babylonDon

Now that we've established context, (Canadians of all shapes and sizes REALLY like Tragically Hip) I feel like we can discuss the show.

The Hip have always been a solid band to me. I like them a lot. They've got a front man, with a taste for esoteric lyrics and bizarre behavior. It helps to know that they started life as Doors cover band. The rest of the band is fantastic. Their songs are structured in an open-ended, loose fashion, that allows for lots of room to maneuver. And the band is both confident and talented enough to use that space to their full advantage.

They've been touring in support of their latest album 'World Container', and had been in Ottawa recently. But this was a festival, and the crowd was 23,000 strong, and openly adoring.

This show was a victory lap. It was a mutual admiration rite, bordering on orgiastic. This was a blow-out of epic proportion.

They opened with a song off the new album, a single that received heavy air play in Canada called 'In View'. It was well-received from the opening notes...But they were pumped up by the crowd, and by the time they finished that song had taken off all the way up the mountain, and there was no looking back.

By this time it had been made clear to me, that Gordon Downy, is not to be regarded as merely mortal. He was riding waves of love heretofore reserved for Jerry Garcia, or Christ....Or Super Golden Christ.

And Downy was eating it up with both hands. Every drop of sweat that popped up on his shaved head, was blotted with a tissue, and every tissue bearing the sacred sweat was tossed magnanimously to the grateful thronging the stage.
He also twirls, bends, and breaks microphone stands, with an entertaining flourish.

Don't get me wrong, I believe Downy gets it. But he was plainly enjoying the the irony, of behaving like the guy most of these good people would avoid on the bus, and being revered for it. He contorts, drags his knuckles like an ape man, and screams at unexpected moments. And the crowd is riveted. They never take their eyes off him, and reward each lurch, gesture, and tic, with unabashed joy.

Which in a way, is a real shame. Downy is a high energy, antic front man, and he deserves notice, but let's hear it for the band, eh? Granted, they are not visually spectacular, in comparison. But that's probably because they're busy ripping up the songs. They were unrelenting. And they were certainly feeding off the crowd as well. I've heard most of the music they played Thursday, live and on album, and they absolutely sailed past anything I've ever heard them do before. Even ballads like 'Ahead By A Century' and 'Wheat Kings', that started off..well pretty, took on leathery, behemoth wings, and buzzed the grounds. When Downy picks up his acoustic and they go into a three guitar attack, hold on. Because they are gonna take it 'somewhere'.

And that's how the rest of the show played out. The individual songs, while all known and oh-so-loved, ceased to be anything more than launchpads for jams, that were both powerful and layered. The rhythm section is outstanding, the drummer holding down the beat and suggesting new direction, without a lot of self-indulgent rolls.The bass flows underneath like a white water river made of boxing gloves.
The rhythm guitarist, knows his songs and plays cunningly around them, with more filigrees and subtlety than average, and the lead guitarist wends his way through all of it with an alternating current of nuance and demand, and did so through the entire show.

It was truly a spectacle. To me, it was like being a fan of Clark Kent, and then finding myself inside the phone booth while he changed into superman.

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