Hey. Yo. If you’re reading this you might like wrestling. Or hate it. Or you’re indifferent. Maybe you used to love it, grew out of it, came back, drifted away again, and then came back for good.

Or maybe you’ve always loved it, in which case I don’t need to tell you about Rock ‘n Wrestling. You probably know all the words to "Real American". You own the “The Wrestling Album” on cassette and can do Vince McMahon's dance moves from The Slammy Awards. You’ve seen every episode of both “GLOW” and “G.L.O.W.” and once tried to break a guitar over your brother’s head. But you've never, and I do mean never, ever heard those songs like this before. I guarantee it.

What is “this”? “This” is a collection of songs from the wild world of Wrestling And Music. W.A.M for short. Spanning the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, 00’s, 10’s, and 20’s, there’s a lot of meat on this here turnbuckle. WWF and WWE. Jims Crockett, Barnett, Cornette, Ross, Herd, and Hillbilly. Segues, mash-ups, bloopers, bleeps, and bodyslams. Heavy metal anthems twisted into acoustic ditties, dance-pop hits swerved into torch ballads, and anti-rap country songs reversed into pro-rap country songs.
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Make no mistake: these are real songs. What do I mean by that? I mean they're catchy songs. Do some of them border on being ridiculous because of the subject matter and the person who is singing them? No. ALL of them border on being ridiculous because of the subject matter and the person who is singing them. But that doesn’t mean they’re bad. Are they songs by wrestlers about wrestling? Yes! Songs by wrestlers about music? You damn right. Songs by musicians about wrestlers? It’s true. Songs by wrestlers about love. Oh hell yeah. But they’re not bad.

That being said, my idea was to take these songs and see what shapes I could bend them into. If a song didn’t have a bridge then I took a verse from a different one and used that as the finish. If the music got boring I took parts from other songs - wrestling-related or not - and tossed ‘em in like a reverse Royal Rumble. The goal was to bombard the listener with a deluge of wrestling's finest and occasionally not-so-finest musical moments. If the listener gets all the references, great. If they don't, well, whatcha gonna do?

I love all these songs, wrestlers, managers, announcers, promotions, movies, albums, and songwriters as much as I love the Flair-Steamboat trilogy. There is no irony here. This is a love letter to some of my favorite moments in wrestling, and I imagine some of yours too. You may think it’s the damndest thing you’ve ever heard, you may think I’m someone with too many guitars and not enough talent, but hopefully at the end of the day you’ll think I’m someone you’d like to watch wrestling with. And I’d like that, because I love wrestling.
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Wrestling is like any great piece of art. Once you like the character, that’s it, you’re hooked. You’ll follow them to the ends of the Earth/ring because you believe (in) them, so much so that you won’t even believe your own temporarily suspension of disbelief.

Contrary to popular opinion, wrestling is real. And so is the music. As such, Jimmy Hart and Rick Springfield fighting over the same girl makes as much sense as The Undertaker being Heavyweight Champion while being presently dead. It’s perfectly reasonable for Terry Funk to sing about being a juvenile delinquent when he’s a 42 year old man with two kids. Why is Macho Man rapping about Curt Hennig? Who screwed Bret? These are questions without answers except that they all have one answer: It’s Wrestling. And Music.

Whether you're a historian lamenting the death of the territories or a lapsed fan who binge-watches “Total Bellas", it doesn’t matter. This album is for the millions – and millions – of us who loved wrestling, music, and Wrestling And Music. Especially those of us who still do. And always will.

Have A Nice Day,
Jesse
March 31, 2020