Hip strikes final chord
It’s one of the best pieces of advice we seemingly never listen to: Don’t take anything for granted. You never know when it’ll end.
For nearly 30 years, we’ve always had a Tragically Hip show or tour to look forward to. Somewhere. If you missed them one year, you knew they’d be back the next. There was no urgency to see them after awhile. They would always be here. We all took them for granted. The finality of what’s happening now didn’t really hit me until I called up the Hip’s website Friday morning. Under ‘upcoming shows’ there is only one. The last one. Saturday night.
A list that used to go on and on is now down to one solitary date, in Kingston. Where they started, and where they’ll finish. A mythic end to what has been an amazing chapter in Canadian music history, even if you’re not a devout Hip fan.
I’m struggling to recall anything like it, anywhere. We’ve seen farewell tours, reunion tours, and final shows which actually were final shows. But this? An impending death sentence bringing a huge band and its audience together one last time?
This is different. And much more profound. This past month has been about us as much as the band, which I’m sure is just what Gord Downie wanted.
After every show of this surprising, far-too-short tour, the posts have been fascinating. Painful. Personal.
Fans summing up their emotions in ways you don’t normally associate with a rock show. So many tears, so many stories of cancer taking away friends and family. This has been a communal grieving process we haven’t seen the likes of in Canada since Terry Fox 35 years ago.
And yes, I’m fully aware what a towering figure that is to draw any comparison to in this country. But as the years go on and Downie’s place in Canadian culture and history looms larger, it will be warranted. That chord isn’t struck often, but it is now. As sad as it is, there’s something very far-reaching and important going on here.
“I went to two of the shows on this tour and it was the most intense emotional show I have ever seen,” says Niagara musician Anthony Botting, who has played a series of fundraising Tragically Hip tribute shows this summer for Sunnybrook Hospital’s Gord Downie Fund for Brain Cancer Research.
“Everyone being brought to tears, hanging on his every word and movement.
“He is beloved by this country and they are one of the best bands on the planet.”
While talking to singer Royal Wood this week, who plays Jackson-Triggs Winery Saturday night, the conversation inevitably turned to The Hip.
“They were truly a fabric of what this country has been,” he said. “Every boat ride, every cottage trip, every car trip. I used to paint houses all through high school and university, and the amount of Hip records that I burnt through…”
Former Review editor Stephen Fields, one of my best friends and the biggest Tragically Hip fan I know, has been posting daily videos on his Facebook page compiling a ‘dream set list’ for the final show. For Last American Exit, the second song on their 1987 debut EP, he summed them up beautifully: “Right from the beginning they’ve made it clear they are a Canadian band and that coming home is what really mattered to them. Think of how far they’ve travelled. And think of how uncompromisingly Canadian they’ve always been - right from the get-go. Success in the U.S. means jack s---. The Hip are ours, and have always been.”
Saturday night in Niagara we will gather at the Meridian Centre in St. Catharines. The Scotiabank Convention Centre in Niagara Falls. Queen Victoria Park in Niagara Falls. Civic Square in Welland. Bars and restaurants. Bedrooms and living rooms. In Ontario alone, there are 95 confirmed public spaces to watch the show. CBC will broadcast it across the country commercial free - on its radio, TV and digital platforms.
Whether we’re with a crowd or watching alone, we will all bring something to this show.
I’ll be reminded of getting that very first Tragically Hip EP mailed to me during my second year of college, hoping for a review.
I’ll remember seeing them for the first time at Ontario Place, Aug. 4, 1991. It became the unofficial first date for the girl I’m still with now, and will be watching Saturday’s show with.
I’ll be reminded of the unfiltered love and respect St. Catharines showed when they played the Meridian Centre Feb. 17, 2015. It was my first time seeing them since that first show, and that bond between the band and its fans was something I only see at Springsteen shows.
None of us knew that would be their last Niagara concert.
Saturday night? We’ll know what we’re watching, and what it means.
And then, maybe a year from now – maybe months, the way cancer works – we will get the news we’ve been dreading. And we’ll all scour Hip lyrics to sum up how we feel.
I already have: “We don’t go anywhere…just on trips.”