The improbable media journey of The Tragically Hip.
How do you define success for a rock group? The nature of the ladder is very clear at the bottom: the rungs are marked with “playing competently in the same key,” “playing for money for the first time,” “becoming spiritual leaders of a local music scene,” “having a national hit single” … it is all easy to work out. At the top, though, the standards are no longer technical and commercial. They become historical.
Above the level of “mere” successful hit- makers, there are artists whose core discography, or even their entire career in the studio, becomes part of a larger cultural story — the Led Zeppelins, Black Sabbaths and Kinks. And there’s a level above that, at which a group’s individual tracks become the subject of extensive study, entire miniliteratures — where even B- sides and cast- offs attract interest, and every move, every day, is extensively documented. That level’s pretty much Bob Dylan and the Beatles.
Would you have guessed in, say, 1991, that the Tragically Hip would go on to contend in that league just below Dylan? It’s a surprise to me. I guess I liked them the first time I heard them on the radio, but they became visible in a fertile era for Canadian pop — a bettor might as easily have put chips on the Northern Pikes, Sloan or The Odds. Were we so certain it was Gord Downie who was destined to become a living saint, and not Moe Berg? Some of these acts made great records, but the early Tragically Hip LPs somehow wore like leather, and they held onto their English- Canadian following without flying apart, which might be the unlikeliest part.
Clearly the Hip benefited with Canadian audiences from their failure to penetrate the force- field around the U. S. market. ( There’s a great MBA case study in The Tragically Hip: how to monetize national idiosyncrasy.) Equally clearly is that Downie’s halo shines a little brighter because of his illness. But none of this really explains the particularity with which Canadians broke down and discussed the band’s recorded legacy Saturday night. We have all taken sides on two dozen Tragically Hip songs and anointed favourites. That doesn’t happen overnight, or by accident, or because someone got cancer. People who were 20 when 38 Years Old came out have unpacked it again and again as the actual age of 38 whizzed by and receded.
This highlights something odd about the way the CBC was tongue- bathed on social media for broad- and net- casting the last Tragically Hip show of the tour without traditional ads. The broadcast was a technical success, not susceptible to any criticism that I can see. But the CBC’s employees and clientele made sure to capture the promotional benefit off- camera, hypothesizing extensively about what an ugly hash of the event a “private” broadcaster would have made. Ads for freedom from ads, served after the main dish.
I’ ve probably said too much about all this already, but I have a new question: would we have ever heard of The Tragically Hip if it had been up to the CBC in the first place? When the music video became a dis- tinct medium, the CBC, in general, handled it like a chimp with a smartphone. The pan- Canadian music scene that the Hip entered was a creation of Moses Znaimer and muchmusic, acting with the regulatory spur of the Canadian Radiotelevision & Telecommunications Commission jabbing their flank. The Tragically Hip were shoved into a corrida with other acts that might once have remained regional favourites. Video was our hint that they had a secret weapon in their frantic, unconfined frontman.
All this activity, I’m afraid, was dreadfully commercial and ad- saturated. But one must admit that once the operating cultural nationalists have built some actual national culture, the state broadcaster is good at pointing a camera at it. If muchmusic had not long since become a zombie brand, nobody would even think it necessary for the CBC to distribute a concert event with a unique semisacred character. The CBC, as I hope everyone knows, doesn’ t have an actual rule against ads; like any other broadcaster, it has a budget, and it has to make judgment calls about what the audience will tolerate. Private broadcasting companies proved during the general election that they can take on public responsibilities without the world exploding. Dare I add that every copy of a newspaper proves it?
I have a chauvinist generation al fear that the postvideo world is too fragmented to allow a group like the Tragically Hip to ascend to common, enduring national prominence. There sometimes seems to be no tournament for them to play in, so to speak. I am haunted by mute Miltons, the thought of the later bands or the future ones that never make it out of Kelowna, B.C ., or Cape Breton, N. S. At the same time, I call this a “chauvinist generational fear” because I remember perfectly well that boomers thought music videos were the end of the world — an intrusive force that would subvert the purity of being alone with a vinyl disc and a good stereo.
Silly boomers. Little did you imagine how much concentrated attention could be devoted to the technical specifications of a vinyl record. We did not hear much from the super- oldies on or after Saturday night’s Hip concert — which is interesting, because normally a feature of nationally representative artists is that they appeal across generations. Without question, people not yet born when Phantom Power was released have embraced t he Tragically Hip with avidity. For them, the stature of the band is an established truth. I cannot imagine a greater gift for an artist whose life is in danger than to know, as Downie now must, that he has a future as an idea.
THIS YEAR’S TRAVELS HAVE TAKEN ME FROM ONE END OF THE TRANSCANADA HIGHWAY TO THE OTHER. — FATHER RAYMOND J. DE SOUZA WOULD YOU HAVE GUESSED IN, SAY, 1991, THAT THE BAND WOULD BECOME A NATIONAL ICON?