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On July 10th, 2004 I cycled to the Ottawa Bluesfest to see The Tragically Hip. While the decade-old festival was burgeoning the Kingston quintet certainly was not, on tour behind their fourth-straight disappointing album, In Between Evolution.
It almost seemed like the band wasn’t trying anymore. After reaching the pinnacle of Canrock The Hip tried in vain to spread their success to the US and kept hitting a confounding brick wall. Arenas in Canada sold out in minutes while bars south of the border that booked the band would only fill with Canadians willing to make the drive. And while that must have been remarkably frustrating it seemed like the band started taking their hometown crowd for granted.
Phantom Power, Music @ Work, In Violet Light, and now this new album represented an inarguable decline in the engageability of The Hip’s studio output while their epic live shows had likewise suffered due to a complacency that seemed to lead to a noticeable lack of individual practise. The setlist they presented at this show was designed to push the new album, flipping between new songs and fan favourites for the whole night. They even stuck a new song between Wheat Kings and New Orleans Is Sinking in the first encore.
And while the crowd wasn’t biting on the fresh material we still screamed like rabid teenagers when the classic material came, even if it didn’t rage like we remembered it did.
Meanwhile the Ottawa Bluesfest itself managed to grow exponentially without hardly trying at all. Every year the lineup became even more of a slam dunk, and every year the crowds grew larger and happier.
And while the rising glory days of the Bluesfest were to eventually get kneecapped by a near-tragic event The Hip would rebound both live and in studio before being hobbled by their own internal tragedy.
Rock and roll is a vicious game.
Todd Man Out 