The Tragically Hip was the soundtrack for my high school life, through the tumultuous highs and lows of discovering your own identity in the midst of all that chaos.
Figuring out who your friends are, and what kind of person you want to be. Their music will always be inextricably linked with major milestones in my life.
I've seen them 10 times live in concert, starting with Another Roadside Attraction in 1995 in the cold, dank and muddy Rideau Carleton Raceway. Gord remarked, "Seeing the steam rise...from your sweaty, dirty, slick bodies...reminds me of only one thing....the Inevitability of Death!", and launched into that song. And we cheered that bizarre remark as one cheered anything Gord said or did.
Being a Hip fan in their prime was like being part of a club. People you would meet, you would ask them what their favourite Hip song was, and have a discussion. No two people would like the same song, or the same album, for the same reasons.
And inevitably, when you met Americans, you would try to explain to them what the deal was. And it was difficult to articulate. And as has been said elsewhere, eventually that became part of their allure. They were Canada's own, and no one else could really get it. (until I saw a show in Syracuse, and met rabid Hip fans from Buffalo who would listen to them on Canadian radio stations, way to go Yanks!)
They also came about during the CanCon controversy, when radio stations were required by the CRTC to increase the amount of Canadian content (first in the 80s, and then in 1999). I can recall being pretty irate at the time, "How dare the government do this?", but the surprising end result was a burgeoning pride in our music scene, recognition of our own talent, and a swelling of Canadian interest in our place in the world and our history.
Gord made us interested in ourselves, as Canadians, telling us that our stories, our culture and our history were important, and worth celebrating, condemning or discussing. Somehow, in spite of, or perhaps because of, his crazy antics, his extensive conversations with fruit or microphone stands on stage, his exotic collection of hats, he managed to speak for an entire nation.