If your version of hockey entertainment is still the gigantic pipe organ at the old Chicago Stadium, you almost surely find the introduction of live bands as between-periods entertainment an annoyance even though Chicago Stadium is almost 30 years gone, and live bands are pretty de rigueur by now. Tame, bland, even out of date judging by the aged heavy metal playlists that dominate hockey rinks.
But finally, there is a reason to defend the live band, at least the Seattle band Who Is She? because the three members have been banned by, of all teams, the Seattle Kraken, who should be selling irreverence and fingers-up-to-the-big-man as part of the Kraken Experience. Even if Seattle isn't the cutting edge of music any more, it should pretend like it is, and the Kraken being the hot item in town now that Geno Smith has been put back in storage and Julio Rodriguez doesn't emerge from his winter lair for another couple of weeks should seize the moment to become not only the best team in the Pacific Division but the coolest team in Greater Not Canada.
Instead, there is this dispatch from the Seattle Times that tells us that Who Is She? has been banned from Kraken games, and not because they were allegedly drunk, which the team claims but which they vehemently deny, but that they modified the 1999 Le Tigre song "My My Metrocard" to include the touchingly romantic lyrics "Oh, no, Jeffrey Bezos, He’s such a total jerk, Shut down all the bookstores, Billionaires do not work."
In an unfortunate turn of events, apparently we are not welcome back at Jeff Bezos’ Climate Pledge Arena for tonight and tomorrow’s hockey games. Glad we got to play our take on this @letigreworld song, we had a blast. Sorry to anyone who was hoping to see us play. Go Kraken! pic.twitter.com/AfX4tfwvm3
— Who is She? (@whoissheband) January 27, 2023
Amazon's name is on Climate Pledge Arena, where the Kraken laid waste to the Vancouver Canucks on the night in question, and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is a Kraken minority investor, so modifying the lyrics from the original which cited Rudy Giuliani in the Bezos role could be considered a bit of a rankle. But surely Bezos is too massive a leviathan and Jassy not enough of a fusspot to care about how the boss was perceived in a eight-line lyric during which most folks were in line at the bathroom?
Ahh, but then you'd be giving them both too much credit apparently, because Who Is She? (actual members Julia Shapiro, Bree McKenna, and Robin Edwards) is no longer part of Kraken World for daring to offend a man who wants to buy the Washington Commanders from the oleaginous velociraptor Danny Snyder. Jesus, Jeff, read the room. You want to be known as the guy who wants to replace Snyder but still act like dime-store him? Even if this is just overzealous underlings, they have to be reined in for the good of the team's long-range image.
Even if Bezos don't like being perceived as the guy who killed bookstores, that's one he has to not only let pass but even laugh at, or send a note to the women saying that he enjoys their work but would prefer not to be swapped in to replace a detoxified scorpion like Giuliani. And then he should personally invite them back for the big game against the Boston Bruins on Feb. 23. Paint it as a Stanley Cup Final preview, and pay them extra to sub out Bezos's name for Brad Marchand's: "Oh, no, Brad Marchand, He’s such a total jerk, He's no Patrice Bergeron, Aging left wingers do not work." Or keep the billionaires riff and insert Elon Musk instead of Marchand. Many hockey fans regard them as interchangeable anyway.
But even if Shapiro, McKenna, and Edwards balk at having their own rewritten stuff re-rewritten by the leading corporate monolith of our time or one of his army of sycophants (and we don't know if they are all sycophants because we haven't met them all), it's way more hip to dismiss a throwaway line as beneath one's notice.
This is an opportunity, but a fleeting one. New teams should never be seen to be as stiff, sensitive, and tone-deaf as, say, the New York Rangers under Jimmy Dolan, or the Chicago Blackhawks under Rocky Wirtz, and Seattle gets to compare itself to perpetually angry and dissatisfied Canucks fans just up the road. Being new AND good has worked wonders for the Vegas Golden Knights, and this is the template the Kraken should be actively promoting. If nothing else, it should be focusing people’s attention upon Andre Burakovsky and the recently incapacitated 20-year-old star-in-the-making Matty Beniers. They would want Who Is She? We all want Who Is She? FREE THE WHO IS SHE? THREE.
