5 Questions with Rags #92 - Liiza Hall or "Feeling like I run this whole block...Tryna scratch my way to the top"

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On November 15, 365 Pro Wrestling held the inaugural Queen of the Island Tournament in Victoria. It was a landmark evening, featuring 11 women's wrestlers – including the 8 that made up the tournament bracket. When that bracket originally dropped, consensus among the 365 faithful (at least the ones I talk to!) all chose Liiza Hall as the winner. It seemed obvious to us. So, you can imagine our surprise when she lost in first round, albeit after a genuinely incredible match, to relatively unknown Cherry Blossom. Hall came out to cheers, but as the match progressed, we could see the terrifying bully Liiza, the one that it's cemented in all of our heads as a KILLER, come out more and more. When Blossom got the 1-2-3 and the victory, the jammed-packed crowd erupted in joy at the surprise triumph. Cherry Blossom established herself as someone not to fuck with, because everyone who regularly attends 365, and really any indie wrestling company in the PNW, knows that Liiza Hall is not someone to be fucked with. So bright is her star and strong is her ability in the ring, that getting a win over her is a huge step for anyone coming up in the scene.

Hall has been at the forefront of a quiet revolution of women's wrestling on the Canadian west coast. It's a scene that is genuinely on fire and growing at a rapid pace, with tournaments like the 365's Queen of the Island and BOOM! Pro Wrestling's Coco Harriet Invitational putting the spotlight where it belongs. It's a big change from when Hall first stepped into the scene herself. “It's really nice to see how much it's grown in the last 10 years. When I first started wrestling there was probably the same three or four ladies all the time,” reflects Hall, taking valuable time away from her new kitten, Frankie, to talk on an idle Thursday afternoon. “Now I get to wrestle the new trainees from Lion's Gate. I get to wrestle a bunch of people from Portland and Washington. Even here, we have, it might sound like a small number, but even having five or six women who are consistently wrestling in one area is a big deal. It's nice to see more women trying to get into the sport. I love it.”

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5 Questions with Rags #91 - The Flamin' Aces (Zaye Perez & Spencer Scott) or "Blow out your candles, make a wish, What's a life if you never take a risk?"

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In less than five years of existence, The Flamin' Aces – “Playboy” Zaye Perez and “Hot Shot” Spencer Scott – have set the PNW tag team wrestling scene on fire, establishing themselves as one of the most sought after pairings the region has to offer. In a tag team scene that is jam-packed with talent and charisma, setting yourself apart isn't an easy task, but it's something The Flamin' Aces have accomplished in town after town. I was in the building when they debuted for 365 in Victoria – a city with a crowd with little knowledge of indie wrestling outside of their home promotion(s). When Perez and Scott came out from behind the curtain, it took the 365 crowd about a half-trip around the ring to turn into absolute lunatics for the Flamin' Aces. Cheers, claps, shrieks; the Aces brought it out of us before they even stepped into the ring. Once they got between the ropes, The Flamin' Aces backed up the hype, flipping and diving around the ring like maniacs, while also beautifully executing non-flipping wrestling maneuvers (important!). Their in-ring heroics and magnetic personalities have made Perez and Scott favourites on the Canadian west coast, an area that has embraced them and welcomed them from day one. The duo has been frequent guests here on the Canadian west coast working in all of the dopest promotions including 365, BOOM! Invoke, NEW and Wrestlecore.

Earlier this year, Rags Music caught up with Zaye and Scott before their summer trip to Vancouver where they won, and probably broke, hearts at Invoke and Pride Style's “To Love and Lariat.” In all fairness, we did catch up for a piece for Invoke Pro Wrestling – which is still forthcoming, so keep your eyes peeled for the deep wrestling nerd stuff with that one – but we couldn't pass up the opportunity to get one of our favourite tag teams to answer the 5 Questions. Thankfully, they were game for questions about first albums (however embarrassing), mentors and having a good cry. So, dive in and get to know some things about your new favourite tag team, the Flamin' Aces.

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The Trash Gentlemen List - Vol. 1

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Everyone has a line, a breaking point, that, when reached makes them rethink certain things. I continued to use Spotify for far longer than I should have, in addition to my regular support of the music I love. (I mean, really, we should all be augmenting our streaming services with buying records, concert tickets, merch, etc, whenever we can.) But a few months ago, former Spotify CEO (and current executive chair) Daniel Ek pledged €600 million of his vast, ill-gotten fortune to Helsing, a German firm specializing in AI military technology. This was my line. It was time to ditch Spotify for a different evil steaming overlord – Apple Music. I wanted to do something to “celebrate” this change. A new playlist series seemed like a good idea. Something to help me familiarize myself with a new platform, but also to combat the rise of insipid AI-created playlists. I'm (not actually) sorry, but an algorithm cannot make a mixtape with any kind of feeling or purpose. A good mix is something you sit down, think about, select carefully. I should know, I've been making tapes and playlists for my friends for almost three decades now. (Shout out Blake Shiny Tunes. IYKYK)

But just making a playlist didn't seem particularly fun or exciting, so I sat and I thought, long and hard. Who do I know that uses Apple Music that can help put something together? And it occurred to me, one of coolest dudes I know, and one of my most-trusted music allies uses Apple Music, the big homie Joshua Szirmay-Corrales. From the moment I met Josh in the middle of Rifflandia festival, discussing the great Reggie Watts, he has become one of my most trusted musical taste-havers. The man's ear is impeccable. In a world where everyone seemingly has something to recommend for my ears, Josh is one of the only people who gets their recommendations to the front of my queue. In recent years he's taken up as the main writing contributor with Rocktographers, our hometown Victoria's most-trusted source for live music coverage, and our local scene is absolutely better for it.

And now we're here, celebrating the very first Trash Gentlemen List. This recurring playlist will be a place to celebrate all the different bits of music that make us love it so much. This is a place for you, dear reader/listener, to come find something new, maybe reconnect with something old and most hopefully, to help you think about music in some of the ways you used to, before an algorithm started to take everything over. Each one of these lists is going to be built around a unifying theme or idea, not just a collection of dope songs (Though each list certainly will be that!). To get things started we're looking at some of our favourite Track 1s. We're opening the series with a series of openers. So sit back, relax and let's get into some fucking music.

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5 Questions with Rags #90 - Eddie Osbourne or "Throw fo' fingers up, add a thumb, then make it a fist, Number one draft pick, lead the league in assists"

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If you go to a 365 show now – here on the west coast or out in Ontario where the company also runs sold out shows – it is packed with people seemingly rabid for 365's brand of wrestling. But, of course, what happens currently is just the tip of iceberg, and doesn't happen without all the hard work underneath that no one really sees. “I went in with no knowledge. I had mentors that were wrestlers, but no promoter that took me under their wing to help me out. There was no one to really study and learn from. It was just a bunch of wrestlers trying to figure out how to make this thing work. It was hard to get people in seats. Learning how to get those posters out there, who to talk to about radio, etc. I didn’t know what to do. It was challenging to be the boss of something.” But in the challenges, there's always sprouts of something good to keep you going. “The surprising part was just how much people want to work to help you with getting bigger and better and GROW. I’ve never done PWA or 365 on my own. I’ve had such a community and people behind me. It wouldn’t be here without them. There’s so many of them. There’s phases – sometimes they come and go, sometimes they’re here forever. I’ve had some guys with me since the beginning.”

Osbourne officially had his first match on September 15, 2001. As he approaches a quarter century of wrestling, he's quick to answer when I ask him what keeps him going. “I love it. It’s fun. If it wasn’t fun, I’d quit. If I wasn’t having a good time, I’d leave. There things to learn all of the time, because it’s always changing” This is man who just really fucking loves wrestling, who has grown with wrestling and is always thinking about wrestling. “Wrestling, from when I started to now, is so different, but it’s also so much the same. The goal is the same now, to get the reaction, but the way we do it might be different now. I used to be in faces, trying to start fights, saying some stuff that makes me go 'Oi!' Now it’s maybe a little more tame but also all the fans are here, not as wrestling fans always, but people who want to come out and get away from the world.”

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It's the second weekend of September, so you know what that means, kids?! RIFFLANDIA!

For seemingly as long as I can remember, (Quick caveat here: My memory is kinda fucked.), Rifflandia has been one of the most important weekends in Victoria. It is a marker of time; the summer is over. We get together to commune and blow off the last of that warm summer energy as we get ready for the new – and quite frankly, much better – seasons and return to Life™. It is a beginning and an end. A time to connect with all the homies who went off for separate adventures and a time to maybe make a new homie or two. For all the changes it's gone through over its nearly 20 years of existence, Rifflandia still sits there, at the beginning of September, fulfilling its ultimate destiny as a Great Connector. Beyond that lofty position, Rifflandia remains a place to go and just listen to some really fucking good music.

The musical net Rifflandia casts is wide, genre-wise; you're never going to like everything Rifflandia has to offer. But I don't think that's really the point. Rifflandia is a crossroads where fans of music - be they casual, general fans or hyper-niche fans - can get together and find some common ground to commune on. Like children being given new foods to help expand their palettes, it's good for all of us to be exposed to stuff outside of our bubbles. The pathways in our brains that allow us to genuinely enjoy new, different music will atrophy if not kept active. So even if there’s stuff I’m not personally interested in, I can guarantee there’s going to be something positive in my brain that is a direct result of standing in front of acts I’ve never heard before. But luckily for me (and for you, dear reader) there’s a lot of tremendous music on this years lineup that I already know and that is going to pull me out of the house. And here are some of the things, presented in no particular order, that will make me drag my lazy ass out of my house and down to the Matullia Lands in Rock Bay, Victoria to experience yet another Rifflandia.

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