[Killer Whale Tank]

Yes, well, that's certainly what their commercial profile is. The concert-goers are almost all middle-aged "fans" looking to hear the hits. The Hip are respected as "legends," but as with other "legendary" bands like the Guess Who, only a handful of hard-core fans pay any attention to the new stuff. The old "fans" want new Hip to sound EXACTLY like Fully Completely, and when it doesn't, tune out. Young people see the Hip as an old guys' band irrelevant to their concerns. It's a bad combination, albeit one that befalls most bands eventually. Even U2 - which walked that tightrope of commercial relevance longer than most - has succumbed to irrelevance and therefore nostalgia.

So I don't blame the marketers. Only if the Hip do something that really breaks the mould, would there be an opportunity to "rebrand" them as something other than a nostalgia act. Breaking the formula is the only way out; this is what Bob Dylan did, for instance, completely reconstructing his entire approach and image and finding whole new audiences as a result. Nick Lowe did the same thing. The Hip, though, don't seem ready to go out on that kind of limb.