The review ran with no star rating. Infinite stars out of five. Four fans who were inside the MTS Centre explain why that was the only honest math. Episode summary August 5th, 2016. A Friday night, show eight of the Man Machine Poem Tour, and the MTS Centre sits smack in the middle of downtown Winnipeg with no room to breathe. The Tragically Hip open with four straight from "Fully Completely", and the second song is 'Pigeon Camera' - a tour debut nobody in the building saw coming. Ten years on, four fans who were there pass the night around the table with jD. Nicole from Winnipeg raised three daughters on this music and lived her whole life in Thunder Bay before Winnipeg claimed her. She loaded two teenagers into the car and drove eight hours west so her girls could finally see the band she had been singing to them since the car seat. Somewhere in the causeway, the opening notes of 'At the Hundredth Meridian' hit, and the cranky seventeen-year-old looked at her mother and got it. Kim from Cambridge has 41 Hip shows on her card, and Winnipeg came with a bonus night. Same hotel as the band, a waiter's tip to come back to the bar later, a hundred-dollar bar tab worth of nerve, and then a gracious Rob Baker outside the bathroom, a sit-down with Gord Downie's bus driver, and a photo with Gord Sinclair. The guitar picks Bernie Breen handed over are framed with her tour poster. Dave from Montreal got the email on a beach in Crete, day two of a vacation that never recovered. He went to seven shows on the final tour, and this one meant the most - August 5th was the one-year anniversary of his mother's passing. He landed from Calgary on a WestJet flight full of Hip fans, caught the band's tweet about seats beside the stage, and cabbed straight from the airport to the box office. In the hotel lobby he told Paul Langlois that 'Three Pistols' had dodged him for 65 shows. "I can promise you you're going to hear it," Paul said. Alicia from Winnipeg heard the news before almost anybody, because breaking news was her job - she was the editor at Metro Winnipeg. She reviewed the show on deadline, one ticket, scribbling in a row of stunned critics, and filed it with no star rating at all. Infinite stars out of five. You can't score a goodbye. They talk about the four-song "Now for Plan A" block and what it asked of the room. About Gord Downie stopping the show to thank the Winnipeg people who built the band an audience, and a local music writer's phone detonating in real time. About the scream at the end of 'New Orleans Is Sinking' that shut an entire arena up, Kim's Periscope stream that died the moment 'Springtime in Vienna' made holding a phone still impossible, and the moment Dave realized the rants were gone - no workshopping, because there was nothing coming next. And about August 20th, which found them in a second row in Kingston, a basement watch party, and a raucous Thunder Bay bar called The Foundry. Nobody at this table claims the full picture. They just know what that room felt like, and ten years has not dulled it. This is the Winnipeg night, told back by the people who lived it. Key takeaways • 'Pigeon Camera' and 'Streets Ahead' were both tour debuts that night, and the setlist held five songs from "Road Apples" and nothing from "Day for Night" - Calgary got that block two nights earlier (source: setlist.fm). • Kim from Cambridge spent the night before the show in the band's hotel bar. Rob Baker was gracious, a bus driver made the introductions, Gord Sinclair posed for photos, and Bernie Breen handed out guitar picks. • Dave from Montreal traded up to seats beside the stage the day of the show off a band tweet, then put his spare pair on StubHub at face value. He did it again in Hamilton and Ottawa. Ten years later, he is finally telling that secret. • Gord stopped the Winnipeg show to thank the local supporters who built the band an audience there - the panel can only remember it happening one other place, Hamilton. One Winnipeg music writer's phone exploded on the spot. • The night before the show, a Winnipeg lawyer fighting the same brain cancer threw a fundraiser - and the man Nicole from Winnipeg would marry years later was onstage in the band that played it. • Alicia from Winnipeg filed her Metro Winnipeg review as infinite stars out of five, and a Winnipeg Free Press reviewer independently refused to put a number on it too. https://web.archive.org/web/20160807202054/http://www.metronews.ca/news/winnipeg/2016/08/06/review-at-the-hundredth-meridian-tragically-hip.html Quotes “I always thought we had more time.” Nicole from Winnipeg “I said, infinite stars out of five, because there's no way to do it, whether you're a Hip fan or not.” Alicia from Winnipeg “When he stepped out in that green suit and just commanded that stage, it ended all of that. All of those nerves that I had before the show, they were gone in the first few notes.” Kim from Cambridge “I just had this moment of heartbreak of, oh, he's not workshopping because there's nothing coming next.” Dave from Montreal “If he saw me, I wanted him to know that Dave from Montreal was staring back at him.” Dave from Montreal Guest information • Nicole from Winnipeg - Thunder Bay born and raised, Winnipeg for the last six years. Raised three daughters on The Hip, and two of them made the 2016 drive with her. Her husband plays in Retro Radio, a Winnipeg classic rock band, and their love story runs through this music. • Kim from Cambridge - 41 Hip shows, Kingston included, second row, in a shirt she made herself. Drove out in a new Jeep with her cousin, camping at Pancake Bay and Sleeping Giant on the way. Keeper of feathers, tour-suit leather patches, and a Six String Nation story. • Dave from Montreal - Montreal journalist. Seven shows on the Man Machine Poem Tour, 65 Hip shows deep by that August. Wrote a pre-tour love letter in the National Post and a Rover essay on cover bands. A book is on the way, and that is all he will say for now. • Alicia from Winnipeg - journalist and then-editor at Metro Winnipeg, who reviewed the show that night. On weekends she fronts Whoopsie Daisy, a Winnipeg classic rock cover band, where 'New Orleans Is Sinking' gets the rage out the healthy way. https://whoopsiedacey.wordpress.com/ Resources, links and references • setlist.fm - the full Winnipeg, August 5 2016 setlist, including both tour debuts. • David Bastedo - The Tragically Hip's official concert photographer. His Winnipeg crowd shot is the one Dave found himself inside. • Dave's pre-tour love letter in the National Post. https://nationalpost.com/entertainment/music/the-tragically-hip-gord-downie • Dave's Rover essay on cover bands, The Strictly Hip, and letting the music live on. https://therover.ca/searching-for-the-tragically-hip/ • The bands keeping the music live, named on mic: Killer Whale Tank (Winnipeg), The Incredibly Hip (Brandon), The Hip Experience (on tour across Canada), The Strictly Hip (Buffalo), and Whoopsie Daisy. • "Secret Path" and The Downie Wenjack Fund - the work Nicole's daughter carries forward from the final tour. Calls to action Meet us in Kingston. The Gathering runs August 20 to 23 - a mixer at the Merchant Pub, Choir! Choir! Choir! in Springer Market Square, a first listen of "The Tragically Hip Live, July 22 - August 20, 2016" the day it drops, a Long Time Running screening, and a farewell brunch at Morrison's on the way out of town. Get on the list. email jd@tthpods.com GEDfest comes to Toronto. October 17th, the anniversary of Gord's passing, at the Horseshoe Tavern with Grace, 2. Nine years running, over $750,000 raised, and this year it is for Campfire Circle and the Murphy Family Fund in Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer. gedfest.ca Buy jD a coffee. Editing four loquacious guests is a labour of love. Tips only, no guilt. So there's that. [hyperlink: Buy jD a coffee - buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40 Related episodes • Yer Hipstories - Edmonton 2, July 30, 2016 https://kite.link/Edmonton2 • Yer Hipstories - Victoria, July 22 2016 https://kite.link/Victoria • Now for Plan A - Redux https://kite.link/nowforplana Closing paragraph Nicole, thank you for the sixteen-hour round trip and for the image of a two-year-old singing 'Boots or Hearts' from a car seat. Kim, thank you for holding your nerve at that hotel bar until it turned into guitar picks. Dave, thank you for bringing your mom into the room with you, and for owning every emotion Gord taught you to own. Alicia, thank you for infinite stars out of five, the only rating system this series recognizes. The band takes an extra day off, then it is Ontario the rest of the way home. Come back on August 8th for London, August 8 2016 - new building, new panel, and the home stretch beginning. If you were in one of these rooms, leave yer Hipstory. This series is stitched together from them. Socials and community • Facebook: facebook.com/groups/tthpods • Instagram: @tthpods] • YouTube: youtube.com/@tthpods] • Email: jd@tthpods.com] #TheTragicallyHip #GordDownie #ManMachinePoem #FullyCompletely #RoadApples #NowForPlanA Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/tthtop40/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
