Tragedy for The Tragically Hip

I wish that blog post title was a witty play on a song title or an album title, but it is not.

Shocking news out of Canada yesterday. Gordon Downie, lead singer of The Tragically Hip, is suffering from terminal brain cancer. You can read the band's official statement here.

I listened to this band, heavily, during the late 1980s and early 1990s. One of my favorite live shows was a Tragically Hip concert.

The core four of their early albums were (are) great rock music. I still list them in my top lists of favorite music. The band fell off my radar after those albums. I felt like some of the punch went out. Those were the years between CDs and digital music. I didn't want to keep paying for an entire CD that disappointed me.

The band never quite had the traction in the US that they should have. Maybe it was their lyrical density. Their lyrics weren't often easy to catch on - often intentionally so, to let the audience paint their own pictures and to blend multiple ideas and/or images in one song.

How many rock bands name-check Shakespeare's Falstaff? Or discuss the sinking of the Bismarck? European conquest of North America?

Also, I learned only recently, being Canadian they were often writing about Canadian issues and news-stories. They were, as I read somewhere once on the web, "Canadian as fuck."

Those four early albums should be in any rock/hard-rock listener's collection.

UP TO HERE
ROAD APPLES
FULLY COMPLETELY
DAY FOR NIGHT

If I was stuck on the proverbial desert island, I'd go with ROAD APPLES.

My favorite song from ROAD APPLES?  "Born in the Water"

An explanation of the lyrics. It seems the US does not have a monopoly on attempted ostracization by way of "official language" declarations.

My favorite song from the Hip?  "Fifty Mission Cap"

An explanation of the lyrics.  A blending of the fifty mission requirement from Catch-22 with a plane crash search and a professional hockey player.

Both, lyrically, yes ... Canadian as fuck.

They will be going out "with their boots on."

So after 30-some years together as The Tragically Hip, thousands of shows, and hundreds of tours…

We’ve decided to do another one.

This feels like the right thing to do now, for Gord, and for all of us.

So after 30-some years together as The Tragically Hip, thousands of shows, and hundreds of tours…
We’ve decided to do another one.
This feels like the right thing to do now, for Gord, and for all of us.
- See more at: http://www.thehip.com/news/an-important-message-from-the-band/#sthash.IPovyaX1.gldhGBeL.dpuf So after 30-some years together as The Tragically Hip, thousands of shows, and hundreds of tours…

So after 30-some years together as The Tragically Hip, thousands of shows, and hundreds of tours…
We’ve decided to do another one.
This feels like the right thing to do now, for Gord, and for all of us.
- See more at: http://www.thehip.com/news/an-important-message-from-the-band/#sthash.IPovyaX1.gldhGBeL.dpuf

recent read; The Violent Land

"From the great Brazilian author, an exotic tale of greed, madness, and a dispute between two powerful families over land on the cocoa-rich coast of Bahia

The siren song of the lush, cocoa-growing forests of Bahia lures them all—the adventurers, the assassins, the gamblers, the brave and beautiful women. It is not a gentle song, but a song of greed, madness, and blood. It is a song that promises riches untold, or death for the price of a swig of rum . . . a song most cannot resist—until it is too late..."

Not what I was expecting. I'm not saying it was bad, but I went in with different expectations. I thought I would get a rough & tumble Western set in Brazilian cocoa land.

But it reads more like a prime time soap opera like DALLAS.

Lots of players, movers. A lot of how the cocoa land corrupts the soul and the flesh.  Although the introduction hinted there might be cocoa/coco industry parallels, the cocoa production doesn't reach the US by the end of the novel.

It is more akin to stories about boom oil or gold rushes.

It's very nice writing, some good passages. Surprisingly open about sex and prostitutes. But written south-of-the-border, that's not too surprising. Though, if it reached the US when it was written (1947) I bet it would have been a firestorm.

The real bummer is how much of the gun fighting takes place off page. Far too much telling, not enough showing.

Anyway. Again - not bad - but not what I expected.

Your mileage may vary.