In tribute to the holiday season, I wanted to feature a hockey cartoon with a Christmas theme. Although I couldn't find one specifically related to this holiday, the cartoon I chose does involve a gift, winter and praying to God.
It tells the story of a young boy growing up in Quebec, who outgrows the jersey of his favourite hockey team, the Montreal Canadiens, which has the number of his favourite player on the back, Maurice Richard. Noticing this, his mother orders him a new sweater by mail. When the day comes that the sweater finally arrives, the boy is severely disappointed but the mother can't understand why and forces him to wear it anyway. His eventual humiliation by other boys and his coach at the rink adds to his misery.
You might have seen The Sweater on YouTube. However, this is directly from the NFB, so the clarity is superior to what you may have watched previously. Enjoy it again, won't you?
No audio or video is available for this song, so instead I'll just post a link to the lyrics and ring tone of Hockey Holidays by The Zambonis. The song is available for download at sites like Amazon.com and iTunes. You can even preview a sample of the song before you decide to buy it. For less than a dollar, it's well worth it, in my opinion.
Here are a couple of very short, animated New Yorker Cartoons, the second of which is a hilarious encounter at the end of a hockey game. While the players from each opposing team line up to shake hands, one of them utters something in passing that you woudn't normally hear in that situation.
Enjoy the first one too, which is a Gahan Wilson cartoon.
This week, I decided to focus on hockey's "Great One", Wayne Gretzky, with two very different songs.
The first is an upbeat, biographical tribute to Gretzky, called "Gretzky Rocks". Widely and erroneously credited to The Arrogant Worms on the video below and across the internet (song files), this song was written and performed by another Canadian band, The Pursuit of Happiness. It is absolutely not sung by The Arrogant Worms.
It seems to be, that for whatever reason, half of all novelty songs on the planet are wrongly attributed to the "Worms". I like the Worms but they did not write nor sing this song. Do us all a favor when you are posting a song or video to the web. If you don't know who sings it, don't guess. Do some research and find out for sure. I blame Napster and Limewire as the cause of this. Sites like those are the breeding ground of music misinformation. I stopped going to those sites for the simple fact that it only took one user to upload a song credited to an incorrect artist and then that one song was downloaded thousands of times. Hence, if someone uploaded "Wayne Gretzky Rocks" and typed in "Arrogant Worms" as the artist, then that's what thousands of first-time listeners subscribed to. Later, they would e-mail or text their friends to say, "you gotta listen to this great song by The Arrogant Worms called Gretzky Rocks!" So the misinformation spreads like Wildfire.
I'm here to set the record straight once and for all. "Gretzky Rocks" is absolutely, positively, without a doubt, performed by Pursuit of Happiness. It was track #9 on the 1995 album, "Where's the Bone?" which was produced by band member, Moe Berg. Case closed.
The second song about Wayne Gretzky does a 180 degree turn from the first one. Performed by Goldfinger's drummer, Darrin Pfeiffer, it is an odd composition in which Pfeiffer proudly declares his man-crush on The Great One. As a matter of fact, Pfeiffer could be accused of sharing too much information. Basically, the song is about his sexual fantasies about Gretzky, presumably in jest. At least, I think he's just kidding. Be forewarned. You might not want to let the younger ones hear to this.
