Don't Send The Zamboni Out Just Yet

Every once in a while we stumble across something that allows us to wrap ourselves in the warm comfort of our own lived histories. While the title of Sean Kelly's book Metal On Ice: Tales From Canada's Hard Rock And Heavy Metal Heroes seems to contradict the notions of warmth and comfort, the content, at least for me, was a time-machine back to the body-heat filled bars and taverns of the 80s and the comfort of music that assuaged my daily struggles as a teen. For various reasons my experiences differed (and still differ) from Mr. Kelly's but I noticed a commonality in our approach to the music scene of the day; and in the Canadian scene more specifically.

Despite the brevity of the book, it accomplishes two things: telling the story and explaining the experience of being a fan of metal music in Canada; and recounting the complexities of being a Canadian musician and the additional struggles of Canadian 'Metal' bands. Through interviews with many of the musicians of the day (many still playing in one form or another), Kelly paints a picture of the inception of the Metal scene to its demise with the onset of the Seattle grunge movement. But he does more than that. He details the complications of travelling from one venue to another in a lightly populated, yet enormous landmass filled with mountains, water features, and for all intents and purposes, highways that amount to not much more than glorified horse trails and goat paths. He explores the bizarre phenomenon where many Canadian bands were, sadly, appreciated more in Europe than on their home soil, and the difficulty in 'making it' by gaining the illusive (and decidedly ruinous) record contracts, especially in the United States.

What struck me most though was that despite the distance of time and the effects of the overall experiences these musicians had, every single one of them where laughing when telling their stories. This is evidenced by Kelly's meticulous us of '[laughing]' throughout the text. It occurred to me, that if a non-Canadian were to pick this book up, this is what they'd walk away knowing that - Canadians quintessentially like to laugh about their experiences, and they love to laugh when they tell stories, no matter the hardships involved.

When I first was told that I'd won a copy of the book on Twitter (Thanks Dundurn Press) I knew instinctively this was about metal bands playing in hockey arenas. However, now I'm thinking Kelly was quite clever in his choice of words by evoking a secondary meaning, that not only do Metal bands play on ice, but that while other music fads come and go, the Metal scene is biding it's time, and is 'on ice'. In other words, simply in a holding pattern, and with a little time, we'll be hearing it all fresh again, in our arenas and bars.

As always for the rating enthusiasts: I give this 4.5 rock horns of out 5.