The Tragically Hip: Classic or Dud? Search and Destroy

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Wasn't expecting him to shred his throat so much from the start. Don't know how he'll make it through the whole thing.

that is the way he sings live

or at least that was my experience in seeing them

Really going for it on this one.

Makes sense, Brad.

Watching cbc with goodwill even tho these guys mostly bored me

Idly wondering if they'll mention baton Rouge when they inevitably play "New Orleans is Sinking"

they're playing "fireworks"! my favorite song about nuclear terror and falling in love with someone who doesn't care about hockey

jeez I love gord so much

Doh was so busy I forgot this was on just tuned in now

this show is incredible

I'm really glad they're doing "Nautical Disaster" for a second encore!

"Locked in the Trunk of a Car" to start the third encore!

I actually kind of like that they're still going after the climactic screaming in "Grace, Too".

There must be something in my eye

I feel v alienated from my countrymen tonight

wld love to see NoMeansNo or Propagandhi get even 1/1000 the love when their day comes tho

I will be totally verklempt at the last Blue Rodero show, tho

i can see disliking the hip, even tonight watching some of the songs in the later verses or the outro section quite a few of them seem a bit plodding and pat. they can legitimately rock at times but not necessarily all the time. and i can see not liking gord's vocals or his eccentric, goofy stagecraft. im no huge fan, and am not that familiar with the breadth of their discography, but there's at least a couple dozen of their songs i find great and that i love.

but watching tonight legitimately moved me. im an immigrant to canada, lived here four years, am a permanent resident - my canadian wife sponsored me. this move is permanent and i will apply for citizenship when im eligible in a few years. i often find it hard to get to grips with the canadian national identity, and while i now consider this country home, i sometimes feel there's a paltry number of things for me to identify with or gather a sense of solidarity or belonging from. im scottish, from glasgow, in scotland and in glasgow there's a plethora of identifying and particular elements to life that mark you out as living in that particular place and belonging to it - speaking dialect that is non-intelligible to other native english speakers, a certain definable harsh, sardonic, gallows humour, a pub and a bookies on each corner etc. i don't feel much of that in canada i like hockey ok, im not sure canadians are as polite as people make out, i hate tim horton's, and i live in one of the few places in canada where it isnt cold in the winter. so i dunno, for me cultural things seem to be the things i think of as canadian. you know like old nfb documentaries, the log driver's waltz, alice munro short stories, trailer park boys, and especially the tragically hip.

id never heard of the hip before i moved to canada. my wife was aghast at this. theyre huge in canada but virtually unknown elsewhere, whereas most other bands that are huge in canada crossover somewhat. this makes them more particulary canadian for some reason. then there's the lyrics, multiple hockey references, references to canadian towns, history, people etc. - i found out what the summit series was from googling "hockey goal 72" after hearing the song fireworks. then there's gord downie, quite dorky and canadian for a rock star, and plenty wordy lyrically but still earthy and somehow blue collarish despite his pretensions. so i have thought of them as this dorky, endearing, authentic expression of canadiana. the obvious emotional resonance of the farewell tour before gord dies of terminal brain cancer (which my maternal grandfather died of) and the final show in their hometown, broadcast live and uninterrupted on the cbc, attended by the prime minister - who you know is legitimately a fan who smoked weed in his dorm room listening to fully completely in the early 90s. i dunno, it just got to me.in any case there are much worse things to have as a national symbol than a nerdy 90s alt-rock band.

his voice was def... noticeable to me.

Great post jim

I was almost relieved that they didn't play Long Time Running last night. I know it's easy to write off as a stereotypical bar ballad, but even before recent events, that song was already so nostalgic to me (literally takes my mind back to being in Kingston in the 90s) that I might get teary dwelling on it. Got to love the connection power this all has had though. Just amazing.

Glad Downie used some of his time to kinda hold Trudeau to task, but I fear it might have been too good-natured to register that way to most.

definitely didn't feel that way in the room. downie seemed (unduly) adoring, like he had drunk the kool-aid.

Man this thread is hovering near the top of the New Answers almost as long as Sund4r's Tea Party thread that one time ILX went through an ion storm and that was the only thread that you could post on.

Canada just endured an ion storm

Ha, I had no idea they've released six albums since Music @ Work.

new one's actually good!

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/22/arts/music/tragically-hip-gord-downie-final-show.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&moduleDetail=inside-nyt-region-3&module=inside-nyt-region®ion=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region&_r=0

think this nyt story, along with the new yorker piece quoted in it, are a pretty good explainer for people outside of Canada.

new one's actually good!

Yeah, I listened to the last two this morning. I was pretty impressed. I even thought of Eno and Berlin-era Bowie at times.

Is there a Hip album that encapsulates their project well? I've only heard stray early singles, and I respect Downie as a lyricist, but I haven't found a punctum in their music yet.

day for night. lot of classics on that record but it's also a sustained dark mood

a lot of people would say fully completely but day for night is the deeper, more interesting picture imo

the poppiest and most accessible intro to the hip would prob be phantom power

Thanks!

the poppiest and most accessible intro to the hip would prob be phantom power

Is this poppier than Fully Completely, with its six singles and diamond certification? I mostly either pull out FC for a 90s hit machine or Music @ Work for more engrossing art-rock. Day for Night is good, though. "Nautical Disaster" is classic.

Is this poppier than Fully Completely, with its six singles and diamond certification?

imo in terms of being way more melodic and catchy, yeah!

does anyone know a Gordon outside of Canada who goes by Gord

Lots of Gordons in Scotland, never met a Gord.

is gord not a diminutive outside of canada?

anyway, thoughts on the hip...

i have a lot of musician friends who don't like them. i'm going to guess that in their younger years, the hip left a bad taste in the mouths of one or two of them. these days, these same guys just have no opinions on them. i have no strong opinions on them.

i watched the last three songs of the concert and the discussion that followed (on cbc). the only thing that 'resonated' with me was that their music was playing in the background in some key points in my life. i rarely listened to the radio, except citr (a campus/university radio station), because as someone who participated more in the underground music scene, mainstream radio just didn't do anything for me.

my ex wife actually really liked these guys in the early 90s. she listened to a lot of tracks from up to here. that and a handful of other songs remind me of particular moments and events in my life. some of them are really simple, like walking with her to iga and hearing them being played there, to more joyous or darker events. she also liked the handful of pop rock acts that were usually mentioned in the same breath. when i heard about gord's diagnosis i actually texted her and teared up, i guess because of the memories of our relationship and their music playing in the background.

in my very small circle of musician friends, there was a feeling that the hip's music wasn't as nuanced and it mostly catered to radio listeners and bar-goers. it was a little too 'local-sounding' (almost as bad as the notorious 'vancouver rock' label). in retrospect, i think that's a bit pretentious. but vancouver in the 90s had a totally different feel. at least in my circle, feeling proud of local talent or canadiana made us feel a little too small-townish, which said more about us, but we were interested in the cool, artsy american bands. i guess this is what happens when you really are a small town in the 90s. incidentally, a lot of us loved sloan, specifically twice removed, which had a more artsier image -- a band a few hip fans disliked.

there's no doubt national identity in western canada is quite different than in the rest of canada. we probably have more in common with our fellow cascadians than with calgarians, so this definitely has something to do with it. most of my friends are recent immigrants to canada (first or second generation canadians), so for us, a national identity means something very different than loving hockey and listening to the same popular bands. in fact, i have quite a few friends who hate hockey. but they still have a soft spot for team canada when they win gold in the olypmics. it's a love-hate relationship that's difficult to explain. some friends hate rock, and only listen to rap and grew up talking in american slang. what unites us is probably difficult to articulate, especially in just a few sentences, so i just won't even try. these are obvious subcultures, and it's sometimes not cool to talk about them when a larger cultural force is uniting the country. but you know what, these subcultures feel united as well and have no problems with the larger cultural forces in the country, so it's okay. there's room for everybody.

anyway, canada is a complex and diverse place, each province with its own identity. but that's what makes it a pretty cool place i think. and it's pretty awesome that a band was able to unite so many different types of people from all over the country. the band are breaking up for unfortunate reasons, but their music will always be a part of a specific time in my life that i will always remember as bittersweet, weirdly enough much like the band's 'end'

Every actual person here is Canadian, including the Milwaukee Brewers guy!: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gord_(given_name)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/tragically-hip-cbc-broadcast-ratings-1.3730276

story says that over 11 million people watched or listened to the broadcast through various media. which would be around a third of the population of the country

I believe that figure only measures the number of streams online or on TV. So, e.g., a couple of hundred people watching in a bar counts as only 1 stream. I wouldn't be surprised if the actual viewership was closer to half the country.

Aw:

http://globalnews.ca/news/2896740/the-tragically-hip-in-kingston-who-was-the-couple-seen-making-out-during-bobcaygeon/

Speaking of said song/town/etc

http://www.macleans.ca/culture/bobcaygeon-belts-out-tragically-hip-moment/

Never met a Gord myself but am sad to hear the guy has a glioblastoma. I had a friend die from that a year ago, it takes no prisoners.

Me too -- had a friend hang on for about 18 months with it, until earlier this year.

IIRC 18 months is the life expectancy, so "hang on" is the right expression to use. My friend made it three years, which was a miracle.

At one point I made a little list of various famous people who had it and how long they lasted, it was usually about seven eight nine months.

i feel like they made a LITTLE dent here in the states early on and then they kinda disappeared from view until now. and they do kinda seem like something that could have been more popular in the u.s. but i don't know how extensive their touring was. that's the live or die answer to popularity in the states. rush had to tour relentlessly in the states for years in order for their smash album to be the smash that it was.

reading the early sections of this thread is a little bit alternate universe for me. but obviously there are huge bands all over the world who are huge in their homeland but non-existent elsewhere. we have phish here...