TNA Wrestling and Number 64

About six years ago, I became a big wrestling fan. Wrestling was about excitement, overhype and overkill in every way imaginable. It was great fun. Sadly, a few years back wrestling made a conscious effort to become boring. When I say wrestling, I mean WWE, the only major wrestling promotion left standing after the ratings wars between WWE, WCW and ECW ended. When I first started watching wrestling, it was a big stunt show with people running in all directions knocking into each other. They would jump off the ringpost, the stage, giant ladders and crash through tables or into dumpsters. In between, larger than life characters would run their mouth about how they were the best of everything. The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin and the Hardy Boys were the face of this style.

A few years back, WWE thought people did not want to see this type of action anymore and went to a more traditional, boring style of wrestling. This new/old style consisted of 20 minute matches where the wrestlers would grapple for 15 minutes. In the middle of the match would be a longggg sleeper hold which would take about 5 minutes and always ended with the hold being broken. On top of that, WWE thought it would be great to split their roster into two camps, RAW and Smackdown. They thought they were giving greater exposure to their talent, but they were really weakening their ability to put wrestlers over by showing them on one program instead of two.

At the end of the day, what was left? The only wrestler since the RAW and Smackdown split they have successfully put over fully is John Cena. Cena's a likeable guy who can do everything a wrestler needs to do well...except actually wrestle. His ability to talk and mouth off is first rate, but he only knows five moves and does them in the same order every match. With other wrestling promotions no longer able to stand up to Vince McMahon's WWE, it seemed this junk was all wrestling fans were stuck with.

Until WWE left Spike TV, then Spike signed up the only other wrestling promotion that could try to compete-TNA. TNA is led by wrestler turned wrestler/promoter Jeff Jarrett. In his prime, Jarrett wrestled for just about anybody that had a ring and a bell. TNA's initial approach was to pickup on what the WWE refused to deliver, fast paced mayhem and acrobatic moves. To take it a step further, Jarrett saw what used to work in WWE before the change and made bargin basement copies. Like Mick Foley / Mankind? Now there's Abyss, an enigmatic crazy guy with a mask. Like The Rock? Well, if the Rock got kind of fat, you can call him Samoa Joe. Like Sting? Actually, they got the real thing and Sting is with TNA.

Now that TNA's on Spike, old WCW wrestlers and every WWE wrestler that has become disenchanted with that company's direction have been coming over. In addition to Sting, two big WCW names Scott Steiner and Kevin Nash jumped over. Disgruntled former ECW wrestlers who saw their hardhitting wrestling styles softened and their careers slowed in the process made the jump, such as Rhyno and the Dudley Boyz. WWE midcarders like Christian and underused divas like Gail Kim and Christy Hemme moved as well. And in their biggest coup, TNA was able to bring over former olympic gold medalist / WWE world champion Kurt Angle over because he was tired of being mistreated and misused.

The end result is that TNA, a smaller and hungrier company, is now packing more entertaining action in one hour a week than WWE can with six hours a week. On TNA, the action is fast and furious. The scripted storylines are lamer than WWE's, but they don't spend as much time talking about it which makes it OK. Best of all, TNA has held on to some of their original wrestlers to maintain an X division, where wrestlers pull acrobatic moves left and right . No lousy five minute chokeholds on this show. Just people flying and getting chairs to the face. That's how wrestling should be.

And what should be at Number 64 is:

Journey - Raised On Radio (1986)

Journey's Raised On Radio will always be a meaningful album to me, even though I can't say it was the album I was hoping it would be. A lot happened in my life in 1986, I graduated high school and then moved away from home to start college. This album will always be tied to that period in my life and Journey is my favorite band, so why is this at Number 64?

Well, although Raised On Radio is a good album it ultimately wasn't really a Journey album. Journey had made their name as the top arena rock band with anthemic melodic rock and soft, teary ballads. During the making of Radio, creative conflicts arose which resulted in the rhythm section getting fired and lead singer Steve Perry writing separately from guitarist Neal Schon and keyboardist Jon Cain. On top of this, Perry was riding on a professional high of a successful solo album and a personal low of caring for his terminally ill mother. Perry took absolute control of the project, minimizing the contributions of Schon and Cain.

On the way to a family vacation I heard on the radio the first new Journey song I had heard in three years. "Be Good To Yourself" was a classic Journey rock song with an uplifting chorus, shiny keyboard parts and Neal Schon's sizzling guitar solo at the end. It seemed all of the bad press was wrong, this was going to be Journey the way they had been before.

Then the album finally came out. I bought it the first day it was released, I bugged the record store clerk so much he tried to lie to me and say I was there the wrong day. I ran home and put it on the turntable. I was really pumped and the first song was..."Girl Can't Help It". While "Girl Can't Help It" is a fine song, it's a sort of midtempo song with a heavy dose of Oohing harmony vocals. It was confusing, I didn't know what to make of it. Didn't I buy a Journey album? The second song, "Positive Touch", was even more bewildering. "Touch" hopped along to an R&B beat and featured a saxophone solo. To this day, I consider this one of the worst Journey songs ever. The third song, "Suzanne", I thought was great except they stole the beat from A-Ha's "Take On Me".

Much of the rest of the album went the same way. It became clear to me that this wasn't a Journey album but really Steve Perry's second solo album with members of Journey guesting. With the exception of "Be Good To Yourself" and the excellent power ballad "Why Can't This Night Go On Forever", there wasn't anything recognizibly Journey on the album. Everything else downplayed the arena rock and replaced it with R&B and lightweight funk.

Still, by the standards of a Steve Perry solo album it was pretty good. "I'll Be Alright Without You", a sort of sequel to Perry's "Foolish Heart", is one of my favorite songs. I saw Journey play live twice on the Raised On Radio tour, both shows were outstanding. My friends and I stayed up a full 24 hours to see them perform their first live concert in three years. I sat through crappy bands like Device and Andy Taylor (of Duran Duran) and saw some mediocre sets delivered by Honeymoon Suite and the Outfield ("Your Love" is a great song until you hear an eleven minute version of it with eight minutes of crowd sing-a-long).

The concert also gave me respect for Randy "American Idol" Jackson, who played bass on this album and tour. His bass playing is considerably stronger than Ross Valory, who he had replaced. This album was Journey at the end of their peak run and while it could have been better, it still ranks as one of my all time favorites. As Randy Jackson would say, Journey "y'know, did their thing dawg." Luckily for Journey, that's better than most people's best effort.