(Album ©1991, MCA Records)
After college was filled with all kinds of new music,
as I was working at a radio station and had lots of time and access to see bands. I got into Phish around this time, after pretty much ignoring them all through college as they were refining their sound. We played “Chalkdust Torture” on WIZN and I liked that, so I dug into A Picture of Nectar and enjoyed it quite a bit. I saw the Smashing Pumpkins when they opened for Jane’s Addiction in Montreal, and enjoyed them less. I had seen Drivin’N’Cryin’ open for Soul Asylum a few years earlier, and then their record Fly Me Courageous came out and I really liked that one a lot.
I also “discovered” a ton of classic songs that I totally fell in love with. Old tracks by Pat Travers (“Boom Boom, Out Go the Lights”), Jon Astley (“Jane’s Getting Serious”), Blackfoot (“Train,Train”), and my still favorite from that period, Kim Mitchell (“Go for Soda”). WIZN was THE rock station in and around Burlington, VT, so we played the obvious bands that our audience wanted to hear (Skynyrd, Allmans, The Who, The Beatles, The Stones, etc.), the new radio hit songs (Tom Cochrane’s “Life is a Highway”, Bonnie Raitt’s “Thing Called Love”), and mixed in some local stuff (Phish, The Martin Guigui Band, mostly on the overnights when I had my shift). We also played a Canadian band that I had never heard of called The Tragically Hip.
The Hip had released two previous albums and their third came out just as I started my WIZN gig. They had a quirky, catchy single called “Three Pistols” plus we played two other songs, “Little Bones” and “Twist My Arm”. I took home a copy of the CD and found that every song was great. Who was this band with the cool name and the unique sound? The Hip, it turns out, was fast becoming one of Canada’s most popular bands, right up there with Rush and Bryan Adams. But they were not breaking in the US at all – except in Burlington and also around Detroit, as they hailed from nearby Kingston, Ontario.
In Burlington, they were selling out the local Auditorium when I first came upon them, and in the summer of 1992, our station had them do a “Blooze Cruise” show on a Lake Champlain ferry boat. I got to “work” that show and stood right next to the band as they absolutely killed while we floated along out on the lake. The energy they projected in both their music and their performance was amazing to experience in such close quarters. The lead singer, Gord Downie, was especially intense and physical and quirky – he was really incredible. That was it – I was in.
I went and got their previous album (their first major label release) which had the minor hits “New Orleans is Sinking” and “Blow at High Dough” on it, and again, all the songs were winners! I remember driving up to Montreal the next summer with my buddies Tony and Mike to see them headline an outdoor festival and that was astounding to see how many people were into them! I followed their career and got every album they released right up until 2017, when Downie passed away from brain cancer.
Before he died, the band did one final tour of Canada in 2016. Every show was an event, and the last show, in Kingston, was broadcast nationally on CBC. It was a major event – PM Justin Trudeau even attended. I watched it live online and it was awesome, and I was smiling at my laptop screen through the entire show, even as I realized there were tears running down my face while we all watched the band, and specifically Gord, come out to take their final bows at the end of the show. Last year, just after Gord died, they released a documentary about the final performance, called Long Time Running which I found on Netflix. Watch it if you can. You’ll see a band and a man facing death with love and joy, and connecting with their fans like few bands ever do. I’m proud to be one of those fans, and it all started for me with the Road Apples album back in 1991.
