What a show(s)!

Chris and Kate were a little late (they said they were stuck in traffic) but sounded great. Kate is beautiful (as always) she's in a cream colored dress and Chris? Well he's dressed a little shabby (also, as always). Good set.

Guster. What can I say? These guys are great. I've never seen a drummer play with just his hands. His hands were taped like a hockey stick. These three have huge energy and should go far. Buy their albums...

During Guster I met the Slacker. I had a voicemail, he said row RR. I looked but he found me. A definite highlight. We sat on the hill and talked, and then it was over as quickly as it started.

We'll be in Quebec man!  Me and Chico...

What can I say about the boys that hasn't been said before. A great show, Gord was hot but balanced. They played Yawning!!! wow!!!

The crowd was just beautiful. I couldn't stop looking around at all the people...dancing...singing. Great stuff.

Forward to the end of the show. Second encore, they start to play Spring. Then Gordon stop the band. Someone is hurt up front...a girl. Bouncers and Gord are trying to see what's up...she is carried out. Johnny starts Spring again, but Gord won't start singing. He ends up holding the mic
stand over the crowd and we sing the *whole* song. At the end Gord walks off and that's the end.

On the way home we pull over to let the ambulance through....

I can't do the setlist right now, but it was great...

scoots
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this was tonight's set:

tiger
fully
down
gift
yawning
poets
fever (rhetorical question)
fireworks
flamenco
courage
completists
abac
wheat
freak
nautical (picked out ten only from the crowd)
m@w

break

stay
escape
bones

break

spring
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Hey all,

Just got back from the Pine Knob show in Detroit, Set opened with Tiger and closed with M@W. o Grace, too no NOIS, but they did play Wheat Kings, good show all in all, although I've seen better. Anyone one have any thoughts on Kate Fenner coming up and singing? She sung a whole vere of Yawning or Snarling, and it just didn't seem right. It wasn't... Hip. If she wants to stand there and play tambourine all night she can be my guest, but I really think the set can do without here singing along. Just my opinion, any thoughts?

Lumpy
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Great show, had fun,....but I have to point the lions share of the finger at younger Canadian adults, who just do not know when they are WWWWWAYY past their limit. Got a little freaky there, but that doesn't leave the Americans out either. Cool it on hetting hammered at theses shows or they are gonna stop selling beer in the venue. Just some advise from an old drunk havvin fun.:)
Pat
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Just waking up after last nights show, and trying to asses the show.  I thought it was great to hear some different songs (ie: escape is at hand...) but was sort of bummed with the way the show ended.  I gotta believe that they had a few more to play, but the incident at the stage pissed them off.  Nonetheless, it was still a strong show.  Kate Fenner is pretty talented, but I wish she hadn't spent the entire noght on the stage.  A song or two would have been just fine.  But we don't make the decisions, TTH does.
AH
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Am I the only one who thought the Yawning or Snarling with Kate was the highlight?
Although, it was sad to see the girl faint, I think kudos should be lauded on the Hip's fans for being able to carry Gordie and the band through Springtime.  What other fans would know all the words to the song when the lead singer doesn't feel like singing.

Coach
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Was anyone up close enough to see what happened? The girl they dragged out of the crowd was obviously in very bad shape. I'm just wondering if anyone knows if she was all right ... it didn't look good when they dragged her out.
Whatever happened to her ... it must have been pretty bad. Gord made a B-line right for her and was trying to help security get her out of the crowd. It obviously shook him up pretty good, he kept looking to the side of the stage for the rest of the song to see if she was all right.
It was very strange ... they cut the show short, yet most people in the crowd seemed to grasp that something serious had happened, at least those of us who saw them carry the girl off the side of the stage. I hope she's O.K. Full marks to Gord for literally running to her aid. Not many singers would have done that. You know it shook Gord up when he told the crowd "You sing it" and then later
remarked "sing it for that little girl".
Even though the show ended abruptly, it was none-the-less another quality show. I think everyone was a little shook up by the ending, at least if you were sober enough to know what happened. I hope she's all right. I'd hate to see a fine performance overshadowed by an unfortunate incident.
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All I gotta say is for a Hip concert, I felt two extremes. We had quite the roadtrip to see the Hip play Pine Knob last night. We'll it all started out with 26, 18-21 year old young Southern Ontarians loading up on what we thought we rented as a coach bus but instead turned out to be a damn school bus they converted into a coach bus. It was an ugly white bus with Laidlaw across the side and the seats had like a different material on them and 2 canadian flags tied to the back, other than that it was a schol bus. So we make our way to the Sarnia/Port Huron boarder, thinking with 1 1/2 or 2 hours we'd be in the Pine Knob parking lot tailgating havin a blast before the concert......boy were we wrong! After about 3 bathroom breaks and a stop at a party store to load up on the "wobbly pops" we are about1/2 hour away from Pine Knob wheh the traffic jam hits. It was backed for miles. So we putt along for about 45 minutes when the bus driver pulls off the interstate for ANOTHER bathroom break for everyone..)that's what happens when you break the seal to damn early"..after the break instead of going back on the interstate at the Palace(only 5 minutes away from Pine Knob) we take the regulkar roads....of course we get lost.....an HOUR later we find Pine Knob...we pull into the Pine Knob at 6:30...4 HOURS after we left.
"This when it starts gettin good"..as soon as we stop to park, cops are all over our bus. The get on and give a huge lecture about us drinking on the bus and how we are all under age and the 21 year old with us can be charged with supplying, yadda yadda yadda, and then comes the bad news.."All alcohol will be dumped!!!!!!" Well that doesn't go over well with a few drunk Canadian 20 year old's...so after a bit of arguing with the cops, etc. we proceed to dump our beer. I believe this provided the entertainment for everyone who was in the VIP parking, because crowds surrounded us, people were coming from all over to watch us unload a good 7 cases of beer and other stuff. It almost breaks your heart to see all that beer go to waste. There musta have been 5 or 6 cops watchin us and inspecvting the bus to make sure we got every last ounce of alcohol off the bus. Well this really put a damper on our day. But all was not lost b/c one security "beeotch" on a golf cart swiped 2 bottles of Boones from our stuff and hid it in her golf cart,. we confronted her much to the dismay of the cops, but she said it was hers and she bought them and eneded up keeping them(who briongs alcohol with them while on the job??) but the kicker is only one bottle was Boones, well lets
just say one of the guys couldn't wait for a restroom break...and had to use what was avilable......
Well the concert sure cheered everyone up, the setlist was fantastic, the crowd energy was amazing. But at the secong encore when the girl fainted and Gord stopped, and they started up again afetr they got her outta there, you could tell this kinda bothered Gord b/c he looked out of it and just let the crowd sing springtime, and as soon as it was done he was gone....kinda put a sour end on what was a great concert.
All in all it wasn't a bad day, the concert was amazing though, they sure know how to do it up for the big crowds.
Just outta curiosity..Did anyone on this list see our sweet white laidlaw bus with the Canadian flags flappin on the back, hoootin and hollerin when we pulled in, or did anyone see that travisty of what happend to us in the parking lot with the cops.
Well it was quite a memorable experience (as usual with the hip)
By the way it only took 4 hours to get home too....(damn detroit traffic)
Our beer shoulda been "locked in the trunk of a car"
Al
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saturday-detroit... i ran into this guy that i had recently met at a 54-40 show in cleveland the night before and convinced him to go to detroit with us. so, this time, it was me, friend, acquaintance, and guy i just met. he was cool, though. acquaintance was still an asshole. (i'm not mentioning names just in case-i've been finding out its a smaller world than one might think) so we spent a good while driving through canada, which was fun. we did our damndest to get a speeding ticket, but to no avail...the sarnia bridge was pretty cool. we got over the border and then, like someone else
mentioned (scoots?al?) stuck in traffic. we got off I-75, though and got good directions froma convenience store, so we didn't get lost. but we were late anyways.
caught a couple guster songs and then me and my friend sarah walked around the crowd meeting drunken canadians. most of whom were really cool, some of whom questioned my ability to like a canadian band. so i argued with them, and made fun of canada. (i dont mena to offend any canucks on this list, but trust me, these guys deserved it) and when they busted into "O Canada", sarah and i busted into "the Star Spangled Banner" so, all in all, it was fairly good natured fun. i then decided to make this crowd work to my advantage, and whenever a single guy would step out of his spot to say hi, or ask me if i was canadian, i'd grab his cup, and chug his beer. this works extremely well, i was surprised. anyhow, the show was incredible, except for at the end when the girl got hurt and gord got pissed. really weird ending to a really good show. but i'm trying to block that out. yawning or snarling. wow. all right. sorry if this is too long or whatever.
see ya in pittsburgh,
meghan
p.s. who's going to pittsburgh besides me, dakota, and justin?
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Hey all... Thought I'd weigh in with a few thoughts from the show in Detroit last night....
A LOT of Canadian flags.  I swear that 60% of the crowd was wearing a flag (I'm not sure that a cape is proper use of a flag), waving a flag, or wearing something identifying them as Canadian.  And I heard the anthem at least 4 times.
Anyways... Good show, but it was weird being at the front of the lawn... Not a bad spot, but after Massey Hall, Boston & Chicago, it just wasn't the same... but it's always cool being with 16000 other Hip fans...
Opened with Tiger... the song is growing on me, but I didn't like it as an opener last night... it just doesn't seem to grab the crowd... maybe that'll change....
The band absolutely teared thru Fully... but when don't they... :)
Yawning was great... I don't know if I've heard this one live before, so it was a treat... and Kate did the entire second half of the song solo.... Nice to hear the different treatment, and I like her voice, but I don't think it was powerful enough for this song (but it works nicely on Flamenco, which was a few songs later).
Ahead by a Century with Wheat Kings following... didn't expect that... the crowd loved Wheat Kings, it was one big happy sing along...
And then there was the business at the end with the second encore that Scoots mentioned... I didn't think the band was going to keep playing, Gord looked ready to walk off stage...instead, he turned the mic around, and stood at the mic with his back to the crowd... "Alright, you sing this one" and moved out of the way.... It was different, but the crowd seemed to falter on the second verse (of Springtime in Vienna).
Gord started picking up the mic, holding it out the crowd, and walking across the stage.  Rest of the band was playing along, doing background vocals and everything.  At the end of the song before the band was even done playing the song, Gord stalked off stage, and that was it....
Later...
-Ian B.
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            The Hip took the stage tonight at 9:15, and ripped through a twenty
            song, two encore set that ended just before 11:00 P.M.

            Tonight's stage setup was much cooler than the one used in Grand
            Rapids. On each side of the centered transgenic maple geometrical
            image, there were two raised white cloths with the delta maple
            image. (This is shown on page three of the MAW cd-sleeve) Also,
            on each side of Johnny's drum set, there were two orange beams
            dressed in the same color sequence as the Hip Maple. On each
            beam, there were three rotating spotlightes that were used during the
            show. Check out this photo for a closer look.

            The show was very fast paced with several highlightes. The Hip
            opened with Tiger The Lion followed by an intense version of Fully
            Completely. Also thrown into the mix were Yawning or Snarling and
            Flamenco, which featured some great vocals from Kate Fenner.
            Other personal favorites included Courage, Escape, Little Bones,
            Wheat Kings (which Gord actually introduced!) and the best version
            yet of The Completists.

            During Gift Shop, a beach ball was tossed on-stage, and one of the
            stage manager's made the save . Another interesting moment came
            during Freak Turbulence, when Gord wrapped a name-tag sign
            around his collar that read--Gord! Check out this zoomed-in
            version.

            Sadly, the show came to a quick end during the second encore,
            when a little girl was injured in the first few rows. This occurred on
            Robby's and Gord Sinclair's side of the stage. The band stopped
            and Gord assisted the security officers in finding shelter for the girl.
            The band was obviously shaken by what occurred, and Gord
            moved his mic towards the crowd and asked the audience to sing
            the remainder of the "Springtime In Vienna". Hopefully, everything is
            okay with the girl.