The new address for the tracker is: www.thehiptracker.com
Please update your favourites. For now it redirects to the old page, so that when the new host goes live there will not be any downtime.
The new address for the tracker is: www.thehiptracker.com
Please update your favourites. For now it redirects to the old page, so that when the new host goes live there will not be any downtime.
The tracker is back online for the time being. No new downloads can be started, and no new shows will be uploaded until the move is complete.
Thanks!
Chris
Hello fans,
I know it sucks, but the site is going to be offline for a few days while we move to a new, totally awesome host!
We are just working out the final details with our new host, and we expect to be back online within the next day or so. I would encourage you to stop any files that you are currently downloading, but do not delete them as you will be able to pick up where you left off when we are back online.
In the meantime, keep an eye on the hipfans.com blog and the forum at hipbase.com for news of our transition.
Thanks!
Chris
I’ll post more as I create them. Stay tuned…
Luv (Sic) from October 25 at The Phoenix
Goodnight Josephine from September 18 at the Whitby Courthouse. (Gord Downie solo)
Every time I listen to Last Night I Dreamed You Didn’t Love Me, it makes me think of the three stellar IVL Bonus Tracks “Problem Bears”, “Forest Edge” and “Ultra Mundane”. The pace, the music, the lyrics, the overall sound, everything makes me think that this track has been hanging around since 2002.
Am I nuts? Do you hear it? Thoughts?
Live in Whitby at The Courthouse Theatre on September 18, 2006. Gord Downie performing Goodnight Josephine as part of the Waterkeeper’s Heart Of A Lake Tour.
NOte: There are some issues with the YouTube upload. Here is an MP4, ready for your iPod of the clip.
The Tragically Hip
World Container
(Universal; 2006)
Rating: 78%
Combined Rating: 79%
In early October, Gord Downie, the Tragically Hip’s unshutupable frontman and Brautigan style poet, did a great hour-long interview on Vancouver’s 99.3FM “The Fox” morning show. A couple of highlights and a gross overstatement:
1) Gord, in lieu of answering host Jeff O’Neill’s question, opts instead to pester him for using the word “resonate” in pre-interview conversation. This happens twice. A station co-worker later joins in.
2) After being asked to choose a song from his then-unreleased new record to preview on air, Downie enthusiastically (and rightfully) picks “Family Band,” the catchiest song his band’s penned in almost a decade. Ten seconds of idle talk ensue, followed by the announcement that they can’t play the track because their copy of the record suddenly stopped working. They quickly play eight year old single “Poets” instead, cutting off Downie’s confused follow-up request for “The Kids Don’t Get It,” either not understanding or not believing that their copy of his record mysteriously wonked out just minutes after playing “In View” — their best rock single since “Poets,” and a #1 single in Canada around the time this record hit stores. Warms my heart.
3) Between terrible avian flu jokes and brief discussion about his cameo as a cop in the recent Trailer Park Boys movie (the cast from which he’d worked with years ago on the “Darkest One” video), Downie calls World Container, his eleventh record with Kingston’s Tragically Hip, the best they’ve ever made.
The album’s infamous producer, Bob Rock, joined in recently with his own hyperbole, dubbing World Container “My Great Canadian Record,” proudly usurping Simple Plan’s Still Not Getting Any. (Another gem from that bio: “they even said they listened to and enjoyed the ‘Dr.Feelgood’ album, that I had done in the 80’s with Motley Crue! Wow!!!!”.) And sure, of course they’re going to say that; few admit to making a shit record, and both are behind a product that 95% for sure won’t move units outside of Canada; they need all the help they can get. But Downie actually sounds sincere in his newest-album-is-the-bestest press banter, and for good reason. After his group’s decade-long search for a post-Phantom Power (1998) identity, and after coming to terms with their inability to penetrate the modern US rock radio wasteland, World Container sounds like the work of a band — Downie, drummer Johnny Fay, lead guitarist Rob “one with the hippie hair” Baker, bassist/backup vocalist Gord Sinclair, and rhythm guitarist Paul Langlois (via Wikipedia, and they never lie: “According to a popular legend, Paul Langlois once ate three 72 oz. steaks in one hour. He spent the first 45 minutes having sex with his waitress”) — regaining a sense of vitality and purpose.
Downie’s wrong, though, of course — this isn’t the best record the Hip have made. But eight years after Phantom Power’s triumphant comeback from the ill-received Trouble at the Henhouse (1996), they desperately needed another focused rock album like this, one that avoids spinning their wheels musically, lessening their reliance on Downie’s lyrics — at times the best this country’s produced since Leonard and Joni’s time, and always centuries ahead of whatever’s on your local modern rock station right now (“Personal stakes will get raised and get raised til your story gets compelling / If you lacked the sense or were willfully dense is forever in the telling” vs. “Girl you make it hard to be faithful with the lips of an angel”). Not that they haven’t been making good records since 1998, trying new producers in a ton of different studios in at least three countries, but the music became too predictable, showing only marginal growth each time out. Instead of the next Great album Phantom Power couldn’t help but promise, we got a bunch of almost-there’s instead: 2000’s Music @ Work, 2002’s In Violet Light, and 2004’s In Between Evolution (rated exactly 5% too high, my apologies).
World Container is also “almost there” in the sense that it’s not a Great album — not in the context of the the band’s discography, nor as an introduction, approached without twenty-three years worth of presuppositions and expectations attached. It doesn’t avoid all of their last record’s missteps, but it does thankfully manage to avoid its complacency: here, the band is very clearly trying to push themselves, upping not only the tempo but their willingness to experiment in small but appreciated ways with arrangement and structure — Spanish guitar solos, dance-rock bridges, more than three instruments, etc. Bob Rock levitates toward the lowest common denominator as only Tal Bachman’s producer could, but by some freak miracle only barely stands in the way of the Hip’s most consistent set of songs in almost a decade. For better or for worse, every track on World Container sounds like a potential single, a full-out attempt to reassure Canadian fans they’re done coasting on Hip-by-numbers filler, as well as another likely pointless olive branch to a US commercial rock audience currently eating up Sam’s Town like it’s as good as The Killers desperately want it to be.
For worse: “Fly” is home to the record’s only disarmingly capital POP chorus, paired with a boring bridge (“Fly, that’s right / Fly, yea, that’s right”) and verses straight out of Music @ Work’s “Puttin’ Down.” Then there’s the two overproduced ballads (shocking, given Rock’s past work with minimalists Cher and Bon Jovi): album closer “World Container,” a choir-backed power ballad remake of R.E.M.’s “Daysleeper” and Lennon’s “Imagine” (also referenced in the song: “He’s the one who couldn’t imagine / All the people living in peace / Yoo-hoo-ooo-oo”), and “Pretend,” aka the beautiful acoustic song that Downie plays in several annoying cut-aways in the “In View” video. Except that now it’s decked out with an unfittingly full arrangement that Downie at first doesn’t seem to want to play into, then later follows into melodrama; the song’s big climax, a compounding “You can’t pretend / yes i can Yes I Can YES I CAN,” is crassly shouted and pushed high in the mix, deflating its momentum instead of delivering on the kind of emotional cadence they’re obviously going for. A shame, considering how good the rest of the song is, even despite its producer’s inablity to grasp the alien concepts of emotion and subtlety.
Those are, thankfully, exceptions. “The Lonely End of the Rink,” “The Kids Don’t Get It,” and “The Drop-Off” play to the band’s long-ago defined strengths, giving some fairly straightforward rock tracks enough energy and depth to overcome their repetition, each exactly the kind of great upbeat single they’ve failed to deliver since “My Music at Work” (good Bruce McCullough directed video, best lyrics). Likewise, standouts “In View,” “Luv (Sic)” and “Last Night I Dreamed You Didn’t Love Me” faintly adapt (non-Crüe) ’80s rock/pop without overdoing the delivery like “Fly,” the latter even working in a brief but really great monosyllabic David Byrne hook (“You kissed my fingers and made me love you”). As small as these gestures — “In View’s” synth, “Yer Not the Ocean’s” piano, the title track’s Meatloaf-ish lead guitar, etc. — may be, they do manage to keep the album from falling into another retro-Hip trap, devolving into flat retreads like “Silver Jet” and “One Night in Copenhagen.” When this record does falter, it’s often when they’ve gone overboard with a new idea; which, yeah, is still frustrating, but far more welcome than Evolution and In Violet Light’s tendency to not go nearly far enough.
All things considered, World Container really is their most immediate and focused record in ages, making confident strides toward the kind of fully realized, career-defining statement their John Locke-looking frontman seems genuinely convinced they’ve already made. But then, assuming they can keep up this level of songwriting, and continue to to push their sound forward without a figure like Bob Rock around to stunt the growth, there’s no reason to think they don’t still have that kind of record in them. Especially when you consider the last time they were in this much of an obvious transition was with Henhouse — ‘cos if they could return from a disaster like “Coconut Cream” with an actual candidate for their best album yet (Phantom), it’s exciting to think where they could eventually take music this inspired and assured, given a capable producer and less damning muse.
Step one: stop working with the guy responsible for St. Anger. Please. 19,406 (and counting) Metallica fans can’t be wrong.
Scott Reid
October 31, 2006
FFWDWeekly.com – November 2, 2006
THE TRAGICALLY HIP
World Container
Universal
For their 11th album Canada’s national heroes team up with über-producer Bob Rock.
When Bob Rock produced Metallica’s self-titled black album, there were cries of sell-out from the fans. Now that he’s at the boards for World Container, could there be a similar backlash for The Tragically Hip?
One listen to the lead-off single “In View” reveals the most optimistic track the Hip have laid down since “Fireworks.” The album kicks off with the power-pop crunch of “Yer Not the Ocean,” and closes with the title track, a sentimental piano ballad. It sounds like Rock is intent on breaking the Hip in the States, despite years of flying under the American radar.
Don’t worry, World Container still feels like a Hip album – it’s steeped in Canadian geographic references, nods to hockey and an overwhelming tension – it’s just dressed up with a lot of studio finery. For the first time ever, drummer Johnny Fay plays rim shots, Bobby Baker’s guitar is drenched in echo and more than once the Hip tap into ska, flamenco and dance-rock variations for the break down.
Lyrically Gord Downie has branched out, too. Some of his poetry is downright syrupy on the page (“Love (Sic)” and “Last Night I Dreamed You Didn’t Love Me” being the prime examples). Much of the record seems preoccupied with his relationship with his daughters, making for passionate delivery. Downie’s voice has the gravitas to make it work and when he experiments with self-harmonies, the payoff is astounding. Lest you think he’s gone soft, check out the stunning album standout “The Kids Don’t Get It,” complete with gut-wrenching wail and boundless irony.
World Container may not have the consistency or impact of 2004’s In Between Evolution, but by pushing themselves (with or without Rock’s influence) the Hip have made a record that shows remarkable growth, even for a band that has shed its bar band status. It doesn’t always work, but World Container is fearless, angry, tender and engrossing, not to mention a great rock record.
4/5
JASON LEWIS
Too Hip to ignore; A couple of policy changes would calm concert controversy
Editorial – Wednesday, November 01, 2006 @ 09:00
It was, it turns out, a sure-fire recipe for rock and roll fireworks:
Announce the first-ever local appearance by one of Canada’s iconic bands, the Tragically Hip;
Combine with thousands of hard-core fans;
Pour into Memorial Centre, but sell 2,200 of 3,500 seats in advance; Open ticket office. Step back and wait for explosion.
The wait was short. Angry fans who lined up outside the Memorial Centre box office for hours in the early-morning cold last Friday but went away Hip-less let loose after they discovered how few tickets were available.
Most of their anger was directed at the city-owned arena and concert venue for selling 700 advance tickets to Peterborough Petes club seat holders. As an incentive to pay a premium for season tickets to Petes games, those fans get first choice of tickets to other events.
That’s a common strategy. Use the carrot of year-round access to help sell your priciest season ticket packages. Music fans may not see the connection between hockey and concerts, but they don’t have to pay the bills to operate expensive arenas that are empty most nights of the year.
The $175 club-seat premium and an additional surcharge per ticket generate $150,000 a year toward the cost of paying off the $13-million Memorial Centre renovation.
It’s as much about marketing as music.
Which is also why Hip fans who belong to the band’s official fan club and register on its Web site got access to advance tickets. And why some were sent to The Wolf radio station as a promotional giveaway.
The entire 3,500 tickets could have been sold twice over at the door without any special offers, but that’s not the way the music business works.
The city does deserve some criticism for the way it handled ticket sales, and has said it will consider one change in policy. For future concerts, the number of tickets available would be posted at the box office so people could decide whether to take a chance and wait.
Another necessary change concerns the number of tickets Petes club seat holders can buy. It should be one-for-one, concert seat for hockey seat. One club seat holder bought six concert tickets and was told that was the maximum. Another reported buying eight. That takes too many tickets out of the hands of everyone else, and promotes ticket scalping.
At the same time, give Memorial Centre staff credit for bringing in one of the country’s most popular acts. Had interest not been so high there wouldn’t have been any ticket controversy. Willie Nelson and Bryan Adams both drew big crowds to the Memorial Centre in the past 12 months but no one was complaining they couldn’t get in. Stompin’ Tom Connors sold 2,000 tickets, Jann Arden just 1,600.
But we’d like to think there will be other blockbuster events that are so popular someone is going to be left out. For that reason, fans should be told how many tickets are available when they line up, and a $175 hockey seat fee should buy access to only one ticket. Save the fireworks for concert night.
Write to us: Please address your letters to The Editor, The Examiner, P.O. Box 3890, Peterborough, K9J 8L4. (Fax 743-4581) (letters@peterboroughexaminer.com).
Ticket fiasco could lead to changes Upset fans feeling tragically ripped off
ELIZABETH BOWER
Local News – Tuesday, October 31, 2006 @ 09:00
Pre-selling more than half the Tragically Hip concert tickets before opening sales to the general public is being called “a rip-off,” “a fiasco,” “ridiculous” and “tragic indeed.”
“I think if this type of thing happened anywhere else, there’d be a riot,” said Television Road resident Debbie Lawler.
Lawler’s husband, Gary, worked a midnight shift at GM and then got up early to stand in line for three hours before being told the Jan. 29 concert at the Memorial Centre was sold out.
The Examiner has been inundated with e-mails and phone calls since Saturday’s story stating the Memorial Centre pre-sold 2,200 of 3,500 tickets to Hip fan club members (the club is free to join), Peterborough Petes club seat ticket holders and during a Wolf 101 radio station promotional event before opening sales to the general public Friday morning.
The remaining 1,300 tickets left for sale were sold out within two hours.
Debbie Haigh said she doesn’t understand why 700 tickets were pre-sold to Petes club seat ticket holders – a comment made by virtually every reader who contacted The Examiner about this story. “This concert has nothing to do with hockey,” said the 53-year-old Fairmount Boulevard resident whose 20-year-old daughter also didn’t get tickets after a three-hour wait. “It just doesn’t make sense.”
Dave Duggan, of Rideau Crescent, agrees.
“For the life of me, I cannot understand why they should get first dibs on anything except sporting events,” he said.
Ken Doherty, city community services director, defended the policy. Doherty, who spoke on behalf of Memorial Centre interim manager Harold Sheldon who wasn’t available, said club seat ticket holders are regular clients.
Adding the perk that they get advance sales of all events at the Lansdowne Street arena helps the Memorial Centre sell those tickets, he said.
“And it’s our job to sell those tickets,” Doherty said.
The policy has been in place since renovations were completed in 2003 because the Memorial Centre didn’t have club seats prior to that, he explained.
This is the first he has heard anyone complain about it, he said.
Doherty said the city will consider Stoney Lake resident Dennis Jenkin’s suggestion the Memorial Centre advertise how many tickets will be available to the general public so people can gauge whether it’s worth their time to stand in line.
The city will also consider Debbie Lawler’s suggestion to have two concerts when there’s such a high demand, he said.
“We’ll take that into consideration,” Doherty said. “This is a learning experience for us.”