jD, Pete, and Tim are back and this week they're listening to the 2002 release In Violet Light. Transcript Track 1: [0:00] As I sit at my computer to write this introduction, I've really had to rack. [0:05] My brain for anything specific about In Violet Light. It has nothing to do with the brilliance of the record, but I had pretty much left the missionary zeal phase of my hip fandom and was now, sadly, just a casual. Even something as cool as The Hip Club, which was included with the CD release on the June 11th, 2002 CD didn't suck me in, and it's a damn shame too. When I see you out there with cards still in your wallet, I'm jealous and forlorn. [0:40] Something that was so essential in my life was now being left behind because I was focused on the lo-fi experience of bands like Pavement, Silver Jews, Guided by Voices, andSebadell. I did, however, make it out for the In Violet Light summer tour at the then Molson Amphitheater and was blown away by the new songs I heard live. Lake Fever, Silver Jet, The Dark Knuck, they all rocked live. But there was one song that captured my attention and bled through all the noise I was experiencing at the time. It's a song that I still hold close to my heart today, and it's remained a beacon, like a lighthouse leading a lost vessel homeward in more recent years. It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken is a masterpiece in the hip-souvra. Everything just works, and it straight f*****g cooks as an ominous-sounding live jam. [1:40] I was working at Starbucks downtown when a barista, now my wife, asked me what I thought of the new album and particularly that song. I don't have the words for it, I told her. She agreed. This was supercharged hip at its best. Now it's time for Pete and Tim to experience A Heron Outside in Violet Light. They both were floored with music at work, so IVL has to be a slam dunk, right? Have to wait and see on this episode of Getting Hip to the Hip. Track 4: [2:37] All right, so welcome back to Getting Hip to the Hip, I'm your host JD and every week we talk about a Tragically Hip record with two budding fans of the Tragically Hip butformerly completely ignorant of the existence of the band and I don't mean I mean ignorant in the dictionary definition you guys are both classy gentlemen but you just it had never it hadnever made it to your ears before. So, we've got Tim and we've got Pete, and we're doing In Violet Light this week. Tim, Pete, how you doing? Hey, guys. How's it going? It's going. It's good. We are back for another week. I'm just, you know, I'm just so pleased that somebody's listening to this. I'm just sure of it, right? Yeah. Well, we're selling tickets for the finale event. We can announce that Tragically cover band 50 Mission are going to be playing, we're gonna have local comedian Pete Van Dyke there, there's gonna be some silent auction items, one ofwhich was donated to us by the Tragically Hip themselves, which is f*****g spectacular we also have some items coming to us from David Bustito, so I'm real excited about that becausehe was their official tour photographer for a long time I'd be Curious to see what he what he might what he might donate excellent. [4:07] So yeah, that's pretty I was thinking this week if we make it to the end of this podcast like get through all the records Without a like a seriously like hardcore diehard to actually hitfam you're killing Tim or I And I think we've it's been a success But yeah, it won't happen. Hopefully it won't happen after today's recording. There may be like an Oswald Jack Ruby incident at the finale. [4:38] But you guys don't have guns in Canada, so that's good. I had already plotted... It's really hard though. Oh God. I had already plotted, you know, a disguise for the event, so it's not really me that's there. No, I'm not Pete. If you see somebody with a goatee and a mustache and another mustache on top of that mustache, that's probably Tim Lydon Maybe two mullets The glasses with the nose and themustache Yeah, so let's start off like we always do and get a sense of how you guys took in this record Where you did your listening? Did it heighten or expand that experience? All that good shit. [5:26] I went into it right away. I mean, after our last pod recording, I kind of jumped right into it. In Violet Light because I was excited and wanted to keep the momentum going and the work going and I listened to it all over the place. I was, well, the first listen was cleaning out the garage and I was driving and I was at physical therapy for a portion on the train headed to Seattle. It was, I was kind of all over the place listening to this and I gotta say it was a more fragmented listen than past albums in that I had a hard time. I know about you, Pete, you might be the opposite of a feeling, but I had a hard time going from first song to last song and just listening to it straight through. It was because of a myriadof reasons, but sometimes because of the music. Yeah, sometimes because of the music. Huh. You know, I mean, I hear what you're saying, Tim. For me, I too jumped right into this one immediately after we finished, like, maybe even that night, finished the recording or the very next day. As is with everything with this band, I started to listen and was just wildly unimpressed. [6:48] And then just, it like, as the time went on, I just was like, so wrong and like, I, I mean, literally, I'm glad I've, I've been saving my notes now in my like notes section of my computerbecause I didn't save the notes from the first one, because they just now have gotten longer and longer and longer. And like, by the time we get to the final record, it's going to be a Dostoyevsky novel, dude. [7:18] It's just super, yeah, it's ridiculous, man. I enjoyed the shit out of this record. I would say my listening places, mistake, I started at the computer, which is maybe why I was unimpressed, but I'm just going to say this, there's nothing better than driving in my car,listening to this record. I did a lot of driving this last week, a lot of driving, and this record just, especially on the sound system I have in my car, I think that I'm a... Premium premium audio system in my car. Yeah. [8:00] You know laugh while you want to Just I love it And I think it's my laugh is like 96% joy because you know for all of us Out there and in the interwebs land listening to this It's somedude named Pete He's got, you know blonde hair and blue eyes and he's from California and he lives in f*****g Spain driving around in some cool car Which I don't know what it is. So don't tell me No, you don't some cool car with some cool sound system this dude from LA gets a drive around f*****g Spain And I'm you know at time of recording While we'repromoting our event coming up. It's you know, just f*****g snowed 11 inches in Portland in 24 hours and it was the most snow in 24 hours since 1943. And here's Pete just driving around, do, do, do, do, do. It's not snowing. It's snowed. It snowed this weekend, too, and where I was at. Oh, wow. Envy and joy. Envy and joy. OK, I'll take it. Yeah. I'll take it. Yeah. So. J.D., what do you think? Yeah, J.D. This was a record. This was the last record that I saw a tour for until the last record. [9:15] So I was starting to like wind down my extreme, like this is my number one band fandom. And if you'll note the year, you guys will recognize that's when, you know, like I found pavement and I just was getting caught up. Like, you know, the 2000s for me were getting caught up in everything that I'd missed in the 90s for singularly listening to the Tragically Hip. And of course, a bunch of other stuff. So I resented that a little bit, but when Greg and I were doing the podcast and I came back to this record, it was like, what were you thinking? What blows my mind is that this is 2002. [10:04] This means they've released six records in less than 10 years and they keep getting better, like they keep getting stronger or different at the very least. And I, I just don't understand how they were able to do that. You know, I just don't. Aye, aye. I second that emotion, Smokey, certainly. I have a feeling, I don't know what your all music rating you saw was. I didn't look that up. But I feel that at this point, the past few albums and this one have been highly influenced by who's helping on the pr
