09-03-2004, 05:24 PM
Hey folks,
I picked up Neil Peart's new book Traveling Music at the Darien Lake Rush show last month. He mentions the Hip as well as my favorite Hip album. I thought I would share this with everyone and hope you enjoy it!
<Back story...In 1997 Neil Peart's daughter was killed in a car accident (she was 19) and his wife died of cancer less than a year later. He detailed his recovery, driving his motorcylce across Canada and the US, in his last book Ghost Rider. In his current book, Traveling Music, he recalls how other bands and music has influenced him throughout his life. Recalling the death of his daughter while driving in his car he discusses the Tragically Hip...>
The music helped lift me out of the abyss. It was "rock time" again on my cd changer, and guitars and drums lit up my speakers with another of enduring favorites, Fully Completely, by the Tragically Hip. I remembered the first time I heard them; it must have been 1989, September I think, and I was staying at my old log cabin in Quebec, working on the narrative of a bicycle trip over the Canadian Rockies from earier that summer, taken with my brother Danny, and some other good friends....
...Rush had just released Presto, and someone from the office told me CHOM-FM in Montreal was playing one of the songs, "Show Don't Tell", on a "Top Ten at Ten" feature where listeners called in to vote for their current favorites. I turned on the radio one night to listen to the countdown, and I think we were number three that night, but it was number four that struck me: a Canadian band I'd never heard of, the Tragically Hip, and a live recording of a song called "New Orleans is Sinking." As the band played a slow groove, the singer, Gord Downie, told a long, rambling tale that was throroughly weird and bizarre - about throwing bodies out of his girlfriend's apartment window or something - and yet riveting.
Through the '90s the Hip became very successful in Canada, but never seemed to find the audience they deserved in the United States. That remained a mystery to this listener, for their music seemed accessible enough, smart and yet deceptively simple in construction, rhythmically straight-ahead, and lots of guitars; it certainly rocked, but regrettably, the Hip remained largely a Canadian phenomenon.
I think it was for our Roll the Bones tour in '91 that I lobbied our manager, Ray, to book the Hip as our opening act on a major tour of the U.S. and Canada, a tour that would have put them in front of more than a million potential fans. However, their manager turned down the offer, saying there was a "buzz" starting for the band in Europe, and the record company wanted them to go there. I don't know, but that may have been a missed opportunity for them.
The Hip's music was especially admirable because it has so much Canada in it, Gord Downie's excellent lyrics, unique, intriguing, and sometimes obscure. Probably my overall favorite record of theirs, Fully Completely, from 1992, had some classic examples, from the opening, "Looking For a Place to Happen" with references to the French explorer, Jacques Cartier, who visited Canada in 1534 ("Jacques Cartier, right this way/ I'll put your coat up on the bed/ Hey man, you've got a real bum's eye for clothes"), to the verse in "Fifty Mission Cap" about Bill Barilko, a hockey player with the Toronto Maple Leafs in the early '50s, down through "Wheat Kings" ("Sundown in the paris of the Praries"), and the song title "Courage (for Hugh MacLennan)" (Maclennan was the Canadian author of great novels like Barometer Rising and The Watch That End the Night). The Tragically Hip were as Canadian as...hockey and beer. And donuts.
I picked up Neil Peart's new book Traveling Music at the Darien Lake Rush show last month. He mentions the Hip as well as my favorite Hip album. I thought I would share this with everyone and hope you enjoy it!
<Back story...In 1997 Neil Peart's daughter was killed in a car accident (she was 19) and his wife died of cancer less than a year later. He detailed his recovery, driving his motorcylce across Canada and the US, in his last book Ghost Rider. In his current book, Traveling Music, he recalls how other bands and music has influenced him throughout his life. Recalling the death of his daughter while driving in his car he discusses the Tragically Hip...>
The music helped lift me out of the abyss. It was "rock time" again on my cd changer, and guitars and drums lit up my speakers with another of enduring favorites, Fully Completely, by the Tragically Hip. I remembered the first time I heard them; it must have been 1989, September I think, and I was staying at my old log cabin in Quebec, working on the narrative of a bicycle trip over the Canadian Rockies from earier that summer, taken with my brother Danny, and some other good friends....
...Rush had just released Presto, and someone from the office told me CHOM-FM in Montreal was playing one of the songs, "Show Don't Tell", on a "Top Ten at Ten" feature where listeners called in to vote for their current favorites. I turned on the radio one night to listen to the countdown, and I think we were number three that night, but it was number four that struck me: a Canadian band I'd never heard of, the Tragically Hip, and a live recording of a song called "New Orleans is Sinking." As the band played a slow groove, the singer, Gord Downie, told a long, rambling tale that was throroughly weird and bizarre - about throwing bodies out of his girlfriend's apartment window or something - and yet riveting.
Through the '90s the Hip became very successful in Canada, but never seemed to find the audience they deserved in the United States. That remained a mystery to this listener, for their music seemed accessible enough, smart and yet deceptively simple in construction, rhythmically straight-ahead, and lots of guitars; it certainly rocked, but regrettably, the Hip remained largely a Canadian phenomenon.
I think it was for our Roll the Bones tour in '91 that I lobbied our manager, Ray, to book the Hip as our opening act on a major tour of the U.S. and Canada, a tour that would have put them in front of more than a million potential fans. However, their manager turned down the offer, saying there was a "buzz" starting for the band in Europe, and the record company wanted them to go there. I don't know, but that may have been a missed opportunity for them.
The Hip's music was especially admirable because it has so much Canada in it, Gord Downie's excellent lyrics, unique, intriguing, and sometimes obscure. Probably my overall favorite record of theirs, Fully Completely, from 1992, had some classic examples, from the opening, "Looking For a Place to Happen" with references to the French explorer, Jacques Cartier, who visited Canada in 1534 ("Jacques Cartier, right this way/ I'll put your coat up on the bed/ Hey man, you've got a real bum's eye for clothes"), to the verse in "Fifty Mission Cap" about Bill Barilko, a hockey player with the Toronto Maple Leafs in the early '50s, down through "Wheat Kings" ("Sundown in the paris of the Praries"), and the song title "Courage (for Hugh MacLennan)" (Maclennan was the Canadian author of great novels like Barometer Rising and The Watch That End the Night). The Tragically Hip were as Canadian as...hockey and beer. And donuts.
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