Slapshot played their last gig in Boston on 17 October 2026. For 41 years, Jack “Choke” Kelly had been shouting over fast drums, sick guitar riffs and some of the least diplomatic lyrics in hardcore. At the sold-out Big Night Live, the band ran through 25 songs, brought former members back onstage and finished with “Hang Up Your Boots”. They had been playing that one since the late 1980s.
Pat Flynn of Have Heart and Fiddlehead took the microphone for “Chunks”, a song Kelly originally sang with Last Rights in 1984, long before Have Heart existed.
Wyświetl ten post na Instagramie
Former Slapshot guitarist Craig Silverman returned for the whole set. Original drummer Mark McKay joined for several numbers.
Doors opened at noon, with Agnostic Front, DYS, BOLD, Wisdom In Chains, Béton Armé, Restraining Order, Time X Heist, Neighborhood Shit and Japan’s Aggressive Dogs on the bill.
It was Edge Day, the annual straight edge occasion that grew out of Ten Yard Fight’s 1999 farewell.
Kelly had been part of Boston’s straight edge scene since the beginning, even if he spent plenty of time arguing with people in it.
Wyświetl ten post na Instagramie
The final set opened with a narrated film about Slapshot’s early years. Then came “Back on the Map”, the song that had introduced the band to much of the hardcore world in 1986. “No Friend of Mine” and “I’ve Had Enough” followed.
The show ran for well over an hour, with songs from across their catalogue, a Smiths cover and two visits to Kelly’s pre-Slapshot bands. When Flynn came out for “Chunks”, he finished his turn with a stagedive.
Slapshot were formed after the first rush of Boston hardcore had already begun to break apart. Kelly had been involved in it since 1981, first with Negative FX and then with Last Rights. Flynn came through the Boston and Massachusetts hardcore world two decades later.
Boston’s early hardcore scene had produced SSD, DYS, Jerry’s Kids, Gang Green, The F.U.’s and The Freeze, among others. “This Is Boston, Not L.A.”, the 1982 compilation, captured some of its speed and aggression.
There were independent labels, self-organised gigs, matinees and a tight circle around SSD and DYS that became known as the Boston Crew. There were fights, territorial attitudes and a long-running antagonism with New York.
Dave “Bass” Brown, who drummed for Negative FX, recalled the early days in a2024 interview with Echoes And Dust. “It was just a bunch of kids who wanted to skateboard, make flyers and play their own shows.” They rehearsed in the basement of the house where he lived in Allston during the winter of 1981. A Radio Shack cassette deck and two microphones hanging from the ceiling were enough to make demos. They copied the tapes, posted them to bands on Dischord and Touch and Go, and put handmade flyers on telephone poles.
Wyświetl ten post na Instagramie
Kelly had grown up in Provincetown on Cape Cod, getting into the Sex Pistols, Sham 69 and other punk records before moving to Boston for college. He later remembered buying a Teen Idles single at Newbury Comics after Ian MacKaye had dropped off a few copies. Jamie Sciarappa of SSD bought one too. Kelly would end up playing with Sciarappa years later.
Wyświetl ten post na Instagramie
Negative FX were Kelly, Brown, guitarist Patrick Raftery and bassist Rich Collins. They managed five shows, including bills with Government Issue, Bad Brains and the Misfits, before falling apart in 1983. Their recordings eventually came out through Taang! Records. Last Rights followed, but a knee injury restricted them to one show with Deep Wound. The Last Rights recordings, including “Chunks”, also found their way onto Taang!.
Wyświetl ten post na Instagramie
By 1985, SSD had moved into hard rock and metal and DYS had changed direction too. Kelly wanted another fast hardcore band. In a January 2026 conversation with Damian Abraham on “Turned Out A Punk”, he described repeatedly bumping into guitarist Steve Risteen while shopping for groceries around midnight. Risteen suggested rehearsing with his friend Mark McKay. Kelly arrived with songs already written in his head, including early versions of “Back on the Map” and “Chip on My Shoulder”.
Jonathan Anastas, formerly of DYS, joined on bass. With Kelly singing, Risteen on guitar and McKay on drums, the first Slapshot lineup was ready. They took their name from the 1977 ice hockey film “Slap Shot”, and the hockey gear became a permanent part of the band’s look.
“Back on the Map” came out on Taang! in 1986. The EP had short, fast songs, shouted vocals and thick guitar riffs. Kelly kept the choruses short enough for a roomful of people to shout back. There was also a heavier stomp to parts of their music, especially as the band moved towards their first full-length.
That LP was “Step on It” in 1988. “No Friend of Mine”, “I’ve Had Enough”, “In Your Face” and “Hang Up Your Boots” stayed in the live set for decades. “Sudden Death Overtime” followed in 1989, with “Firewalker”, “Say Goodbye”, “What’s at Stake” and “Punk’s Dead, You’re Next”.
Across both records, the songs switched between fast hardcore and heavier riffs, with Kelly shouting over both.
The band were appearing in the underground press early on. Maximum Rocknroll’s issue listings record Slapshot coverage in May 1986 and November 1989. The New Jersey fanzine Combat Stance interviewed them in 1989, when the lineup included Risteen and Jordan Wood on guitar, Jamie Sciarappa on bass and McKay on drums. The records circulated through fanzines, mail-order catalogues, tapes and gigs booked through friends.
There was plenty for Kelly to complain about. “Crossover Sucks” took a shot at hardcore bands moving towards metal, a subject that had been particularly touchy in Boston since SSD and DYS changed sound. Slapshot weren’t immune to trying heavier, more rock-oriented material themselves, and Kelly would eventually be very critical of some of their own records.
He also kept the Boston-versus-New-York argument going. In a 1994 Ox Fanzine interview, Kelly complained about European promoters billing Slapshot as a New York band. Later came a song called “Fuck New York”.
Straight edge was another source of arguments. Kelly’s commitment to avoiding drink and drugs remained, while his patience for extra rules and moral policing wore thin.
In the 2026 “Turned Out A Punk” conversation he returned to the original idea of not smoking, drinking or taking drugs, and questioned the demands later generations attached to it.
Some of the controversy was considerably uglier. Stars and Stripes, Kelly’s Oi! project involving Slapshot musicians, drew criticism for nationalist imagery and lyrics.
During the band’s first European tour in 1991, Kelly faced questions about whether the project had far-right sympathies. He defended it as a joke and provocation. A 1999 Lollipop Magazine review of “Shaved for Battle” took issue with the record’s attacks on immigrants and Arabs.
They recorded “Unconsciousness” with Steve Albini in Chicago in 1994. Kelly told Ox at the time that the basic tracks were finished on day one, and that recording and mixing took four days altogether. The bill came to a little over $4,000. He was pleased with it then. By 2009, he had little affection for that stretch of the discography.
Wyświetl ten post na Instagramie
Former guitarist Jordan Wood died in 1994. The band also went through serious personal friction, including a difficult relationship between Kelly and McKay. The 2009 documentary “Chip on My Shoulder: The Cautionary Tale of Slapshot” dealt with those problems at length. McKay’s return for the farewell followed years of disagreements and lineup changes.
“16 Valve Hate” arrived in 1995 and brought the band back towards the fast, hard sound of their earlier records. An Ox review from the time praised the drums, thick guitars and Kelly’s rough vocals. The record also included a cover of the Smiths’ “Bigmouth Strikes Again”, which survived all the way to the 2026 setlist. Kelly later called “16 Valve Hate” the one Slapshot album he could still play from start to finish.
“Olde Tyme Hardcore” followed in 1996, with a version of SSD’s “Get It Away”. By then the band had been playing Europe for five years. Their first trip was in 1991, and they kept returning, building an audience in Germany, Belgium and elsewhere that helped sustain Slapshot during quieter periods back home.
Those tours were hard work. After a run in 1996, Kelly got so tired of living in a van that he wanted time away from the band. In a 2004 interview with Ox, he spoke about losing touch with the other members for a while, then getting back on the road in Europe around 2001.
He liked visiting friends in Germany and Belgium and sometimes cared more about catching up with them than playing another gig. He had even considered moving to Amsterdam, taking a job assisting at Vidal Sassoon because he thought hairdressing might be a way to earn a living abroad. He gave up the idea after meeting his wife.
“Digital Warfare” finally came out in 2003, after seven years without a new studio album. Its title track criticised the way modern war could be conducted and presented on television, a subject Kelly discussed at length in that 2004 interview. “Tear It Down” followed in 2005. There were label disputes, further lineup changes and another long wait before the self-titled Slapshot album in 2014.
Kelly found it harder to write angry hardcore lyrics while raising a family and spending more time at home. For “Make America Hate Again”, guitarist Craig Silverman said the music was finished in December 2016, but Kelly didn’t complete his vocals until August 2017.
The record eventually came out through Bridge Nine in June 2018. Speaking to Decibel, Kelly offered a suitably ridiculous sales pitch: “More brutality. More hate, hate, hate. More cat memes.”
The record’s title attracted attention during Donald Trump’s first presidency. Kelly told Ox that the title wasn’t an endorsement of Trump and that he generally tried to avoid party politics in Slapshot lyrics. He was still happy to make people angry, and he had never been especially worried about being liked. Silverman later left the band and returned for the farewell show.
Slapshot announced their retirement in 2024 and spent the following years working through their last dates. Europe got an extended farewell run, ending at Revolution Calling in Eindhoven in November 2025. They played more shows in the United States in 2026, including Brooklyn, and travelled to Japan with Aggressive Dogs before the final Boston date was announced in August.
On Reddit, some fans were especially pleased to see DYS and BOLD listed.
One remembered their first Slapshot gig with Sham 69 in October 1988. Others wondered about ticket availability and whether a smaller Boston room might have felt more appropriate. The band limited purchases to four tickets and introduced a code to discourage scalpers and resale bots.
Agnostic Front represented the New York hardcore scene Kelly had spent years needling, DYS brought one of his old Boston connections back onto the bill, and younger groups including Restraining Order and Time X Heist filled out the day.
After the opening run of “Back on the Map”, “No Friend of Mine”, “I’ve Had Enough” and “I Told You So”, the set moved through “Old Tyme Hardcore”, “Silence”, “No Time Left” and “Bigmouth Strikes Again”. “In Your Face”, “Firewalker”, “Where There’s Smoke” and “Crossover Sucks” kept the early records well represented.
Later came “Watch Me Bleed”, “Kill Your Parents”, “Say Goodbye” and “Desensitized”. Flynn sang “Chunks”, followed by Negative FX’s “Might Makes Right”. Both covers reached back to Kelly’s life before Slapshot. “Punk’s Dead, You’re Next”, “16 Valve Hate”, “What’s at Stake”, “108”, “Chip on My Shoulder” and “Step On It” took the band towards the finish. The running order is documented in the published 25-song setlist.
Silverman played guitar throughout, and McKay took the drum stool for several songs, including material from “16 Valve Hate”.
The post-show Reddit thread includes thanks from someone who attended and comments about McKay’s appearance.
“Hang Up Your Boots” appeared on “Step on It” in 1988. Slapshot played it last at Big Night Live on 17 October 2026.
Wyświetl ten post na Instagramie
