Had to post this from the Wall Street Journal
The bands website is Two Man Advantage
Dropping the Gloves,
Picking Up Guitars:
Call It Puck Rock
Bands Devote Their Talents
To Goading Hockey Fans;
Zamboni Driving Maniac
By CHRISTOPHER CONKEY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
April 19, 2004; Page A1
By day, architect Anthony Spagnolo dons business clothes, squeezes into
a cubicle and studies floor plans for office-building renovations. By
night, he pulls on a hockey uniform, climbs on stage and belts out songs
like "Zamboni Driving Maniac":
Before and after and in between
One man's mission, the ice he'll clean
He's fueled by hockey, fueled by beer
Run you down if you get near...
Mr. Spagnolo, 30 years old, is the lead vocalist in Two Man Advantage, a
Long Island, N.Y., band in a tiny but feverish musical subgenre known as
puck rock. He and his four band mates compose and play songs about
hockey, a sport that for decades inspired very little music that
couldn't be played on a Wurlitzer between whistles.
Their pounding tunes use such hockey staples as hip checks, loose teeth
and ice-resurfacing machines as fodder for lyrics. One fan favorite, "I
Had a Dream About Hockey," describes the band's obsession:
I had a dream about hockey
and I tossed and turned...
when I woke up I had my skates on...
Mr. Spagnolo says he doesn't care that his songs aren't likely to get
much radio play. "Who cares if the fat, lonely lead singer got his heart
broken? The guys don't care. They care more that the Islanders lost last
night."
Hockey songs, like the game itself, were originally a Canadian
phenomenon. One early classic was "Clear the Track, Here Comes Shack,"
by Douglas Rankin and the Secrets. The song about Eddie Shack, a
bruising Toronto Maple Leafs winger in the 1960s, spent nine weeks in
1966 as Toronto's No. 1 song.
Another old gem is "Please Forgive My Misconduct Last Night," written by
Canadian comedian Alan Thicke in 1980. More recently, Wayne Gretzky fan
Darrin Pfeiffer composed "The Only Man I'd Have Sex With," and The
Zambonis sang "Bob Marley and the Hartford Whalers," a reggae lament for
the team that left Connecticut for North Carolina in 1997.
In hockey-mad British Columbia, local Elvis impersonator "Heavy" Eric
Holmquist, 43, has made a name with a series of odes to players on the
National Hockey League's Vancouver Canucks. It started in 1991 when Mr.
Holmquist wrote "Gino Gino," a song lauding Canuck forward Gino Odjick.
He followed that with "Bure Bure," a celebration of Pavel Bure, the
diminutive scorer whom Mr. Odjick protected on the ice.
In 2002, Mr. Holmquist's tune about the team's latest star, "It's Called
the Todd Bertuzzi," was all over Vancouver radio during the Canucks'
playoff run. The players listened to it before games, the team made a
video, and the song became a citywide anthem. When the NHL suspended Mr.
Bertuzzi this year for a vicious hit, the song became a rallying cry for
Canuck fans who thought the sentence too harsh.
Today, at least three bands devote themselves almost exclusively to
hockey music. The Zambonis, of Bridgeport, Conn., have had the most
commercial success as pure hockey rockers, while NoMeansNo, a Vancouver
punk outfit, plays sold-out nightclubs when they make occasional
Canadian tours as their hockey-crazed alter egos, The Hanson Brothers.
A poster for Two Man Advantage's April 14, 1999, show in New Orleans
New York's Two Man Advantage and its hard, pummeling sound are to puck
rock what fisticuffs and cross-checks are to hockey. Mr. Spagnolo, a fan
of the NHL's New York Islanders, assembled the band as a stunt for a
Halloween party in 1997. "I was tired of punk bands singing about
politics and heartbreak," he says. He plucked musicians from other, more
artsy bands who had also wearied of the seriousness.
The Halloween party never took place, but a few weeks later, Mr.
Spagnolo's band performed its 12 newly written songs about hockey and
beer at Dr. Shay's Pub in Lindenhurst, N.Y.
They wore hockey jerseys on stage and named themselves for the hockey
term that refers to a team whose opponent has two players in the penalty
box.
"It was supposed to be a joke amongst a bunch of old guys," Mr. Spagnolo
says. "But kids kept coming up to us asking, 'Hey, when's your next
show?' and it just snowballed."
After their third show, the band adopted the matching black-and-white
uniforms they always wear on stage. The front of their jerseys is
emblazoned with the band logo: a goalie mask and hockey sticks arranged
like a skull and crossbones.
Several NHL arenas have played their song "Hockey Junkie" during games.
Royalty Records of New York signed the band and released its first CD,
"Drafted," in 1998. "Wow, things came so fast," recalls guitarist
Jeffrey "Captain" Kaplan, 30, a legal assistant. "We thought we'd be on
some big label doing huge tours."
So far, though, Two Man has been relegated to minor-league status. Their
label went under and the band didn't put out its second album until
2001. Neither sold well. The band has lost nearly $30,000 over the past
six years, and that doesn't include replacement costs for beer-soaked
speakers.
On tour the band brings along sticks and pucks in case a local team
wants to take them on. Their performances have become "games" to be won
or lost against "opponents" -- the audience. The more frenetic the
crowd, the better, says Aaron "Coach" Pagdon, 31, an insurance examiner
who is the band's drummer and chief crowd instigator. "The object is to
get as far under the opposition's skin as possible."
Before a recent show in a Washington, D.C., nightclub, Two Man huddled
in a smelly room behind the bar. "All right, we've had a great weekend,
two wins already," Mr. Pagdon said, referring to previous games. Then he
led the band in the cheer it shouts before each game: "One, two, three,
Two Man!"
Between songs, Mr. Spagnolo goaded the crowd like a hockey goon spoiling
for a fight. "All right, all you Peter Bondra fans," he shouted,
referring to the then-star of the lowly Washington Capitals. "I think
the Penguins could even beat you guys." Two Capitals fans cursed him,
and Mr. Spagnolo yelled, "This song is about the Penguins and how much
they suck!" With that, the band launched into "Home Crowd," and the
audience became a mass of delirious hockey jerseys bouncing up and down
with the beat.
On St. Patrick's Day at the Continental in Manhattan, Mr. Spagnolo flung
himself off the stage into a mosh pit of Two Man fans in green Minnesota
North Star jerseys mixed with others in spiky leather jackets. In the
locker room afterward, a relatively satisfied Mr. Pagdon told his band
mates, "It was a two-goal victory tonight, but one of the goals was an
empty netter." Then he ticked off the scoring. Goals were surrendered
for playing out of tune and forgetting lyrics. Goals were scored for
general feeling and intensity level. The winning difference, he said,
was "Zamboni Driving Maniac."
"That's our Martin Brodeur," he said, referring to the New Jersey
Devils' all-star goalie. "If he plays well, we're going to win. And we
played it well tonight."
