[Hammer]

Ahhh I like this thread, pretty interesting to see how people came to love TTH.

I remember getting ready to play hockey as a kid while growing up and two CD's stick out the most in my mind from those times.
- The Offspring: Smash
- The Tragically Hip: Up To Here

That was pretty much all we had been listening to for most of at least one season. I would have to venture a guess that I was in grade 4 as Smash came out in '94 lol. Needless to say there were some lyrics on that CD that the coach didn't much care for us repeating lol.

Our goaltender would fire Up To Here into his boom-box at every chance he could. I LIKED their music at that time, but i'd be lying if I said that I had fallen in love with TTH at that particular point in my life.

Although I heard the odd song from Road Apples, Fully Completely and Day For Night... It wasn't really until 1996 when my older brother brought home Trouble at the Henhouse, that I had began to really appreciate The Hip. ABAC was the first one he played and I loved it right from the first listen... Gift Shop, Don't Wake Daddy, 700ft Ceiling, Butts Wigglin' and Put if Off all quickly made their way into my head as well.

A few years later I find myself in 8th grade... My brother buys Phantom Power... Phantom Power and his Discman basically make their way into my hands never to be seen again lol... The slow climb to how I feel about this band now has begun... (Road Apples, Fully Completely, Day For Night and The Tragically Hip albums all grace my ear-drums on a regular basis)

Music @ Work hit... I believe they played a show or two somewhere in the Maritimes... I remember some friends coming back with t-shirts... I remember thinking "i'd never waste my money on going to a concert, the music is never as good as it is on the CD's" (Do I ever regret thinking that at the time now that i've seen The Hip live and enjoy their live stuff more than the studio stuff lol)

IVL, IBE both drop. At this point The Hip are pretty much all me and one of my close friends at the time would even talk about to each other lol.



Magnetic Hill - September 3rd, 2005

I ALMOST didn't purchase tickets for this... In fact, tickets had sold out... I can't remember at this point if I had managed to get tickets before it sold out or if I got them when they released a 2nd batch, but either way, I had a ticket lol... I had absolutely NO interest in seeing The Stones play, but I just couldn't pass up seeing The Hip.

I went down the night before and stayed at my buddies place. We got pretty trashed that night, but woke up nice and early the next day. After that somewhat confusing/hectic bus situation we made our way to Magnetic Hill (my little brother and his friends WALKED from the same location in which we caught our first bus, and they got inside the gates of the concert before us lol)

Hung out with my friends, grabbed some beer in the beer tent and laid back on the hill watching OLP... I spent all of Maroon5's set waiting in line to take a leak lol... I thought I was gonna blow up, but I sure didn't feel like I had missed anything lol...

I'm waiting in the "beer tents" with my friend who was only 18 at the time and scared to leave the area in case he got asked for I.D next time we tried to come back in lol... The rest of my friends try and get a little closer, they gain about 30-feet on us on the other side of the roped-off area, but they have a decent little crowd around them, where as we've got an awesome amount of space to just stand there comfortably.

What seemed like an eternity was passing by... The anticipation and excitement was killing me but it was at this point-in-time that it happened... The Tragically Hip took the stage, then proceeded to blow my fucking mind! (pardon the language) I can't even explain the feeling that came over me as I stood there just completely awe-struck.

I remember having a little chuckle as Gordie gave a shout-out to the Red-Cross and them having "big-buckets" but for the next couple of songs I was completely silent, didn't move a muscle and just stood there with my eyes wide-open watching Gordie and the boys on stage. Everything else going on around me, those 10's of Thousands of people just didn't exist anymore... I remember finally taking my eyes off the stage and looking over at my buddy and just kinda shook my head in dis-belief as I began to bring myself back into reality and began singing along quietly for the rest of the set.

I actually listened to this particular show the other day with my younger bro on our way to pick up his new motorcycle. I had forgot just how good it actually was (IMO)... I think Gord ranted 3/4 of the WC album throughout the set but we had a good laugh listening to him. I think he was feeling pretty good that day lol.

I thought I was crazy over The Hip before that concert, but It was truly that day that I became the fan of TTH in the way that I am today.

It doesn't matter what kind of mood i'm in, I can ALWAYS listen to The Hip. I can feel down or depressed over something and all I have to do to brighten my mood is press play. That right there ensures that they will always have a special place in my heart.

[cochise]

I remember perfectly. I was living in Brampton at the time, I was at a stop light listening to Q107, when the DJ said, "here's a new one from a new group, what's it called 'Blowing For Dough' or something like that?"............. About 2 weeks later I head Boots Or Hearts and was absolutely hooked. I went out and bought Up To Here and was convinced I was listening to the next Rolling Stones

I grew up with the Hip, I will grow old with them too

[PatrickTheLion]

In highschool, when everyone there (Buffalo suburb) used to walk the halls quoting Live Between Us Rants....

"Jesus Christ, it's a big fucking bear!!"

Hey - I went to Kenmore East - what Buffalo suburb high school are you referring to?

[ashtrayrock]

a friend suggested i go see the band in 1991

it was a crazy night of youth(university campus-UofT) and just enough alcohol

gordo had long hair and was just freaky enough to make me want more.

[cygnus8595]

Living in the USA is not conducive to Hip fandom. Fortunately for me, they tried one more attempt at American fame in the '90s with Phantom Power. I remember hearing "Poets" on a local rock station and I liked it, but it was played so infrequently that I don't even think I heard it all the way through before it was pulled from the rotation. That's the last I heard of them for 10 years.

So I was bored at work one day (happens a lot - I'm a computer geek) and I was losing myself in the 'Net. I was on a mission to find new music to replace my former grungy habits - it was great when I was in high school, but now that I'm in my 30s I don't want to hear about someone's drug addiction on EVERY FRIGGIN' SONG. I stumbled on the Hip and remembered hearing them back in the '90s.

I started off with some Internet streaming of their songs followed by a download of Yer Favourites (I always start with a greatest hits if I can). That was all it took. I still haven't seen them live and I still haven't purchased We Are the Same, but I'm probably the biggest Hip fan in Wyoming and I'm forever grateful for that day of boredom.

[bstrauss24]

In highschool, when everyone there (Buffalo suburb) used to walk the halls quoting Live Between Us Rants....

"Jesus Christ, it's a big fucking bear!!"

Hey - I went to Kenmore East - what Buffalo suburb high school are you referring to?

Tonawanda...graduated in 2001

[Tthip]

Hey - I went to Kenmore East - what Buffalo suburb high school are you referring to?

Tonawanda...graduated in 2001

And a North Tonawanda graduate here.

[Edward_K]

What a great thread and some real interesting reads.

So, Road Apples was just out and this English dude was painting the outside of my mom's home - my sister puts in RA and I am listening and the painter is asking us who is this band...my sister says it is a friends tape and some new band, TTH. So the English painter after the tape plays asks the name again and writes it down; telling us that this is one of the best new bands he has ever heard...

So, fast forward a couple years and I like the hip, but they still haven't HIT me. I am now in University in Montreal and my cousin is a first year lawyer in Washington DC. He calls me and says, he has tickets for 2 nights at the 9:30 Club for the hip plus tickets to see the caps and kings with Gretz in town....do I want to come, he asks, and he can hook me up with plane tickets.....Umm, are you kidding? damn right I want to come down!

So, my cousin, who is 2 years older than I, and now has the big job, takes me out for a big steak dinner and then off to the 9:30 club we go...I think it was Aiden that opened back then, and the room was filling up...we were one person back from front-middle of the stage.

It was my first Hip show....and Downie comes onstage with a hoodie on pulled over his head, stumbles / bumbles to the front of the stage and they start playing. I'm thinking, this guy is fucking way out there and with every note, I am getting drawn in; as is the whole crowd. I am now lost and just floating with this concert experience that I will never forget. I remember looking over and my cousin is shaking me and just screaming, 'can you fuckin' believe these guys'.

No, I couldn't believe these guys.

My cousin grabs me the set-list and then has the band sign it...."Steam clean the universe" Gord Downie writes and I have that framed in this collage of memories.

What a weekend, back to Montreal and back to school and a weekend that I will never forget...man, I just realize how much I owe my cousin! I am taking him to the NYC and Boston shows in ~3 weeks! Actually he got the tickets but the weekend will be on me.

I now see the hip whenever I can, and have kept up with their music - they are the only band that I really follow; and I have been lucky enought to meet them and see them play in big and small venues.

And on occasion, at one of their shows, when the stars are aligned, usually in a small venue, I get that same feeling as their first show.

And I remember my cousin asking "Can you fuckin' believe these guys?!?"

[The Horrible Esthete]

When I first posted my recollection of my Hip introduction, I said that I had heard a TTH song on a Columbus college radio station as we were partying late one night just off the OSU campus.

Later, I was corrected; my cousin had somehow been introduced shortly before via college radio, I believe, and had proceeded to obtain a copy of UTH. He had a portable CD player hooked up dircetly to an amplifier with stage speakers in his apartment when I came for a visit. It was long after midinght on a Saturday morning, it was the dead of winter with snow everywhere, and we were sitting in pitch darkness listening to tunes cranked up to chest-cavity-vibrating levels, and he said "you've GOT to hear this..."

What followed was perhaps the greatest musical epiphany I'd ever experienced.

A bluesy, distorted Les Paul metered out the opening riff of New Orleans Is Sinking, and the groove was puntuated by the most intense rock vocals I'd ever heard. My head was already swimming after I'd heard the first verse and chourus. By the time it ended, and that final note rang and faded on Paul's Paul, and I shitchyou not, my eyes were bleary with sheer incredulity. I could not believe I had actually heard what I had just heard.

I soon snatched up UTH and RA, and the rest is history. I have since seen every show possible within driving distance (and beyond) -- somewhere around 40-45 in number -- and the beat rolls on.

[mastodonfarm]

There's no reason any of us should really care about how we all became Hip fans. And yet this post is rather interesting, idn't-it?

[SoylentGreg]

Completely by accident...well, two accidents.

In 2001, my little suburb outside of Richmond, VA expanded its cable network, going from about 35 channels to something like seventy. The TV in my room only went up to channel 50, and since almost all the channels in the 40's were local access stuff the only new thing I got to see was some Canadian music video channel called MuchMusic. I saw this music video with this weird guy jiving while making copies and singing about his 'music at work'. I remember really liking the song, but this being (for me) pre-internet, pre-Napster days I had no way of getting any more of the band's songs. A couple months later, MuchMusic was off the air in my area and I had forgotten all about that quirky tune, having become a gigantic metalhead.

Three years later, i'm working at a shitty electronics retailer, stocking the software aisle with this awful little generic CD burning program (something like Burn2CD or Music2Burn, something with a cheesy number in the middle) and something about one of the screenshots struck me as familiar. One of the screenshots showing how the program worked had as the sample album something called "Music @ Work", by some band called The Tragically Hip. Hey, that was that band! It was a bizarre coincidence. A few days later, at Plan 9 downtown, I found a copy of their latest album, "In Between Evolution," and started working backwards from there.

[Shane Kroeker]

It was probably about 5 years ago. I was driving in my car, listening to the radio, when Locked in the Trunk of a Car came on. I had heard the song many times before, but this particular time, I really listened to the lyrics, and the part where Gord screams "Let me ooooooouuuttttt!!" really struck me. From that point on, I bought the Fully Completely CD, and every other release since then. I still remember the exact spot on the road that I was so greatly impacted by the Hip.

[Billy]

I was in either grade 11 or 12 in 89 and I watched a lot of Muchmusic back then. I recall one day after school watching and the video for NOIS came on. I was mesmerized by the grainy, grey cloured video, the bizarre lead singer and the grinding guitar. At first I thought this must be some late 60's-70's band that I somehow had never heard of. I asked a friend the next day at school who the Tragically Hip were and he said they had a new album out called Up To Here and that they sounded a lot like the Stones. I went to a record store asap and found Up To Here and have ever since been in love.

[hipnosis]

It all started in I believe my freshman or sophomore year in high school. A teacher of mine and I always battled between which of our bands were better (as I was going through a rap to rock transition). At the time I was in love with The Darkness (glam rock band from the UK) since I went to go see them over the summer and was able to touch the singer's leg. They were also my first concert. Well one day me and my teacher were just playfully arguing over which bands were better and he just happened to say "there is no way that that The Darkness crap is better than The Hip" and I was like "who the hell is The Hip?! just their name sounds weird!" he told me that "they are The Tragically Hip. and they are one of the best bands ever. learn something kid." so that night I went on my routine schedule of watching Yahoo Music Videos and remembered about The Hip. so I typed in their name and found a list of their videos. first one I watched was Ahead By A Century. at the time that type music just wasn't my thing...so I was like yeah they suck. the darkness is WAAAAAAAAY better. then a few weeks later (or so) I decided to download Trouble at the Henhouse randomly.
listened to 700 Ft. Ceiling and Butts' Wigglin' and I dunno...something clicked and they have been my absolute favorite band since.
I saw them for the first time in Rochester on November 11, 2007...me and my teacher were there but he was second and center as I was in the balcony. |-_-|
However, I did manage to snag 2 extra backstage passes from a guy at the end of the show because he loved my shirt [Gord Downie is My Hero]. I had the absolute wonderful opportunity to meet all of the band except for Paul. They were wonderful and I loved every second of it It still seems like a dream to me. My teacher did NOT come backstage with me as he thought it would be funny to ignore my texts and not believe that I had backstage passes. He now regrets that decision. hahahahaha
The two of us are going to the July 25th show in Rochester together and can't wait!! It should be a blast!!
I am also trying to get the band to come to my University so I can interview them for the school newspaper. I hope to hear from them soon!

[Graham]

Summer of 2003....

I was heading into my grade 12 year of high school. Up to then I really didn't care too much for music. Everyone around me seemed to be listening to music all the time, like it was the cool thing to do. Whatever was popular at the moment. I didn't mind U2 at that point, had a thing for Sunday Bloody Sunday, New Years Day and Zoo Station. My album collection had been incredibly limited, a couple U2 albums, Queens of the Stone Age, Wallflowers, Weezer and I liked most of the music my parents listened to.

At some point I decided to "get into" music, learn some of the rich history that I knew rock and roll had. I started listening to 92 CITI FM, the classic rock station here in Winnipeg, while I ploughed the fields in the fall time, with the shittiest radio you'd ever seen. But it had that classic charm. You had to crank it to hear anything audibly over the diesel, labouring hard to get through the soil that had compacted throughout the summer.

Eventually I became somewhat familiar with some of the bands. I remembered hearing "The Tragically Hip," and thinking, yeah, those guys have a reputation of sorts. I remembered my babysitter asking us years earlier if we liked that band. I remembered a big event (The Warchild Concert) that they had headlined here, and a lot of people I knew went to volunteer. As a result I kept an ear out for them when I was on the fields and developed a liking for Little Bones. Anytime they announced the Hip in the next rock block, I would sit there going Little Bones! Little Bones! Willing the radio station to play the one song I liked, being dissapointed when something else came on.

After the fall I headed into a record store to check what they had. I flipped through all the albums at the time. I looked at all of them, unsure of which one to buy. The one with Little Bones, or something else? I decided to check the track listings and buy the album with the most song names I could recognize. I'm sure you can guess I walked out of the store with Fully Completely.

I didn't really get into it all that fast. Sure I liked a couple songs but, always ended putting it down. Several months later I had grown to kind of like that album. In the springtime I bought myself Day For Night, being attracted to the cover art. The first spin, I thought the album was complete crap. Noise on the ears, it wasn't polished like Fully. But I gave it a chance (as I do with all music) and it grew on me, track by track...Grace, then Inevitability, Scared...etc. I heard a new album was coming out in June, so I decided to go out and get that first day out.

I still didn't like all of DFN (ironically would become my favourite) but bought IBE anyways, feeling special, that I had been there for the release day of a CD for the first time ever. I spun it. I fell in love. V-scar, Summer, Gus, and Makeshift became the soundtrack to the summer of 2004 for me. I don't think that disc ever left my car for the whole summer. I would buy Live Between Us and a few other albums over the summer.

Then the tour came around, and I had gotten tickets, 2nd row, to my first "real" rock concert. Which blew me away of course.

I had my band.

The Hip had also, in my quest to learn more about rock, essentially baptized me. Music went from something I avoided in 2003 to a full-out past time now. I spend practically all my money on albums and concerts, vinyls became another hobby of mine. Now my friends come to me when they have a question about music, when a new album is coming out or for the latest quality stuff in Canadian rock.

And here I am today.