Why Psykotik is my Hero and Songs for other people
Howdy folks.
I was stoked to hear from S. today, letting me know he's climbing back in the ring after a year in recovery from injury.
Regular Cellar Dwellers may remember that we wrote a song for Psykotic and his mates at Australian Wrestling Entertainment and played it at their Championship match. Don't recall? here's the promo.
Even though I never considered myself a wrestling fan, I have a deep respect for these guys. It's a Co-op, they set up the stage themselves, do their own promo, plan their own stories and as I learned, the stories are Mythic, Epic, in an amazing way, a direct descendant of hi brow Greek stuff...minus the face paint and buff body parts.
Well...
It totally changed my mind on the nature of wrestling and what it means.
Children and their grandparents, business dudes and hecklers, Cheer the good guys, Hiss at the bad guys and experience titanic battles in their local RSL.
S. explained to me that the choices of characters, good guys and bad guys, represent the fears and hero archetypes of suburban Aussies.
The audience is part of the experience. It blew my mind.
Recap the night here:
We wrote 'Return of the king' for the championship and had to rename it to 'The King is Back' cos some douchebags turned the 'return of the king' from a tolkien reference to some douchey pickup stuff and Marketing Department intervened..
Where was I? oh yeah. So there we were, getting ready to find a night to come in and launch the song at another match when Psykotik was badly injured at a match.
I admire these guys, the persistence, the tenacity, the Cojones to just go be a Hero for a night, to transcend themselves, in some way it represents the best of what we can be as Men. Yeah weird I know, yes I draw a long bow, citation required sure.
But this same determination has seen S. walk again, return to work, greet his newborn standing, and now, Psykotik returns to the ring September 9th.
We salute the members of the AWE and we bow to the rightful king. The King Is Back.
Telling the stories of the people we meet is one of the great things we get to do.
I'll add a link to the sound shortly.