Tool vs The Tragically Hip CLOSED

For those who don't know, the Hip was Canada's top rock band for well over a decade...despite the success of their stateside hit "New Orleans Is Sinking" thry just didn't catch on in the US. Lyrically brilliant, it's rock with a midwestern feel and an eccentric front man..sorta like very early Train with balls and fronted by Micheal Stipe's evil twin brother.

 

Yes...was trying to remember that one. Lyrically it's a trip...sounds like a letter set to music.

 

50 Mission Cap. Has been overplayed over the years but I still love it. About a creepy sports story.

The last goal Bill Barilko scored won the Maple Leafs the Stanley Cup. He died that summer in a plane crash. They didn't win another cup until immediately after his body was found.

 

Back in the 90s it was funny when big US and/or UK bands would come to Canada and play a music festival with the Hip. It would weird them out that this band they had never heard of got a bigger crowd reception than everyone else put together.

 

True story: second band I played in had a Hip fan in it...I'd never heard them but I wrote my own bass lines over "She Didn't Know" and "When The Weight Comes Down".
One day the Hip came to Ziggy's in Winston-Salem. I was hanging out in a music store chatting with a friend and in walks this tall, staggeringly voluptuous brunette asking if she can hang a Hip promo poster. She asked if we knew of them; friend said no but I was all like "YEAH! My band plays their material!" She asked if I heard their new album?..no?...here, have the CD!...and she gave me a copy of Fully, Completely. That was a great introduction album, and I've been Hip ever since.

 

Another great lyric..because how does anyone set THIS to music?! :

"Bill Barilko disappeared that summer. He was on a fishing trip. The last goal he ever scored won the Leafs the Cup. The didn't win another till 1962- the year he was discovered. I stole this from a hockey card I keep tucked up under my fifty mission cap; I worked it in to look like that."

 

Damn that is pretty early on. I believe that was their third album and what many consider their best.


A strange song of theirs

Also one of the few songs where it is easy to figure out. Most of the lyrics in their songs were rather abstract which may have hurt them with American 90s music fans who wanted to find deep meaning in every song.

 

My office bulletin board:

 

Hey, Gordon Lightfoot once put a Newsweek article to music.