Music plays an important part in life, from the daily commute, to your feel-good song, to a tune that helps you through tough times. Music is unavoidable, and an important part of everyone’s lives, whether they know it or not. Personally, it’s an escape. I put on music to distract myself from my thoughts running away, it helps me focus, it helps me fall asleep, and it is a great way to experience art. I really started getting into music when I started piano lessons in elementary school, then it turned into the clarinet through band class, I picked up guitar through COVID, and making music has always been a part of killing time ever since. I never got into it so much that I would get into a band, or start writing music, but it is a great way I can get closer to my favorite songs. It gives me a challenge, and something easy to achieve and work towards, with no consequence if things go wrong. Making music is a way I can lose myself in the strings, and have somewhat of a connection with the spirit of the music.
My favorite band is The Tragically Hip. There is no doubt about it, I have every track on iTunes, and I mean track, not song. Every album, every deluxe version, every live album. I even have both movies. Pictured below, there’s a corner of my room dedicated to the albums I have, with posters, cd books I’ve torn apart for the art inside, and CD cases to the missing albums. I love the Hip’s discography and how it changed over their lifetime. From the early rock to the love albums in the early 2010’s to Man Machine Poem in 2016. My favorite era, however, was the love songs. Generally, some of the least liked, Now for Plan A and We are the Same have some of the best stories through the album. Both are deeply personal albums; Now for Plan A focuses on Gord caring for his wife while she battles cancer. “Now for Plan A” and “We Want to Be It” are beautiful tracks with a lot of emotion. We Are the Same has been described as having a lack of conviction. That’s exactly the purpose. With songs like
The Depression Suite, Now the Struggle Has a Name, The Exact Feeling, and Morning Moon the whole point is a relationship with a lack of conviction, or commitment. Looking into the sky and seeing the moon during the day, a feeling you don’t know why you don’t miss, putting a name to the struggle, and letting go of all the wrong problems and wondering why it didn’t work.
[Pictured above from left to right, My computer, where I do most of my listening. Middle, my Tragically Hip corner. Left, my poster of Gord's final salute.]
The Hip have written deep tracks before the early 2000’s flip, “Fiddler’s Green” is about Gord’s nephew who passed. Their 2009 show in Abbotsford has Gord saying, “We’d like to do a song now, we don’t do it too often, but we’ve been doin’ it a fair amount lately. Probably just because it’s time. A song that used to kinda be painful to play, is now not as painful to play because maybe it helps some people. Without being too presumptuous we bring you, Fiddler’s Green.” The song was released in 1991 on Road Apples. That’s 18 years they didn’t play that song because it was too personal, too close to be able to do on stage to people that might not understand what it really meant. To this day, they still do not have a live version on Itunes, and I can’t find a live version before 2009. So it helped, and it got less painful to play. The memory got no better, but it was something Gord could share. They played it during their last performance in Kingston. Live shows give a new meaning and insight to the songs, and the Kingston show was emotional for everyone. Fiddler’s Green had a different feeling, and the final song, Ahead by a Century left everyone in tears. I have a poster of the final salute from that show in my room, and it helps me remember the impact five friends from Kingston have on not just me, but the 1/3 of the population who watched the show in Kingston August 2016. I could go on about every album they have and what it means to me, but neither of us have the time for that. I never got too deep into the band like some people do. I don’t feel the need to know their birthdays, who and when they married, the entire life story. I get what I need to from the music, from the parts they share during concerts, not something someone dug up for clicks online. I want to let these people live their lives and know what parts of them they decided to share in the music, the real feeling and the connection I make to it.
Some people make deep connections to music. There are some songs I can’t play because the lyrics mean so much to me, but sometimes, it’s nice to sit down and get involved with a song you can make a connection with. There are many songs I have a personal connection to, and many people have connections to songs about people passing, or their wedding song. Strong lyrics and melodies are part of what got me into radio in the first place. Music is something I can’t live without, and I know many people who can’t as well.
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