beat the champ

474. Hair Match

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It does matter, in a way, if you win the fight in “Hair Match,” but the ending suggests it’s tough for everybody.

Track: “Hair Match”
Album: Beat the Champ (2015)

The song “Hair Match” requires you to know what a “hair match” is, though you can probably get it from the lyrics. In a “hair match,” wrestlers wager that they are willing to be unmasked or have their head shaved if they lose. Wrestling really requires you to buy into the fiction, but the consequences here are actually real, even more than the “real” that you have to believe to watch the match itself. The entire third verse in “Hair Match” is about shaving someone’s head when they’ve lost the match. But is it?

Darnielle answered a question on Tumblr about “Hair Match” and essentially said that he loves that people want to know more, but he’s not saying. When you look at the last song on each album, you notice patterns. One that sticks out to me is the finality of these moments and how bittersweet, if you can even go that far in the positive column, they end up. “In Corolla” is the obvious one, where someone walks into the ocean and dies. I don’t think you’re supposed to hear this and say “ah, duh, I get it,” but you are supposed to feel a certain way. It’s not about losing your hair to face real consequences. For me, it’s the last two lines, where someone walks out of the building after that and looks at the stars. The final line is “and all the cheap cars,” which reminds me of dozens of songs where someone sighs, reflects, and then goes back into whatever comes next. What else can you do, forcibly shaved head or not?

473. The Ballad of Bull Ramos

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“The Ballad of Bull Ramos” is just that, but it’s such a tight package that it’s also a standout song among hundreds.

Track: “The Ballad of Bull Ramos”
Album: Beat the Champ (2015)

The Mountain Goats are both extremely popular (in a way) and extremely insular (in a way). Their most popular shirt is a play on this, with the slogan “I Only Listen to The Mountain Goats.” I had a bumper sticker on my car in college that read in all caps “LISTEN TO THE MOUNTAIN GOATS.” In both cases, you’ll spark a conversation if someone knows what you’re talking about, but you’ll prompt a “like, the animals?” if they don’t.

I mention this because there is a community, obviously, that’s why you’re here, but not one where everyone knows each other. I have no idea what the average fan thinks of a song like “The Ballad of Bull Ramos,” which means I have no idea if it’s weird for me to say that I think it’s one of their 50 best songs. I’ve never tried to rank all of them or anything, but I just can’t get over how complete it feels. The drums are incredible and the tempo really works with what would otherwise be a sort of odd delivery from John Darnielle. I love the whine over a line like “lose a kidney, then go blind.” I can’t help but bob my head to it and I have to squint through the held note over “help the boys unload” every time.

On the surface, this is an A to B to C story, literally the ballad of a man who went by Apache Bull Ramos. But it feels so cleanly done, so complete a story, that I never even went deeper. For years I heard this song and felt like it had to be all of it and all of it true. If it isn’t, it hardly matters. The result speaks for itself.

472. Unmasked!

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“Unmasked!” may be straightforward, but there’s a deeper story about yourself that reveals itself.

Track: “Unmasked!”
Album: Beat the Champ (2015)

John Darnielle has only played “Unmasked!” three times, as far as the regular sources are concerned. At one of those in Los Angeles, he said “I hope this song speaks for itself and doesn’t need me to frame anything.” The first thing I thought of when I heard that was the word choice a director used for an art film that I saw recently that felt extremely obtuse to me. They said the central metaphor in their film was “obvious.” The two artists here are saying it for different originating reasons, but in both cases they want their art to speak for itself. They also feel like it does. In the director’s case, that comment makes the viewer feel stupid, at best, and it is hard to read it as a positive in any way. In Darnielle’s case, he’s saying he feels that any further digression just isn’t necessary.

That makes this entry a tough one, as the artist himself has essentially said that we don’t need to do this. In lieu of discussing the subject itself, I tried to listen to this one through the lens of a new listener. I’ve had some newer fans over the years tell me “Choked Out” is one of their favorite songs, even if they aren’t usually into the Mountain Goats. “Unmasked!” is on the same album, but it’s such a different song. The central mask metaphor maybe speaks for itself, but it takes until the end there to realize that it’s not directed outward. This one didn’t click with me at all for many listens, but when it did, I really appreciated what was locked inside. There’s wonder in that, even if the basics are, as the man says, obvious.

471. Stabbed to Death Outside San Juan

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The title tells you what happens in “Stabbed to Death Outside San Juan,” but the song tells you why you need to know.

Track: “Stabbed to Death Outside San Juan”
Album: Beat the Champ (2015)

There are a handful of songs with titles like “Stabbed to Death Outside San Juan,” where there is a certain charm to referring to them directly. John Darnielle acknowledges this at live shows by saying versions of “this is a song about being stabbed to death outside San Jan, it is called ‘Stabbed to Death Outside San Juan.'” One such version of this is at this live video performance at a now-closed convenience store in North Carolina. I’m mostly linking that so you can see his hair in 2015, which I emulated at the time, almost exactly in color and length, but certainly not in grandeur. We’ll cover the title phenomenon more as we get into newer songs than this, where the titles have truly gotten long and out there.

Title aside, this is a truly incredible story and arguably the best one on Beat the Champ. Bruiser Brody was a wrestler who was stabbed, to death, outside San Juan. Everyone knows who did it, but as the song says, “shower room full of people, no one hears a goddamned thing.” It is hard to read about the actual event, because it really does read fairly open-and-shut, but it all hinges on that line. You can’t know exactly what happened, but it’s very difficult to believe any version other than what became the truth everywhere except the trial that decided the opposite. The song centers on the event and the victim rather than the aftermath, but most of the time with events like these, everyone other than the victim lives in what comes after the end of the last line. That’s why you need the song to tell about the moment that will never come again.

470. Fire Editorial

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“Fire Editorial” forces you to remember that wrestling is best when it feels almost too real.

Track: “Fire Editorial”
Album: Beat the Champ (2015)

I am not deep enough in the subculture of wrestling to know who Ed Farhat was. I’m also not in John Darnielle’s generation, but that doesn’t stop most folks. Wrestling is a fascinating corner of the world, where most folks I know who like it a little end up liking it a lot. It would not be unreasonable for someone to know The Sheik, clarified sometimes as The Original Sheik to differentiate him from the guy who is still alive and still yelling at Hulk Hogan on Twitter, who was really Ed Farhat, a guy from Michigan who was a big deal in the world of wrestling in the 1970s.

“Fire Editorial” isn’t exactly his story, directly, but he’s the central figure. Darnielle described the story behind the song at a show in Seattle in 2015 and I really relate to his explanation. When I was a kid, The Undertaker beat Yokozuna in a “casket match” where the loser, supposedly, would be rolled into a specially made casket and buried. I had to look up the details, but I was nine when that happened. That’s exactly the right age where you logically know someone isn’t going to be killed and buried on TV, but you can suspend it just enough. Ed Farhat threw fire at people and the announcers played into it, screaming that he was a literal killer and “something must be done!”

You can picture young John Darnielle seeing this and being in that same headspace as I was at nine years old. Maybe you have a similar experience and maybe you don’t. The tension of Darnielle’s highest range and the piano here sell it, even if it’s a new experience for you.

469. Heel Turn 2

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“Heel Turn 2” shows us one way playing for yourself can turn out.

Track: “Heel Turn 2”
Album: Beat the Champ (2015)

The Mountain Goats debuted “Heel Turn 2” on Welcome to Night Vale in 2015. I still remember listening to the nearly six-minute song there and then taking it in live in Chicago a few weeks later. That show in Chicago was one of very few so far where the band played “Heel Turn 1,” a thematically similar song about another wrestler who makes a “heel turn,” or the appearance of making a self-centered play in the wring. The unreleased “Heel Turn 1” is funny, sorta, but “Heel Turn 2” is downright morose. The chorus is the difference, where it changes from “I, I, I’m not gonna die in here” as a stomp-along triumphant message into “I don’t want to die in here” as an uncertain, worried one.

“Heel Turn 2” also has a lengthy outro, which is a risk. If I had to pick a song to sum up the difference between “early” and “modern” Mountain Goats, it would be this one. Any fan from either era would understand the narrator who saves themselves and says “let all the trash rain down,” throwing opinions out the window and taking their chance. Those early folks might not understand the two-minute piano cooldown from “Heel Turn 2.” I generally love the evolution of the band as an idea, even when I don’t think it necessarily is exactly what I want in the moment, and I’ve really enjoyed the moments like these on albums recently. It’s not all quick explosions and mania, sometimes you have to wander around and consider the implications of the choices.

468. Animal Mask

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“Animal Mask” offers you a costume for when you aren’t ready for everyone to see inside.

Track: “Animal Mask”
Album: Beat the Champ (2015)

I’ve had a few people ask me versions of the same question since I started writing this series. They all essentially boil down to asking if there are any Mountain Goats songs I don’t like. At the time of this writing, there are 525 “released” non-cover Mountain Goats songs (though that number is very unofficial and requires several caveats) and I think every single one of them has something interesting about it. I wouldn’t have done this if I felt otherwise. That said, I like some more than others, and “Animal Mask” is near the bottom of my list.

What’s even the point of saying that? I initially randomized the whole list of songs to write about and I punted “Animal Mask” five or six times because I didn’t know what to say beyond that. It’s one of John Darnielle’s favorites, it’s been played live at least a hundred times, and it’s a touching song about his own child. I just find it hard to engage with, and I recognize that’s a personal problem.

I love the message behind it, which Darnielle has described as being about how you don’t owe anyone your true face. It’s a beautiful sentiment for one’s family, especially delivered on an album where most of the main characters feel so much pain and don’t have much say in how things go. I can appreciate “Animal Mask” as a hopeful story about father and son and about maintaining yourself in a world that tests you, even if it’s not my favorite jam.

467. The Legend of Chavo Guerrero

Alex Russell Beat the Champ , , , , , , , , ,

“The Legend of Chavo Guerrero” is, of course, just what it sounds like, but it’s also an explainer for the album as a whole.

Track: “The Legend of Chavo Guerrero”
Album: Beat the Champ (2015)

“The Legend of Chavo Guerrero” is sneaky. The first few times you hear it, you’ll probably enjoy it and follow the story. The important parts aren’t hidden, but “you called him names to try to get beneath my skin // now your ashes are scattered on the wind” could, maybe, seem to be less serious than it is. At the time of writing this, the Mountain Goats are famous on a video app because people discovered “No Children.” If that’s all you know, you might hear this one and not piece together the characters from The Sunset Tree.

The foreground story is pretty obvious: Chavo Guerrero is a cool wrestler. He’s passed away now, but at the time he was really into the song and appeared in the music video, which had to be an incredible thrill for the whole band. I watched his son wrestle when I was a kid, and I get where young Darnielle is coming from, here. “I hated all of Chavo’s enemies, I would pray nightly for their death” is a grand statement, but it’s how you feel when wrestling really matters to you.

“The Legend of Chavo Guerrero” gets the theme of Beat the Champ across so directly that it might not work if it weren’t such an incredible song. Even the ending kills me every time, with the most hopeful, sincere message possible: “I don’t know if that’s true, but I’ve been told // it’s real sweet to grow old.”

466. Southwestern Territory

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“Southwestern Territory” opens Beat the Champ on a note you can view as hopeful or remorseful.

Track: “Southwestern Territory”
Album: Beat the Champ (2015)

“Southwestern Territory” isn’t really all that different, thematically, from the rest of Beat the Champ. The whole album is about wrestling, literally, but it’s really about the struggle to make ends meet. It’s fitting that the album starts with a song that sets the stage even more directly than most of the other tracks. We follow a character who views wrestling as a way of life, but not necessarily one that will make them famous. They hope this will work but suspect it won’t. They’re realistic.

I listened to it again to write this. I didn’t need to, as this is a song I’ve heard hundreds of times. But upon hearing it again it reminded me of the title track from Tallahassee. I’m not a musician and I can’t tell you exactly why those two feel similar to me beyond that they both open up thematic albums and they both feel sort of ethereal and high-pitched. Darnielle is especially high up there for much of “Southwestern Territory” and it ends up feeling sad as a result. “I try to remember to write in the diary // that my son gave me” is most of the backstory we get, but what does that tell you? Can’t you see this place in downtown Los Angeles, but also can’t you see this wrestler? So many of these narrators are hopeless, but this one is showing us more. The limitation of songwriting as character study is exploded by that brief two-line look into who this person is, but also who they hope to be.

310. Luna

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From the opening line, “Luna” tells us that Luna Vachon’s story will not be an easy one to hear.

Track: “Luna”
Album: Beat the Champ (2015)

If you’re of a certain age and if you watched wrestling at a certain other age, you might remember Luna Vachon. She was a wrestler, which may not be shocking for Beat the Champ, but she was especially memorable for her persona and her look. She exists for me in a space most wrestlers of the early 90s exist, which I can almost place these memories but not quite. I must have seen her dozens of times or more, but all of it is just outside where I can access.

Luna Vachon is the Luna in “Luna,” which details her life, or at least one part of it. She saw a lot of success, comparatively speaking, but her story ends with a housefire that destroyed much of her memorabilia and then a tragic overdose. “Luna” follows the wrestler tracing “big names” in ash as the fire dies down. The song stops short of what comes after and suggests an eternal next step with the repetition of “and ride // and ride // and ride // and ride.”

John Darnielle says Beat the Champ is about what happens to people who wrestle more than it is about wrestling, and in “Luna” he finds a way to talk about both. We see only a moment or two of Luna Vachon’s life and we only know it’s her from the title, but once the connection is made the song is something completely different. The experience is specific, but the feeling it creates is general. This is one of the last moments, but it’s only that in retrospect. In the moment, maybe this is the start of everything turning around, but as you might know, sometimes, it’s not.