Twenty years ago today I fell in love with five guys from Kingston:
On August 15th, 1991 I saw The Tragically Hip for the first time. It was a night that will forever stand out in my memories, and it marked the beginning of a long-term love affair between The Tragically Hip and I.
The Ottawa Congress Centre was packed, and I mean packed - there must have been 2,500 crammed in there. Based on the success of New Orleans Is Sinking The Hip had made the jump from bars to concert halls, but when Road Apples dropped and exploded across the country the band found themselves seriously under-booked, honouring contracts in venues that were much too small for their burgeoning fame. This was certainly one of those cases; I’m sure the band could have filled the 9,000 seat Civic Centre on this run.
(A cool fact: The Hip said in an interview that nobody in Canada would have to pay more than $20 to see them on this tour. A fan in Toronto wrote to tell the band that with service charges the Toronto show cost $20.50 so The Tragically Hip hired people to stand inside the Toronto venue and hand fifty cents to everyone who walked through the doors.)
I grabbed a pair of beers and wedged myself into a spot about twenty feet from the stage. Beyond that I didn’t move for the rest of the night, except as the tide would take me. It was so packed in there we were jammed together like commuters on a Tokyo subway, and with the crowd raging to the band the whole room would drift one way or another as a single, amorphous beast. One minute we would be standing straight up, then the crowd would shift and I’d be leaning to my left at a forty-five degree angle, another shift and my body would be pitched in the opposite direction, again standing at a perilous angle. It was a weird feeling almost falling over again and again while knowing I could never actually fall down - there just wasn’t room.
At one point the kid in front of me craned his head around and said to me, “My feet aren’t touching the ground.” Honestly.
Up on stage the band was absolutely on fire. The newly-shorn Gord Downie commanded the stage with teeming confidence, fronting a band that was well-juiced from an obviously relentless touring and recording regimen. And with just the EP, Up To Here and Road Apples to draw upon the material was utterly top-notch.
This was the end of the era of real rock and roll shows. I’m talking balls-to-the-walls, screaming, fist-pumping, general admission, stage diving rock and roll. Not the ticket-scanning, stay out of the aisles, two-beer limit, print at home, big screen, VIP section, two-song encore, “sit down I paid for these seats” concerts of today. Back in the day a concert was an event, just as weight-lifting and javelin-throwing are events.
Yes friends, back in the day a concert required sweat, stamina, and a good deal of training to get the full experience, and I think this may have been the last real rock and roll concert I ever attended.
Throughout the evening a couple of people had jumped on the stage only to turn and jump immediately back into the swarthy crowd. But during New Orleans Is Sinking some moron leapt onto the stage and as he ran back towards the crowd with security giving chase the guy grabbed Gord Downie, pulling the singer down with him into the pit area between the crowd and the stage.
From my vantage point it looked like Gord went down pretty hard, and he wasn’t coming up. The band played on, looking down into the pit and back and forth at each other quizzically, and still there was no Gord. I was convinced he had gotten hurt and the show would soon be stopped. It seemed like at least a minute or two before he finally dragged himself back on the stage, shirtless, sweaty, and clearly very, very angry.
Teeth and fists clenched Gord paced back and forth across the stage furiously as the band chugged along exchanging worried glances. A few times he went up to the microphone as if to speak, only to turn away, utterly speechless with anger. I was 100% sure it was just a matter of seconds before he stopped the show and stormed offstage - I can’t remember ever seeing someone that angry.
It was like watching an animal that had just been caged for the first time, crazed with fear and indignation and just waiting for an opportunity to attack.
And then, finally, pumping with adrenaline Gord Downie went to the mic, and instead of lashing out, instead of cancelling the show, instead of screaming at people that love him and still try to pull him down, he sang:
“I had my hands in the river, my feet back up on the banks. I looked up to the Lord above and said ‘hey man, thanks’.”
And the room absolutely exploded. This was pure rock; a true moment in the cosmos of three-chord emotion and certainly the most unbridled display of pure rock and roll ethos I’ve seen, and it made my soul explode with that feeling. And it wasn’t over yet.
“Sometimes I feel so good I gotta scream. She said ‘Gordie, baby, I know exactly what you mean’. She said.
“I swear to God she said…”
When Gord screamed the scream that comes after that line he let all the anger out at once and we all felt it - the demon escaped and took over the room. He screamed again, and people started throwing their beer cups.
Downie came to the front of the stage, shirtless and without a mic, his arms at his sides with his fingers spread wide and his head raised to the ceiling, screaming for his life. His eyes clenched and his head shaking from side to side, a thousand beer cups bounced off his body as the crowd pelted the angry beast. I can see the beer cascading through the air, lit up by red and blue light cans, Gord taking it in like a Baptism of fire. I can still hear Downie’s acoustic screams audible above the electrified band and the manic crowd.
Watching those beer cup bounce off of that man as he screamed primally at a rabid audience hypnotized by rock and roll is probably the single most enthralling moment of my entire concert-going history. It’s not just a visual memory, it had nothing to do with the song, it was a magnified burst of that feeling that made me fall in love with live music in the first place, that intangible, indescribable orgasm of intense emotion that makes you go blind and senseless with bliss, makes you throw your hands in the air and scream like a madman on fire.
The kind of feeling that makes you throw a pair of $6 beers into the air at a rock and roll show.
Some vids I too. If you can get through the Grace, Too without tears, you're not human :0)
At the Hundredth Meridian: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBp98emsJgY
Courage (For Hugh Maclennan): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZgXdU_cGTc
Grace, Too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQwrq2KHH9k
Gift Shop: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQwrq2KHH9k
Ahead By A Century: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG8jIAAoiMc
Fiddler's Green http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ-5PJDB2FA
Incredible show. The crowd BLEW away the crowd at the Toronto show I saw (Wed). Super high energy. The Grace, Too was unreal with Gordie in tears. What a night.
So happy and satisfied with the shows i saw this summer. My Phish cup is full!
great to have such a big Ottawa crew down at the show on sunday. And what a gorgeous view!
last 3 shows were redic. Get ready west coasters!
Nice memory.
I came to Ottawa from Kingston to see Phish for the night and stayed at a friend's place who had preloaded myself and my buddy's heads with some tapes that he gave us. I wish I could remember it in detail like Velvet. I only knew a couple of the songs played at the time and now can't even be sure which ones I only had heard then. We didn't have more than 2 or 3 tapes to listen to before catching this show.
I recall being enlightened as to why they would be "the next grateful dead" as Relix was proclaiming. Sure the talent was obvious, but I found their non-amplified barbershop portions to be delightful like "man these guys can sing!" and the quirkiness of Jon Fishman's vacuum solo helped add to the entertainment.
Would love to see a video of this show pop out one day.
It's a travelogue doc-style program called Earth Beat. The idea is that in each episode I travel to a different city or country and look at the music indigenous to that particular area. I shot the pilot episode in Zambia and spent the last long time figuring out software and editing it together. The next trick is to sell it to a network, and the first step in that direction is to see if anyone likes it.
So if you have forty-nine or so minutes to kill I urge you to give it a spin. I am very open to comments and criticisms. If you have any thoughts that can make this thing better please, by all means let me know.
Booche got a reaction from Pablo Sanchez in The Ringers
