A Lion's Tale_ Around the World in Spandex - Chris Jericho [14]
In round two, we totally threw down, inspired by the kids in the crowd who were singing along to “City Nights.” I’d like to say that we won the battle and surpassed the Guess Who as the biggest Winnipeg band of all time, but I can’t. We ended up losing to a band called the Fourth Floor who did a kick-ass version of “Back in the USSR” by the Beatles. Beaten by my own favorite band! Even though we lost, it was still an amazing night. We were backstage in our own dressing room/closet playing in front of kids from all over the Peg who knew our song. Stepping onto the stage under the glow of the stage lights in front of what felt like 5,000 (50) screaming fans was the ultimate rush. I began to think that I could do that for a living.
The battle was filmed for a local TV show and we got one tape of it that we were supposed to share. We decided we’d take turns with it and when the tape got to my house, I watched it once and it ruled. The next morning, I went downstairs to watch it again, only to be mortified when I saw that my mom had accidentally taped over it with an episode of The Love Boat! Scimitar’s finest hour had been erased forever, replaced with Isaac serving mai-tais to Charo and Jonathan Winters.
The need to perform continued and I landed the role of lead villain Bill Sykes in our high school musical Oliver! I threw myself into the role by spray-painting my hair black, introducing an Indiana Jones–style bullwhip into Sykes’s repertoire, and practicing my English accent constantly. The play culminated with my big death scene as I plummeted off the back of the stage (landing on a BTWF regulation-sized PORTaPIT), causing the entire crowd to erupt in glee. I felt like Eugene Levy in Waiting for Guffman, when he looks at the camera and says, “I have to perform, I must entertain.”
My résumé continued to grow as my group of buds and I became the masters of the Air Band. Air Band was a lip-synching competition where a group would get up on stage and pantomime a song—and we were the best in the city. Instead of doing one song straight through by one band, we took two songs from two different bands and put them together. “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go” by Wham! was combined with the heaviest metal song we could find, “Damage Inc.” by Metallica. We called ourselves the Wham Bangers and the crowd yawned as they saw another group of guys dressed in black leather and studs, miming the opening of the Metallica song. But their yawns turned to looks of confusion, as right when it was about to explode, you heard “Jitterbug,” and Wham! kicked in. Then balloons and confetti fell on the stage as a pair of hot preppy girls came out and started dancing. Then—boom—it’s back into the super-fast guitar solo from Metallica. It was so original and entertaining that we won the city championship.
Not to be outdone, the next year we took the original country version of “Take This Job and Shove It” by Johnny Paycheck and combined it with the punk version by the Dead Kennedys. Then we had the Johnny Paycheck part sung by a little person named Gary Dyson. At our high school, we had more midgets than black people (two midgets, one African-Canadian) and we took advantage of that. We won again, took our prize money, and blew the entire wad on hookers and blow. Actually we got nothing as the cash was donated to the Student Council. When we won again the next year with a Village People dance extravaganza called the Village Inn Guys, we made sure to have the check written out to Chris Irvine Esquire. Then we blew it on hookers and blow.
CHAPTER 4
MATH FOR HINDUS
I was only seventeen when I graduated from high school, which meant I had to wait another year before I could go to wrestling school. When Wallass told me he