“Jesus Saves” was HOCKEY TEETH’s first official release. Cassettes suffered from their association to demoes, but vinyl was considered authentic. As well, this recording represents the line up that would be known as Hockey Teeth, that is Mark was on vocals and Rob was on drums. The four songs were recorded in October and November of 1993 by Mike Pedro at his studio called Rumenal. Mike Pedro had played an earlier role in the scene by running a club at Queen and Bathurst originally known as the Soup Club and later as the Slither Club. Ike would be responsible for recording loads of bands in the Toronto scene at this time. The ep opens up with a song about racism called “Not so long ago” and was a tribute to ARA. This is probably my favourite song by Hockey teeth and is memorable because of the 7 Seconds like chorus. “The final shock” is a critique of the military-industrial complex along the same lines of MDC. “Don’t belong” is about alienation and “War” is a song that Dan wrote about a co-worker he knew from a job who went nuts and killed a bunch of people, so the song has a war in the head kind of Black Flag approach thematically. The recording originally was overproduced, but some of the members didn’t like it and it was re-mixed and then re-recorded some parts. In addition there is more song time on here forcing it to be compressed which effected the sound.
The artwork was a collaboration of talents. The front cover was a photo Mark found from the Globe and Mail. The players had the same letters in their name and Rob was able to change them around to read “Christ” and “Satan”. This worked perfectly with irreverent reinterpretation of the Christian recruitment line. Pat Laso, of the Blundermen, drew the back cover
The record came out on Homewreckords, which was the drummer Rob Neilson and Jon Harvie from the BLUNDERMEN. I believe this was the only release this label came out with. The record was originally pressed at 1,000 copies and they did a second pressing for 200 copies. Rob still some copies of this available through Rob.
1. Not so Long Ago
