Ox Baker Triumphant^[1]

Lyrics

Banter

• So I wanted to pick songs that otld stories, and htis is one that was on an EP that came out in Australia, that is sort of, it's not autobiographical, it's based on a moment that I had, a moment with my stepfather, uh, this is a long story. So I was a big wrestling fan when I was in the 5th and 6th grade. I loved professional wrestling. It was a small thing then, the WWF existed, but it was this east coast syndicate that was all divided up regionally, and it was a poor man's game. it cost $5 to get into the wrestling match and you'd see twelve of them, and it was, poor people went to enjoy them, my family wasn't rich, so we would go tot he wrestling matches. my stepfather's father had been a wrestling promoter in indiana, and, and he would tell meabout how stuff worked, but I didn't choose to believe a lot of it, because I liked to believe in the good and the evil of my heroes and villains. And, but, I would read wrestling magazines and read about these people who didn't wrestle in los angeles, 'los angeles was not a big market and there was not a lot of a-list wrestlers there. although there was a guy named ronnie piper who later became very famous. [woo!] he was the biggest villain in los angeles and i got to see him a lot of times. but one day, a guy who i had seen in the wrestling magazines showed up to be interviewed on the weekly broadcast. his name was ox baker and I had seen pictures of him, he looked like a very scary dude. he had a big ol handlebar mustache, squinty eyes, a hulking man, and i later figured out that these guys would come to la for two weeks to get their ass- uh, hats handed to them, and sent home, that the deal was probably like they were supposed to be in the hospital in their home market, they were on vacation and they'd like, do two matches in la to make money. so this guy ox baker get sinterviewed by jeff walton, the interviewer on channel 56, i think, and jeff says to ox baker, you know, so, what, what are you gonna show to the la audience, and ox baker says: [ox baker impression] "when i tell you that the blood is going to roll from chavo guerrero's eyes, you better bring your handkerchiefs so you can dip it into the blood." [nervous laughter from audience] i knew he was supposed to sound evil but it didn't really make any sense! [less nervous laughter] i like, cocked my head like, what? and my stepfather said, how sad, i said what, and he said, well, he's inarticulate. it was the day i learned the word inarticulate, that's how i remembered it. anyways, i liked ox baker because his sort of, sort of unintelligent evil, this evil that was too primal to really be chained by reason, so 25 years later, i wrote this story abou thow, you konw, wrestling's real and they try to away with ox baker, and he comes to get his revenge. (2009-02-24)
• This song involves less yelling and screaming [than No Children], I gotta be honest with you. But I played it last night and I told a very long story about it, and I'm just really fond of this one. Did I - let me just be the teacher. Who was at the Herbst last night? [audience cheering] Did I tell you gyus at length who Ox Baker is? [cheering, cries of YES] Do you mind hearing the story again for those who missed it? [cries of NO] I'm really conscious of that. You should go get a drink, if you mind. So. But. I'm really conscious of that, 'cause if you go see a band twice, and you hear the exact same patter, to me, you know, this arouses a murderous rage in me. And I'm not going back to prison. So. When I was a kid, I was really into pro-wrestling. But pro-wrestling was a very cheap game in those days. There were not script writers working on the tagline for the guy to have when he makes his entry with the lighting rigs and the fire pots and everything. There was just a wrestling - well, it was a boxing ring that they were using for wrestling in the Olympic Auditorium, and some lights. That was kind of about it. It was kind of the indie rock of sports. And the people who showed up thought it was the greatest thing in the world, but everybody else didn' think so. And the way it worked was, in LA, we had a very unimportant bunch of wrestlers who no one ever heard of outside of Southern California and maybe a little bit in Arizona. But, in every wrestling market, there comes a time when some guy swears if he loses a match, he’s gonna leave town and you’ll never see him again. And what it means when a guy does this is that he had family to visit someplace and he needed a month off. Maybe he had something going on in his life. So he's in the New York market and he says to a then-young entrepreneur named Vince McMahon, Vince, I gotta go out to California to see some people. Can you set me up with some dates out there? And Vince would say, oh yeah, there's an organization out there. And so, suddenly this guy you’ve only seen in the magazines is being interviewed, and he seems to have some beef with our local wrestlers. But even as a kid, you go, well, you don’t know any of our guys! Nobody out here has ever heard of you except me, because I make my mom buy me the wrestling magazines. Otherwise, you're just some guy, and you're all mad at Chavo Guerrero, who never did a thing to you. Right? But his anger was contagious, because it was senseless, because it seemed to originate in itself. It was a perfect emotional feedback loop. Ox Baker comes out and says 'I'm gonna defeat Chavo Guerrero' - my hero - but I liked him, because he came out so filled with hatred. He never heard of us or our piddling little LA franchise, and he started talking, and what came out was just blind, incoherent - and I mean that in a real sense - rage. The line that I'm always quoting that he said - because this is when I learned from my stepfather what the word inarticulate meant, in a good moment between the two of us. I was watching Ox Baker and trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about. My stepfather had this look and he said, 'Oh, that's so sad.' And I said, 'Why is it sad?' And he said, 'Well, he's inarticulate. Being interviewed is not a thing for him, but he has to do it anyway.' So, what Ox Baker said to we, the viewing audience in Los Angeles, was: When I tell you that the blood is gonna run from Chavo Guerrero's eyes, you better come down to ringside and bring your handkerchief so you can dip it in the blood. My stage patter aspires to the condition of this great utterance. Anyway, this song envisions Ox Baker having been kicked out, having been told, we have no more use for you here in Florida, so go find a gig someplace else, and Ox taking the whole thing kind of rather more seriously. Thinking, you know, maybe I'm actually going to have to wrestle these people to prove my point. (2009-02-26)
• What I have to tell you about this next song is longish, and I've told this story several times in the last week, but at the same time, I don't feel that the song is as good without the story. Hence why it did not become a #1 single in so many countries as I had hoped it would, because I think it would have benefited from the story. And I submitted the version with the story attached, and hte label said, John, it's 10 minutes of talking before the song, we can't, not sending that around to radio. And I'm - but c'mon! they'll love it! [laughter] this story is not true, this part I'm telling you, it's not true. Also it's preface. It's not the actual story. So anyway, I grew up in southern California, and , you know how, oh, this story's gonna be even longer thanusual. D you know how when you're a child, you either gravitate toward things naturally, or you feel as though you did? You're not aware of the - how it is you come ot like what it is you like, you just fele like one day I looked at this thing, and terw was this thing i liked. and then you become and adult and you become jaded and afraid of spin, and you don't like anything excpet jandek records. But - but, when you're a hild you flip the tv stations around and you see something that juts calls to where you are, and who yu are and so if you are laone on a saturday morning, everybody's asleep or out of the house, you sya hey, that's what i wanna watch, professional wreestling. maybe you don't even know it's called that, maybe it's just 'guys in trunks hittin' each other'and you sya hey, check that, the dude's smacking the living god out of - awesome! look at htem go! well that was me, i started watching wresgling, and wrestling in those days was a poor people sport. the wwf, they can afford flash pods and all that, but back then, wrestling was a sport in profound decline, and the only people who went to see wrestling were, you know, people who new a bargain when they saw it. $5 for eleven matches on a wednesday. you know, wrestlers being announced as hailing form argentina when really they're from [unintelligible] or west covina, and i was really into it. and i really, i looked forward ot it , i started watching it on the psanish stations. I didn't speak spanish but it's like, the spanish stations were super into it. they had a three hour broadcast on saturday morning, awesome, right. and i was super into it, and i'd get wrestling magazines and read about people on the east coast who would come out to where we were. they were the main ones, la was not a big market, and i would read about ht ebig famous ones: andre the giant, bruno sammartino, and these guys, who were the big players. and then one day, one of htem whom i'd seen in the magazines, seen his picture, popped up on the screen one saturday morning being interviewed by jeff walton, the la interviewer, his name was ox baker, and the reason i think i remember him is htis interview. i didn't see the match, but jeff walton said to ox bakre, so, ox, you have a tough match coming up here in LA, we have our local hero chavo guerrero, what do you have to say. and ox baker launched into this rant of which no sense could be made by human beings. [laughter] and it was terrifying, he wsa like 6'4" and i'm a reading kid. i grew up into books, and hte more compelling your argument, the better it is, and the more likely you are to win. because that's what wins things, it's reason, you know, and persuasion, sweet persuasion. and ox baker said, [ox baker impression] JEFF WHEN I TELL YOU BLOOD IS GONNA RUN FROM CHAVO GUERRERO'S EYES ON SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE OLYMPIC AUDITORIUM, THEN YOU'D BETTER BRING YOUR HANKIE TO RINGSIDE SO YOU CAN DRIP IT INTO THE BLOOD. [confused laughter] and i was like, here you are, confronted with brute force in the absence of all the things you thought were going ot be victorious in the world, and as it turns out, as we all learn later, ox baker was right, and the rest of us were up on some romantic nonsense. so. anyway. years later i was thining about ox baker, and i sorta had developed an affeciton for him as yo udo for the things that you remember from childhood. sort of imagined this little story where htey run him out of town to try to kill him, but he comes back to exact his revenge. (2009-03-21)
• This is another tiresome Indiana-related story. I hope that's okay, I don't wanna be like, pandering - you know, oyu go see a big stadium rock band and htey keep saying the name of your town over and over and over again, yeah, man I know, i live here, hands up to gainbury ohio, thank you for comin' out. [woo!] but, my stepfather's father was a wrestling promoter in South Bend. In the 40s, briefly, and this was of interest to me because, wihtout knowing that, came to start watching wrestling on television in southern california in the late 70s and i thought it was the greatest fuckin thing. the guys are kickin' each others' asses. i mean, i like boxing a lot, and muhammad ali was my hero, but sometimes you're watching boxing and they're htrowing too many punches and you think, he should kick that guy in the face. in wrestling, you cna do exactly that. so i tohught it was pretty great, and southern califonia has a high mexican population, so lucha libre wrestling is huge down in mexico, the whole big thing, you could see the english language broadcast which was like an hour, or if you could stand to watch a language you couldn't speak yet, watch channel 34, kmdx, three solid hours of la professional wrestling on saturday morning. i thought it was high times. and my stepfather would, uh, would watch me watch and enjoy it, and - i've told some this- this was the thing that was hard to put on the sunset tree, i tried to a little in the last song on it. but as a number of you know, my stepfather terrorized my family. but if you live in an abusive home, the person who abuses you is also you friend and father. he would teach me things, and he would say, my dad used to promote wrestling out there in south bend, and he'd [unintelligible] through and he would explain to me what was gonna happen. he'd say, you see that red bulb on the turnbuckle, it won't be there at the end of hte match, 'cause there's blood in it. not real blood, and i'd go [very quiet] holy shit. so i'd be watching and he'd be explaining these thing sto me, and sometimes i'd like it, and sometimes i'd be like, well, my hero chavo guerrero, he's actually wrestling for real. and he is punishing them for their fake-ass wrestling. But, uh, anyways, i'd read wrestling magazines, i'd read about these guys on the east coast and in the southeast who'd never come to LA and then one day one of them was interviewed because hew as gonnac ome through. i assume now it was because he was on vacation, and he was like, hey, do you guys got any work, i'm coming to [unintelligible] for the weekend. but he was interviewed, and his interview was hte strangest thing. i'd seen pictures of him, and i was waiting to hear how this thing would be done, all i had was a big handlebar mustache and his name was ox baker. and he gave his interview and it was the day i learned hte word inarticulate, it was the interviewer guy, a guy all drenched in his own innocence who goes, 'ox baker, whta cna the fans of los angeles expect from your match against our hero chavo guerrero htis saturday night at the olympic auditorium?' and ox baker [jd laughing] grabs hte microphone around the guy and goes [ox baker impression] JEFF WHEN I TELL YOU BLOOD IS GONNA RUN FROM CHAVO GUERRERO'S EYES, YOU BETTER BRING YOUR HANKY TO RINGSIDE SO YOU CAN DIP IT INTO THE BLOOD. i don't get it. i looked at my stepfather like, explain this, the guy is talking into poetry that nobody can understand. and my stepfather got htis tragic look on his face and went, oh, it's the saddest thing. becuase htey didn't used to hve interviews, so old wrestlers didn't hvae to say anything on camera, they weren't afforded the choice. so if you weren't really capable of formulating a coherent thought and ad libbing one, then they just hang you out to dry. this song imagines ox baker being hung out to dry one too many times and coming back to seek his revenge. (2009-04-06)
• This song is my dream of Ox Baker being forced to leave town and then coming back to his normal arena to seek revenge on those who would wrong him. (2012-06-27
• This is a song about a professional wrestler named Ox Baker. Master of the heart punch. You get hit with a heart punch, you could possibly die. That's the word on the street about Ox Baker, is that if he hits you with a heart punch you could land in the hospital or the grave. That's a hell of a thing to have happen to you if you just went in, maybe trying to wrestle scientifically, and the god-damn good-guy baby-face going in there. Wrestle, you know, like the holds and the moves, and Ox Baker comes around and he's six-foot-four. And he has a handle bar moustache. And he'll punch you straight in the goddamn heart as soon as look at you. That's the thing about Ox, is that you're there to score a victory, you know, and to gain glory for yourself and for your family name. Ox Baker has a t-shirt that says 'I Like to Hurt People'. So you guys have different ideologies. One of you has this ideology of like good and evil, and probably courtly love and all kinds of other things. Ox's ideology is primitive and dark and springs from the rocks underneath us, and we can't even understand it because we graduated from it a long time ago. But Ox is very interested in these darker, more primitive, base, earthen ideas. But he doesn’t express it that way. He expresses it by punching you in the goddamn heart. So it's probably going to be hard times for you, when you get into it with Ox, 'cause he doesn't really care. You care. Ox doesn't care. The guy who doesn't care has a big advantage in life, generally speaking. He has a disadvantage as far as like, feeling at home with the world, but a big advantage over you. This is a song that imagines that Ox Baker has been taken away somehow and dumped because they wanted to get rid of him, because they don't understand his philosophy, right? But Ox will come back. That's really, that's my message. That's why I'm in this business in the first place, to let everybody know that Ox is coming back. He will come again in a sort of glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. (2013-06-17)

Live Performances

• 2008-12-18 - San Francisco Bath House, Wellington
• 2009-02-24 - Herbst Theatre, San Francisco (JD solo - recording)
• 2009-02-25 - Swedish American Hall, San Francisco (JD solo - video, recording)
• 2009-03-07 - Harvest of Hope Festival, St. Augustine (JD solo)
• 2009-03-18 - The Grey Eagle, Asheville (JD solo)
• 2009-03-21 - Sixth and I Historic Synagogue (JD solo - recording)
• 2009-03-26 - Donovan's Pub at Colgate University, Hamilton (JD solo)
• 2009-04-03 - Mission Creek Music Festival at The Mill, Iowa City (JD solo)
• 2009-04-06 - Buskirk-Chumley Theater, Bloomington (JD solo - recording)
• 2012-06-22 - Rio Theater, Vancouver (JD solo)
• 2012-06-25 - Mission Theater, Portland OR (JD solo)
• 2012-06-27 - Swedish American Hall, San Francisco (JD solo)
• 2012-09-07 - Hopscotch Music Festival at Fletcher Opera Theater, Raleigh (JD solo)
• 2012-10-10 - Ottobar, Baltimore (JD solo)
• 2013-06-04 - Strand-Capitol Performing Arts Center, York PA (JD and Peter duo)
• 2013-06-07 - Center Church on the Green, New Haven (JD and Peter duo)
• 2013-06-08 - Port City Music Hall, Portland ME (JD and Peter duo)
• 2013-06-17 - Lincoln Hall, Chicago (JD and Peter duo - video)

Footnotes