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Hair Match

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Hair Match
Beatthechamp

Album

Beat the Champ

Released

April 7, 2015

Length

3:28

Previous Track

"The Ballad of Bull Ramos"

Hair Match is the 13th song on the album Beat the Champ. It also appears as the 24th song on the 2021 live album The Jordan Lake Sessions: Volumes 3 and 4.

Lyrics[]

You'll be maybe lunging for the bad guy’s hip
No one anticipates the sunset flip
The referee and your opponent will hold you there
And we're gonna bring in a folding chair

We'll stipulate that there will be no cameras filming
But of course there will be several in the building
And if by chance somebody hits "record"
And stands real still somewhere back behind the soundboard

Cheap electric razor from the Thrifty down the street
Two guys down around your ankles so you'll stay put in your seat
Buzzing razor held aloft and just about to strike
I loved you before I even ever knew what love was like

Some people leave before it's over, but most of them stay
Some hide behind their programs, some turn away
Out in the parking lot you look up at the stars
And all the cheap cars

Comments by John Darnielle About this Song[]

  • "...the question of the identity of the narrator in 'Hair Match' is maybe my single favorite thing about the whole album, and kept me inspired throughout the writing of it ('Hair Match' was the first song written of the bunch)..." -- John's Tumblr
  • "It was the first song written for the album & the one that pointed the way" -- Twitter
  • "But easily the most Greek of them all was the hair match, that, uh, in which the loser had to have his head shaved in front of an entire witnessing audience. Again, there's nothing sexual about any of this [audience laughter]. It's just like any normal athletic contest..." -- 2021-09-26 - Musikfest Cafe - Bethlehem, PA
  • "One way you can tell which is my favorite song on a record is look for which one is last. Oh, I should explain, 'cause some of you aren't into professional wrestling, and you'll be mystified by this song otherwise. So professional wrestling which is to be distinguished from amateur wrestling in that it is wrestled by professionals. [...] one of my favorites back when I was a child, I took it so seriously, was the 'Loser leaves town' match. They should have this in music! But if you're 12, and even if you've been told over and over- my stepfather, whose father had been a wrestling promoter in Indiana in the '40s would [tell me] none of this is real- I knew it! But it doesn't matter, because children and mature people know, something can both be true and false at the same time, that's how we manage to read books. [...] people are weird about wrestling- they go 'oh, it's not real'- right, neither is Mission: Impossible, and yet I watched that guy jump out of the plane, and I got excited. But so- the 'Loser leaves town' match- it's fairly self-explanatory. My theory about it in adulthood is that like one of the guys- 'cause this is the days of the territories. The territories in wrestling meant that there was not like a big wrestling company that ran coast to coast, there were all these little fiefdoms, and they were very small change operations, nobody was getting rich, except for maybe the owner, which is a very familiar story. NFL, right. NCAA, pay your players. [crowd cheers] yeah, goddamn right. But- my theory is. That one of the wrestlers, who again are making peanuts, would tell the local promoter 'Hey man. My dad is going to the hospital and I gotta go to Arizona, for a week, I wanna be with Dad, is there something I could do to get out of the next week and a half worth of work-' 'Yeah man! You gotta lose a 'Loser leaves town' match! [...]' There was a rope match which is incredibly sexual, where the guys are tied to each other by the ankles, with a rope. And then they have to fight, each other, with the rope. And I think if one guy gets the rope off, then theoretically he wins, but he usually before he finishes winning beats the other guy with the rope that once bound them together. It's hot stuff. But the hair match is like the most Greco-Roman of them all, and they would do it all the time, back then. The loser has to get shaved, bald. In the center of the ring. And he sits there, on the cheapest chair they could find. It's like a classroom chair, a pale tan thing with paint flaking. And he sits there, while the razor buzzes. And because in those days they weren't doing it for TV, the people tended not to cheer. They just watch." --2023-02-15 - Mickey's Black Box - Lititz, PA

Things Referenced in this Song[]

Live Shows this Song Was Played at[]

Videos of this Song[]


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