Last Saturday, we hosted a live streaming show by yours truly from the saloon in our house. It’s called the Double Deuce and I call these streamers, “Live From the Double Deuce.” Yeah. Real original. Don’t like it—name your own shows. Oh that’s right, you don’t have any. Okay, enough of being mean. Let’s all make America kind again. Oh, never mind. [lyrical reference]
My sister mentioned one of my songs I played, “Bobcaygeon,” by The Tragically Hip.
I’ve been a fan of the Hip since I drove up to Montreal with Mary and Mark to visit Canadian members of her extended family. Mark was probably eight or nine. We ended up going to an Expos game at the Olympic Stadium. Probably the Braves were in town. We went down to St. Catherine’s Street, part of the city’s shopping district. There was one of those classic department stores, Eaton’s. Eaton’s was a multi-story emporium that every large city had in the late 19th and through much of the 20th centuries. Of course, the big box phenomenon brought about their demise and Jeff Bezos and Amazon ended up finishing them off. Eaton’s officially shut its doors in 1999. Back in 1990, the store still maintained a vibrant buzz with its multiple floors of consumer goods including music. Of course, if all you know is scrolling through items on a small phone screen, you’ll never understand the art of tastefully arrayed items with a purpose, in an actual physical space: think retail Feng shui, or something similar. But that was the lure and wonder of places like Eaton’s.
The T. Eaton Co. Ltd. store in downtown Montreal
That visit is where I scored my initial piece of plastic ware from the hip. This being the 1990s, it came in cassette form and the title was Road Apples. I knew the band due to their song “New Orleans is Sinking” on Maine’s last freeform FM station, WTOS. I probably bought the tape on the strength of that one song (which isn’t on this recording, btw). Glad I did. I became a huge fan. Have been to this day.
Road Apples (1991) by The Tragically Hip
Phantom Power, the record that “Bobcaygeon” is on, is one of my favorite Hip records. I always liked that song and I learned it as one of my first five songs on my quest to master 10 songs so I’d have an actual setlist. I’ve blown past that self-imposed barrier.
When Gord Downie was diagnosed w/ terminal brain cancer in 2016, his band had just released a record, what would be their final offering, Man Machine Poem. Initially, this bandmates must have been devastated by Gord’s news. Then, there would have been the parallel disappointment of thinking that they’d not be able to tour behind a new record like they’d done since the release of their first one in 1989.
Downie, of course, had other intentions. He knew something that todays bugmen have never learned. That life means at some point that we’ll all “pass through the door” and die. Like all great men, he planned to die with grace and dignity. Oh, and rocking to the finish line, too.
He told his bandmates they were going to tour. I mean, he’s getting cancer treatment, he’s sick, and he’s having trouble remembering lyrics. The documentary, Long Time Running, tells how Paul Langlois his longtime rhythm guitar player was thinking, “how do we tell Gord we can’t do this?” Well, you don’t. Watch the documentary if you get a chance. Maybe it might serve as a buffer to all the fear-fogging coming your way and the constant message of “Be afraid: be very afraid (of COVID).”
Downie managed to ready himself and the band ran from west to east across the magnificent Canadian continent playing Hip shows they were known for: long, loud, and filled with Gord’s charismatic personality. By the time they’d reached Toronto for the final run of shows, fans had been able to pour their heart out and extend their love for Gord and the band one last time. The band’s final song, streamed all over Canada. I mean, who in America would have been able to gather this kind of collective sense of national unity like Gord did? No one, not even Springsteen. Granted, Canada has a tenth of our population, but still. This is amazing and emotional and speaks to the better side of human nature.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes for a good life. Men like Gord Downie showed us a manner of how it’s to be done right up until he “walked through the door.” Not perfect, but a man who knew at the end, how to lay his life down with grace and dignity.
We could all learn something from his example.