary wrestling match. Needless to say, I'm not going to bother saying anything more about those.
Track Numero Dos: Powertrip
Pretty bland little number that sounds like it was recorded in the band's basement. They're going for badass rebellious rock here, but it sounds far too much like the group is moonlighting at McDonald's. Don't listen to this while operating heavy machinery.
Track Rating: 3/4*
Track Numero Tres: Kick Out the Jams
Yes, it can actually get worse. What do you get when you combine my description of the previous song with a tired old 1970/80s cliche phrase like "kick out the jams?" You get this, something so nauseating that my dog actually walked over to the ficus and vomited on it while the music was playing.
Track Rating: 1/2*
Track Numero Cuatro: Stone Cold Steve Austin
And now we dip in to the music that is a little bit more closely tied to our fair grapplin' game. This is an instrumental reworking of the Austin music that was done by Twiztid, which everybody's favorite redneck started using in 2001 and kept throughout his run as the captain of the WCW/ECW Alliance. It manages to be a pretty faithful translation, actually, but the song gets pretty repetitive without the lyrics. Actually, it gets pretty repetitive with the lyrics too, but this only compounds the problem. I suppose the song is useful if you and your friends are going to have one of those "wrestling karaoke" parties that I hear are all the rage in Paris.
Track Rating: *1/2
Track Numero Cinco: Freak on a Leash
Yes, this is a cover of the Korn song by the same name. I'm not a huge Korn fan to begin with, and the song sounds even worse coming out of the good old Magnificent Tracers. The singer puts far too much effort in to giving his voice that raspy nu metal growl, and he just comes off sounding like a constipated idiot.
Track Rating: 3/4*
Track Numero Siete: Stranglehold
More of the bland, generic sounding rock that I was complaining about on the first and second tracks. It sounds like they were going with more of a southern rock sound with this, and it really didn't serve for any vast improvements. I've actually come to the conclusion that nobody can record good, original southern rock anymore. Half of the people on the planet who could were killed in a plane crash nineteen years ago, and the genre just hasn't been the same since.
Track Rating: 1/2*
Track Numero Ocho: Welcome to the Jungle
This actually has some connection to wrestling, as it was used by Bam Bam Bigelow in ECW and used to serve as the entrance music for various WWE commentators when they would come out to prior to TV tapings. I believe that the company has since switched over to a song that is much more obnoxious. Anyway, this track slightly better than the Korn cover, but they're working with a much better song to begin with, so that's not horribly surprising. It's like very good karaoke. However, I don't even pay cover to hear that at a bar, so you can't bet I'm not too happy with shelling out money to get it on a CD.
Track Rating: **
Track Numero Nueve: Take No Prisoners
The highlight of this track is that it's probably got the best use of the word "permeate" I've ever heard in a rock song. Seriously. Aside from that, though, it's just as bad as any of the other songs that I've never heard of.
Track Rating: 3/4*
Track Numero Deis: Undertaker
This is a remake of the Taker's music that appears on WWF: The Music Volume 4. Believe it or not, I actually like this version MORE than the original. Why? Because, as it appears on the WWF CD, the song is horribly, horribly looped and gets so repetitive that I'm generally hitting the skip button about ninety seconds in. Fortunately the Tracers are much more courteous hosts, so they've chopped the song down to just about that length. Sadly, it may be their greatest contribution ever to the world of music.
Track Rating: **1/4
Track Numero Once: More Human Than Human
This was actually used in a few ECW promos and, as such, bears a connection to wrestling, though I am hesitant to call most things that come out of ECW "wrestling." Anyway, see the comments that I made about the singer's pathetic attempt to growl in the Korn cover and quintuple it, because he does the entire freaking thing throughout this entire song. I don't know why, as Rob Zombie's performance on the original version of "More Human" isn't that raspy. Shoot me now.
Track Rating: 1/2*
Track Numero Trece: Seek and Destroy
This was formerly Metallica ditty that Sting was using as his entrance music in WCW at the bitter end. (Actually, that could have been a Jimmy Hart knockoff, but, if it was a fake, it was so good that I couldn't tell the difference while watching TV.) Here it appears that the singer has certainly learned his lesson about the whole growling thing, but now he sounds like a complete and utter girly man. It's like somebody let a ninety pound system administrator in to the recording studio to do the vocals for one of the greatest metal bands of all time. It doesn't help that I consider this to be one of the weaker Metallica songs that I've heard.
Track Rating: 1/2*
Track Numero Catorce: Anti Social
It sounds like the group has another guy singing on this song . . . but, guess what? He's not any better. I'm as shocked as you are. It's really not a good sign when the title is spelled as two separate words when it should be one.
Track Rating: 1/2*
Track Numero Quince: Cowboys From Hell
I have absolutely no clue what this song has to do with cowboys. Its only redeeming quality is that you can pretend that it was written as a tribute to Curt Hennig and the West Texas Rednecks, who were one of the most entertaining and misused stables in the history of professional wrestling, right up there with the Desperados and the Parade of Human Oddities. Aside from its ability to make me remember the days when Virgil dressed up like a cowboy, there's nothing to the track.
Track Rating: 1/2*
Track Numero Dieciseis: Kane
Quite obviously, it's Kane's entrance music. We're talking about the original version here, not the current one with the lyrics that for some reason don't start until two minutes in to the song. It's a bit off (I'm not a huge guitar freak, so I can't tell you exactly how), but yet it still manages to not suck as much as a lot of the previous songs. I think I've got the Tracers figured out by now. They can take fairly simple "wrestling songs" composed by Jim Johnston and turn out covers that aren't horrid, but once you ask them to do something that was actually composed by a musician who actually has fans or a recording contract, they're up a particular creek without a paddle.
Track Rating: *
Track Numero Dieciocho: Wrathchild
Mercifully shorter than most of the other original songs on the album. I'll give it an extra half point just for that.
Track Rating: 3/4*
Track Numero Diecinueve: Killed by Death
What ELSE are you supposed to be killed by, exactly? I don't think I've heard of anybody who was ever killed by birth, and even fewer people are killed by living. I suppose you could be killed by repeatedly listening to World of Wrestling Rocks. The Magnificent Tracers repeat the ridiculous phrase about fifty times, and everybody goes home.
Track Rating: 1/2*
Track Numero Veinte: Beautiful People
If you thought I hated covers of songs that I didn't like in the first place, wait until you see me when somebody takes a song that I like and butchers it beyond belief. I get a kick out of the editing that they had to do in order to get the word "motherfucker" out of the song, but that's just about it. It's still better than the crappy one-verse-then-instrumental version that they've got on WWE Forcible Entry.
Track Rating: 3/4*
Track Numero Veintiuno: God of Thunder
It just wouldn't be a wrestling CD if you didn't include the theme music of everybody's favorite superstar: THE DEMON! Yes, long before he came to NWA-TNA as a member of the Chicago White Sox and a little bit after he debuted in WCW as part of the Pit Crew, he was immortalized on World of Wrestling Rocks. Though I know some people will consider this rock n' role heresy, I'm not that familiar with the original version (by KISS), so I can't exactly say how bad it is compared to that. I can, however, say how horrible it is on its own.
Track Rating: 1/2*
Track Numero Veintidos: New Age Outlaws
Yes, this does come complete with a lousy rendition of the Road Dogg's catchphrases at the beginning. It sounds a lot less like they're being done by Brian Armstrong and a lot more like they're being done by "Bullet" Bob Armstrong. It actually sounds like the Tracers added a few riffs to the original song, which keeps it from being completely bland. Yet, it still can't wash the bad taste out of my mouth that was given to me by the rest of the CD.
Track Rating: *
Overall
This is one of those cases where if somebody were to read the review and then ask me about my overall thoughts, I'd punch them in the mouth. Avoid this CD at all costs, please. It's bad, and it's not even bad enough for people to laugh at it and justify a purchase in that manner. I suppose wresting music is just one of those things that you have to shell out real money for if you want to receive a quality product. Yes, I say this fully aware of the fact that I'm one of about two rubes left on the planet who actually pays for music in the twenty-first century. What can I say, I'm just too damn law abiding for my own good.
That does it for this week, kids. I'll be back in seven days with something that should be a little bit more conventional and a little bit more exciting. Until then, feel free to throw some e-mail my way, and take care of yourselves.
