Nice Place To Live If You're A Beaver--Hockey Punk For The Connoisseur--Puck Rock Volume #1--Johnny Hanson Presents

Yes, hockey season has begun my friends. Admittedly, south of the 49th parallel and west of the Czech Republic, it is not a pastime for everyone. I have lost track of the many times when in the middle of a hockey monologue, my innocent victims eyes begin to glaze over, or their facial muscles start twitching, as their eyes begin darting around the room looking for a stick to hit me over the head with.

Actually I am a hockey player, temporarily retired. Sort of. Technically speaking, I am a guy who plays beer league hockey, not a hockey player. I didn't have to get up at 5 am to get skating lessons when I was six and there is not a drop of Michigan blood in me, let alone Canadian. When I was young there weren't any rinks around and I didn't learn to skate until I was twelve. Yeah, I know, boo hoo. Anyway, I am no superstar and I'm not tough enough to be a good goon. But believe me, it is still an exciting and fun sport for masochists like me to play.

Punk Rock and Hockey seem to go together. The aggressiveness of the music parallels the physicality of the sport. It's best done with a tongue in cheek demeanor though. Today I review the compilation Johnny Hanson's Puck Rock Vol 1. There is also a Vol. 2 only --so far Puck Rock lacks in popularity so there is no Police Academyesque Puck Rock Vol 17. The record is a hit and miss proposition. Amid the brilliance there is a lot of samey sounding unclever hardcore. Basically half the songs are good here.

Hockey connoisseurs should know two important things. As far as Puck Rock goes, any recording by The Hanson Brothers or D.O.A./Joe Shithead bears the punk rock trademark of excellence. So of course their contributions to this album are peerless. The Hanson Brothers (not the boy band or the goons from Slapshot)
fittingly begin and end the record, as Johnny Hanson is curator of this project. The first song is Hockey Night Tonight (not The Hockey Song of Stompin' Tom), with punk velocity and lyrical poetry worthy of the Ice Capades. In essence they truly are The Ramones On Ice.

Put away the Snakes and Ladders
Love Connection doesn't matter
You're gonna exercise your bladders
It's Hockey Night Tonight

Don't want no instant replay
Don't care what the TV geeks say
They look like Ronny Dugay
It's Hockey Night Tonight

Its these little vignettes that allow us a Americans to get a peek at the real Canada, our friends to the North.
This song has certainly taught me more about Hockey and its Fans than any Bob Dylan song ever did. Even more than beer. Incidentally, The Hansons are from Vancouver, so the Ronny Dugay slap may be an East Coast-West Coast thing. I'm hoping he provides a rebuttal single someday. Though I must say that when I see Dugay as a Rangers analyst he looks a like a character from the movie Deuce Bigalow.

Equally great is Joe Shithead/Keithley and cub's hockified version of wrestler/philosopher Classy Freddie Blassie's version of Pencil Neck Geek. Keithley is a hockey fan who also happens to be the frontman for D.O.A. and is probably the Godfather of Canadian Punk Rock. On this track, Keithley takes issue with modern players in the Gretzky mode versus the traditional Gordie Howe player. An inspired idea carried out perfectly. D.O.A. contributes the brief but memorable Overtime. "I don't give a puck! away in Overtime."

Unfortunately there is a lot of thrown together hardcore with little cleverness. It just sounds the same and sometimes the songs just go on for too long. Lots of aggro with no wit. Jughead's Hockey Song is funny, a song about a Canadian Hockey fan and his bewildering encounter with a Frenchman, California surfer dude, and an Aussie. Take shots! What's Wrong With Lumme is another Ramone style winner by Glen Ford and the Piers. The Smugglers' Our Stanley Cup and Muscle Bitches' She Devils On Skates are decent. Itch's old school rink rap Swampwater is also pretty good. I especially like Sweaters' Hockey Sucks, where the narrator complete disses the sport, but in the process humorously reveals how much he knows about the NHL, including the names of all the teams.



I admittedly am a fan of the New York Rangers since childhood, but I am not a fanatic. I watch a game sometimes but since I started playing organized hockey, simply watching bores me. So let me relate to you a hare raising post-Halloween urban legend.

I have a friend, for purposes of anonymity let's me refer to him as "Mr. Slicey". Let's just say he is no Dancing Larry, but as far as non-dancing zealous fans go, he is in the top tier. He is a regular in the upper level sections of Madison Square Garden and probably still working on his public persona there. I fondly recall watching him enthusiastically taunting two 9 year old Islander fans during a preseason game after the Rangers took the lead.

But after the Rangers won the Stanley Cup in 1994 Mr. S. simply vanished. We did not know what happened to him. It was a sad thing, but we all moved on with our lives, as people do. We heard rumors of sightings, but we dismissed them, fearing the worst. Then suddenly 15 years later he reappears, much to the amazement of our small circle, M-Slice reappeared. It seemed to be the same person, wearing a ratty old Rangers jersey and sporting a beard straight out of the Old Testament, or a ZZ Top video. Turns out it wasn't a jersey, but merely the bottom portion of his beard knitted into a shirt. His sneaker were all worn out, as though he had walked all the way home from Manhattan. So what happened?

It turned out that at the very end of this game he was celebrating in one of the lounges when he realized that he was the only remaining fan except for a group of extremely short French Canadians. He had had a bit to drink that night and let his guard down, as he mistook the head of the group for Ranger great Rod Gilbert. They were downing ales and playing rounds on a bowling machine. "Rod" claimed that they had been doing this long before there was a Madison Square Garden. My friend doesn't remember much about what happened after the miniature Rod Gilbert led him into a mysterious elevator that he swears he went into.  To this day he cannot show us where this elevator was. He vaguely remembers cheering at games, taking catnaps on top of Zambonis and has an uncanny knowledge of Ranger statistics. At times he thinks some mysterious giant named Malik is after him. His unusual regular diet of boiled hot dogs and beer gave him a serious case of malnutrition. For some reason he still screams out the strange phrase Potvin Sucks!, no matter what sporting event is played, sometimes even during reruns of Golden Girls. A sad and cautionary tale about the dangers of overzealous love of hockey in America, comparable in a way to sad story of Gram Parsons fatal attempt to become Keith Richards.

But for Canadians love of hockey is a necessary to everyday life. I believe there are secret camps somewhere in the vicinity of Hudson Bay where they do what they have to to deprogram hockey "pacifists". And no better place can be found to appreciate Canadians' love for their national sport than in The Hansons I'm Gonna Play Hockey.

But in Canada
The streets are paved with gold
In my rookie year I'll score 50 goals
I'll buy a luxury condo in Etobicoke
Let me sign on the line, I've got to go...
Mama, Papa wish me well
I'm gonna play for the NHL!!

If Joe Keithley ever becomes Canadian Premier this would be the new national anthem. Read his entertaining punk memoir I, Shithead for more elaboration on this, and the Vancouver punk rock scene.