Rink rock

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/11/2022 (1040 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Picture it. Winnipeg, 1995.

The Winnipeg Jets 1.0 were about to be sold to another city. A grassroots campaign to ‘Save the Jets’ brought together hockey fans from all over the city. It’s well-known local lore by now that kids even took their piggy banks to Portage and Main, hoping their hard-earned tooth-fairy cash might save an NHL franchise.

But an enterprising person in the sales and promotions department at the Winnipeg Jets had another idea. Even if the Winnipeg Jets 1.0 couldn’t be saved, there might be a way for fans to have a keepsake from this illustrious time in Jets history and raise some money for Goals for Kids, the hockey club’s then-official charity.

Enter Hockey Rock Winnipeg Style!, the 1996 novelty charity compilation album on which well-known songs by Manitoba musicians were rewritten and re-recorded to be, well, about the Jets.

Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet was reimagined as an ode to Alexei Zhamnov called That’s One Hot Russian Jet — “He’s one hot Russian Jet/Ale-le-lexei is one hot Ru-ru-russian Jet” (you’re already singing it).

Harlequin’s Innocence became Numminen, owing to some nice syllabic symmetry — “Numminen, yes he’s all we ever needed…”

Streetheart’s One More Time was adapted as One More Save, about goaltender Nikolai Khabibulin.

Conspicuously absent: a song about Teemu Selanne.

Yes, these songs are performed by the actual musicians, which also included Streetheart (well, “former members of,” according to the liner notes), Colin James and Big Dave McLean & The Muddy-Tones among others. Yes, they are cheesy, but they are also fun. This album is, without question, the most Winnipeg thing to have ever Winnipegged. It’s hard to imagine anyone having the guts — or the sense of humour — to pull this off now.

Hockey Rock Winnipeg Style! had exactly one pressing (remember CDs?). It was a Winnipeg exclusive, distributed by HMV (remember HMV?). And it sold out, raising $30,000 for Goals for Kids. If you still have a copy somewhere, you’re lucky. This Winnipeg curio pops up on the internet occasionally, delighting and baffling listeners anew, but there’s never really been a good history of “this unique musical venture,” as it is referred to in the liner notes.

So, here you go. In honour of Teppo Numminen and Teemu Selanne’s recent induction into the Winnipeg Jets Hall of Fame, here is a brief history of Hockey Rock Winnipeg Style!

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David MacLean lives in British Columbia now, but in 1995, he was a sales and promotions guy for the Winnipeg Jets.

“The Jets were leaving Winnipeg and it was a really tough time for everybody, really sad,” he recalls. “And I had a crazy idea.”

MacLean (not to be confused with Big Dave McLean), you see, also played guitar. For friends’ birthdays, he’d find out what their favourite rock song was, change the lyrics to be all about the birthday person, then perform it.

“And I thought, ‘What if I did that with Manitoba musicians who had hit songs? And what if I changed the lyrics to their songs so they were about players on the hockey team and the hockey team itself? And then I got the original artists to re-record their song with my lyrics? And they’ll do it for free, because we’re going to donate the proceeds to our Goals for Kids Foundation.

“We’ll produce a CD, and we’ll form a partnership with HMV music stores, they’ll be the exclusive reseller of these CDs. So we’ll drive store traffic for them, they’ll front all the costs for the CD. We sell them, we donate, we help sick kids, and we create a lasting musical memento for the fans of Manitoba.”

And that’s… pretty much exactly how it went down. But that’s not to say the project didn’t have its roadblocks.

“They thought I was nuts,” MacLean says of his workplace at the time. “And I’ll tell you, I almost gave up on it.”

MacLean had identified Manitoba artists he wanted to be on the CD, and approached the heavy-hitters first: Neil Young, Burton Cummings, Tom Cochrane and Randy Bachman. All of them said no — except Bachman.

“What breathed life back into this whole thing was Randy,” MacLean says. “He was the first one who said, ‘Let’s do it.’”

MacLean says the writing process came fairly naturally. “You’ve got to get the lyric that’s close and fits the song,” he says. “And so, I thought, ‘Russian. Russian Jet. That’s one hot Russian Jet, you ain’t seen nothing yet,’” MacLean says, and then immediately breaks into song. “That’s one hot Russian Jet.”

Finding musicians was not unlike assembling a pick-up hockey team: Harlequin was a yes, Colin James was a yes, though Chris Burke-Gaffney provided the vocals on that one. Big Dave MacLean was a yes.

HMV, critically, was a yes, which meant MacLean could record and press a CD. “If it weren’t for HMV, this wouldn’t have happened,” MacLean says.

MacLean also tapped Jennifer Hanson, who was then the primary anthem singer at Winnipeg Jets games, to sing the sultry, jazz-inflected Give Me a Ring King (about Kris King), co-written by Joey Gregorash and MacLean.

“Kris was really nice and I almost felt bad about singing it,” Hanson says. “I felt a little awkward about it because he was a cute, nice guy and I didn’t want people to think I was after hockey players. I mean, people make dumb conclusions when you’re a girl singer — many dumb conclusions.

“But it was such a fun thing to do and Kris was cool about it.”

Hanson was also struggling with vocal problems (including possibly laryngitis) at the time, but she got through the session. “They call (that voice) cigarettes and whiskey, but really it’s acid reflux, right?” she deadpans.

What stands out the most to Hanson, however, was the vibe in those final years of Jets 1.0.

“It was an exciting, tense time,” she says. “We already knew that we were under threat of not having a team but none of us believed it. We were just fighting and fighting and fighting until the very last moment and then it was just crushing.

“But it was amazing to feel all the love that Winnipeg had for hockey and the team. It was an amazing time because it was just so nice to see people coming together. It was such love.”

That’s also the spirit in which Hockey Rock Winnipeg Style! was made, and explains, too, why it was such a hit with Manitobans, even, MacLean notes with pride, dethroning Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill from the top of the sales charts locally.

“The fans loved it. I mean, we sold out. People wanted more albums,” MacLean says.

“One of the things I learned from this project, specifically, is that sometimes the road to our greatest achievements is lined with spectators telling you why it can’t be done. The number of people who said, ‘This is a stupid idea, it’s a waste of time, don’t do it’ was crazy. But thankfully, there were enough people who said, ‘Dude, this is killer. You can’t give up on this.’”

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One last thing.

“The best song on the album never made it onto the album,” MacLean says.

That song was Teemu Means Business, a riff on BTO’s Takin’ Care of Business, in honour of Selanne.

But it was not to be. Just as MacLean was in the mixing phase of the song, he got the call: the Finnish Flash was no longer a Winnipeg Jet. He had been traded to Anaheim.

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com