The mutton-chopped dude in the Fred Flinstone vest on the cover of this CD is old school wrestler Beauregarde, who decided to exploit his popularity as a flamboyant bad guy by cutting this LP of greasy rock and soul back in 1970. The obvious question: is it any good? Well, most Earth residents would say no – Beauregarde’s voice is flat and occasionally tuneless, and his lyrics (he wrote all nine tunes on the album) drift perilously between baffling (his would-be dance craze tune “Everybody Ball” gives listeners a laundry list of where they can execute these new steps, but never quite explains how to actually do the dance) to insane (the morbid “Super Star Super Star,” which recounts the deaths of Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Jimi Hendrix with a spectacular lack of taste – “She was on the top, she was flyin’ high/But that needle in her arm, it caused her to die”).

But bad singing and songwriting is never a negative here on Planet Motherfucker – hell, that’s practically mother’s milk to us. And as off-key and off-center as Beauregarde clearly is, the man’s Mt. Rushmore-sized self-confidence overshadows his technical flaws – you can practically hear him totaling up in his head the amount of pussy this LP was going to get him. Also in the plus department is B’s backing band, which includes future Wipers Greg Sage (whose label, Zeno, reissued this disc) and Dave Koupal– no one’s ever gonna mistake these guys for The Funk Brothers, but for a bunch of young session players, they pump out some respectable back alley psych-blues, especially on “Testify,” where they lay out a freakflag tapestry of wah-wah guitar and fat bottom bass for Beauregarde to roll around on while shrieking his leather lungs out.

I’ll be honest – I can’t say for sure sure how many times you’re gonna pull out this CD for a listen. But should the mood to spin a record by a professional wrestler, isn’t it comforting to know that you’ve got one of the best (on par with the Captain Lou Albano/NRQB matchup Lou and the ‘Q, I’d say) and not that hip-hop abomination by WWE champ John Cena? These kids today, I don’t know.
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-Paul Gaita