The HNIC theme challenge

Because of hilarious “only-in-Canada” style bungling, CTV now owns the rights to the Hockey Night in Canada theme song which has been a CBC institution for over 150 years. CBC, trying to cover its own butt, has launched a contest where ordinary Canadians can compose a theme song of their own and have a chance to win some prizes and the actual honour of being the composer of the new HNIC theme. This new song will be played prior to the start of HNIC for another 150 years, when it too will be stolen from the CBC.

This is actually a cool contest, though clearly not one that your ol’ pal Wanye can enter. The best we could submit would be a 50-minute recording of us clapping and yelling “HOOOOOOCCKEEEEEEY” over the sounds of the cars driving on the bridge under which we live.

But many people have entered and we keep seeing ads for it on CBC, especially during the recent Olympics. We can’t handle the song that they usually show—the one with everyone screaming incoherently along to a vague tune while standing in the bar. First, there are children in the clip. We don’t think that children screaming in a sports bar is good business, but we don’t work for the CBC. Secondly, there is something unsettling about the vacant desperate stare of its creator. Something that says “if I don’t win, expect me to mail you a box of my toe nails annually, you CBC bastards.”

So we decided we would go over to CBC’s anthem page and peruse through some of the top rated ones. Some of them are actually quite good. Others are so bad we would rather have air horns blasted into our ear canals for a week straight, rather than be forced to hear them again. But after half an hour of poking around we have come up with this one which we will endorse as the Wanye Gretz Sing Song Champion 2008™.

Check it out here.

It’s a good track and we can picture listening to it on Saturday nights as we wait—wearing only an authentic Dr Randy Gregg jersey—for the second half of the double-header to commence. Its author Rene Schmidt is from Chestermere, AB and we will gladly support a fellow Albertan.

We highly suggest you vote in the poll. We would ordinarily never encourage anyone to vote for anything—especially Civic, Provincial or Federal Elections. But do a stranger from Chestermere a favour—and vote for his song.

Good luck to you Rene Schmidt, wherever you are.