Happy Monday! The topic of this article reminded me of an old beloved hockey player who bounced around six different National Hockey League teams between 1959 and 1975. His name was Eddie "The Entertainer" Shack and one of the teams he played for was our own Toronto Maple Leafs from 1960 to 1967. In fact, he had played for the last Leaf team to win the Stanley Cup in 1967 just before he was traded to the Boston Bruins.
Considering that being less than two years of age at the time, I couldn't even remember Toronto winning that trophy, Shack's reputation greatly preceded him as a popular guy because although he couldn't score too much, he more than compensated by being a third-line agent provocateur to distract the opposing guys from their game. So I can imagine him getting into plenty of donnybrooks during a time when players fought like Japanese kaiju all the time. A local garage rock band known as The Secrets even whipped up a huge hit called "Clear the Track, Here Comes Shack" sometime in the year that I was born. I actually first got to recognize who he was by seeing some classmate's lunch box at school with a picture of Shack and the title of the song. I also realized that he did return to the Leafs at the very end of his playing career for a couple of seasons; that must explain some of the hoopla that I barely remember on the TV with his crumply grinning mug on the screen.
One thing that I do remember is Shack with his colourful personality was a natural in commercials, and when he retired, he would do ads for this soft drink business called The Pop Shoppe. As he put it, he "...had a nose for value". He definitely had the nose, all right.
Anyways, I'm waxing nostalgic on an old Leafs hero because a few days ago, a Japanese band followed me on Twitter (and thank you for that, by the way) and I followed them back. I never heard of them before but although「しゃっく」would be romaji-cized into Shakku, their website has Shack in their URL, so I'll go with that. From what little I've heard so far, they seem to be an indies rock band with a sense of humour. I'm uncertain how long they've been around but at this point, they consist of Hikaru Ishibashi（いし橋ひかる）, Kenta Nagasawa（なかざわけん太）, Giorgio Dekoyatsu（ジョルジョデコヤツ）, Hideyuki Aoki（アオキヒデユキ）, Kaji（かじ）and Sone（そね）.
One song that I've come across is the comely and parade-like "Love Machine ni Norikonde" (Hop Onto the Love Machine) which was released sometime in 2020. The lyrics by Ishibashi may have some innuendo as the title indicates, although the overall premise is about having a sunny day together and the song has nothing to do with another "Love Machine". The music video has the guys enjoying their regular Othello disc-making bee, although the appearance of a new lady in the area has suddenly added a complication to the routine. The pandemic was in full blast at that time so seeing a video like this one must have been of great comfort to fans.
If any of the band members read this article and would like to provide any confirmation or correction to their names or any commentary about the band's history, they can feel free to do so.
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