Brewsers #305- Harry Slash

Today on Brewsers, we talk to Harry Slash. We talk about music, ECW, and so much more. Harry Slash and the Slashtones release Christmas Music on November 14th. Follow us on instagram and twitter at Brewserspod. Like, share, review, enjoy and cheers. #brewsers #brewserspod #Enjoylife #DrinkLocal #Cheers 


https://linktr.ee/brewserspod

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:20):
We welcome to the Bruisers podcastbed Beer, Coffee, Booze and Bruisers.
I am your host, Roy John and today we talked
to Harry Slash. We talk about music, E CW and
so much more. Harry Slash and the Slash Tones are
releasing Christmas Music on November fourteenth. It is a three
song EP with all Christmas music and as you'll hear

(00:40):
in this interview, there are something very special about this
musical collection. So you don't want to hear from me,
you want to hear from him. So without further ado,
here is Harry Slash.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Like to welcome to show. Harry Slash. How are you
doing tonight, sir?

Speaker 3 (01:03):
What's up man? Good? I'm sorry? I love you. Start
that over? What's up man? Thank you for having me on.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Thank you for being here. So for those listening kind
of paints and word picture, where are you at? What's
going on around you?

Speaker 3 (01:17):
I'm in New York. I have only gotten two hours
sleep and I'm in New York.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Which bird are you in?

Speaker 3 (01:30):
I'm in Queens?

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Okay? Have you always lived in Queens?

Speaker 3 (01:35):
For? I was born here, I've lived here for most
of my life. I have lived other places like California
and Westchester and Bronx and Brooklyn and Manhattan. You know,
I've bounced around, but somehow I always end up back
in Queens.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
What is it? Because I've I've visited New York multiple times,
I'm always curious as much as I always say I
would never live there just because well, first off, I
don't like the cold, so that definitely wouldn't work out
for me. But it just it's almost a too busyness
for me. But also like on the other side, my
fomo would be like, there's always something happening. You could

(02:12):
literally walk to almost all these different things in your area.
But like, I don't know, for you, what has always
been kind of the draw for coming back, Like you said,
either to Queens or New York and story itself.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
Well, I spent a great deal of time in the
late eighties and nineties in Manhattan when I was working
in the nightclub world. Oh yeah, Manhattan runs twenty four
hours a day, seven days a week, but living in
Queens was a great It was like twenty minutes later
and I would be in a different planet where there

(02:47):
would be peace and quiet and a little more stability.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Interesting, Yeah, Manhattan Back in the eighties and early nineties
was completely different Manhattan than what is happening right now.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
Oh, absolutely, right now. Tourist section. Yeah, when I my
Manhattan included peep shows on forty second Street and the
Lower East Side was like the wild West. Yeah, and
you didn't travel beyond Avenue B unless you were you
were packing packing a gun, you know, or had some

(03:20):
weapon of some sort because it was no man's land.
And now you can't even afford the rents on Avenue
D and forty second Street is now Disneyland.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah, exactly what was the music scene like back then,
because obviously you had what CBGB's Studio fifty four, which
was you know, his own little Animal, and then like
there was obviously all these other tiny little uh con
clubs and everything. What was the whole music scene like
back in the day.

Speaker 3 (03:52):
It was. It was phenomenal. Absolutely. I got to see
Nirvana before their first record came out. I got to
see Alice and Chains at the Cat Club. You know
New York City music scene. The hub would have been
a club called the Scrap Bar, which was featured on MTV,
where every major act touring through New York had to

(04:14):
go to the Scrap Bar, which was a little hole
in the wall dive on I think it was on
Bleaker Street or McDougall Street, one of those. It's been
a while, so, you know, Scrap Bar was the hub.
Limelight was the mecca.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
How many people feeding there?

Speaker 3 (04:30):
You think? Sorry, how many people you think fitting there?
And the Scrap or the Limelight both scrap On a
given night you could have three to four hundred, but
the capacity was the capacity was probably like one hundred.
You know, it would be packed wall to wall, you know,

(04:50):
every single night with metal heads, alternatives, rockers, you know, bikers.
You know, that whole vibe was there. Limelight again, depending
on the night. I don't know what the legal capacity is,
but on an average night, there would be about five
thousand people in and out of the club at any
not at the same.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
Time, right, but just rotating throughout the night.

Speaker 3 (05:12):
Yeah, Like when Guns n' Roses played there, they were
sold out. When Pearl Jam played there, sold out to capacity.
You know, it was just it had a vibe of
its own. And then we had a couple of mayors
that decided to kill the life blood and the heart
and soul of Manhattan. You know, it started with Rudy

(05:33):
Giuliani and carried over to Mike Bloomberg and they basically
killed the music scene in New York.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (05:42):
You know, I had my club on Third Avenue between
twelve and thirteen Street, and I didn't put my first
band on until ten o'clock and the last band would
go on around three o'clock in the morning. Right now,
by midnight, clubs are closing up for the night. Yeah,
you know, it's they've turned it into a different world.

(06:04):
They've they've turned it into well by some some some
of it is good, right, whereas like you know, families
can go to Times Square and forty second Street and
take pictures of people dressed like Spider Man and Bozo
the Clown and stuff like that. But the dirty soul
of New York.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
Is gone, right.

Speaker 3 (06:26):
You know, the whole CBGB's if it opened today, it
would close in a couple of months because they that
vibe would not exist, right.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yeah. I watched a movie about tv GB. It may
have been called tv GB, and I was I didn't realize,
Oh what's his fucking name? He was in Dogma anyway?

Speaker 3 (06:46):
Uh, Yes, the guy who played Hilly Crystal, whose name
I'm also forgetting.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
Yeah, the bad guy from uh Diehard or a good
guy depending on how you look at it. Uh. Anyway, yes,
he was the he was the main guy. That movie
was fantastic And obviously it's not a documentary or anything,
but it is kind of hitting the high points. Is
kind of what was going on for that place. And
you know, from what I hear, all that stuff was
taken down and then moved all to Vegas. I think

(07:14):
some of it might be in Seattle too, So.

Speaker 3 (07:16):
Yeah, there's people have bought parts of the wall.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
Yeah, and what have you now?

Speaker 3 (07:21):
The movie Alan Reichman, that's it.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
Yes, thank you.

Speaker 3 (07:25):
It took me a moment. The movie was loosely based
on a true story, right and as a New Yorker
with a lot of friends that played CBGB's during the heyday,
like the Dictators and the Ramones and Blondie. A lot
of people hated the movie because it wasn't a word

(07:45):
for word documentary style as it happened, But the filmmakers
had to make it for everybody on the planet, not
just the people on the Lower East Side. Yep, you know,
so there was a lot of poetic license taken with
the movie. I personally enjoyed the movie.

Speaker 2 (08:03):
Yeah, and I.

Speaker 3 (08:04):
Know younger kids, the gen zers that got turned on
to bands from watching that movie that never would have
heard of the Dead Boys or Talking Heads or Digging Pop.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
Right, or maybe even Blondie, which is kind of insane
to think about. Yeah it is, you know, but yeah,
I mean we're seeing that with so many other music
movies now that where they are kind of just hitting
kind of the high points or whatever, but they're kind
of telling the overall story. Because again, you can get
really into the weeds about a lot of stuff when
it comes to even Queen or Bob Dylan or now

(08:37):
this new Bruce Springsteen movies, or like even the CBG wing.
But let somebody else do that documentary about CBGB's and
you know, if it gets you interested in it, and
then you start, like you said, finding all these new
bands that have been around forever, then you know, that's
always a good thing. And then if they really want
to go deep diving, they can go deep dive even
more because obviously we have access to everything in our
hands at all times.

Speaker 3 (08:58):
So yeah, you know, when somebody makes a movie like
the Ray Charles movie, Ray, which was.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
Jamie Farr, Jamie Jamie Fox.

Speaker 3 (09:08):
I'm sorry, Jamie Fox. Jamie Farr is the guy from
Mesh a dude, I apologize to your audience. I've only
gotten a couple hours sleep. But uh so, Jamie Jamie Fox.
And Ray Charles was very hands on and he made
sure that if you're going to tell the good story,
you're gonna tell the bad story. So there was a

(09:31):
lot of things that you wouldn't expect to have been
in the Ray movie. But Ray Charles himself insisted, it's like, no,
I was a prick, you know, so I want you
to show that the movie about Johnny Cash with Joaquin Phoenix.
Loved the movie mostly a true story, you know, but

(09:53):
you have to take poetic license. You you can't make
a motion picture on a living sum object only to
appeal to the people.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
That know the facts.

Speaker 3 (10:04):
You need to appeal to a broader audience. And you know,
if people are suddenly discovering the movie of the music
of Johnny Cash through the Joaquin Phoenix movie, maybe they'll
find out and they'll do their research and find out
the true story behind everything you know that they showed
in the movie.

Speaker 2 (10:23):
Yeah, no, without a doubt. Well, let's go all the
way back in time of fast What is your earliest
memory of wrestling? Sorry, of music. I'll talk about wrestling later.

Speaker 3 (10:33):
My earliest memory of music was probably as a child.
When as I was growing up, my father, one of
the jobs he had was to change the forty fives,
the vinyl forty fives and jukeboxes.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
That's cool.

Speaker 3 (10:50):
So my father, being a hoarder, everybody else that did
that job through the forty five's away, my father kept them.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (10:59):
So from very young age, I had a like stacks
and crates filled with singles from a huge variety of music,
everything from like Celtic to Bing Crosby to the Doors
to early Jimmy Hendrix that you know. At like five

(11:20):
years old, I would just go down into the garage
and grab a stack of forty fives and I put
them on my little plastic one piece record player where
the lid flipped open and the speaker was in the lid.
You know, this little piece of junk that they used
to buy all the little kids to play their music.
So while my friends were listening to like Sesame Street

(11:42):
and the Partridge Family, I was listening to like Louis Armstrong,
and Jimmy Duranty and The Doors and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (11:50):
Man, what so you never really got the album art though,
you just got the music itself.

Speaker 3 (11:58):
No, because you also had promotional records, okay, like when
he would go pick up the latest forty fives occasionally
he would, you know, they'd give out the promotional use
only albums. So I have the Doors, absolutely Live, the
Best of Love, I think, the first Simon and Garfunkel record,

(12:22):
and a few others that my father kept because he
never threw anything away.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
Right, what are the I mean, have you looked to
see how much does it worth? Now?

Speaker 3 (12:31):
Honestly no, I haven't even thought about that.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
Okay, not that obviously you're trying to, but just just
kind of have a reference.

Speaker 3 (12:37):
Really my first album or maybe like the second or
third album that I bought when I think I was
like five years old or six years old. My older
cousins were going to a record store, you know, probably
looking for the latest brit pop beatles type of thing,

(12:58):
and I had my birthday money and at the time
I was fascinated by the film footage of the Hindenburg.
Oh it had shown. They'd showed that quite often on PBS. Right, okay,
And I saw the Hindenburg on an album cover. I

(13:19):
didn't bother to read the text on the front, nor
did I flip over the back. I just took the
album cover to the cashier and I pulled out my
five dollar bill for my birthday money, and I ended
up buying led Zeppelin one, and I went home and
I put it on my plastic record player, expecting to

(13:39):
hear and all the humanity, the humanity, it's burst into flames,
and instead I'm listening to good times, bad times, the
days and confused, and I'm like, this ain't the Hindenburg,
but this is pretty badass.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
I like this. Yeah. I recently went through I think
the first three led Zeppelin albums again and I was like, man,
these are just they hold up and they're just insane.

Speaker 3 (14:02):
The sick part is led Zeppelin one was recorded in
less than twenty four hours on like an eight track
or something like that, right, you know, and fifty years
later it sounds like something that was recorded yesterday and
pro tools, right.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
I mean, you can do the same thing with most
of the Beatles album as well, Like those are just
they weren't obviously recorded in that quick of time. But
the amount of albums they put out in that shorter period,
they just showed that they lived either on the road
or in a studio, and it was just, yeah, that
was it.

Speaker 3 (14:33):
I'm not the biggest early Beatles fan, Okay, makes sense.
I really prefer the Beatles after they started smoking pot.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
And dropping that. Yep, lokay.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
The post Revolver Beatles and the pre Revolver Beatles, in
my opinion, or two different bands. Yeah, the early Beatles
were a boy band. Yeah, without it, they were the
n Sync, the the Backstreet Boys, the Backstreet Boys of
their era, and then they turned into the Pink Floyd

(15:06):
psychedelic What the hell am I listening to of the
later half of their career, where it's absolutely brilliant some
of the things they did well.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
I mean, there is that little bit of comparison because
I believe that they were I think they said their
actual competitors were the Beach Boys, and the Beach Boys
you could do the same thing where they were just
doing that that boy band kind of, but it was
on the California side and so it was all surfery.
And then once they started smoking weed and doing acid,

(15:37):
then you get pet sounds and all these other stuff.

Speaker 3 (15:39):
Yeah, like good vibrations. I think like has seven key
chains changes and like five timing changes. It's like like
somebody dropped something to create. Like Ryan Wilson was smoking
some really good stuff when he came up with that one. Yeah,
and god, God only knows is another one that when

(16:01):
I hear and I'm like, I don't get it. I
don't understand how a human being could create this. It's
just Brendant, you know, but most people know them from
surfing USA, and you know, you know all their surf rock,
you know, California boy band music. And then much like

(16:21):
the Beatles, somebody said, here, smoke this, and they're like,
oh wow, a hole new universe is opened up for us.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
Yeah. Yeah, your brain just breaks and you're like, whoa,
everything's everywhere. This is the best I get it. I
smoke weed too, It's great.

Speaker 3 (16:36):
I used to. Now I do. I smoke on occasion,
but I really like my gummies.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
Gummies are fantastic.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
Yeah, you know, for pain, for for physical ailments, for
medicinal purposes.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
Gummies are great.

Speaker 3 (16:53):
And if you just want to get zonked out and
listen to Leonard Cohen, smoking weed is great.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
Exactly, well, when did you start actually playing music yourself?

Speaker 3 (17:03):
Though I would to narrow down the actual year would
be difficult. I would say middle school, where I bought
a drum kit at a garage sale. We're talking about
like a four piece, a symbol snare kick drum. I

(17:27):
think it had a tom okay, and with some other
kids in the neighborhood, we formed a band. And I
had no idea about anything to do with music. All
I knew was I bought a drum kit. So for
one summer we rehearsed five songs where I learned how
to count to four, you know, kick snare, snare, symbol

(17:50):
kick snare, snare, tom. It didn't matter what drums were
played on the original song. All I could do was
count to four. And we were given the opportunit tunity
to play on a Sunday afternoon in front of a
lot of alcohol of drunks at a local bar called
Cheers Pub, which was near my house. I don't even

(18:12):
remember what songs we played. I was the youngest guy
in the band. I could count to four, that's all
that mattered. And then I realized I'm not a drummer.
It takes a special mindset to be able to do
something completely different with both hands and both feet at
the same time. So I did something radical. I sold

(18:32):
the garbage drum kit. I think I bought it for
five and sold it for six, you.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
Know, so I'm like that.

Speaker 3 (18:40):
It was a toy. And I bought an acoustic guitar
and actually started taking guitar lessons. And that would have
been right before high school, like eighth grade or something
like that, seventh grade. And then I just kept taking
guitar lessons, and then I played in some punk bands
in the early eighties. But in all honesty, on my

(19:05):
best day, I was a mediocre guitar player, great songwriter,
mediocre guitar player. That's why every time I've done anything,
I've always brought in better guitar players. I can write
the part, I can tell you what to play. I
just can't play it myself.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
Okay, there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, you know that.
It's obviously it worked out well for you.

Speaker 3 (19:27):
And as life went further on, I did some serious
damage to my left hand, broke a couple of fingers
a couple of times. They never healed right. I was
in a fight where a guy stabbed me in the
upper forearm and then muscle over here and it cut
one of the tendons or whatever the things you're called.

(19:48):
So I got two fingers that are constantly shaking and
don't go where I tell them to go, right, you know.
So I can still form a C chord or a
G chord, but sometimes I have to use my right
hand to put the finger on the actual threatboard, right. Yeah, yeah,
it is what it is, man.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
Yeah, that's life and you're just you're still making your
way through it. So that's good. Yeah. Yeah, Well how
did you eventually start forming Harry and the Hairytes Harry
and the slash Tes.

Speaker 3 (20:20):
Okay, that was I was a club promoter at the time.
It had been several years since I was in my
last band, maybe eight nine years, and at the time,
club promoters would exploit their birthday like it was a
religious holiday.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
I've seen many places like that, yes, to.

Speaker 3 (20:37):
Get people in the club, and I was always kind
of like left field, off center, and I'm like, all right,
for my birthday, I'm going to put a band together
as a joke. We're going to advertise it as the
first and last appearance of Harry Slash and the Slash
Tones or Harry and the Slash Tones, and we rehearsed

(20:58):
some songs, a couple of which were funny. I sang
the words to Green Acres over Purple Haze, I sang
the words to the Beverly HILLBILLIESE over mcgilla Gorilla. And
we did the first and last appearance so I could
exploit my birthday get people in the club. And then

(21:22):
about a year later, a friend of mine, another promoter,
said why don't you do another Slashtone show for your birthday,
only this time do it at my club so you
can bring me five hundred people. So we did it
for a second time, and then the next thing I
know is people wanted to pay us to perform because

(21:42):
by the third show it had become ninety minutes of comedy.
All the songs were sitcom lyrics over classic rock songs,
or like strange bizarre things like a polka version of
Stairway Heaven, I like that, a heavy metal version of

(22:03):
I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor. You know. So we
just did trippy shit to amuse ourselves. But musically it
was kind of like Frank Zappa ish, because like the
arrangements like all right. In one song, which we called
Welcome to the Family, it starts off as started off
as Welcome to the Jungle with the words to the

(22:26):
Adams Family. The break became a reggae version of the
Munsters theme back into Welcome to the Jungle with the
final verse of the Adams Family. Right, okay, And we
just kept coming up with like crazy crazy. We were
doing mashups before mashups existed. Love and that lasted for

(22:51):
several years. And you know, I at one point, I
every time I broke up the band, something else would
happen that would make me put it back together again.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
So it was the university and like, no, you're not
done with this yet, keep going.

Speaker 3 (23:08):
They basically yeah, I had retired and said I'm done
with this. I'd started a legitimate business. And then my
friend Paul Hayman called me up and said I need
music for a WWF crossover at the Manhattan Center. Oh
that was like February of ninety seven, So all right,
I guess I'm doing this again.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
How did you meet it? How did you initially meet
Paul Hayman? Obviously guys were in New York together, but
obviously that's a massive place.

Speaker 3 (23:36):
Through the clubs. I literally met him waiting online to
use the bathroom at the China Club at a time
when I wasn't watching wrestling right and I had no
idea what he did for a living, and we just
became friends.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
Was he where was he in that point in wrestling?

Speaker 3 (23:55):
He was Polly dangerously Dangerous alliance w.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
C I was here, say there's WCW days or not?

Speaker 3 (24:01):
Okay, it was his tail end at the wcwdas.

Speaker 2 (24:05):
Wow, so went so okay. So then let's go back
in time. What is your earliest memory of pro wrestling?

Speaker 3 (24:11):
I think it was flipping through the channels, and I
think it was a promo by Dean Hoe and Tony Geria. Wow,
early seventies. Yeah, and all right, this is interesting. And
then the next time I was flipping through the channels,
I found Bruno San Martino and that's it. I was

(24:36):
sucked in lockstock and barrel. Okay, Bruno was wrestling some
lower card enhancement guy for their TV show. It could
have been Johnny Rods or Baron mcguel, Secluna or somebody
like that. And then this dignified Italian champion did an
interview where suddenly I'm like, Okay, I want to watch

(24:59):
this again next time it's on And along the way
on a Tuesday night at eleven o'clock on a Spanish station,
I found Championship Wrestling from Florida, Oh shit, with a
guy named Dusty Road. And at that point I was
about as hooked as hooked can be. And this was

(25:21):
I was still in middle school at the time. But
Dusty and Bruno they became my childhood idols.

Speaker 2 (25:29):
Did you get a chance to meet either one of them.

Speaker 3 (25:31):
Both of them? I got to work with Dusty when
he was in ECW a little bit, yeah, And I
had several interactions with Bruno over the years over various things. Wow,
you know, but you know, Bruno for me, he was
like a god. So even like when he called my house,

(25:52):
you know, a couple of guys were using his name
to promote a wrestling federation that was supposed to tour China,
and I got a funny feeling about these two guys,
Lenny and Stu, so I called up Georgianne Micropolish. You know,
she's no longer with us. She was like very close

(26:13):
to Bruno and she used to write for a lot
of the dirt sheets as they call them. And then
she had articles on the website and I called Georgiane
and I told her about it, and she's like, oh, man,
I had a bad feeling about those guys. And the
next thing I know, Georgiane calls me back says, Bruno
would like to talk to you. Would you mind if

(26:33):
I gave him your number? And me I turned into
a child. I'm like, oh my god, absolutely, And I
got to spend an hour, maybe an hour or more
on the phone with Bruno San Martino, you know, first
talking about the scammers that you know, tried to use
his good name, and then just talking. You know, he

(26:54):
told me the story about his mother going up up
Villa Roca on the mountain and climbing. So I got
a live shoot interview from Bruno hearing all the stories
from Italy in the early days of WWWWWW, you know
when Vincenior owned it, and I got for me that

(27:17):
was like, that's like one of the highlights of my
life is I'm the man that got a phone call
from Bruno San Martino.

Speaker 2 (27:23):
Yeah, like you said your childhood idol, Yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:27):
And then like in E. C W I didn't know
anybody in there when I first, you know, came aboard
because I wasn't watching wrestling.

Speaker 2 (27:36):
I knew very.

Speaker 3 (27:36):
Little about anybody. And then Terry Funk came back into
the company and for me, for me, you know, I'm
there with Taz and the Dudleys and Shane Douglas and
all these guys that are stars, but to me, they
were just guys. And then Terry Funk is coming back
in to work something, work a program with Brian Lee
or something, and to head for the title run. And

(27:59):
I'm like, oh my god, Terry Funk, He's a real wrestler,
you know. Not to say the Taz and them weren't,
but for me, they were just they were just guys
in some little indie fed that my friend Paul was running.
Terry Funk was a legit star. He was the former
n WA champion yep. And then when I found out
Dusty was coming.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
In, oh man, I.

Speaker 3 (28:22):
Turned it. Every time I was around him, I was
like starstruck child.

Speaker 2 (28:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:27):
The only two people in ECW that did that to
me were Dusty and Funked. I mean, it makes sense,
you know, but Terry was Terry. Eventually, I chilled out
a little bit and was able to talk to him,
you know, and he was a very funny dude. And
I'm really, really glad I got to spend some time
with him while he was here on Earth.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
Yeah. I was gonna say, how many times did it
take for you to be around him before you're like, Okay,
I'm human, he's human if he just gone down a bit.

Speaker 3 (28:56):
The first time he was there and I was in
the locker room, I asked Paul to introduce me, and
he goes, go introduce yourself, and I kept walking towards him,
and then I would chicken out at the last minute,
and then like a few minutes before the show started,
he tapped me on the shoulder and he goes, excuse me,

(29:17):
we haven't been introduced. My name is Terry Funk, and
my eyes are like wide open, ha ha ha. I'm Harry, Hi, Harry.
It's a pleasure to meet you. What do you do here?
And I'm like, well, I do a little bit of everything,
just not wrestling, and he started laughing and he goes,
me too, I do a little bit of everything too,

(29:40):
just not wrestling. And then post ecw every time I
saw him, i'd get the big hug and the big
Texas handshake, and you know, I miss him. I wish
I wish he was still with us.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
He was definitely one of those guys. I never thought
it was going to be gone.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
Like I just thought Terry Funk would live forever like
Saboo dude.

Speaker 2 (30:04):
Yeah, I mean I was at that last match in
in Vegas and I was, you know, not even a
week later, it's like he's gone. I was like, what
the fuck? I just saw him?

Speaker 3 (30:14):
I know, I know, man. You know, like I used
to joke around with Sabou, wouldn't say that he's going
to end up like the car from Blues Brothers that
one day somebody was going to pull a string off
his turban and his spine.

Speaker 2 (30:29):
Would fall out, right, you know, he would.

Speaker 3 (30:31):
Just collapse and he's like, fuck you, I'm sorry, Can
I curse?

Speaker 2 (30:35):
Yes? Without a depth?

Speaker 3 (30:36):
You know. Okay, So I never ever expected sab Boo
to go.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
That young, right, yeah, very young for hit for I mean,
obviously his body went through so much, but I thought
he was going to live much longer too.

Speaker 3 (30:52):
Yeah, And I don't think we have the cause of
death yet.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
That is the weird considering we how far eight months later.

Speaker 3 (31:01):
Well, from what I was told he and told me
Mebo is his Japanese wife never actually got divorced, and
only she can sign off on making the coroner's report public.
But I believe that after one year, if she doesn't

(31:23):
do anything, the rights will revert to his next of kin,
which would be his sister Paula.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
Right, huh.

Speaker 3 (31:31):
You know it would be nice to have closure as
to why he's no longer with us, but it's not
going to bring him.

Speaker 2 (31:38):
Back, That's true. Yeah, No matter what it is, it's
not going to make him have another day on this earth.

Speaker 3 (31:44):
No, No, I mean honestly, I always thought I would
see him at least one more In time, I couldn't
get out to Vegas, And ironically, I was working on
an updated version of Who Could Lose His theme song,
but I was taking a twenty twenty four approach to it,

(32:04):
and I did a deep dive Onidaikkubu, who did all
the Godzilla music, and I was going more in a
Godzilla esque vein Okay with an updated version of Hookah Blues. Right,
and before he passed, I had this song ninety five

(32:25):
percent finished. Other than the saxophone solo. I'm gonna let
that sit on the shelf because the last thing I'd
ever want anybody to think I was doing is profiting
off of my friend's death.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:37):
So maybe sometime next year or the year after that,
I'll get around to finishing it and release it and
tribute to him, But for the time being, let it
sit where it is.

Speaker 2 (32:50):
Well, I mean now we now people have even more
to look forward to, because yeah, I mean that that
song was so iconic and obviously it was so perfect
for Sabu and the character and everything. Where did we're
the idea for obviously like the saxophone part as well,
and how did all of that kind of come together
for you?

Speaker 3 (33:10):
It wasn't written or recorded with Sabu in mind, Okay, Okay.
It was an idea I had for a song where
I wanted to use a rhythm pattern similar to the
song March of the Monsters from the Godzilla movie Destroy
All Monsters. I wanted a very plotting, marching drum beat

(33:37):
like in the Zoo or China White by the Scorpions. Right,
and Arno, the saxophone player I've been working with the
only saxophone on the planet as far as I'm concerned.
He was coming in just to reinforce the guitars, and
he was warming up and he started throwing out some

(33:58):
Middle Eastern licks, and I'm like the light bulb went
off in my head and I took away the chart
and I'm like, forget this, do that. Yeah, you know,
just solo throughout the whole thing. Go Middle Eastern klesmer morocket,
you know, throw me all that shit at Throw all
that shit at me, and we'll use it in the song.

(34:21):
And that's how the song came to be. It wasn't
written specifically for sab Boo, much like Enter Sandman wasn't
written for Sandman, which is probably why those two songs
became iconic and synonymous with those two characters. When Saboo

(34:41):
first heard it, he was using a Little Crazy by
the Rob Halford band fight right, okay, And originally he
didn't like Huka Blues. He told me he thought it
was too slow.

Speaker 2 (34:53):
Yeah, I can see that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (34:55):
Then he realized he didn't have to run to the ring,
you know, with Little Crazy and the other songs he used,
he'd come through the curtain, go running to the ring,
and you know, ninety miles an hour from the moment
he'd start with who Could Blues? He could take a
sweet ass time going to the ring, not get blown up,

(35:15):
have more energy for the match, and it added to
the presentation.

Speaker 2 (35:20):
Yeah, you know.

Speaker 3 (35:21):
Plus he was no longer being wheeled out on a
gurney with a hand an elector mask. You know, the
character had involved a great deal over time, and by
the time that you know, he started using Hookuld Blues,
it was more of a methodical character than a maniacal character.

Speaker 2 (35:39):
Yeah, now that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (35:42):
You know. And eventually we became married with because of
that song. When you know, not only he used it
in ECW, he used it in Japan. He used it
on the indies. When he went to TNA and they
couldn't get the rights to it, they did a knockoff
that they called Carpet Ride. When he went to All

(36:03):
Elite for a cup of coffee, they did a knockoff
of who Could Blues you know for him, a sound
alike for him. So I created a unique, original piece
of music that wasn't based on any pre existing music
that people are taking as the basis for music. Yeah,

(36:24):
you know, like, like I can be honest that Taz's
music was a ripoff of Kiss. Not a ripoff, but.

Speaker 2 (36:30):
A knockoff right inspiration?

Speaker 3 (36:33):
You know, So Hookuld Blues became an inspiration for the
guys in ae W and TNA to create their own
version of Who Could Blues that they could legally use
when I know that when they first played it at
the arena and they were trying to figure out who
to use the song for before Polly had figured out

(36:54):
it was Saboo that I believe Bubba Ray Dudley wanted
to use it for the Dudley Boys. Interesting, you know,
he ended up using a remake of the TNA version
for the Bully Ray character. Right, the Bully Ray music
is just carpet ride with heavier guitars and no saxophone.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
M okay, I'll have to go listen to that again. Yeah,
so where did you so you're you've created the iconic
obviously the Taboo's music, TAZ music, and then the ECW
music is still so iconic that it is always being
used to this day. What how did that one even

(37:40):
come about? Because that one is just kind of I
don't even like, I can't even describe it, Like, how
did that even come about?

Speaker 3 (37:47):
I had five days to create a theme song for
the Barely Legal pay per view. Oh okay, and Paul
that didn't really speak music, So in order to get
an idea of what he wanted, I would always ask
him named four songs, three or four songs that if

(38:08):
you could use those songs, that's what he'd use. Nine
times out of ten I ignored him, right, Okay. So he
gave me a bunch of songs that he wanted to
open the Barely Legal pay per view with, and I'm like, okay,
I get the idea of what he's looking for. He
was looking for and at the time modern rock, you know,

(38:30):
hard rock MTV type sound like nine inch Nails, butthole surfers,
White Zombie, and the inspiration for the ECW theme actually
came from the theme music from the movie Jaws.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
That the movie Jaws. Yeah, I'm thinking like, oh, the
theme song, but not yeah the data data Yeah yeah, okay,
I'm trying to think because it's so much faster than that.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
Well it is, But the vibe I wanted to get
was like build the tension and then blow it up
so that you know, shit was about to break off.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
Okay, Okay, you know in Jaws.

Speaker 3 (39:11):
It's bob bump, yeah, bob bum bump bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump,
bump bump bo, you know. And that was like not
we didn't take the notes or anything like that. It
was just the vibe that I was going for. And
then we added a whole bunch of led Zeppelin, White Zombie,
nine inch Nail sounds to go with it. And we

(39:33):
had five days and that song was usually worked on
starting at like two o'clock in the morning because my
partner guitar player had other gigs. So between two and
four in the morning every night for five days, I
would go to his little studio, his apartment where he
had a studio, and we would work on the ECW

(39:56):
theme as we were mastering the Eliminators, the as I
was creating something for Sassicating Us and a few other
songs for the first pay per view, the Barely Legal
pay per view. I did not expect the ECW theme
to be around twenty five years later, obviously, you know,

(40:17):
But it's still there. People still listen to it, people
still like it. Maybe one day somebody at WWE Music
will get off their ass and put it on streaming
so that other people aren't legging it and pirating it. Right,
I have no idea how WWE works or why they
do or don't do what they.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
Do well with the new TKO. I don't Unfortunately, I
don't think that they care about that kind of I'm
not going to say they don't care about that kind
of stuff. It looks to me that they wouldn't care
for that kind of stuff, which is very dumb because
if you're buying something like AWWE, and obviously they're trying
to make it as big as possible or whatever they're doing,

(40:59):
but you still need to respect what it was before
you bought the thing. And so all the fans that
were there before want all of this stuff because I mean,
think about how many fucking wrestling I mean counting this one,
how many fucking wrestling podcasts there are that talk about
this stuff. People like the clips that go around on TikTok, Instagram,

(41:21):
whatever it is on a regular basis. I've seen at
least five ECW ones today and I haven't even looked
up ECW recently. So like it's people want this kind
of thing, and so the fact that they're not giving
it to them It's almost like they're not paying attention,
or they're obviously just looking for that big payday whenever
it is for the foreseeable.

Speaker 3 (41:42):
Future, or maybe they just don't like me.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
That makes no sense because obviously they haven't even talked
to you. I'm enjoying you right now, and they talked
to you for less than a hour.

Speaker 3 (41:51):
I can't explain it. Because if they put the music,
the entire ECW catalog on let's say Spotify, they would
make money off of it. They have the the video
library on the Peacock Network. They've created about a dozen
e c W specials, and every time there's a milestone,

(42:13):
you know, they talk about ECW. When Paul Hayman got
inducted into the Hall of Fame, what song did he
come out to? You know, the ECW thing. It's a
no brainer. Put it up on Spotify and collect the
royalties off it. Why they're not doing it, I have
no freaking clue.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
I mean, it's not like you don't know somebody that
you met in the bathroom line to where you could
probably be like, hey, mister hall of Famer, why don't
you ask somebody there since you're there on you know,
every Monday or sometimes Friday as well.

Speaker 3 (42:46):
Well, I think i'm below Pol's pag right now. I
haven't really spoken to him in quite a while.

Speaker 2 (42:52):
Okay, well that's unfortunate.

Speaker 3 (42:54):
You Oh no, no, we're all it's all good.

Speaker 2 (42:56):
But yeah, it's life. Yeah, you know, life.

Speaker 3 (43:00):
Know, sometimes you're not really best friends with your best
friend from high school anymore. That's a rare occasion.

Speaker 2 (43:07):
Yeah, you know.

Speaker 3 (43:08):
And and during e c W Paul and I were
thick as thieves. We traveled together, we hung out together
during the week. The times changed. The guy had a
couple of kids. And I'm not saying this in a
bad way, but the moment his daughter was born, the poll,
the poll I knew didn't exist anymore, makes sense, you know,

(43:28):
the moment he became a dad. He became a dad.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
Yeah, you know.

Speaker 3 (43:34):
And I don't have any kids that I know about
or found me soame, you know, so I can still
be a prick. But he asked to be a father.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
Now, that makes it. I've definitely heard that. I mean,
I've seen experience it too. There's so many people that
once they do have the kids, you you either grow
up or you say the exact same age and there's
you know, thankfully, a lot of people just grow up
immediately because they realize, Nope, it's not just me, it's
not just her, it's it's everybody.

Speaker 3 (44:01):
Now. Yeah, yeah, you know you're responsible for a family,
which is cool, man. You know it's people need to
either grow old gracefully or you become the dinosaur staring
at the big bright light and the sky wondering why
it's getting bigger.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
Well, let's go back to those days of EACW. Like
you mentioned with the Terry Funk story, what else did
you do there? Because I had read that you have
done so much, You've appeared on TV and multiple times, like,
what all did you actually do When it comes to
the ECW back in.

Speaker 3 (44:34):
The day, it was I started off doing production because
I had a background in live theater and in club events.
So when I originally came in, I was doing production
for them at the TV tapings, Okay, doing like amindion
jobs day and one night. I was like an all

(44:54):
around guy. And the music came about in February of nineties,
which was supposed to be a woman done for the
Manhattan Center, and then Taz wanted to keep using the
version of his theme song that I did for the
Manhattan Center. He wanted to use it all the time.

(45:16):
But those those songs for the Manhattan Center were done
in a twenty four hour period, literally, and there were
a lot of mistakes, and I let go because I
figured they're going to be played live, people will be screaming,
the announcers will be talking, nobody's going to notice the mistakes. Well,
if they're going to be used on a regular basis,

(45:37):
I want to fix the mistakes. So Taz wanted his
music full time, and we clean that up. And then
because Taz and Perry Saturn both ran the ECW school,
if Taz had his own original music, then Perry Saturn
needed to have his own original music. And then that

(45:59):
that just start to the snowball effect of like, you know, suddenly,
like somebody would come into the we need music for
Super Crazy, we need something for Rick Rude, you know.
But Paul wanted to continue using the commercial music because
that's what set ECW apart from the other companies. They

(46:20):
weren't using, you know, quote unquote wrestling music. They were
using quote unquote real music. And I tried to make
my wrestling music real music in as much as I
was possibly able now again, mostly my gig there was production,
and Paul knew me from the nightclubs. And I was

(46:41):
also a good guy to have around because I did
have a martial arts background. And I might be a
pacifist now, but I was a psychopath back then. You know,
if a fight broke out in the crowd, I'd be
running towards it, you know, not away from it. I'd
be secure already. Atlas security loved me because at any

(47:02):
given moment, I was jumping into the fray with them, Yeah,
and not afraid of them. But for me back then,
twenty five thirty years ago, it was just an excuse
to add people.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
Yeah, I could see him.

Speaker 3 (47:13):
Sorry, if I ever hit you at an ECW show,
you probably deserved it.

Speaker 2 (47:20):
Now, tell us some stories that you experience, I guess
to tell us some experiences from just being at these
ec W shows, because I mean, the Dudley Boys could
easily cause a riot depending on whatever they said on
a right any given night. But you know, and then
you obviously you've got the guy's going through the crowd.
I mean, if if anybody has not seen RVD Bam

(47:43):
Bam Bigelow, first off, this is pause it right now
and go watch that and then come back, because that
that spot where he just dives in the crowd on
top of Bam Bam is absolute instic. Yeah he almost
missed them.

Speaker 3 (47:55):
Bambam had to reach up to grab him. Yeah, dude, Okay,
Like when the Dudley boys would come in, the common
expression I heard from Atlas security is like, oh shit,
time to go to work. Yeah, you know, because while
the crowd was rowdy, the Dudley's like starting riots, you know.
And when I'd be at the CW shows, I'd have

(48:17):
a black shirt, my black vest on, and when people
were fighting through the crowds, I would put the laminates
under my shirt and I would just blend into the crowd.
Yeah yeah, you know, so I wouldn't be noticeable on
TV as like you know, an office guy or production guy.
I could just look like one of the fans, and
if a fan got too close, I could take them

(48:37):
out of the equation, right.

Speaker 2 (48:39):
Yeah. Do you think that the so I've been I've
had this thought that I wonder if everybody loved the
Attitude era, because you know, everything was they took so
much from the ECW and from the crowd was so
crazy as well. But I think it was because of
what was happening in the late nineties that this could
have really happened. I wonder if in today's society we

(49:03):
would even get away with half of this stuff that
was going on. Yeah, that's what I thought, like that
we couldn't have really that kind of like the closest
thing they have now obviously is maybe GCW, but that's
just because I think you have the extreme aspect that
you also have the spectrum of wrestling that happens at
DCW the same way it did at ECW. But the
crowd itself is so much different than it was at

(49:26):
an ECW show because they were there almost like a
rock show, just to like, you know, and obviously they're
for a lot of the violence as well.

Speaker 3 (49:33):
Well that's what drew me in originally. When Paul started
inviting me to just go see the shows, I kept
using excuses to not go because when Bruno permed his
hair Bruno San Martino permed his hair, put on a
yellow jacket and became a commentator, I knew he wasn't
going to get the title back. Yeah, okay, I love

(49:56):
Superstar ram I loved Bob Backland, but know was my guy,
and eventually we lost wrestling on broadcast television. It all
went to cable, and my part of Queen's didn't get
cable until much later than everybody else. There was some
lawsuit dispute as to whose territory it was, so even

(50:18):
by the time I met Paul Hayman, the only wrestling
I would ever see would be Saturday Night's main event
on NBC, and it was cartoons. It was plumbers and
clowns and jugglers and you know, all the kind of
stuff which I'd love now, but at the time I.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
Thought was garbage.

Speaker 3 (50:40):
So when I'd be invited to go see an ECW show,
I was expecting jugglers and clowns and plumbers and you know,
cartoon characters. And I finally went to see my first
ECW show and people were putting each other through plate
glass windows. The audience looked more like something you would
see at Emerge if he's last show, or a misfit

(51:01):
show at CBGB's and I'm like, this is different, this
is dangerous. Someone could get hurt. I like this, I'm
gonna come back again.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
Yeah, you know.

Speaker 3 (51:12):
So that drew me in, but could could that happen today?
Not at all. Nothing about that era is viable today.
I mean, for me, a dream match would be EO
Sky versus Live Morgan in a brown panty's paddle on
a pole match. And we're never going to see that.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
No, No, I don't think we are. No, it's definitely not.

Speaker 3 (51:34):
I can keep my fingers crossed, but I'm not going
to see that in my lifetime.

Speaker 2 (51:39):
I mean, AI, you could probably do a prompt I
bet you could be. I mean, if we've We've already
got Kristin Wall coming back from what I've seen on
these AI slops, so you know, if that's happening, I
think yeah.

Speaker 3 (51:49):
But also the times have changed, well, without a doubt.
You know, at one point Doop was heavy metal.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
Yeah, okay, and you couldn't show Elvis from the waist
down exactly.

Speaker 3 (52:01):
Times have changed now. Would I want to see the
bron Panties match in twenty twenty five? Honestly no, you
know that would just set humanity back thirty years. And
we've evolved as a species to the point where, honestly,
the best match I've seen in the last two years
was litt was EO Sky versus Rhea Ripley when Naomi

(52:26):
cashed in the money in the bank briefcase, Okay, that
was like the most amazing match I've seen. The women
used to be props, right, Okay, they were just there
for tits and ass. Now they're having better matches than
the men. Yes, you know, not to mention, they've kind

(52:48):
of brought the reality back into it where it isn't
one named the Plumber, the Mounti, you know, the Crossing Guard,
the Proctologist. You know. Now it's people with actual names.
Now they may not be real names, and they are characters,
but they're realistic characters, right, you know, it's a Today's

(53:12):
wrestling is closer to what I grew up with as
a kid, with the Bruno San Martinos and the Dusty
Rhodes and the Ernie Ladds and the Billy Grahams than
it was during the Mania Bust Mania Boom, with you know,
the the jugglers and the clowns and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (53:31):
Right, and insert a pun name for whatever hockey players
they got. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:35):
Yeah, you know, like if we'd see a women's match
back as a kid, it would be like Mula versus
Suzanne Green in a competitive match. They wouldn't be in
a tub of jello pudding.

Speaker 2 (53:48):
That was that whole stretch and I was like, what
are we Okay, I get it kind of but not really. Yeah,
it was. It was definitely not something that people look
back finally on.

Speaker 3 (53:58):
Well, it was coming off of the end TV tits
and smoke era.

Speaker 2 (54:01):
Yeah, without a doubt. Yeah, there's spring breaks. If you
weren't watching those.

Speaker 3 (54:06):
Motley Crue videos where they would have Tony a white
snake with Tony Katan, you know, barely dressed on the
hood of a car and doing seductive moves. And you know,
that was the era of music when women were sex objects.
We've grown, yes, but we can still keep our fingers

(54:26):
crossed for Lived Morgan versus the O Sky in a
bron Pante's match.

Speaker 2 (54:30):
You know, I mean one day you never knew.

Speaker 3 (54:33):
You don't meet to me? Okay, anybody listening, anybody listening
to this. I'm a feminist, you know, so I'm a feminist,
but I'm also a male.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
There you go. I would I mean, while we're at it,
dominic mysterio in seth Rowins and in a paddle on
a pole manchie get him into getting both ways?

Speaker 3 (54:53):
Why not well, it never happened that like that. In
the past. It was always men were competitive and women
were sex objects. Right now the women are putting on
better matches than the men.

Speaker 2 (55:03):
Yeah, and then also the inter gender matches are so
fantastic now that it's just its next level because wrestling's art,
and so at the end of the day, they're just
creating fantastic art.

Speaker 3 (55:13):
Well, they finally embraced it as a performance art as
opposed to being a fake sport that we're supposed to
keep secret.

Speaker 2 (55:21):
Yeah, you know which.

Speaker 3 (55:23):
Boggles my mind that guys like Bruise of Brody and
Harley Race lived their entire life keeping KFAE when it
was The art form was the same back then. The
art form was the same back then as it is now.

Speaker 2 (55:39):
Well, so you have a Christmas album coming out on
the fourteenth, tell us about this.

Speaker 3 (55:44):
Well, it's not an album, it's three songs.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
Okay, Well, it's like an ep an ep Okay.

Speaker 3 (55:50):
An old collaborator of mine had reached out to me
about twenty eight months ago to collaborate with her on
a Christmas record, but then she kind of got busy,
flake doubt, whatever you want to call it. But I
had already created some very unique versions of very very
old songs, so I went into the rolodex. I brought

(56:11):
the band in and we did some very different versions
of Good King wenss Loss in the Bleak Midwinter and
God Rest You Merry Gentlemen, where all three songs are
completely different. Really Good King wenss Loss. I wanted it

(56:31):
to sound almost like a kid's cartoon, you know, very
happy and peppy, where you can almost see the cartoon images.
Bleak Midwinter sounds like a song that a band would
play at the end of the night during their set.
So I approached the mixing and mastering of that like

(56:53):
I was doing a live band. And God Rest You
Marry Gentlemen. I don't even know how to describe it.
It's like Pink Lloyd meets Nick Cave meets Leonard Kohen.

Speaker 2 (57:03):
Wow, it's very, very, very.

Speaker 3 (57:06):
Different from any version of God Rescue Marry Gentlemen that's
ever been out there and doing research about the songs.
That song was written back in the sixteen hundreds. Whoa, yeah,
all of these songs are nineteenth century. Good King wences
Loss was written like in the eighteen fifties. Bleak Midwinter

(57:28):
in the eighteen seventies. You know, I didn't realize how
old most of the Christmas music was, so it's not
I did these more as an approach to how would
I interpret very old melodies? And I got some great
players on that. I got Les Warner on drums, who

(57:48):
was with the Cult for a period of time. He
was on the Electric album, and my bass player, even
Stephen even Stephen Levy who was a founding member of
the Slash Stones. He plays bass and he co produced
the stuff. Arno hecked from the Uptown Horns and from
the Rolling Stones. And James Brown, who's been my sax player,

(58:11):
you know since ninety four. I won't work with anybody else.
And I guess the two the new kids on the
block would be Tom Jack, formerly of the band Chemistry,
and from the band Jacks, who had a couple records out.
I believe one was out in Germany. Ross Byron, which
is just a friend here in New York, contributed guitar
on one track. And I got another singer, Roxy Purple,

(58:35):
to sing in the Bleak Midwinter. I sang good King
Wence's Loss and God Rescue Mary, gentlemen. But as I said,
I originally created these songs to be sung by a female,
so I did not have the range for Bleak Midwinter, right,
you know, So we brought Roxy in who is you know,

(58:56):
She's like within the Inner Circles family, so to speak.

Speaker 2 (59:02):
I love that.

Speaker 3 (59:04):
And they're coming out on the fourteenth and hopefully people
will like them. But the way I gave success is
if ten people I don't personally know listens to something
I do, then it's a hit.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
Yeah, you know, I don't.

Speaker 3 (59:19):
I'd love to have everybody on the planet listen to
it once so I could make fifty bucks because streaming
doesn't pay anything.

Speaker 2 (59:26):
That's what I've heard.

Speaker 3 (59:27):
But at this point I'm not making music to get rich.
I'm making music for the sake of art.

Speaker 2 (59:32):
Yes, exactly.

Speaker 3 (59:34):
You know. There will be a follow up record next year.
I don't really like announcing my plans, and every time
I announce my plans, I hear somebody in the sky laughing.
You know the old expression, if you ever want to
hear God laugh, announce your plans. Yeah. Yeah, So I
didn't talk about the Christmas records this year. We missed
two Christmases in a row because I made the mistake

(59:56):
of like, we're going to be releasing this stuff member
of twenty three. Nope, We're going to release this stuff
in December of twenty twenty four. Nope. I heard the laughter.
So I waited until we got the the confirmation from
Spotify before talking about anything. And they'll be on Spotify, iTunes,
Amazon Music, you know all the streaming services that pay nothing.

(01:00:23):
And there will be a follow up, non religious, non
Christmas record next year of instrumental songs.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
Let me just leave it at that, Okay. I like that.

Speaker 3 (01:00:36):
If you like Tuka Blues, if you like the extreme theme.
They're not wrestling songs by any means, but they're more
within that vein of instrumental.

Speaker 2 (01:00:47):
I think that world is becoming so much bigger. Obviously,
with the like Crank beIN getting as big as they
are bad bad not good, being as big as they've
been for as many years as they have, I think
that world is becoming a lot bigger. I'd either it
be for people just having in the background to vibe with,
or you know, just something to maybe build on top

(01:01:07):
of it in case they want to make their own music.

Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
Yeah, you know, originally the music I'll be releasing next year,
I intended to have vocals on, but unfortunately, due to
dental surgery not going well and my implants not going
according to plan, I had my upper jaw. I had

(01:01:30):
to get all my teeth replaced because a really bad
dentist destroyed my upper teeth and then a really good
dentist tried to save them. Yeah, but it didn't work
out as according to plan, and I don't think I'll
ever be able to sing again.

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
Oh man, I'm so sorry.

Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
Yeah. So you know, good King Wens's loss and God
rescue Mary, gentlemen. I sang those in late twenty twenty
three with a mouth filled with stitches, and unbeknownst to
me at the time, I also had COVID whoa. Yeah,
So those two songs, those two Christmas songs, might be

(01:02:08):
the last two songs I'm ever able to sing on.
You know, I have a lazyess, I have a minor
speech impediment that I'm trying to work through because of
the unsuccessful dental surgery. So I decided, you know what,
I always liked wipe Out, I always liked Apache, I
always liked you know the song by what's his name?

(01:02:31):
Jimmy Page says was the greatest song of all time
the instrumental tune. I'm spacing on the name of it,
but I always liked instrumentals, right, So all right, I
got a whole bunch of good songs. Forget the vocals,
just release them as instrumentals and people can sing their
own words over them.

Speaker 2 (01:02:50):
That's yeah, that's perfect. You're still creating the art and
giving the people the music. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
Yeah, you know, they could sample a part of it.
They can write their own lyrics, or they could just
sit back and listen to what I've given them. Smoke
a little weed, eat your gummy, drink your beer, and
space out on the stuff I'm going to put out.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
I love that.

Speaker 3 (01:03:11):
Hold on, let me listen for laughter. Nope, still no
laughter from the sky. I guess that album is going
to happen to.

Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
Well that We got four too in a couple of days.
Then we got up four too for next year. I
love that.

Speaker 3 (01:03:24):
Yeah, it should be fun. You know I won't I
won't be screaming. This is extreme on anything.

Speaker 2 (01:03:31):
Well, I was gonna say, if you got to play
it live, I imagine that you'd find somebody to cover that
for you.

Speaker 3 (01:03:37):
Yeah, dude, I'd love to put a band on the
road and not be in it. That way, I could
just stay home.

Speaker 2 (01:03:42):
I mean, that's what Brian Wilson did.

Speaker 3 (01:03:44):
You know. Let somebody else be Harry Slash on stage,
you know, like day one hundred pounds, grow your beard,
wear a bandana, sing like you have a frog in
your throat.

Speaker 2 (01:03:54):
You got it covered, nailed it. Yeah, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:03:58):
So hopefully people will like the Christmas songs I did.
Hopefully they'll like the instrumental songs I did, and then
who knows what's next after that?

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 3 (01:04:10):
You know, maybe I will get around to finishing the
updated version of Who Could Blues, because during the pandemic,
I just started recreating my own music on garage band
just as a way to keep myself sane during lockdown,
makes sense. So I created a modern version of the

(01:04:30):
ECW theme that sounds like a seventies movie theme like
The Warriors.

Speaker 2 (01:04:36):
Oh, I like that.

Speaker 3 (01:04:39):
I redid super Crazy song to sound like something you
might see in a Clint east something you might hear
in a Clint Eastwood Western. And then Who Could Blues
sounds like something that might be in a Godzilla movie.
So maybe one day I'll look in the rear view
mirror and release new versions of twenty five year old

(01:05:01):
songs that other people have been copying for the last
twenty five years. It's all good.

Speaker 2 (01:05:08):
Obviously, you are inspiring other people, so that's a good thing.

Speaker 3 (01:05:10):
Hey man. You know, that's the whole thing about music.
You put something out and if somebody else can take
what you did and take it further, yeah, or be
inspired by something you did. Over the years, I've spoken
to people online that have told me they started playing
guitar because of the ECW theme.

Speaker 2 (01:05:28):
Wow, you know I didn't.

Speaker 3 (01:05:29):
Play the guitar on that. That was roder Rack Cohene,
my partner at the time, you know, musical partner at
the time, you know. But if something I produced inspired
you to, you know, bring your art further, then my
job is done, you know. Then I did a good thing.

Speaker 2 (01:05:45):
Hell yeah, I love that well. I was a second
on the show. I call it the five counts is
five random questions. Sure, what was your first concert or
who was your first concert?

Speaker 3 (01:05:56):
Black Sabbath with Van Halen opening up?

Speaker 2 (01:05:59):
Holy shit? Where did they? Where did they played?

Speaker 3 (01:06:02):
Madison Square Garden? God, there were a couple of concerts
before that that. I was taken to as a kid.
Because my aunt and uncle used to send the little
baby with the cousins to so that they wouldn't get
in trouble, they had to bring me with them. So
I was at a Randalls Island show with Jimmy Hendricks.

(01:06:24):
I don't remember it. I was in the stroller, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:06:27):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:06:28):
But the only way my cousins could go is if
they brought me with them. There were a few other
shows that I remember being taken to, but Black Sabbath
was the first one I like. I got to see this. Unfortunately,
the one that should have been the first one would
have been led Zeppelin at Madison Square Garden.

Speaker 2 (01:06:45):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (01:06:46):
I was in eighth grade. I had tickets to the
to the show the day we were supposed to come back,
but a congressman named Mario Biagi, who ended up in jail,
was really impressed by my class and invited us to
watch a joint session of Congress that was taking place

(01:07:08):
the next day, and I never would have been back
in New York on time to go to Madison Square Garden.
I tried to escape the hotel room where my eighth
grade class was staying in Washington, d C. To the
point that I had to sleep in the same bed
with one of the teachers with a rope tied from
my leg to his leg because I tried to escape

(01:07:30):
and hitchhike back to New York three times.

Speaker 2 (01:07:33):
Wow, I want them to see led Zeppelin. I get it.

Speaker 3 (01:07:36):
Yeah, I didn't get to see led Zeppelin.

Speaker 2 (01:07:39):
Congress is boring.

Speaker 3 (01:07:40):
I got to see a joint session of Congress. And
years later, when Mario Biagi was invited and dieted, I said,
good for him. You cost me my led Zeppelin show,
you know, so Yeah. Answer your first random question. First
concert Black Sabbath with Van Halen opening up in their
first tour.

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
Not a bad one. Number two, if you if you
owned a liquor company, brewery, winery, coffee shop, or dispensary,
which one would you own and what would the name be?

Speaker 3 (01:08:11):
Probably repeat the question. I got to think about that.

Speaker 2 (01:08:15):
You're fine. If you own a brewery, coffee shop, winery,
liquor company, or dispensary, which one would you own and
what would the name be?

Speaker 3 (01:08:26):
All three would be called Hire's High. That's perfect, and
I would probably go with coffee.

Speaker 2 (01:08:33):
Okay, that's a good one.

Speaker 3 (01:08:35):
Because I know I used to drink way too much liquor.
I don't, not that I had a problem with it.
I just stopped drinking a few years ago.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
Good for you.

Speaker 3 (01:08:45):
I don't smoke as much as I used to, but
I'm I'm like twenty percent coffee in my blood.

Speaker 2 (01:08:55):
Love it. Number three? What emoji do you use most?

Speaker 3 (01:09:00):
Okay, I'm really not an emoji guy. I don't. Yeah, same,
you know, I don't text cucumbers to women and stuff
like that. It's just and I say the thumbs up
because of Facebook and social media. Granted on X it's
a heart right as a thumbs up.

Speaker 2 (01:09:17):
So yeah, same thing. Number four? Who are what inspires
you art?

Speaker 3 (01:09:24):
Love that art, doing something creative, something that maybe in
twenty or forty or one hundred years ago people will
look at and be inspired by.

Speaker 2 (01:09:36):
That's perfect, which they still are, so it's even better. Yeah.
And number five, what would you tell your seventeen year
old self?

Speaker 3 (01:09:44):
Don't do stupid shit.

Speaker 2 (01:09:47):
You can have what they's up that at any age.

Speaker 3 (01:09:51):
Yeah, but at seventeen I was indestructible and fearless.

Speaker 2 (01:09:55):
Yeh.

Speaker 3 (01:09:56):
And that's how I ended up with severe nerve damage
in my right foot, busted up, hit and a whole
bunch of stab wounds and a lot of injuries over
the years because I would never go see a doctor.
You know, A car ran over my foot, Eh, I'll live. Yeah,
a car ran over the foot of a second time,

(01:10:17):
that big deal. A car runs over the same foot
a third time. Not Ald in the same day, mind you,
over a period of years. The third day my foot
swalled up to the size of a grapefruit. I taped
on a flip flop and a workshoe on the left foot,
and I still went to work the next day. Jesus
should have gone to the hospital. And now I'm dealing

(01:10:37):
with neuropathy where every step feels like I'm walking on
broken glass. Don't do stupid shit, That's the best advice
I could give a seventeen year old me. And avoid
doing cocaine because that's just going to give you a
lot of problems.

Speaker 2 (01:10:55):
Yeah, I never got into that one. I'm glad I
never started that one.

Speaker 3 (01:10:58):
Oh. I was a great junkie until I came a
terrible junkie.

Speaker 2 (01:11:01):
That's usually how it ends.

Speaker 3 (01:11:03):
And the last time I shoved a straw on my nose,
Ronald Reagan was president. So during my nightclub world, my
wrestling world, my music world. I never did a granule
of cocaine. I had already gotten all of that out
of my system during the Reagan administration.

Speaker 2 (01:11:18):
I'd say that's good because, yeah, if you go in
a nightclub and music scene and wrestling, especially back then,
it was coke was free, especially in New York City. Yeah, yeah,
you know so.

Speaker 3 (01:11:28):
I I'd be in the limelight on a Sunday night,
I'd smoke a little weed, I'd drink a little coffe.
You maybe do a shot of vodka or Jaegermeister. But
would anybody you want to bump? No, thank you, not
since the Reagan administration. I'm one of those obsessive people
where one hit is too much and a kiloh is
not enough. Oh yeah, so I avoid cocaine. Smoke weed.

Speaker 2 (01:11:54):
Kids, there you go.

Speaker 3 (01:11:55):
The only thing that could happen to you from smoking
weed is you fall asleep, or you get fat.

Speaker 2 (01:12:00):
Or you get very creative and create an amazing art. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Now,
if people wanted to find out more about you, follow
you online, listen to your music, obviously your upcoming Christmas EP.
How can they do all the things?

Speaker 3 (01:12:14):
Harry Slash and the slash Tones on Spotify and Amazon
and Apple will have the Christmas music. I am on
Instagram under slash Tones one. I am on Facebook. I
have a Harry Slash page. I have a Harry Slash
and the slash Tones page, but I also have my

(01:12:34):
real page under my real name, which you can easily
find on Google. And occasionally I say stupid shit to
piss off both sides on x under Hari Underscore Slash.

Speaker 2 (01:12:46):
This is true, Harry. Thank you so much for your time.
I've love this. I feel like we could have talk
so much longer about music and wrestling. But I would
love to have you back on the show and I
can't I can't wait for this Christmas EP.

Speaker 3 (01:12:57):
Thank you, thank you very much. Thank you for having
me John anytime.

Speaker 1 (01:13:14):
Thank you so much to Harry for being on the
show again. Make sure to check out the Christmas music
from Harry Slash and the Slash Tones coming out November fourteenth.
This is the last time you're gonna hear him sing.
He said it right there. He can't sing anymore, so
this is gonna be the last time you hear him sing.
This is gonna be awesome and I can't wait to
have Harry back on the show. We could talk so
much more about music wrestling. We literally talked after we

(01:13:35):
recorded for another hour just about wrestling, what was going
on in the world.

Speaker 2 (01:13:39):
So I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:13:40):
I can't wait to see what's going on with Harry,
So while you're following him, definitely make sure to follow
us on social media. It is bruisers Pod. That is
R E W S E R S P O D
on the Instagram, the threads, and the Twitter. If you
want to send us an email, it is Bruiserspod at
gmail dot com. If you want to follow me directly,
it is Rody John. That is our O D I
E J O N. Rody John is the name on
the Twitter handing untapped. In case you want to find

(01:14:01):
out what I'm drinking, maybe we can have a beer together.
If you're gonna follow me on the threads or the Instagram,
it is a Fisher Ordie John sad. Until next time,
make sure to enjoy life, drink local, good cheers,