Why I love The Tragically Hip...

I was going to title this post "Why I want to have Gordon Downie's babies" but I thought maybe that was taking my love of The Hip just a bit far. Just a bit, though.

Gordon Downie on tour, circa 2007
Image courtesy/copyright mikelastphoto.com
(The Photographer took this, so don't steal it. He also gave me a print of it for Valentine's Day one year...)

Today, April 7, The Tragically Hip are releasing their twelfth album (fourteenth if you count Live Between Us and Yer Favourites, but I don’t because they’re more like “greatest hits”) since first hitting the scene in Kingston, Ontario back in 1983. They released their first album in 1987 and have been in the recording studio fairly consistently ever since.

I started listening to them in the late 90s after raiding my dad’s CD collection in search of something cool. What I came out of the cupboard with was Fully Completely. Love at first listen. Not long after, The Hip released Phantom Power and went on tour. I managed to convince my parents to take me. So it became a family outing, all five of us, trekking across Michigan to catch the concert. We had lousy seats and the old man next to us called my mom “Baby” all night, but I was hooked.

We saw them one more time in Michigan (again as a family) before I went away to university. At which point I realized that no one in the U.S. has ever heard of them. This precious knowledge lead to my next two Hip concert experiences: small venues in New York City, general admission, and front row as long as we got there before the opening act started. Because guaranteed the entire population of Kingston would arrive just as Gordon, Paul, Rob, Gord, and Johnny were taking the stage. The atmosphere was awesome and I was close enough for the Downie’s sweat to hit me (seriously, he sweats more than any human I’ve ever seen). This is one thing I really miss about living south of the border. But then, they don’t quite get it the way we do up here.

So, in honour of today’s release of We Are the Same, I thought I would share some of the reasons I think The Hip may be the best band ever…

1. Polar Bears. The Hip share my love of the handsome white bears, enough to write a song about one. A specific one. Named Gus. He lives in Central Park. They also let one star in the music video for Yer Not the Ocean. And by “star” I mean chase Gordon Downie through the woods.

2. Hockey. A national obsession, The Hip have a healthy respect for the sport and its place in the Canadian psyche. They’ve made songs out of the back of a hockey card, hanging out in the crease (featured on Hockey Night in Canada), and a very famous summit series…but here's that song.

3. They’re intelligent. The Hip reference everyone from Northrop Frye to Jacques Cartier to John Lennon to Shakespeare. They tell stories in their songs, whether by adapting a Hugh MacLennan novel, re-imagining a real historical mystery, or just by their own invention. And this, with a moment for Falstaff, is one of my favourites.

4. Their songs read like a map. They really cover the Canadian landscape, from Newfoundland to Ontario to Manitoba, and all across the Great Plains. To me, they’re local…whether they’re singing about Sault Ste. Marie where my grandparents live, or commiserating on the state of the 401 or Lake Ontario where I live, or depicting in song the majesty of Algonquin Park where I love.

5. They have a connection to modern Canadian pop culture. I love that The Hip love The Trailer Park Boys. And vice versa (disclaimer: don't follow that link if you're offended by profanity). And I love that when the TPB made a movie, The Hip got a cameo, all the movie titles outside the theatre were Hip songs, and the soundtrack was pretty much a “greatest hits” for TTH. But nothing makes me happier than the music video for The Darkest One. Ricky, Julian, Bubbles, Don Cherry, and The Hip. Who could ask for more? But wait, there is some Rick Mercer love, too. Blow At High Dough was the theme song for Mercer’s TV show, Made In Canada.

6. Global social and political consciousness. They’re aware of the world around them in a way that is artistic, engaged, and interesting. If New Orleans is Sinking became If New Orleans is Beat after Katrina, asking "where does that leave you and me?" As Makeshift as We Are and Are We Family take on human rights, war, and responsibility to one another.

You do the combat math, I'm the war artist
You can't take your shots back, I have to watch them miss
The basketball rim shook like a tambourine
Not an unlikely event in a game that means nothing
In a game that means nothing
Makeshift we are
Lead never leaves your system no matter who you are

And they do it all with such poetry.

7. They know who they are and where they came from. The Hip have never really left Canada. Sure, they’ve toured everywhere. But this is their home. Historically, philosophically, in every way that matters. And they get us. They get our history.

8. They are artists. They are rockstars. And they’re the kind of guys you’d want to have a beer with. As artists, they’re constantly challenging themselves. Which is why they are still putting out new albums 26 years on, still working on various projects (Rob Baker used to do all their album art and some of their t-shirt designs), still pushing the bounds of what they can do. As rockstars, well, they just put on one hell of a show. I’ve seen them four times now and they’ve never failed to impress me. As beer drinking cool guys, Rob Baker gave me his guitar pick unsolicited once. And they just keep it real.

And more than all of this, they inspire me. So that’s enough for me to love them, really.