Tales of the Road

Crazy, crazy weekend(s).  The Chapel Hill journey went smooth as glass and the Burlington trip was a pretty cool afternoon overall.  CWF packed out Hargrave Community Center and had a vocal crowd from bell to bell.  Only problem was parking, as Carolina and Duke both graduated that afternoon.  Returned to Gibsonville this past Saturday to record 3 episodes of #CWFWorldwide and then to Burlington for Benefit Championship Wrestling on Sunday.  Sunday was a fun one that raised $1630.00 for Relay For Life's fight against cancer.  Matter of fact, on preview photos, I captioned them as "This is what raising $1630.00 in three hours looks like!"

This past Saturday night after the CWF event, I loaded the sound system into my car behind the building.  In the dark.  Carried a small rubber-covered flashlight in and out with me, sticking it in whatever pocket was available when I didn't need it.  Beat the storm and got home to realize I'd lost some cash, probably pulled out of my pocket by the aforementioned flashlight.  Sunday evening after the BCW event, I went behind the Sportatorium and took a look around.  Found my money.  Clean, dry, flat and perfect bills about 5' from the bottom of the stairs.  Right where I was parked when I loaded out.  Yeah.  I'd rather have stupid luck than just be stupid...

On the music side, today was the first day I sat down to try to pen some lyrics for the new "industrial" tune Tommy sent me almost 2 weeks ago.  Every time I'd messed with it before, "City of Misery" in a Manson-like sound was what I thought would come from this one.  But no.  I'm so contrary.  Sat down with the headphones and notepad and suddenly, I'm writing a story of Egyptian gods and the Eye of Horus.  You know what that is.  It's on the top of the pyramid on the back of one dollar bills.

Guess I should buy the t-shirt I saw today on Facebook.  It says "I'm not condonscending (that means someone who talks down to people)"...

Bits & Pieces

→ Received the first complete rough mix for the eleven minute unreleased RoxX original "Fly With Me" from Tommy and it is incredible.  So let me try to describe the almost finished epic to you...It's got a deep Pink Floyd vibe with Beatles overtones and a run-in attack by Yes/Styx/Kansas before returning to the Pink Floyd vibe with Beatles overtones.  Tommy's additional vocals create a great feel for this one and the backing vocals are indeed epic.  This one will turn a few heads when released, I'm betting. 

→ After feeling under the weather for several days, my new malady has exposed itself to me and is NOTHING more than a momentary discomfort, not some crazy painful ailment that would require surgery or such...  How do I spell relief?  W-H-E-W!  Pretty confident that I'll be 100% again in a day or so at the most.

→ Road trips abound this month in a spanning only a couple of weekends.  The scheduled CWF-RGL event over Memorial Day weekend has been cancelled to allow for family vacations.  So Saturday I'm rolling in with the CWF Mid Atlantic crew to Hargraves Community Center in Chapel Hill NC for CWF DOUBLE OR NOTHING!  The following Saturday, the 20th, CWF Mid Atlantic returns to their home base of Gibsonville NC for MADNESS IN ANY DIRECTION 2017!  On Sunday, May 21st, I'll be handling the sound duties at Benefit Championship Wrestling's CAGE UP CANCER in Burlington NC's Positive Attitude Youth Center!  Stacked cards all around, BCW includes FOUR bouts inside of a steel cage on a Sunday afternoon matinee!

→ Had a strange happening at 5am yesterday morning.  I walked downstairs to the kitchen to feed Pip Rocket and stepped on something on the floor in the living room in the dark.  Several somethings.  Turned on a light to discover a full package of Extra Peppermint gum from the bowels of Karen's suitcase-sized purse ripped open and most of the individual pieces of gum bitten through by cat teeth.  So after a good fifteen minutes of uncontrollable laughter, I went back to bed...At least now I know why the cat burrows in Karen's pocketbook.

Messin' With Gypsies

Totally freaking out at the kind words and the number of "likes" on SoundCloud from last weekend's release of "Gypsy Girl".  Gypsy is a tribute to the legendary Stevie Ray Vaughan, an artist that both Tommy and I enjoy even today.  It's upbeat and it's bluesy, it's kind of like Texas Swing with a little North Cackylacky Cheerwine flavor thrown in for good measure!

RoxX's Gypsy Girl on SoundCloud

Both releases from 2017 are doing rather well, getting positive reviews as well as shares and likes like mad.  Thanks again for listening and sharing!

We still have the 11+ minute epic "Fly With Me" in production, our idea of hanging out with Pink Floyd and several others in the can awaiting release.  Possible new releases upcoming include "Life Is Good", "We Will Not Fail" and perhaps even a re-mixed "Eleven Or Bust".  Not sure what we're going after next, but I'm eagerly awaiting our next adventure!

Still Rasslin' Ya'll!

Spent some quality time with the "younger" set of the CWF roster, guys with 3 or less years of ring-time as pro wrestlers.  That's what our Rising Generation League is all about, giving a platform for the young guys to show what they've learned against other young guys instead of getting buried on a "big" event.  I keep seeing things that make me wonder and I sometimes see things that make me cringe.

The most cringe-worthy tonight was Ethan Sharpe driving Kool J into the canvas like a human lawn dart.  I don't have a clue how Kool J ever got out of the ring, but I will report I actually saw him on his feet before I left the building after the event ended.  Donny Ray and big Luke Grimes returned as a tag team and both of these young men continue to impress with their attitudes and skills.  "Film Maker" Movie Myk also appeared tonight, taking Nick Richards to the limit in a physical singles bout.  Manager "Real Deal" Big Zoe was ejected by the referee moments before his man was put down for the three count.

Young Cain Justice and Snooty Foxx main evented with Cain's RGL Title on the line and the bout ended as a time limit draw.  Snooty Foxx asked for five more minutes and the referee agreed and restarted the match.  Five seconds later, the referee was out cold by a Foxx spear.  The second referee appeared to have called the match over at 17:41 with a title change before ordering the clock to start again declaring Justice had his foot on the rope.  Cain Justice connected and got the pinfall win eighteen seconds later over Foxx.  And for the record, Cain Justice's Mom is over a lot better than HE is!  HA!

And with that, I'm heading up for a little shut-eye, which I'm sure will end when Pip decides it's time for his breakfast.  Happy Easter Ya'll!  He Is Not Here!

National Politics and Positive Music?

So let me understand this.  America is a nation of laws.  In 1952 the United States made the Immigration & Naturalization Act of 1952 the law of the land.  This law states that Muslims may not be granted citizenship and need specific permission to enter the country for work purposes on specifically timed visas.  Suddenly we have No Go Zones in Michigan, populated by those same alleged peace loving folks that will attack anyone who is not of their faith.

Any idea what happened in Europe and what is still happening there due to this so-called "refugee" problem?  France is in flames.  Italy can't stop new arrivals coming ashore daily.  The Muslim mayor of London tells the world that terrorism is a symptom of living in a big city.  Europe has fallen without more than a couple hundred shots.  It's all in their books, their folklore and their holy book itself.  It's a plan.  That plan is jihad.  In other words, those peaceful infiltrators are running from members of their own faith, leaving their wives and kids at home to invade far-away nations.  

Washington DC hasn't cleared up much, but progress is being made every day toward the promised draining of the swamp.  Liberals are cackling that Trump isn't able to snap his fingers and change every law (which Obama had no problems doing), but in the Art of the Deal, it's explained that sometimes you lose a times before scoring the BIG deal.  I expect more failure before the President has convinced both sides of Congress that it's better to cooperate than the alternative, which has been the norm for quite a while now.  Nuclear option?  Filibuster?  Funny how all of a sudden the party that got it's ass whipped last November is making demands for investigations and spreading false news trying to "take down" the presidency.  That's American as hell right there, ya'll, I tell ya.

Drop down to the previous post and check out RoxX most recent release, Sing Us Your Song!  Thrilled at the positive comments posted by SoundCloud listeners...

Sing Us Your Song Already!

Rather surprised that Tommy released a new RoxX tune last weekend that I'd not even heard a finished demo of, and it is taking off.  We released "Sing Us Your Song", an acoustic song of praise, totally unlike anything else we have put out there before.  It was one of three tunes Tommy composed in the same unusual tuning, and the lyrics for the song literally wrote themselves.  I'm so happy that this song already has an amazing amount of reposts and likes and comments by SoundCloud users, which is very encouraging.  Yeah.  It's a happy song.  Very unusual from the comments we're getting!

Click Here to Hear "Sing Us Your Song" On SoundCloud!

We completed our first "epic", or at least finished recording the vocals for our upcoming Pink Floyd-inspired "Fly With Me".  It's currently an eleven minute long offering that I'm on pins and needles waiting to hear completed.  There is so much Pink Floyd in the song that we're not sure how listeners will react to a portion that kicks into high-speed overdrive in a Kansas-like vein before returning to the Floyd-styled finale at the conclusion of the song.

So I will formally announce the END of college basketball season with Duke being defeated by University of South Carolina, who will be making their first-ever Sweet Sixteen.  Congrats to the Gamecocks on this signature win!  This year was a success for the Blue Devils, who defeated the University of North Carolina at home and on a neutral court, while only being defeated in the Dean Dome.  2-1 is a great head-to-head season record.  Carolina fans must be relieved that they won't have to worry about those pesky Duke Boys again this season, if you know what I mean.  Right Roy?

Where's Wally Gator?

Yeah, seriously, where is Wally Gator, Youtube?  Many of his episodes are posted in Spanish, but there's none in English anywhere I can find.  What you got against a hip stylish alligator with his own tv show?  HUH?

On the music front, we've not released a thing since Halloween despite having several songs finished and several in process and one huge monster on the drawing board as we speak.  What started out as something in the vein of Pink Floyd was sent to me as an 8 minute track.  I wrote lyrics, sent them back to Tommy and a week or so later I receive the same track, an updated version, that is a little over 11 minutes long!  Submitted final lyrics for it today, we're calling it "Fly With Me" and yeah, we're trying to catch a Pink Floyd vibe with this tune, but there's a few twists from other influences that should set anyone who listens to it on their ear.  Yeah I'm excited and haven't recorded the first word for it yet.

Wrestling took a turn for the worse this week, with Impact's new owners sending out contracts that strips talent of much of their income from previous contracts.  It's my understanding that the Hardys did walk away after Anthem refused to negotiate.  Also, this week's episode of Impact was the originally scheduled date for the event we had taped in our building, Omega Bowl.  I'm pretty certain it won't make the airwaves, but don't worry.  We aired it last month on #CWFWorldWide!  Simply go to CWF Mid Atlantic's page on Youtube and look it up!  Main event featured the Extreme Horsemen's CW Anderson & "Southern Savior" John Skyler v. All Stars' Roy Wilkins & Arik Royal v. "Broken" Matt Hardy & Brother Nero for the Omega Tag Team Titles.  Still may want to check out Impact this week as the main event now is advertised to be a couple of CWF's own, X-Division Champ Trevor Lee v. Andrew Everett!

Digging Gab.ai ya'll.  Heads and shoulders over Twitter simply because the folks on the service are almost all conservative patriotic Americans.  Gives you 300 characters compared to Twitter's 140, but doesn't have a means to upload photos or a telephone app yet.  If you check it out and sign up, find me at @heddroxx, just like on the Twitter-bird!  See ya kids!

Beating a Dead Roadie

Just had an hour of flashback fun.  The Brak Show, Space Ghost Coast 2 Coast, Harvey Birdman Attorney At Law and SeaLab 2021 on Cartoon Network.  Didn't realize how badly I've missed these old friends.  And now I'm ready for a few episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000.  Then maybe Airplane!

Guess I should put Spaceballs on the watchlist, I've not seen it in months either.  I have begun watching some of my vast collection of concert DVDs again and need to re-watch everything I have with Ronnie James Dio singing on it.  Yeah, got some Rainbow, Dio and Heaven & Hell on video.  Saw Dio a few times, he was a monster.  Great visual show with great music and Ronnie James roaring like Godzilla.  He is definitely in my Top 10 All Time Vocalists.

Never actually thought about who I'd consider the best 10 today, but I do recall some of the ones I used to enjoy.  Who would have thought a "favorite" singer list would have included the gravel-voiced Jim "Dandy" Mangrum of Black Oak Arkansas.  Got a few great memories with Jim Dandy.  John Kay of Steppenwolf has a unique voice that no one else has ever duplicated, and yeah, Steppenwolf are grand-parents of today's metal music, along with Judas Priest.

Yup.  Seen Priest a dozen times over the years maybe.  Last time was 2004 Ozzfest and it was the first time Karen had seen Halford.  On the trip home she told me I should have told her how great he was.  I'm thinking, "I play it all the time in the car, didn't you notice?"  She decided after one time seeing Halford that "Ripper" Tim Owens was merely a tribute to Halford.

Back on the strange singers list, Shagrath of Dimmu Borgir was downright nasty-sounding and very evil looking.  Dude I worked with at A.S.S. liked to tell me he sounded like Popeye when I was blasting "Progenies of the Great Apocalypse" in the shop when the owner was out of town.  Funny.  He DOES sound a little like Popeye!

Always dug Noddy Holder, the lead singer for Slade.  You know, the Brit band that wrote most of Quiet Riot's hits 20 years before they arrived (Cum On Feel The Noiz, Mama Weer All Crazee Now).  Kevin Dubrow had nothing on Noddy, who I actually saw open once for Kiss in Greensboro, but he gave it out good.  

How about this?  No politics!  Aliens have hacked my brain!

Of course, this is history, but I'm old.  First actual concert in an arena was Grand Funk Railroad.  I was about 14 or 15 and my mother took me, my brother and a friend.  First road concert was Kiss in '74, a two-car convoy road trip to Fayetteville, riding with Tim Maners and Tommy Smith and witnessing the unknown trio Rush and the Atlanta Rhythm Section opening for the fire-breathing monster that is Kiss.  I've seen Kiss in concert at least 35 times, always the original four in makeup.  Never saw Eric Carr, a mistake.  

Best concert?  Pink Floyd.  Both times.  Biggest freaking production I've ever witnessed in an outdoor sports arena that seats 90,000 (both times) and the best sounding live show ever.  Despite 11+ musicians and singers on stage at once, it was like listening to the album with headphones.  I almost didn't go to see Floyd the first time and after witnessing them live, I jumped at the chance to see them again just a few years later.  Memories there, both trips, both concerts were unique and incredible.  

Honorable Mentions for Best Concert:  Rush (numerous concerts), the Who (BIG production, all star band), Judas Priest (numerous concerts - if you get the chance, see Rob Halford perform while you can), Ozzy Osbourne (if you catch him on a night he wasn't slurring), Kamelot (with Roy Khan singing), Yes (personally seen about 4 different lineups, including the reunion troupe), Iron Maiden (Big production, big loud sound, and Bruce Dickenson).

Regrets?  Missed out on the Beatles (Karen saw them) and Hendrix.  I've also never seen Clapton on stage.  Stopping this one now or I'll sit here typing all night, ya'll.  See ya next time.

More Or Less

Politics:  The Butthurt is still real.  And sadly, the problem isn't that the libs really believe Mr. Trump is evil, etc., they are terrified he will succeed in his quest to make the inner cities safer.  And you know what that means.  No more Democrats.

Music:  RoxX has been pretty much on hiatus since our last recording session until this very weekend, when Tommy sent me an 8+ minute new original that leans heavily toward Pink Floyd with a few hints of the Beatles.  I shall begin writing lyrics after a few more previews in the car at high volume or after a few sessions with the headphones.

Wrestling:  Enjoying a couple of consecutive weekends off from the squared circle and will return with a CWF Mid Atlantic event, a scheduled CWF-Rising Generation League event and the two-day first annual Kernodle Brothers Tag Team Tournament late in March.

Home:  Find myself almost physically connected with my four-wheel-drive Pip Rocket.  He rarely lets me out of his sight, and is currently sleeping at my right elbow on my desk's side table.  We've come to a much better understanding these days, as he often allows me to sleep all night without waking me for a midnight (4am) snack but once.  Karen was screaming at him earlier this evening while in the kitchen ironing her work clothes, apparently he was exploring the inside of our clothes dryer, which was still filled with clean dry clothes...When he wants my attention or to get me in the kitchen, his new trick is to open all of the cabinets and slam them shut.  Yeah.  He's one smart joker!

The Poison Pill

I'm witnessing it from many platforms.  The internet, in person and in the media.  I'm witnessing an entire generation of liberal-thinking progressive types losing their collective minds over a Boogie Man they invented inside of their own heads.

Liberals have used an attack and demean strategy for a half dozen years or longer and by making up "news" and "accusations" about their opponent, they created what they can only see as a monster.  A sexist, racist, xenophobic, misogynistic fire-breathing baby-eating beast that exists only in their minds.  And then, lo and behold, the monster they created gets elected President of the United States of America.  What to do?

Easy.  The five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression & acceptance).  The first stage, denial, continued from election day until Inauguration day.  Anger set in on Inauguration day and continued until the violence of these alleged "women's" marches took place and the bargaining phase began.  The final two stages will be dramatic, depression will be a quiet, self-loathing bunch of pajama boys trying to look all hard and the final stage of acceptance will be done in total silence.

Obama himself left our new leadership a ground scattered with poison pills.  He ALMOST made good on his campaign promise to empty Gitmo, really surprised he didn't try to give the base back to the Cuban government actually.  Obama moving tanks into Poland and trying to jump start the cold war is another situation which adults should be able to remedy without any problem whatsoever.  The world realizes the petulant miscreant that held America in a mini-dictatorship has fled and a new day has dawned in the USA where our military and LEOs are once again honored for their service to our nation and our communities.  America voted to become America once again.  Greatness will surely follow.

New Year, Etc., So Forth Blah Blah

Don't know what to think of the "revelers" around my neighborhood as the clock struck midnight on Sunday morning.  I heard the fireworks going off starting around 11pm and continuing until about 12:05 when it began raining quite hard.  I'm sitting on the couch in the dark awaiting relief from my acid reflux and watched my next door neighbor dash out of his front door into the parking lot.  He bends over to light something in the lot and runs back in the house like a madman.  "pop"  Yeah, one of those "legal" lady-finger firecrackers.  What a thrill-seeker!

Had the time of my life at BATTLECADE X-SEVEN, especially the after-show tradition of dinner for the entire company.  A few familiar faces returned and it had a "home" feel to it, as if the "old crew" was reunited.  Folks outside of the rasslin' circle don't realize how much of a family we all become.  It was great to see Ray & Angela Kandrack again, it was good to see Jesse Ortega in the ring (AFTER THE SHOW) working out with the new RGL champion.  As always, the most under-appreciated person behind the scenes is the one that makes CWF Mid Atlantic a reality, Danny Wenkel.  He has an extended family that would be virtually non-existent without him and continued enthusiasm for the sport.  Wait until you get a load of what Danny has coming to the Sportatorium next!

Announced publicly on Facebook Sunday that I was not going to retire yet from the pro rasslin biz.  Still having fun, we're moving forward into a situation that could possibly lead to great exposure for our company and our wrestlers.  We will be hosting a joint venture between CWF Mid Atlantic, Omega Wrestling and Impact Wrestling on January 29th that will be taped for TNA Impact Wrestling.  Long time friend "Broken" Matt Hardy & "Brother Nero" Jeff Hardy are already booked to be in the ring for BATTLE BOWL!  Yeah, I'll drop the poster here!