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I'm sure others have thought about this years ago but this only came to me recently. Despite the miraculous nature of the final tour, it's actually kind of sad that the old rambling Gord was pretty much not there. The Hip were obviously famous for developing new songs out of their riffing and Gord's rants and poems and asides. And I don't think that happened on this tour, right? The miracle was that they nailed the songs as well as they did. They didn't really stray far from them. At least from what I saw in Toronto or on TV in Kingston. Now Gord had to focus on the songs. I totally get that. I still can't believe he and the band pulled it off so splendidly. But beyond the lack of Gord's between-song banter, that also signified that there weren't any new songs in development. At least nothing they were obviously trying to work out on stage. We know they were working on Hip songs together after the final tour. But we have no evidence that they were working on these ideas on the MMP tour. So the tour is an anomaly in that way. The one time they weren't playing live with an eye toward what's next. Sad in itself. But again, thank God we had that last tour. Imagine if Gord announced his illness and the band was just done. That would be worlds worse. They landed the balloon. Cheers to that.
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Couldn't agree more. They weren't the Hip I knew, the Hip I followed from province to province and mailed blank CD's to strangers for bootlegged recordings of, but I'm so grateful I got one last chance to see them play. And I will add that the last album stands up, objectively. They really did score the OT winner and skate off with the Cup over their heads.
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I agree and disagree at the same time. Its true that on the last tour there was not much rambling or rants, but it seems that had slowly faded off over the years anyways. Even Gord of the 2000's never rivaled the Gord of the 90's when it came to that aspect of the shows. Each tour seemed a little less and a little less.
I was always disappointed how "Live Between Us" never captured THAT Gord. It really missed one of the key elements of any Hip show from back in that day.
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I found the intro used at a number (all?) shows on the 2016 tour for ABAC to be the one truly new piece of music - when Rob played it at the first show I was at it really threw me for a loop. Not sure if that was simply a new intro, something pulled from the vault or something they had been work-shopping.
One other thing I'd like to mention is in regards to the supposed shadow album for Man Machine Poem - I believe is was Rob who mentioned it's existence.
My belief is it's not so much an additional album worth of content, but different versions of existing songs with a few songs that didn't make the album (similar to every other album they've put out). My guess is that they played around with the sound and cohesion of the album and eventually landing on that atmospheric sound I associate with Kevin Drew.
Not sure if I read this or made this up, but an example of this would be that Man/Machine were originally one song and may have had some additional verses. When watching the Long Time Running doc, there are a few parts where handwritten lyrics are overlaid on top of the shots, I keep meaning to re-visit this, but I seem to recall a number of lyrics that were similar but different from the final lyrics used in either song.
Hope my random thoughts make some sort of sense.
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I don't recall missing the rants too much at the show, but what I distinctly recall missing were the little flourishes that gord used to put in some songs, like the "ummm...yoo hoo?" line in ABAC and "bring our yer dead, (city), bring out yer dead" in poets.
There *was* a brief moment in Ottawa when he dropped the mic during gus and, just for an instant, switched into 'old gord' mode, mentioning something about how that was an embarrassing thing to happen to a bear and then growled. It made me laugh out loud and my heart ache at the same time.
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Kieffer, good call on that haunting new intro for ABAC.
Beautiful piece that gets the lump in the throat going even before that classic riff we know so well.
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The FC tour was also a pretty straight "by the song" tour -- especially the FC parts. In vermont Gord had a really good rant in the encore section, precipitated by him totally missing a mark in M@W.
For the last tour, the band had a pretty kick ass outro to Grace, especially in Ottawa. I actually recall it a bit less in Kingston, but for the Ottawa show after Gord left the stage they really hit a cool groove.
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I love the ranting, but for every one of me, there are two people that hate it. I've heard far more people complain about it than enjoy it. Obviously I think they're crazy, but I can see why Gord reined it in a bit. They did have tickets to sell after all.
