For most music fans, there is at least one band they can never quite get into. No matter how popular, no matter how critically acclaimed. For whatever reason, you just don’t get it.
Conversely, most music fans also have a band they will love with an unconditional devotion usually only seen in dogs towards their owners. Whose music will always be special, personal, sacred.
For me, the Tragically Hip is somehow both.
If you didn’t grow up in Canada, it’s hard to explain how much a part of daily life this band became over the course of their 30-odd years together. Think of how impossible it was to escape the music of the Dave Matthews Band at their peak. Or Coldplay. Now imagine that for three decades.
Since the late-80s, the Hip’s music has been a staple of dorm rooms, summer camps, and cottages across the country. Some magical combination of patriotic lyrics, accessibility, and Canadian content laws gave them unprecedented staying power.
And this past weekend, it came to an emotional end as they played their final concert.
The band announced this year that because of frontman Gord Downie’s terminal brain cancer, they would be touring for the last time. The outpouring of gratitude was, within Canada, equal to the outpouring in the wake of Bowie’s death. But whereas Bowie left us while we slept, leaving a surprise under our pillows with his post-humous release, the Hip took the time to say goodbye, shake each person’s hand, sing everyone’s favourite tunes.
Both musicians saluted their fans in a way that was absolutely in line with their personalities. Bowie, the showman, the architect of so many characters, engineered his final opus with all the cleverness and artistry for which he was known. Downie, the friendly-Canadian-next-door, wanted to tour the country that had crowned him and his group of friends “Canada’s Rock Band”.
The Tragically Hip’s goodbye tour was perhaps the national event of the summer in Canada. I can’t even guess at what people paid for tickets. The very last show was streamed live, and people packed theatres and concert halls to watch it on the big screen. The Prime Minister (whose father was PM when the Hip began) was in attendance and crying along with everyone else.
The intense emotion was understandable- after all, how often does a band play a show that everyone knows is their last? There will be no money-grabbing reunion tour ten years down the road. The songs they played at their final show will be the last songs they will ever play together.
Anyone who watched will tell you it was an emotionally complex show. I watched the final show in my friend’s backyard. We rented a projector, put up a sheet, and sat under the glowing mixture of stars and ambient city light. Sometimes we sang along, sometimes we chatted about which songs we hoped they’d play next, sometimes we sat in silence as Downie seemed to lose himself halfway between his unique stage persona and his own internal coming-to-terms with exactly what he was doing.
And all the while, I found myself pondering my original question: how is it possible for me to feel both positive and neutral about this iconic band’s music?
I think it can all be summed up in this one song.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. Voice and lyrics. A lot of Canadian singers seem to have a love-it-or-hate-it voice. Think Neil Young or Leonard Cohen. Gord Downie’s tone is an acquired taste, on the same spectrum as Michael Stipe and Ed Kowalczyk, and it’s not for everyone. But regardless of how I’m feeling about his voice at any moment, Downie’s ability as a poet is undeniably amazing. His words are the lyrical equivalent of a painting by the Group of Seven.
2. Drive and energy. This song, like most Hip songs, doesn’t really “go anywhere” musically. It just builds its own modest momentum and eventually grooves itself out. As a song-structure nerd, that usually turns me off. But the band’s great live energy manages to come through in their recordings. The only time I saw them live was on January 1st, 2000, and in Downie’s performance on that day, whether he was singing, bantering with the audience, or doing his signature dance, the energy was incredible.
3. Music and memories. Like many Canadians, I have strong memories associated with the Hip’s music. This particular track takes me directly to my summers as a camp counsellor. It is impossible for me to detach the warmth of those memories from the music. Whether I love the memories or the song doesn’t matter anymore, because the two can’t be separated.
I guess the Hip for me are like the old wallpaper at a childhood cottage. It’s always there, and often you ignore it, or even sneer snobbishly at it for being ugly. But sometimes you take a moment to notice its interesting pattern. You realize that to remove it would be to take away from the cottage as a whole. It’s out of style but current, bland but beautiful, irreversibly linked to your own identity.
Over the decades, the Hip became part of the background noise of the country, and there’s a strange hush now that they’re done.
Recommended listening activity:
Sitting on a dock with your toes dangling in the water.