Artist: The Mountain Goats
Song: The Legend of Chavo Guerrero
Album: Beat the Champ (2015, released on my twelfth birthday)

I’m not sure where I first encountered the Mountain Goats, a band that is primarily a vehicle for John Darnielle. It looks like the first song I downloaded by the band was Dance Music back in 2021, but the first time I meaningfully engaged with their work was 2022 when I discovered their wonderful, minimal 2002 indie folk album All Hail West Texas, probably from a chart on RateYourMusic.

Something about the lo-fi emotion stuck with me. The album tells the stories of people from the middle of nowhere, fumbling through their lives - “Fall of the Star High School Running Back” is a highlight, telling the story of a kid who makes some bad decisions and then has to deal with it. The lyrics and instrumentation are both sparse, but they manage to communicate plenty.

A couple years later I saw that the Mountain Goats were coming to Boston on tour, so I figured I should go. At work that day I put the band on loop, trying to learn as much of their music as I could before the show. I knew it was a largely futile task, as Darnielle has released over 20 albums and draws almost at random from his discography at any given show, but I figured I might as well try.

One song resonated with me in particular that day, 2015’s “The Legend of Chavo Guerrero.” It’s not nearly as stripped-down as his earlier work, with more propulsive energy.

It’s about wrestler Chavo Guerrero, but it’s really about Darnielle’s childhood fixation on Guerrero. At a time when his life was difficult, the dynamism of Guerrero in his battle against his opponents brought him light.

Look high
It’s my last hope
Chavo Guerrero
Coming off the top rope

I dragged a friend to the concert. He was not someone who had ever encountered the Mountain Goats before. I encouraged him to listen to some of their music beforehand, but I don’t think he did.

Darnielle took the stage and immediately launched into The Legend of Chavo Guerrero. I was surprised—I knew it wasn’t one of their most popular songs—but very pleased, and so was everyone else. The crowd bought in, the place lit up. My friend texted his parents a video, adding: “I’m at the Billy Goat concert, so much fun!!”

The rest of the show was great. The middle sagged a bit, with a few songs that no one knew at all, but that happens.

Afterwards, I decided to check setlist.fm to see how many times he had played that song at concerts. It turned out that he had played it the night before in New York, both to start the concert and then again to close it out, and at his previous show two nights before that. But previously he hadn’t played it in nine years!

He went on to play it a bunch more for a week, but he hasn’t played it once since. At time of publication of this note, setlist.fm tells us that Darnielle has played The Legend of Chavo Guerrero 30 times in concert, which makes it the 195th (!!) most-played song in his catalogue.

That’s a remarkable fact from a remarkable career. What a discography, what a choice to be bold enough to play your ~195th-most performed song to start a concert 33 years after your first record was released. What an achievement, to have it work!