Video Of The Week: The Tragically Hip

Well, it had to happen, and so it has: The Tragically Hip's lead singer and central figure, Gord Downie, has passed away from his incurable brain cancer.

My own personal history with the Hip began with their 1989 "true" debut Up To Here's second single, New Orleans Is Sinking, the first (Blow At High Dough) not making a dent in what I was listening to at the time at 10-11 years old (Guns N' Roses' Appetite For Destruction and GNR Lies, Kiss' Crazy Nights, N.W.A.'s Straight Outta Compton, Def Leppard's Hysteria, Michael Jackson's Thriller and Bad, Prince's Batman soundtrack, Queen's The Miracle, Red Hot Chili Peppers' Mother's Milk, and Bon Jovi's New Jersey). But New Orleans had something, a feel, a groove that I could deal with. I say "true" debut, by the way, because I'd seen their self-titled Tragically Hip 1987 EP release in stores at that point, but didn't buy it until 1992 or 1993; Up To Here was their first full-length endeavour. I didn't really think much of the rest of that record, so I waited for the second one, 1991's Road Apples, to be very discounted (under $10) to give it a go, and I loved Little Bones, Twist My Arm, and Cordelia right away. I liked the rest of it, too, but not as much as the one-two-three punch at the beginning of the record, which I still go to in order from time to time.

1992's Fully Completely was a whole new ballgame. All killer, no filler. This was what cemented the band as a force to be reckoned with on the Canadian mainstream rock stage, with reason. Out of the 12 songs on the album, only four do not qualify as "hits". They're great nonetheless, but the Big Eight just pack so much: Courage (for Hugh MacLennan), Looking for a Place to Happen, At the Hundredth Meridian, Locked in the Trunk of a Car, Fully Completely, Fifty Mission Cap and Wheat Kings all became staples of their live shows until the very end, and remain in full rotation on Canadian rock radio to this day.

1994's Day For Night was even better, with such classics as Grace, Too, Greasy Jungle, So Hard Done By, the tear-inducing Nautical Disaster, Inevitability of Death, Scared and An Inch an Hour. With sleeker production, this was a band at the height of songwriting genius made to sound like early R.E.M. - and it worked. It felt real, honest, and raw.

1996's Trouble At The Henhouse might be their finest work, with standouts Gift Shop, Springtime In Vienna, and the masterpiece Ahead by a Century. It has a more acoustic feel to it, it seems warmer and softer then their preceding works.

They released Live Between Us, a live album recorded in Detroit, in 1997, containing most hits, then went in the studio to make 1998's Phantom Power, with standout tracks Poets, Bobcaygeon, Something On, and Fireworks. It was a fine record, but nothing original; it was The Hip sounding like The Hip - not as generic as future releases, but there was a comfort level setting, there wasn't much surprise.

The same can be said of 2000's Music @ Work. If anything, even the four singles (My Music At Work, Lake Fever, The Completists and Freak Turbulence) sound almost sarcastically like keeping with the band's signature sound. And titles like Tiger The Lion do nothing to dispel that notion. This is where I moved on from the Hip a bit, so I bought 2002's In Violet Light because I'd bought all the others, but I played it twice in its entirety and never really went back to it. They made videos for It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken and The Darkest One, and that was my lone contact with this album.

2004's In Between Evolution, however, struck a major chord in me. Perhaps it's the fact that unlike others, it's politically-charged, in the midst of George W. Bush's Iraq War, or maybe they just started trying again, but songs like Heaven Is a Better Place Today, Summer's Killing Us, Gus: The Polar Bear from Central Park, Vaccination Scar, It Can't Be Nashville Every Night, As Makeshift as We Are, One Night in Copenhagen and Goodnight Josephine really resonated. The album was produced by engineer extraordinaire Adam Kasper (Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Queens Of The Stone Age, R.E.M., winner of two Grammys for his work with the Foo Fighters), which probably helped.

2006 brought World Container, which I remember liking, but The Kids Don't Get It is the only song from that album that's made its way into my Permanent Playlist. It's pretty much the same for 2009's We Are The Same: Coffee Girl, Now the Struggle Has a Name, The Depression Suite, and Love Is a First are all fine tunes, but Queen of the Furrows is the only song off that record that I still listen to on a regular basis.

Then there was the two-album conclusion, Now For Plan A and Man Machine Poem, the latter of which is named after a song from the former. Confused? Good. These are good records, introspective, deep in thought, with dark yet groovy pieces of music. Not what I would recommend for someone who has never heard the band (the 1992-96 output would be a better starting point, in my opinion), but for a casual fan or radio listener who was curious to find out how their 1990s sound evovled with age and technical skill, I'd recommend these two ahead of the previous two.

Pretty much as soon as the cancer diagnosis was confirmed, the band embarked on what doubled as the Man Machine Poem tour and its farewell tour, playing 15 shows in 10 cities - it was originally 10, but controversy surrounding ticket scalpers getting the bulk of the tickets (promoter Live Nation estimates upwards of two-thirds of tickets were purchased by bots, not people) forced the band to add a show apiece in Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary, and two in Toronto; the tour did not go farther East than Ottawa, meaning Québec (specifically the rather large Montréal market) and the Maritimes drew blanks. The final concert was held at Kingston's Rogers K-Rock Center, in the heart of the group's hometown.

I bring this post home with the song that first caught my ear, New Orleans Is Sinking:

I don't know who directed it, but if I come by it, I will update this post.

Video Of The Week: The Tragically Hip

I know I featured The Tragically Hip not too long ago, but this is a Hip summer, and Ahead By A Century is one of their best songs, from 1996's Trouble At The Henhouse, which could very well be their best record.

The video was directed by Eric Yealland and filmed on a small farm in Brooklin, Ontario. It won the award for "Best Video" at the 1996 MuchMusic Video Awards (i.e. Canada's MTV Awards) and was also nominated for "Best Video" at the 1997 Juno Awards (i.e. Canada's Grammys):

Video Of The (Past) Week: The Tragically Hip

We learned last month that Gord Downie, lyricist and singer of Canadian band The Tragically Hip, has terminal brain cancer. And that they were going on tour so he can go out on his own terms, one last hurrah and a final "fuck you" to his illness and to Fate.

You can argue about the "best" or "greatest" Canadian band of all time; you can try to compare the virtuosity of Rush with the universal acclaim of a The Guess Who, the endurance of a Neil Young, the critical acclaim of an Arcade Fire or a Sloan, the public adulation of an April Wine, or you can go sarcastic and say Nickleback.

You can even pretend her impact was as wide as Babes In Toyland's and Hole's and suggest Alanis Morissette, or you can try to "go roots" with Blue Rodeo, Ashley MacIsaac or one of the many legendary folks whose names still strike chords in villages but opted not to make their way to any of the major cities and are now close to being forgotten.

I'll put the Hip up there with Rush and probably be so-Canadian about it and call it a tie.

However way you rank it, there has never been a "more Canadian" band than the Hip, whose lyrics are almost all based on true Canadian stories, be they political (kidnappings and murders of provincial ministers such as Pierre Laporte, language laws in Sault-Ste-Marie), historical (war heroes, events in small towns, the Polytechnique massacre) or sports-related (the 1972 Summit Series, the disappearance and eventual death of Toronto Maple Leaf Bill Barilko).

There would have been two dozen songs I could have chosen to first feature them here, and yet I've chosen It Can't Be Nashville Every Night, because it's the only thing that comes to mind after the Montréal Canadiens traded their best home-grown (i.e. "team-drafted") player in 25 years, P.K. Subban, to the Nashville Predators for becoming-a-liability Team Canada member Shea Weber.

The video for the song was directed by Christopher Mills, who also has worked with the likes of Modest Mouse, The Dead Weather, Interpol, Buck 65, Broken Social Scene, Blue Rodeo, Metric, The Joy Formidable, Senses Fail, Tortoise, Ken Mode, Rush, Breaking Benjamin, Ra Ra Riot, Young Galaxy, Great Lake Swimmers, Mandy Moore and The Boomtang Boys: