[The Horrible Esthete]

Posted in "How did you become a Hip fan", Thu Oct 30, 2003 9:52 pm

Meh. Leave it to Esthete to bloviate in his debut:

Hello Hipsters! The first post from this “newbie” should rightfully be made in this thread. I am a small-town Ohio boy, now living in Cincinnati - a place where The Hip visited only once (1998), presumably due to the woefully small attendance. By the Grace of Gord, I happened upon The Hip by pure coincidence in the early nineties. The band, as you may well know, gets very little exposure in the heart of the Midwest, so it was by tremendously slim odds that I had the fortune to be introduced to their works over ten years ago. Please indulge me an opportunity to share an account of my discovery:

February, 1992. I was twenty, a freshman at Xavier University in Cincy. After class on an icy Friday, I hastily packed a bag and headed north to Columbus to partake in some weekend debauchery just off the campus of mighty OSU. Due to the bitter cold, we decided stay inside and, well, “expand our minds”. After we played some guitar, discovered a sixth sense, and identified the meaning of life, we decided to sit back and just listen to some cuts. Aided by a stage amplification system, we absorbed Jane’s Addiction’s mesmerizing Ritual de lo Habitual at ear-splitting levels, and proceeded to immerse ourselves in various selections by Led Zeppelin. We would occasionally pause and replay some tracks, as we regularly found ourselves in sheer awe of Page’s lick-writing mastery. When a disc was stopped, the receiver would default to the tuner, which was dialed in to a local “progressive rock” radio station. When I insisted on cuing “No Quarter” a second time to dissect Jimmy’s haunting lead (“Play it again - how on earth did he even conceive that shit?”), it happened: I heard the opening riff of what I would soon discover was “New Orleans is Sinking” by a Canadian band called The Tragically Hip.

We looked at each other quizzically amidst the settling groove, our facial expressions screaming “What is this?”, but no one dared speak, and risk breaking the fantastic grip of Gord’s opening line. The goosebumps pushed higher and higher with the escalation of Gord’s passion and intensity, and I swear, when he belted out “My memory is muddy - what’s this river that I’m in?” in the last refrain, up an octave, I nearly creamed my skivvies. We were giddy with excitement, and frantically called the station and asked for the name of the band “that just kicked our asses”.

The rest is history. I’ve attended over twenty Hip shows, many of them by my lonesome. I’ve hit almost every Ohio show, and have caught them in venues as far away as Las Vegas and Los Angeles. I have even managed to meet each member in person. I cannot fathom how this band has not developed a more substantial following in the States, but I ultimately benefit from such local obscurity.

Thank you, Canada. Five of your citizens have made my life that much more worth living.

Oh wow. The meaning of that last line is now exponentially more poignant, as those five Canadians have since delivered me the love of my life.....

Thanks again, boys! :thumb:

EDIT: Incidentally, at the time I posted this, I remember swearing that the Hip had played Cincy twice, but at the time, this site only showed one - the 1998 show....so i thought i was mistaken, and was merely thinking of some Columbus show (I had seen so many in the late 90's). Some time later, going through my stubs, I found a stub for a 1996 show here, emailed Lance, and had it added. So the hip have, in fact, played here twice. Sadly, it doesn't appear that they will ever return.