I got a few new followers it seems, so I’d like to let all of you know that I actually have another website called Mostly-Retro, where I ramble about all things music, movies and games (but mostly music). Check it out. Right now I’m writing about obscure grunge rock. I’m sure that appeals to someone either than me. Maybe.
Moving on. When I posted Hulk Hogan & Itch-Band a few weeks back I had a sneaking suspicion that it would catch on and gain some traction with the online wrestling community. However, I didn’t suspect that it would be the most popular thing I’ve written all year. Like, by a lot. My hits usually hover in the mid-to-high hundreds. That one garnered me a few thousand. And if I’m anything I’m a sucker for attention so, congratulations you all, you made me do this.
The Wrestling Album (Complete Album Download)
The Wrestling Album, released in 1985 and the he first WWF/WWE album. It was produced mostly by Rick Derringer with some assist by Cyndi Lauper, under the pseudonym of Mona Flambe. It features 10 tracks in total, and is a combination of wrestler theme music, oldies covers, a few comedic bits and original tunes. All singing duties on the album are performed by either wrestlers or other WWF personnel, with appearances by Junkyward Dog, Jimmy Hart, ‘Captain’ Lou Albano, and many others. The album is mostly known for its all-star single, a cover of “Land Of 1,000 Dances ?!!?” that features pretty much every wrestler the WWF had at the time.
Oh. And its the worst album I’ve ever heard in my entire life.
And that’s really saying something! Because A: I’ve listened to a lot of shitty albums and B: I actually like two tracks on this record. But it goes to show you just how damn bad the rest of it is.
But before I get to the dogshit, the good tracks. First up, Derrenger’s “Real American.” While it’s most famous for being Hulk Hogan’s theme music during the majority of his time in the WWF, here the song is billed as the theme music to the U.S. Express tag team. However, they bailed on the WWF not long after this album came out, so the song was re-purposed as the Hulkster’s theme music. Still a classic, I get goosebumps of nostalgia every time I play it. Not just that, I do think it’s an honest-to-goodness good song. Not many songs can be blatantly patriotic while avoiding sounding nationalistic, so good job on Derringer for pulling it off.
Trivia note: the backup vocals are by Cyndi Lauper!
The other good track is “Hulk Hogan’s Theme.” This served as the theme to Hulk’s cartoon and was, as the title suggests, was also Hulk’s theme song for about five minutes in 1984. This track was written by Jim Steinman of Meat Loaf fame, and would go on to be reworked as “Ravishing” by Bonnie Tyler. So yeah, it’s an alright tune.
Okay, now that I got that out of the way – everything else on this album is dogshit of the worst variety. “Mean” Gene Okerlund covers “Tutti Frutti” and it’s abysmal. Jimmy Hart drops the dis track “Eat Your Hart Out Rick Springfield” and – wait a second, “Hart?” Is Jimmy Hart asking Rick Springfield to eat…okay I’m gonna move on now before I get incredibly unfortunate mental pictures stuck in my head.
One of the stranger tracks on the album is “Rowdy” Roddy Piper covering the obscure Mike Angelo & The Idols’ track “Fuck Everybody” renamed to “For Everybody.” This, of course, completely changes the meaning of the song into complete nonsense, but that’s the least of its problems as Roddy can’t sing for shit. Seriously, he sounds like someone is pulling out his testicle hair with a pair of tweezers. There’s a reason why They Live didn’t have a musical number.
Junkyard Dog, Hillbilly Jim’s , and Nikoli Volkoff all have songs too, but they’re just run-of-the-mill horrible and barely worth talking about. What is worth talking about, however, is “Captain Lou’s History Of Music/Captain Lou.” This is the worst song I’ve ever heard in my entire life. No question. The constant wailing by The Animal, the hideous carnivalesque music, the bland production (thanks to Cyndi Lauper) and, at the forefront of the shit, Captain Lou’s atrocious, hideous, craptastic singing. If you have any esteem for Captain Lou, wrestling, Cyndi Lauper or pretty much “the 80s” as a singular thing, you’ve been warned – this might destroy all of that.
As for the all-star rendition of “Land of 1,000 Dances ?!!?,” well, that’s just kind of cute. I mean, yes, its horrible and not a single wrestler who makes an appearance on the track can actually sing, but none of them are really trying to. It’s just a joke track, a novelty number and nothing more. Yeah, the joke is horrible and the novelty wears off after about one minute, but it’s a hard song to outright hate. Or maybe my hatred for it is just dulled because, when compared to the sonic manure that makes up the rest of the record, it’s downright Grammy-worthy.
The WWF certainly thought the track was noteworthy. It was the only song from the album to get a video, and they even released it as a 12″ single, complete with an extended version and an instrumental. Now, I know what you’re thinking, what idiot would be dumb enough to buy that?
Yo.
The Wrestlers
Land Of 1,000 Dances (Dance Version)
Land Of 1,000 Dances (Instrumental Version)
So if you were listening to the album version of this track and thought, “you know what? This needs to be about two minutes longer and end with a wicked drum solo,” then you are in luck. As for the instrumental, you should download it just so when people ask you “what’s the dumbest, most pointless song in your MP3 collection? you have an easy answer.
Enjoy the horribleness. One more wrestling album coming soon.
It’s slightly better than this one.
Slightly.
1,000 horribles, but i thoroughly enjoyed it. Nice find as always.
You know, in terms of how incredibly lame The Wrestling Album is… I actually like 6 out of the 10 tracks. It’s kinda like the musical equivalent of what MST3K would air. Hell man, Nikolai Volkoff’s cover of “Cara Mia” is definitely one of my favorites due to how off the wall it gets with him singing the Soviet national anthem toward the end.
I seriously can not wait to see what the next wrestling album you post is 🙂 Some part of me is thinking it might be Piledriver lol.
This rocked my world thank u
worst album … ?
i bought it, and it was Good actually,
what can i say i was ten!
The song that Capt. Lou sings is actually a cover of an NRBQ song they did in honor of Capt. Lou a few years before. He made a guest appearance on their record but then I guess someone had the bright idea of having him do the entire song on the Wrestling Album. His appearance on the original added a nice touch to an otherwise cute little novelty song and is nowhere near as annoying as the one you have here. But thank you for posting this. It’s definitely a guilty pleasure. 🙂
Wow, thanks for keeping the spirit of cheesy music alive. It’s one of the great guilty pleasures, for sure! A bunch of covers, but no one really embarrassed themselves.
I think you’re being way too harsh on The Wrestling Album in your review. First of all, it was, is, and always has been a novelty album. You seem to be comparing it to albums like “Purple Rain”, “Born I The USA”, “Like A Virgin”, and other mainstream hit albums of that year. Truthfully you should be comparing it to other novelty albums supch as “Dumb Ditties” and “Looney Tunes”. Can you honestly say that you can compare The Wrestling Album to songs like My Ding-A-Ling, Hello Mudda/Hello Fadda, Itsy Bitsy-Teeny Weenie-Yellow Polkadot Bikini, Purple People Eater, etc, and say “Yeah, The Wrestling Album sucks in comparison to all those great classic dance hits”? Hell no! You’ll be more like “Yeah, that’s where the Wrestling Album belongs. Right beside those other novelty songs.” Which is exactly where it was always meant to be found.
Also, the Wrestling Album was made for a very specific target demographic. Wrestling fans. If you’re not a wrestling fan you’re not going to enjoy this album. Period.
Now let’s look at some of the songs you dissed in your review. First, “Grab Them Cakes” by The Junkyard Dog. This was essentially a rap song. In 1985. At least a couple of years before rap was even really a thing in the music industry. The Grammies didn’t even recognize rap with their own category until 1989 (won by DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince). That to me says that the song was ahead of its time. Was it a great rap song? No. But saying that it sucks because it was rap before rap was cool is very unfair.
And what about Jimmy Hart’s “Eat Your Heart Out Rick Springfield”? You seem to have forgotten that Jimmy Hart was a professional singer before becoming a wrestling manager. In fact his band, The Gentrys, knocked The Beatles out of the #1 spot on The US charts with their song “Keep On Rockin'”. Think about that for a moment. The mother fucking Beatles! Knocked out of the #1 spot by by one hit wonder named Jimmy Hart. You might not have liked the song, but don’t diss the talent or skills of the man who sang it. I’m still kicking myself for not buying his solo album just because he was a heel and I was a total mark at the time.
It’s totally no surprise that the only two songs on the album that you liked were “Real American” and “Hulk Hogan’s Theme Music”. As those were the only two songs (aside from Jimmy Hart’s) that were performed by professional singers/musicians.
Hillbilly Jim’s “Don’t Go Messin’ With A Country Boy”, while technically not a great song, is a lot of fun. And for a song like that you don’t have to be a great singer. Just have an energetic personality and a southern drawl, which Hillbilly Jim has. And while his singing voice isn’t great, it’s not Captain Lou level of bad either. It’s in the middle of the road, and that’s just fine for th particular song.
Nikolai Volkoff’s rendition of Cara Mia I’m a little torn on. On the one hand, Nikolai has a nice “Johnny Cash” type quality to his singing voice. On the other hand, with his heavy Slavic accent I can hardly understand a word he said in that entire song.
The other three songs, “For Everybody” by Rowdy Roddy Piper, “The History Of Music” by Captain Lou Albano, and “Land Of 1000 Dances” by the WWF Superstars I can’t really defend except by saying that they’re novelty songs being sung for a novelty album. I will say that hating on Hot Rod’s song because they changed the lyrics of “The World Doesn’t Like Me” and renamed the song “For Everybody” I think is unfair, as wrestling at that time was being geared more towards a younger demographic, with action figures, Halloween costumes, Saturday morning cartoons, and stuffed toys being just on the horizon. Parents would have flipped if they had bought the album for their kids, only to hear them singing “Fuck Everybody”. There was a reason Roddy Piper coined the phrase “Son of an unnamed goat”. It was because in the mid 1980’s he couldn’t get away with saying “Son of a bitch”.
Anyway, as a huge wrestling fan who has owned this album since 1985 (in fact it was the very first record I ever owned) I thought I should share my opinion. Take it for what you will.
You’re not wrong.
I would counter by saying that Piledriver, the second wrestling album, is a novelty album that is actually not that bad with a few good songs even.
Regardless, you do you, and if you enjoy that album I’m happy that brings you joy!