Puck Rock: Hockey Maniacs Come to Play

Features Research Feb 2000

By Chuck MolgatNHL commissioner Gary Bettman wouldn't approve of it, but punk rock - particularly the Canadian variety - is fast becoming the unofficial music of hockey. If that sounds like a stretch, consider this: with the release this month of the second Johnny Hanson Presents Puck Rock compilation CD, there are now more punk rock recordings dedicated to Canada's game than any other musical genre, or, for that matter, all other genres combined.

Released back in 1994 on NoMeansNo's Wrong Records label, Johnny Hanson Presents Puck Rock Vol. 1 introduced 21 punk rock classics-to-be to the hitherto heterogeneous annals of hockey music. Two years prior to that, NoMeansNo unveiled its hockey-obsessed, Ramones-influenced alter ego, the Hanson Brothers, with their debut CDGross Misconduct . True, not all of that disc's material revolved around the Sport of Sports, but the album's hockey-crazed aesthetic managed to pervade just the same. The Hanson Bros. followed up Gross Misconduct four years later with another full-length release,Sudden Death . Even more hockey-centric than its predecessor, the disc even featured the Hanson Brother's own inspired rendition of Stompin' Tom Connors' "The Hockey Song."

The latest volume of Johnny Hanson Presents Puck Rock comes by way of D.O.A. main man Joe Keithley's Sudden Death Records, and features an additional 21 punk rock hockey numbers. Meanwhile, south of the border, New Jersey band the Zambonis have three puck rock releases of their own. Add to the list tunes like Vancouver punkabilly band the Deadcats' recent "Get Outta My Crease," the Dik Van Dykes' '80s classic "How Could You Leave Me For Harold Snepsts," and D.O.A.'s "Give 'em the Lumber."

Clearly, there's enough punk rock/hockey material out there to warrant its own retail section. But punk rock isn't just laying claim to hockey through sheer volume alone. Rather, the outpouring of musical tribute to The Game is indicative of an evolving social dynamic.

The popularity of "extreme" sports, and the aggressive music that invariably accompanies their televised broadcast, has obscured forever the time-honoured lines between jocks and punks. Snowboarding in particular has introduced and popularised the punk-as-athlete image - something two decades of skateboarding and BMXing couldn't achieve. Meanwhile, a breed of relative punk veterans have rediscovered their own hockey roots and are actively taking back the game they lost somewhere on the way to the record store.

D.O.A.'s Keithley is one such musician. "I just kinda drifted away [from hockey] when I got into music," says Keithley, whose musician-comprised D.O.A. Murder Squad has been icing routine charity games in Vancouver for the past few years. "I stopped playing hockey altogether. All my old friends that used to play, I didn't hang out with them anymore. I hung out with a bunch of punk rockers who didn't give a shit about hockey."

Keithley says punk peer pressure kept him away from The Game for years before he took to the ice again around 1986. "The first few years, there was this real anti-sports thing," he recalls. "I remember the first Seven Seconds record had this song, 'I Hate Sports,' or something, which was written by their original drummer Tom, who's a friend of mine. Now he goes to every single Oakland Raiders football game, so I laugh at him and remind him of that song. Or the Biafra one, 'Jock-O-Rama,' where he's going [affecting Biafra-esque vibrato] 'The star quarterback is lying on the field with a broken back... What a hero! What a man!' He makes some good points in the song, but..."

Keithley's experience isn't unique. After a childhood of bona fide hockey fanaticism, the Smugglers' Grant Lawrence found himself similarly estranged from his favourite pastime.

"Once I discovered booze and drugs, I thought hockey was for jock thugs. I eventually came around." Smugglers Grant Lawrence

"I stopped playing because once our class went on to high school, everybody got split up and got into other things like pot, rock, beer, Dungeons and Dragons, cars, and for me personally, I aimed my energies on forming a band," explains Lawrence. "Once I discovered booze and drugs, I turned hippie for a couple of years and thought hockey was for jock thugs. For the most part it still is, I just eventually came around to immensely enjoy the game again."

The Smugglers' contribution to hockey's musical legacy appeared on the first Johnny Hanson Presents... CD. The band's prescient contribution, "Our Stanley Cup," foreshadowed the Canucks' dramatic run to the seventh game of the '94 Stanley Cup final.

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