Where's Sudbury, you ask??  A thriving metropolis located in Northern Ontario, and it seems to be one of their favourite stops.  Gord talks of it being a priviledge to visit our town, but we're the lucky ones with the boys rolling into town on the last two cross-Canada tours...

A great mix of new and classic, Opiated, haven't heard that in a little while.  I was hoping for Fully Completely but they didn't disappoint one bit with Bones, ABAC, New Orleans, Nautical Disaster and a whole bunch of others...  Tiger was very cool, it's a perfect live song.  Just awesome, they deliver, as always...

CLD
"This song was written by a brownie, ....... not a girl guide"
- GD
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Of course there was snow..... lots of it. On the way there..in our face...seeming so fitting ......... 4+ hours from Toronto we arrive in Sudbury. Minutes after bundling up outside our car at the back of the arena..... we see Gord Sinclair & say a quick hello asking him what time the sound check was at.....he replies "around 5pm"...... So we head around to the front of the arena and duck inside for some air above 0 degrees. The reporters show up and we have a quick chat with them and they ask us what all of the Band members names are....?? ??  So we tell them....shaking our heads! 5pm arrives & we slide in for the sound check upstairs.... no one sees us.
The boys play through Escape, Lake Fever and an instrumental Tiger the Lion! Now we find out if we donate food they are giving  away 3 more pairs of TIX for the Zone! They gave away the other 17 pairs Monday at 4pm........and brace yourselves.... IT TOOK 1.5 hrs TO GIVE AWAY ALL 17 PAIRS at the secret location. Yes 90 minutes........are you seeing where my Subject line  is coming from?
Dinner............ now we enter the show & hand them 2 cases of soup = 48 cans altogether figuring we'd get a pile of chances to win! NOT ..... 1 ticket each! They draw & we don't win. ... Well folks we had a back up plan....we did not drive from Toronto not to be in the ZONE & guess what ? ......Tod & Jeffro made it in... How? Well maybe I'll reveal that another time.....but we were creative.
We stood on Bobby's side.....Looking for a Place to Happen... was the 3rd song.....and it was not in the other side of the Zone in front of Paul. That whole side was sitting.....yep sitting down like the band hadn't arrived on stage yet.....Our side was up and rock'in naturally and a few of us turned to catch the groove out in the audience.....ummm there was none past the 3rd row or so? The back of this 6000 seat arena was empty? At the other end of the arena there was 100's of empty seats. Blend that in with everyone sitting down in the left Zone....I'm wondering what the Boys are thinking. Well I wasn't going to think about it anymore.... because they just CLOBBERED me over the head with "Last of the Unplucked Gems" .....my gawd.... no rants ..just a straight up classic... I was now hooked....into the band Fully! Sharks soon came along and was nice.... then came
TIGER...another classic already....followed by Meridian, an tight Engaged and finished off with Nautical!!
Ok I was really going in now for the kill.....arms on the stage I plopped myself right in front of Bobby's position! Here they come & opening with Wheat Kings.... Not one lighter was lit during this song but I didn't care I just starting nodding into the jam with Bobby & Gord S.! TrainOvernight came next & I just love this tune ...it really fits well with the 2 acoustics!
Then BAM.....Opiated.. a first for me now sprinkle some Courage into it!!....Soon comes Toronto #4... wow has this ever tightened up since Massey Hall! Solid Solid Solid. No....ranting just the song from the CD!.....and now DADDY.... man..with me playing guitar abit myself I couldn't take my eyes off Bobby's fingers..... & he knew it ....& he leaned into that much more in that appreciative fashion during Freak Turbulance! Wherewithal was last on the list but was not played!
Encore.... STAY.... even juicier than Toronto...what a flow this song had last night ......as Bobby strummed his new 12 string.... the Security guy beside me said .."what album is this from"?.... I said the new one..."Great song" he yelled back over the crowd..! This guy had been singing along most of the night!
And finally Little Bones.... Bottom line here is Bobby stepped over the monitors towards the end of the song and basically presented the bones-solo 3ft from me/us  ....I snapped a picture ...soaked the 15 seconds up like it was my job....& the show ended. Bobby handed his guitar off....and Gord S. looked over at us also nodding saying thanks.....& here comes Bobby.... over towards us and high fives Tod (who grabbed his pic) and proceeded to shake my hand and one other.
I got it ! Bobby got it ! But I'm really not sure if Sudbury gets it?

Jeffroed!

P.S. - I lived in Sudbury for 3yrs or so and it is a great place & if your from there & your on this list....you obviously get it... but if you were in attendance last night... what did you see around you?

2 nights in 3 days and TTH changed the setlist about 35%.....10+ songs.....
very nice
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a couple of very nice little touches I caught during this show .....the circular backdrop that comes down over the stage is actually a map of the moon.....am I only one who never noticed this before?...particularly during Sharks it now has new meaning....during Opiated when you hear " the medicineman started seeing red ..." BAM! ALL the lights go deep red ...very
nice...what can you say...GEMS.....Lookin' ....Engaged....we were in the zone and into BB huge...he was really getting into the groove...we were yellin' for him the whole show and he responed....as Jeffro said stepped right up to us and gave a beautiful Bones rock out and I would like to go record by saying that I was handed the pick...Jeff ...wait for the video....the soundcheck very nice...gotta love a nice orderly sound check....I was about to go behind stage for a snack I felt so comfortable in there...the ride sucked but the company was good...ran into Matt & Dave the 2 brothers from Hamilton....they are in Ottawa as we speak and headin' to Montreal....Dave passed me his Workplace stub to get me in the zone and I made my own wrist band from a menu...yeah, yeah.. I hear what your saying...Is there anyone on the list that would have done this ?...please
respond...Hey !... I donated 2 cases of soup and come on almost 2 hours to give away the zone tix...that is if they were all givin away..by the way the zone looked at 8PM....I think the radiostation van left the secret location after a couple of hours cause noone was shown up...I had a great time ... drove down with Jeff, Matt and Jeff's wife....snow on the way there ..  did I say SNOW and snow on the way back...made in at 4:10AM ...at work for 9:30 and home at & 7:15PM...there were over 10 songs in total that differed from the ACC setlist on the 3rd...I can count  GEMS,LOOKIN',SOMETHING ON, TORONTO
#4, OPIATED,FREAK,BONES,ENGAGED, DADDY,SHARKS,LIONIZED, there were a couple more I'm sure...anyway the band was into it for the people who were into it ...during the PP tour Sudbury loved the Hip...maybe it was the -29 degree
air....see ya in Hamilton...Gordie said to say Hi...thanks again Matt and Dave.....Todd
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They just didn't seem to be really 'into' it, Gord especially -- this probably had a lot to do with having so recently played in their home town area down south.
But the worst part -- the absolutely unforgiveable part (as far as I was concerned) -- was the absence, even during the encore (the one encore that they deigned to bestow upon us non-Torontonians, anyway) of:  "50 Mission Cap".  This is their signature song, fer cryin' out loud, their "high watermark" of tunes, as the Toronto Star so eloquently put it recently.  When the Hip neglected to perform it during both the 1st AND 2nd acts, I was just positive they were saving it for the encore, especially for a concert set here in Northern Ontario.  Great way to go out, I thought.  Nope.  "Little Bones" was the actual closer, and that was suddenly IT.  Sheesh.  Whadda let down.
The muddy acoustics (in the grand ol' Sudbury Arena), which were not their fault, didn't help matters either, as you so rightly pointed out.  Poor Gord was often babbling non-stop into his mic (as he is wont to do), and I defy ANYbody other than those lucky enough to have been in the front row, to repeat to me one word of what he was muttering to us when he wasn't actually singing out loud.  (The guys at the sound board might not have had him mixed "up" quite enough, methinks.)  And no banter with the crowd?  No sing-a-long invitations? The closest we came to anything like that was Gord's offhand "it's a pleasure to be here" or something equally generic. *Sigh*  Perhaps the band **IS** in now wind-down mode after all.  Damn.  Had good seats tho.....

Con
cpfelber@vianet.on.ca
Sudbury, ON