September 14 - Hair Match
This song is gloriously mean and nasty sounding. Not in the instrumentation, which is this soft and meditative piece, but in everything about the vocal, both lyrics and how they're performed. It's a piece of teasing, needling, taunting of someone receiving one of the worst things that could happen to a territories wrestler. There's no consolation here, gentle though the voice is. There was a Lucha de Apuestas and you lost, buddy.
For those who don't know, a Lucha de Apuestas is a match where the opponents lay something on the line in case of their loss. In Mexico the most common one is for two wrestlers, at the culmination of a huge feud to bet their masks. The winner gets to win, the loser gets unmasked, a huge deal in lucha libre where the faces and identifies of masked wrestlers are often secret their whole lives. Picking an example, the identity of Pentagon Jr is not public knowledge. He has never been unmasked, and his name is not known to audiences. Unmasking a wrestler (either through them betting their mask or a rudo tearing it off) is a big fucking deal. In the United States, where the deal with masks is very different and there are basically no masked wrestlers whose name is not known, unmasking a wrestler can be important but usually isn't so much. However, bet matches are still big business, and far more frequently what is bet is a wrestler's hair. An unmasking can be a dignified thing, albeit one with humiliation attached. The wrestler is sacrificing and putting down part of their identity. Shaving someone's head, though, now that's just humiliation from beginning to end. For one thing, it's usually not the wrestler shaving their own head. If they're lucky there's a barber. If they're unlucky it's their still-bloody opponent. And yes, in some of the shittier feds it's been known for someone to carve into someone else's head while cutting the hair. There's no dignity possible in this, it's designed to have no dignity. When done to a heel, it's something they will be mocked about forever (although most heels have looked better bald). When done to a face... wow, you'd be better of being put in a hospital bed.
A nasty song, and I say that in a complimentary way.