PREMIERE: Watch Stuck Out Here's hockey themed video, "Clinton Radars"
by Mark Teo
March 12, 2014
Directed by Curt Lobb and Andrew Appelle
When Hockey Night In Canada announced that George Strombolopolous—the cool-guy CBC host who once defensively proclaimed that “I don’t rock the ganj”—the conservative-minded hockey world was aflutter. Indeed, over at the Sun, a full 82 per cent of readers declared that Strombo was too colourful for the role: Heavens, he wears earrings in both ears! He has “sometimes punk hair!” And worst of all: this is an affront to the upstanding, family value-rooted world of Canadian hockey!
Anyone who’s spent time around the game, though, understands that it isn’t nearly as wholesome as its image suggests. Clinton-Toronto melodic punk outfit Stuck Out Here certainly do: In the shinny-themed video for “Clinton Radars,” the band aligns the game with the less upstanding corners of life: They spend the entire time crushing Old Mils and slugging away at mickeys of whiskey. They use the game as a metaphor for their own existence, at one point comparing their lives to the abject failures of the Edmonton Oilers. (Sorry guys, as rebuilds go, we’re impartial to the Buffalo Sabres.) And when things get dire, they strap fireworks onto the blades of their sticks, letting explosives blast away the existential melancholy. After all, there’s a reason they titled their latest Art Drug / Get Party-released EP Getting Used to Feeling Like Shit.
“We hoped the video would reflect old jaded kids trying to do something that was once so pure, a wicked game of winter road hockey,” says singer/guitarist Cam Laurie. “We all won boat loads of Stanley Cups growing up playing shinny. Now we just get drunk.
“A bunch of drunk dudes shooting fireworks during the middle of the day raised a lot of suspicion from neighbours passing by. I don’t know why they didn’t call the cops on us.”
Indeed, “Clinton Radars” is a reminder that the game isn’t just for upstanding Canadians—it’s for the life-loathing degenerates, too. Because sometimes, when life gives you lemons, fuck lemonade: It’s way more therapeutic to strap on a Logan Couture jersey, guzzle cheap beer, and talk shit on the NHLers you knew growing up. (In their case, Colorado Avalanche forward—and one-time Clinton resident—Ryan O’Reilly.)
“During the lockout, a guy we went to high school with, who had gone on to become the leading scorer for the Colorado Avalanche, decided to spend his lockout helping coach Clinton’s local hockey team, the Radars,” explains Laurie. “That man’s name is Ryan O’Reilly. It’s a pretty bizarre feeling noticing the age of hockey players become younger than you, it’s even more bizarre to sit at home watching guys you grew up with play in the NHL, and its bizarre to think the Clinton Radars mens hockey team is now made up of dudes like us.
“The song is about caring [about] sports a whole lot, investing your stupid time into it. Really, it’s just something to distract you from actually doing stuff, like… I don’t know, fulfilling your dreams and stuff. We’d just rather watch other people who have fulfilled their dreams and cling on as if we’re in some way a part of it.”
Never change, Stuck Out Here.
Stuck Out Here perform this Friday, March 14, with Swearin’, Stares, and Neon Windbreaker at Parts and Labour in Toronto. They’re also preparing to play this year’s Pouzza Fest in Montreal.