{"id":35983,"date":"2016-09-28T02:00:28","date_gmt":"2016-09-28T06:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=35983"},"modified":"2016-09-27T10:02:59","modified_gmt":"2016-09-27T14:02:59","slug":"first-i-have-to-explain-the-tragically-hip-i-apologize-in-advance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/09\/28\/first-i-have-to-explain-the-tragically-hip-i-apologize-in-advance\/","title":{"rendered":"“… first I have to explain the Tragically Hip. I apologize in advance.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kathy Shaidle<\/a> burnishes her street cred as the most anti-Tragically Hip writer of the year:<\/p>\n

Foreign ears will likely mistake the Hip for a fairly capable R.E.M. cover band \u2014 very \u201cStuff White People Like,\u201d nothing more. But up here during, yes, the 1990s, college students got maudlin drunk on this group\u2019s unsingable songs, in part because the only words you can make out are Canadian place names<\/a> and slang terms<\/a>, and there will always exist a particular variety of parochial \u2014 the type who otherwise despises \u201cpatriotism\u201d \u2014 who inevitably finds that sort of thing weirdly\u2026I don\u2019t know if \u201cflattering\u201d is quite the word, but it will have to do. It helps that, off stage, the Hip promote the usual \u201cprogressive\u201d bunkum.<\/p>\n

The Tragically Hip are hardly the Rolling Stones or the Who, or Smashing Pumpkins or Hole. The Tragically Hip will never make any Top 50, or even Top 500, Musical Groups of All Time List.<\/p>\n

And yet, I\u2019ve been duly informed, they are \u201cCanada\u2019s Band.\u201d The announcement on May Two-Four<\/a> that lead singer and songwriter Gord Downie<\/a> had fatal brain cancer meant, for me, that (forget what I wrote last week<\/a>) his gnomic lyrics finally had a pretext, and for everyone else, that the band was embarking on a national farewell tour.<\/p>\n

The media covered<\/a> every aspect of this cross-country excursion with that cloying, breathless boosterism normally reserved for the Olympics. Except even the Games\u2019 critics are allowed to voice their dissent, and not a discouraging word was permitted as the Tragically Hip traipsed across the country all summer, their \u201csongs\u201d blaring on the radio even more than already demanded by CanCon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The CBC broadcast their final gig live, calling it \u201can honour and a privilege.\u201d Prime Minister Zoolander (later conspicuously absent from any 15th-anniversary commemorations of 9\/11) attended, of course. Maclean\u2019s<\/em> put Downie on the cover of a special issue and devoted dozens of pages<\/a> to the tour, analyzing each set list and quoting fans<\/a> declaring the Hip\u2019s songs \u201cthe soundtrack of our lives\u201d and Downie \u201ca genius\u201d and a \u201cshaman\u201d and a \u201csaint.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019d go on, but Canadian poet David Solway\u2019s crabby take<\/a> on this \u201corgiastic sobfest\u201d cannot be bettered. (Not surprisingly, it was published by an American outlet.)<\/p>\n

And then it was over. Finally.<\/p>\n

Except until it wasn\u2019t.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kathy Shaidle burnishes her street cred as the most anti-Tragically Hip writer of the year: Foreign ears will likely mistake the Hip for a fairly capable R.E.M. cover band \u2014 very \u201cStuff White People Like,\u201d nothing more. But up here during, yes, the 1990s, college students got maudlin drunk on this group\u2019s unsingable songs, in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,28],"tags":[86,456,804,200],"class_list":["post-35983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-media","tag-criticism","tag-hysteria","tag-mourningsickness","tag-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9mn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35983"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35985,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35983\/revisions\/35985"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}