38 - Wednesday. May 26. 1999 -- North Shore News Puck r West Van rink rat Spins playoff hockey songs on CBC FM Bob Mackin News Reporter JUST as in the old days, hock- ey fans from coast-to-coast will tune their radios to CBC this Saturday night. Foster Hewitt’s play-by-play broad- casts from Maple Eeaf Gardens were a Saturday night tradition on the national AM radio network before Hockey Nigitt In Canada moved to TV. West Vancouyer-raised Grant Lawrence is building a hockey tradition of his own on CBC’s FM band. The singer from the Smugglers is a production assistant for CBC Radio Two's Radiosonic program and hosts the show’s annual plavoff-time special on hockey and music. Lawrence has been preparing for months. He has interviewed hockey play- ers about their musical tastes, thumbed through the CBC’s extensive library and collected rare records sent by listeners. “We've got records, like Clear the Track Eddie Shack and Jim Schoenfeld’s Schony, we've got a real rare single called Golden Jes about Bobby Hull,” Lawrence says. “We go basically from the mid-°50s to 1999 and we encapsulate it all in about 90 minutes in the middle of Radiosonic.” Lawrence can’t wait to juxtapose records made by Toronto Maple Leafs’ Frank Mahovlich and Montreal Canadiens’ Guy Lafleur. Both convey hockey wisdom to young players with remarkably different advice. “The Guy Lafleur instructional record is backed with disco music, it basically gives almost opposite advice from the Frank Mahovlich record. — Frank Mahovlich suggests you have a hockey stick that feels like a two-by-four, and Guy Lafleur suggests vou have a_ stick that’s fight and almost whippy in your hands. “It’s the first time this stuff has been heard on a national level for a long, long time.” Lawrence says the show was prompted oy this decade’s fusion of hockey and rock and roll. Bands like the Tragically Hip and Rheostatics play the game, even while on tour, and have written songs avout play- ers. (The Hip based “50 Mission Cap” on Bill Barilko and the Kheostatics have wee Ballad of Wendel Clark, Parts 1 and II”.) “What we've found is that there are More songs that have been written about hockey than any other sport, by a long- shor. There’s a lot of American songs about base- ball, but nowhere near the amount about hockey. Especially in the °90s in the punk rock genre, which has taken on the name puck rock.” Songs by the Ramones, Rancid and Green Day are played at some National Hockey League rinks. And some NHLers even consider themselves punks. “(New York Islanders’ goalie) Felix Potvin is a guy who likes Bad Religion and DOA. When he was a young goalie he went to all the punk shows thar went through Quebec. (Ottawa Senators’ goalic) Damien Rhodes loves to chat about it, he’s om Minnesota, so he’s a Replacements fan and knows all the Husker Du and Minnesota bands. There’s a couple of others, like (Buffalo Sabres’ forward) Joe Juneau. He had a band in Washington, D.C. And (Detroit Red Wings’ for- ward) Darren McCarty has his own band called Grinder. He calls it punk rock, F call it more like death grunge.” Lawrence learned how to skate as a youngster in Toronto at the city hall ice rink, but he consid- ers himself'a street hockey rink rat. His career coin- cided with his six years at Irwin Park elementary in West Vancouver. Every noon hour, Lawrence and his classmates faced-off on the school playground. “We had two teams and I was on the total loser team, the total geek team that was way too small to play and the other team were all the jocks who north shore news © SPORTS could whip our asses. We lost every day, day in day out, and we literally had to learn how to play dirty. 1 learned litele tricks like smacking the other guy's stick at just the right point that it hurts their hand so much they have to drop it.” The end of the two-team, noon hour hockey league came at the conclusion of Grade 6 when the players moved on to high school. “T got into other things,” Lawrence says. “I basically decided that sports was for jock thugs. I put my energies into forming a band. But I slowly came around to rediscovering the game and redis- cover my love for the game, and even though it’s still dominated by a lot of closed- minded jocks, it’s still an incredible game.” Lawrence plays street hockey every weekend in east Vancouver with members of his own band, plus musicians trom the Royal Grand Prix and Evaporators and anyone else who shows up. But he’s not alone in his devotion for the good old game. Joe “Shichead” Keithley of DOA is one of the west coast’s biggest “puck rockers.” Keithley’s Sudden Death record label just released Johnny Hanson Presents Puck Rock Vol. 11, a 20-hand, 21-song hockey-flavoured CD featur- ing DOA and the Hanson Brothers. The latter group is the alter-ego of Victoria’s Nomeansno. They are known for Ramones-like two-minute, three chord songs and wear jerseys and glasses like their namesakes from the movie Slapshot. oon eye rs a NEWS photo Paul McGrath GRANT Lawrence hosts a special 90-minute segment on music and hockey this Saturday on CBC Radio Two's Radiosonic. The West Vancouver-raised singer with the Smugglers will exam- ine the “puck rock” phenomenon of the '90s. The Hansons’ biggest gig was part of the pre- game hoopla for rhe 1997 NHE All-Star Game at GM Place. They lip-synched their cover of Stompin’ Tom Connors’ classte Hockey Sane. According to Keithley, hockey and punk rock are a perfeet match. “The way look at it, it’s really fast, it’s really tough, it’s sometimes violent and it’s pretty non- stop, so it’s very akin to punk rock,” says Keithley. He participates in the Puck Rock hockey pool with music industry and media proiessionals when he’s not recording, touring or playing with DOA's Murder Squad hockey team. The Puck Roek compilation’s official release is June 12 at the Startish Room, the same night as the Stanley Cup final’s third game. Lawrence will be playing some of the tracks on Saturday. The Smugglers contributed to the first volume of Puck Rock in 1994 with “Our Stanley Cup”. The song cerily foreshadowed the Canucks™ tirst round defeat of the Calgary Flames and ensuing run to the Stanley Cup tinal. @ Hear Radiosonic on 105.7 FM from 7 pan. to midnight (Pacific) Saturday. Listen to it live with RealAudio via the CBC Web site beginning at 4 p.m. Go to and click on Radio ‘Two live. The Toronto Maple Leafs meet the Buffalo Sabres in game four of the Eastern Conference final at £30 p.m. live on CBC TV. MARK Bates of North Vancouver won the 10th North Shore Triathlon Monday. Bates finished with atime of 5] minutes and 22 seconds. The race consisted af a 700 metre swim, TS kilometre bey: cle race and a five Kilometre run. Vara Tyler of Coquitlant was the cop temale tinisher. She had 17th place overall with atime of 57:58. See Sunday’s News fora fist of finishers. aad THE North Shore Indians’ first game in Kelowna was a success in the stands, but not on the floor. General manager Harry Ferguson said 1,200 fans came through the turnstiles at Kelowna Memorial Arena. Approximately 900 of them paid for ticket. But the Indians are still win- tess after the Victoria Shamrocks took an L1-S8 victory back to Vancouver Island. The teams met carlier in the week on Vancouver Island as the Shamrocks were 18-8 vie- tors. Gary Gait scored four goals and added four assists for Victoria in the Kelowna game. His nvin brother Paul did not play. Despite 1,000 empry seats, Ferguson was encouraged by the holiday weekend crowd. “We're very happy with the crowd, they got behind us and supported us. It was a real posi- tive experience.” Derek Malawsky had three goals for the Indians and leads the team with nine. Jim Nishivama had a pair. The Indians occupy last place in the six-team Western Lacrosse Association. They return home to Lonsdale Arena on June 9 avainst the defending champion Coquitlam Adanacs. a NORTH Vancouver's Philip Bester won the boys’ 14 sin- gles crown at the Hollyburn junior Tennis Classic on Sunday. Bester, the top seed, took the first set 6-2 but third-ranked opponent Kamil Pajkowski came back in the second with a 7-5 score. Bester regained domi- nance in the third and took the victory with a 6-4 result. ORS GROUSE Mountain is throwing a party June 4. The mountain's longest spring ski season will be cele- brated with free skiing and snowboarding all-day for non- annual ski and snowboard pass holders, It will be the last day of Friday skiing this season. Saturday and Sunday openings will continue after June 6 trom 9am. to 5 pam. The Grouse Mountain SkyRide remains in regular service seven days a week, from 9 am. to LO p.m. Before last weekend, the mountain had 821 centimetres of snow, — Bob Mackin