Thoughts and Insights -- Music@Work

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Re: Thoughts and Insights -- Music@Work - sean.bonner - 12-04-2017

My old babysitter Sarah Pinette plays cello on Tiger The Lion and Toronto #4.

She would bring her cello and practice for us growing up. Needless to say my jaw dropped when I saw the liner notes years later.

Re: Thoughts and Insights -- Music@Work - Moof_Milker - 12-04-2017

sean.bonner Wrote:My old babysitter Sarah Pinette plays cello on Tiger The Lion and Toronto #4.

Very cool. Did you ever get to ask her about this?

Also, I stumbled across this on The Hip’s website - Gord Sinclair’s thoughts on recording Music@Work. He touches on some things discussed in this thread. Worth reading, or re-reading.
http://www.thehip.com/albums/Music+%40+Work/biography/

Re: Thoughts and Insights -- Music@Work - potsie - 12-04-2017

Moof_Milker Wrote:Also, I stumbled across this on The Hip’s website - Gord Sinclair’s thoughts on recording Music@Work. He touches on some things discussed in this thread. Worth reading, or re-reading.
http://www.thehip.com/albums/Music+%40+Work/biography/

Interesting stuff.

"Our recycle bin is getting pretty full of tasty left overs after ten years of making records": Hopefully in 2018 it will be time to re-heat those tasty left-overs and get 'em out on the table.
"Tiger had begun with some crazy guitar synth lines of Johnny": I was impressed that Pigeon Camera was Johnny's idea. Now I find out Tiger is his idea as well? Mad respect for that guy!
"Train Overnight had been through a number of different incarnations over the months and had been a tough song for Steve to accept, until Chris gave it it's final touches on the Hammond organ": Steve Berlin should have kept voicing his displeasure with Train Overnight... it needed something more than some Hammond Organ!

Thanks for sharing. Are there bios like this for the other albums? I've never read this before.

Re: Thoughts and Insights -- Music@Work - direwolf74 - 12-04-2017

potsie Wrote:
Moof_Milker Wrote:Also, I stumbled across this on The Hip’s website - Gord Sinclair’s thoughts on recording Music@Work. He touches on some things discussed in this thread. Worth reading, or re-reading.
http://www.thehip.com/albums/Music+%40+Work/biography/

Thanks for sharing. Are there bios like this for the other albums? I've never read this before.

There are write-ups for some of the other albums as well. Must be a new addition to the website. I don't remember seeing these before.

Re: Thoughts and Insights -- Music@Work - andrew sharpe - 12-05-2017

potsie Wrote:My Music at Work. I don’t know if Gord intended this, but this phrase has a dual meaning. Music at work – the soundtrack for the office, or Music at work – the power of music to effect change. It is this later meaning that became more pertinent in 2016 as we watched Gord’s music “go to work” on social issues in the country. “Secret Path” was “Gord's music at work”.

Most probably know this, but "Your music at work" was a phrase on a radio station billboard that GD saw.

Re: Thoughts and Insights -- Music@Work - andrew sharpe - 12-05-2017

Moof_Milker Wrote:"Tiger had begun with some crazy guitar synth lines of Johnny": I was impressed that Pigeon Camera was Johnny's idea. Now I find out Tiger is his idea as well? Mad respect for that guy!

I'm looking forward to the contributions of all the band members coming forward. It really was their unity that made them great.

I seem to remember that MAW had some weird obscure instrument on it that Johnny found on the streets of NYC? Anyone remember that?

Re: Thoughts and Insights -- Music@Work - Scotty12 - 12-05-2017

andrew sharpe Wrote:
Moof_Milker Wrote:"Tiger had begun with some crazy guitar synth lines of Johnny": I was impressed that Pigeon Camera was Johnny's idea. Now I find out Tiger is his idea as well? Mad respect for that guy!
I'm looking forward to the contributions of all the band members coming forward. It really was their unity that made them great.

I seem to remember that MAW had some weird obscure instrument on it that Johnny found on the streets of NYC? Anyone remember that?

You may be confusing this with the cover art of phantom power, which Johnny found on the streets of NYC thinking it "had a sound in it" but turned out to be a 70s air force equipment line tester:

<a class="postlink-local" href="http://hipbase.com/forum/download/file.php?id=1314&mode=view">download/file.php?id=1314&mode=view</a>

Re: Thoughts and Insights -- Music@Work - andrew sharpe - 12-05-2017

scotty12 Wrote:
andrew sharpe Wrote:I seem to remember that MAW had some weird obscure instrument on it that Johnny found on the streets of NYC? Anyone remember that?

You may be confusing this with the cover art of phantom power, which Johnny found on the streets of NYC thinking it "had a sound in it" but turned out to be a 70s air force equipment line tester:

<a class="postlink" href="http://hipbase.com/forum/download/file.php?id=1314&mode=view">http://hipbase.com/forum/download/file. ... &mode=view</a>

Ahaha that's totally it. Stupid brain!

Re: Thoughts and Insights -- Music@Work - chives - 12-07-2017

Music @ Work could be the most over-rated work TTH have put out. Not sure if it was overshadowed by rumours of Gord's impending solo stuff, or the "Evening with..." tour, possibly the "change in direction sound", but this cd (IMO) has grown on me more than any other piece of work in their catalogue. I think there are way too many songs on here that never saw the light of day after the 2000 tour which is very unfortunate. Songs like the Bear, Completesits, Train Overnight, Stay were basically 1 tour staples that should have easily been brought back into rotation. I'm sure the band "lost" some fans with this release, but the die-hards who "got them" at the time and grew with them since this release can truly appreciate where Gord and the band were heading.

Re: Thoughts and Insights -- Music@Work - edgoffin - 12-07-2017

chives Wrote:I'm sure the band "lost" some fans with this release, but the die-hards who "got them" at the time and grew with them since this release can truly appreciate where Gord and the band were heading.

I think from this album onward, they had the aptitude (and maybe the financial ability) to experiment more with their sound. I don't think they were ever a "verse, chorus, verse" band before M@W, but every album after brought a more marked element of change.

Re: Thoughts and Insights -- Music@Work - Killer Whale Tank - 12-07-2017

I dunno...I think the Hip's music was always moving around. It's not as though there was no 'change' from UTH to DFN. I tend to disagree that M@W added some hitherto-absent 'experimental' quality to their work, then. It's true that their work became much less obviously radio-ready. M@W is conspicuous in its lack of strong hooks and Gord's later singing voice was both spikier and more warbly; he also, as I'll have occasion to observe in later threads, tended to sing *against* the hook rather than hitting it hard.

But in fact the Hip's corpus is ultimately fairly conservative. What changes is Gord D's approach to writing; I find it fascinating how almost from album to album there are subtle yet significant shifts in his lyrical voice. But while the Hip are unquestionably more exploratory and interesting than formula bands like AC DC or Nickleback, many other acts, such as U2, The Beatles, Bowie, Elvis Costello, Dylan, PJ Harvey, etc., have moved around way more than the Hip did. This isn't a criticism, mind you (I don't think artistic merit is a matter of weighing 'experimentation' by the pound). I just don't think we should exaggerate their experimental qualities.

Re: Thoughts and Insights -- Music@Work - edgoffin - 12-07-2017

Killer Whale Tank Wrote:I dunno...I think the Hip's music was always moving around. It's not as though there was no 'change' from UTH to DFN. I tend to disagree that M@W added some hitherto-absent 'experimental' quality to their work, then.

Sure, there was constant evolution from every album -- I just think with this album and then more so onward they were increasingly open to risk, change, or different ambitions. That includes producer choices, recording outside of their own studio (I think it's not until WATS that they return to Bathhouse?), some song arrangements and lyrical direction, and touring decisions.

There's no Pop, Philly soul, or White album shift, but the evolution and occasional step back maybe become easier to see as the band moves forward from this point onward. I think the discussions on the next albums and the song poll vote will be interesting. In these few pages of dialogue, even for the hardcore fans M@W has proved to be a difficult album to peg. Some like it, some really like tracks and are either unsure of indifferent about others (and usually not the same tracks), no one seems to outright dislike it.

It is their last really widespread commercially successfully album (excluding whatever happened with sales last year), and I like that they were able to maybe expand the musical palette for some with songs like Tiger, Toronto #4, The Bear.

Re: Thoughts and Insights -- Music@Work - hotmetal401 - 12-08-2017

There are two big things I can't separate this album from.

First, is the leak. Man, the leak. The album was out in June; it leaked a full two months early. I remember seeing those first Henhouse emails on it - or was it the alt.tragicallyhip news group - and then the incredible amount of debate on the morality of grabbing it. I think all of us did, whether we admit it or not. I actually didn't get it off Napster - I actually downloaded it off IRC of all things, which I certainly couldn't tell you how to use now and barely understood then.

Also, a note on how fast technology seemed to change at that time. In the fall of 1999, the new Rage Against The Machine album leaked as well. That was the first record my friends and I were able to get our hands on early. The difference here was that it was two weeks early and instead of being able to burn our own CD copies, we had to download it at school (only place seemingly with high speed at that moment) and put it on a zip drive disc to take over to a friend who had a CD-R. Needless to say, Santa Claus brought a lot of CD burners to my friends and I for Christmas that year.

Here's the other main thing I can't separate from this album: January 1, 2000. My first show.

I remember reading the review of the secret Horseshoe show in the Toronto Sun, listing like 7-8 news songs played, thinking this going to be good. Even then, I was never turned off to the idea of being one of the first people to hear a song no one had ever heard before. And then that happened - Lake Fever and The Bastard had been played at the secret show, but Freak Turbulence was brand new. It sounded so raw, so powerful. All three of those songs were instant winners for me. That version of The Bastard is still my absolute favourite of the song; I still sing the original closing verse to Lake Fever (rain dissent, collapse yer tent, jack up yer rent) as it was sung at that show.

I remember thinking this was the best thing they've ever done. That didn't last long. I thought the songs lacked the power they did live (all-in-all, maybe two Hip songs I've had the good fortune of seeing live pre-release ever did live up to the promise - Rink and We Don't Want To Be It). I didn't think it was too long, but I kind of do now. It has one of the two songs I never wanted to hear live on it (Puttin Down - the other is Fireworks, for the record).

But My Music At Work was as good as any rock radio single released in 2000. And Tiger The Lion is just this ambitious beast of a song that wouldn't be out of place on Man Machine Poem (probably a reason I like that record so much). Stay remains so simple, so beautiful, as does Toronto #4, which I'm thrilled got dusted of for the final run of shows like it did.

I like the REM comparison from earlier in the thread, but I'd argue this is the New Adventures In HiFi of their catalogue, more so than Green. They'd already had that tipping point, with Day For Night, and still found commercial and critical success where in the eyes of so many they could do no wrong. Then, everything changes. I'd stick The Hip's later period up against REM's any day of the week, mind you.

Anyway, this was a really fun time to be a fan. The first four times I saw the band was in 2000, touring this record. And even though my Henhouse-bootleg loving heart might argue, I wouldn't trade those early show experiences for anything.

Re: Thoughts and Insights -- Music@Work - senrab - 12-08-2017

andrew sharpe Wrote:
potsie Wrote:My Music at Work. I don’t know if Gord intended this, but this phrase has a dual meaning. Music at work – the soundtrack for the office, or Music at work – the power of music to effect change. It is this later meaning that became more pertinent in 2016 as we watched Gord’s music “go to work” on social issues in the country. “Secret Path” was “Gord's music at work”.
Most probably know this, but "Your music at work" was a phrase on a radio station billboard that GD saw.

It was CHFI wasn't it? 98.1? I remember hearing that station when I lived in Buffalo.

Re: Thoughts and Insights -- Music@Work - senrab - 12-08-2017

I honestly can't even remember what many of the songs sound like on this album, especially the 2nd half...I'm a bad fan. I need to listen to it again.

I hate the album cover.

The standouts for me are the title track, Lake Fever, Stay, and Toronto 4 - what a moving song.

I thought for the longest time Gord was singing "and when the sunlight hits the Autobahn" instead of "olive oil". :lol: