Sitting here in the hostel in Montreal before Ihead out to dinner with a few Henhousers. Just thought I would give my account of show number one!

Setlist:

USE IT UP: Nothing special here... though this song still kicks live.
MUSIC: Got the crowd going... Gord flubbed up the first few lines.
NOIS: I was sitting in the second balcony, and this brought the entire place onto its feet. No one sat down after that. A great crowd!
GRACE: This song contuinues to amaze, even after 7 years of seeing it being performed live. Gord S is manic on his bass for this song. The shadows on the wall of the beautiful Sall Wilfred-Pelletier were extremely cool!
ESCAPE: I was blown away.. havent heard this one in a couple years, and they have made it sound more sombre...
COURAGE: The drunken cougar beside me went nuts for this one... sour-milk breath and all... other than that... awesome song :)
JET: A great intro to this song from Gord.. cant remember what he said, but I will check the recording (which turned out great again, btw... first row of the balcony, mics taped to the front)
DADDY: Gord goes nuts with the ranting again...
WEAKEN: The crowd loved this one... takes full advantage of the fantastic light show!
POETS: Aforementioned drunken lady joins me again at the front of the balcony, and proceeds to sing the song, WWAAAAAYYY off-key, in her French-Canadian drawl...
IOD: More ranting from Gord... great tune.. Gord S explored some different notes with his bass...
BEAUTY
MERIDIAN: Life is forgetting.. though not for as long this time around... Gord started to mimic his mic stand as it spun around... then he spun around.. he rubbed up against it with his back... priceless moment, one that makes a Hip show unique...
ABAC
WOLF: Was hoping for the Gems lead-in, but satisfied with a great song... a lot of people took a beer break during the song...??
LOCKED: Thought it was gonna be Giftshop, but was pleasantly surprised...
BONES: Someone threw a toque on stage right before Paul started with his opening riff, and Gord said, "Has anyone seen my cat? That is not a cat... that is a toque.Has anyone seen Little Bones, my cat?" That is the basic gist of the rant... stay tuned to the recording for a more accurate description...

ENCORE:
FEVER
READY
FIRE

A great show. This just means tonight we will get Canuck, Fireworks, maybe Daredevil and Vapour Trails! I cant wait to meet everyone tonight. Didn't get a chance to meet up with anyone last night, as my plane landed 45 minutes b4 the show started. Saw Jake Gold sitting below me behind the soundboard, but was too high to yell a hello.
As I mentioned above, I did record it, and it turned out amazing! I should have it ready to go out by late next week!
One more show to go for 2002!

Cheers, all!

Rory

Great show. Great energy. Great crowd. Great sound. Great rants.
(Note to self: Buy thesaurus.)

Not much in the way of surprises, mind you. But a show that won over a, shall we say, very skeptical GF. So I can now possibly listen to the Hip in the car when she's in it. And to quote an investigation-plagued annoying wench, "That's a good thing."

A disappointing encore, perhaps. Though Fire was smokin'.

More or less in order, from memory:

Use
M@W
NOIS
Grace
Escape
Courage
Silver Jet
IOD
Weaken
Daddy
Poets (sssssound) (Gord did the bring out your dead line and then repeated it as a question, as if by someone not getting the
reference)
Beauty
100 (life is forgetting...)
ABAC (pink moon)
Dire
Locked
Bones

E:Lake
Ready
Fire

-Rob B.

Anyway I did manage to take about 100 pics and about 40 video clips with a Sony MVC-CD1000.. I'm in the process of uploading them to livehip.com and you'll be able to check them out there.

there were a number of tapers there, and I'm sure that there was some GREAT recordings and videotapes of it.. if I get one I'll make a VCD of it and pass it around to all of you..

besides that the band seemed very tight, and gord was going crazy (a lot more than I've seen him do in a long time)..

Sam Roberts was a pretty good opener too.. he plays on the crowd fairly well.
-Peter P.

Finally at home and resting after a long couple of days of travel. I'm actually writing a short story based on the travels of the past 48 hours, it was that ironic, tragic, and out right funny.
Thought I would add a couple of notes to what's already been said.

Setlist in order

Use
Music
New O -- "The water's on fire!" (thought I also heard some Purple Paint here, but I'm not sure)
Grace - bent Mike stand #1 of the night
EscapeÝ -- such a great surprise to hear...I know it's been played, but it's a nice thing to hear
Courage - during the "piss on" lines, he spelt "Gordie"
Jet - a rant about the shadows... "it's so close you could touch it" and Gord jumps up and tries to touch the bottom of the plane with his head
Daddy -- really good to hear this too... I actually missed it
Good Life -- better and better every time I hear it
Poets - "ring out your dead"...the "shhhh" rant from the night before...also Gord did a great thing with the audience "Tell me (crowd cheers) Tell Me (crowd cheers) Don't tell me (crowd is silent) Okay, tell me (crowd goes nuts)
IOD
Beauty - "This song isn't a similie, but it's name is"
Meridian - w/ Life is Forgetting... I love how the song has progressed "I remember everything (really fast, x8) / Yes I do / I remember everything (really fast x 8) / About you" (or something like that)
ABAC - Pink Moon
WolfÝ - I agree with Rory... I really wanted the Gems intro
Locked - incredible...
Bones -- "tired of waiting, tired of waiting for you...""where's my kitten?"
Fever
Ready - "Are you ready? Are you ready? Manditory third time, are you ready?"
Fire - sadly no burning church, but I think I heard 100 Years Old as an outro

Both New O and Poets had the "Swim, not to me..." outros...

What a great night. I hope the Hummingbird show on Wednesday can live up. And I really hope Montreal #2 lived up to the first night

Cheers, and Happy Thanksgiving

PB, at home (finally)

1 use it up
2 music
3 nois
4 grace
5 daddy
6 escape
7 jet
8 Poets -> hayride jam
9 good life
10Courage ("if you're not good looking courage, the least you could do is be on time")
11 beatiful thing
12 meridian -> jam (intro:"just thought everyone should know, we've reached the 100th meridian... just so you know")
13 IOD
14 abac
15 wolf
16 locked
17 bones
-------
fever
ready
FitH

fourteenth hip show for me and i've got to say i've never seen gord maintain intensity like he did tonight in Mtl. On a personal level i was overjoyed with the setlist tonight.I hope they can top it tommorow  but i think its pretty unlikely unless they pull out a second encore.

Fire in the Hole... no better way to close a show

-J-

Show #1 Dave, Sonny, Bob & Myself were sitting outside and a couple guys come up and start chatting with us. They were really nice and we exchanged emails and stuff with them. It was cool and goes to show how friendly people hanging for a HIP show are.Ý Then we head inside and run into Jeff who we met at the Somerville show. He and a buddy were right next to us at the front of the stage for the last night. Turned out that he and the same buddy were in the same row with us Friday night too. Small world. It was
good to make connections again. Then on the way out that night I spotted Matt & Dave who we also met at Somerville and were happy to see someone in the crowd getting it recorded.

The show was super! The boys all seemed to be a great moods with lots of smiling and jammin. We were a bit bummed that the crowd wasn't into it as much as we have seen at other shows. Loved "Has anyone seen my cat?" during Little Bones. Gord D was interacting quite a lot with his microphone, fighting it a good portion of the show. At one point going into a rant about "I'm in charge here" to his mic. Quite funny.
-Bob and Fran