The Hip. Fully Completely

The Never-Ending Present: The Story of Gord Downie and the Tragically Hip – Michael Barclay (ECW Press)

I remember the conversation vividly. I wandered into the converted old house on Buffalo’s east side that was home to an independent record promotion company run by friends of mine; my mission was to pick up an arm load of new music to play on my show. Unlike the stereotypical image of slick guys in silk tour jackets, more concerned about money and radio airplay, these guys were old school music fans, who happened to have a company that worked to get records played on the radio. Their track record of “breaking” bands was impressive, as the oversized autographs on the office wall that dated back to 1980 from a little Irish outfit known as U2 can attest.

Spinning in his office chair to greet me, my friend Bruce reached down to a stack of albums leaning against his desk and thrust copies of the Tragically Hip’s self-titled debut EP and their first full album Up To Here, into my hands and proclaimed, “you have to hear this, you have to play this.” With that he went to the office stereo system and dropped the needle onto the record and cranked up the volume. I had seen the look on his face before, so I knew this was the real deal. I had the rare opportunity at the time to have a show on a otherwise tightly formatted rock station to pick and choose music I thought was cool and great and give it a spin. Needless to say, the Tragically Hip was both cool and great; it’s no wonder that Buffalo, NY would form a love affair with the band that would that was unmatched outside of their home of Canada.

It was with a mix of love for the band and sadness at the passing of frontman Gord Downie that I approached Michael Barclay’s epic rendering of their history, The Never-Ending Present: the Story of Gord Downie and the Tragically Hip, from beginning to end at the all too early age of 53. Barclay utilizes an almost documentarian approach to detailing the band; utterly comprehensive from the band’s formation in Kingston, Ontario and through the evolution of their sound and style serving up insights from studio and the thought processes of the band.

While I tend to avoid the minor details of getting the first guitar/drums/bass and the machinations of how bands came together, Barclay manages to deliver the highlights without dwelling on every broken guitar string along  the way like many biographers. He paints the picture, sets the scene and moves the story forward. While the book is 500 plus pages, it never felt like a door stop like too many overblown tales. Thank God it also avoided the tendency of so many rock bios to wander into the Behind the Music, realm of too many drugs, too many women and too much excess; like I said, The Hip was cool and good.

Barclay does a great job of showcasing the cultural shift and impact the band had on Canada that was like no other band. The fact that my home town of Buffalo got to be like a distant, but loving cousin who was a part of that was not lost on me as I read the book; he managed to tap into the joy that that band brought to so many while never diminishing the impact of the tragic loss of Downie to brain cancer.

While I have moved away for career reasons, I continued to live vicariously through the reporting of my home town newspaper, The Buffalo News, and their reporting on a jam packed video screening of the band’s farewell concert, which I have managed to watch online a couple of times. It seemed somehow fitting that my friend Bruce was quoted via text message by the Buffalo News music critic Jeff Miers, in his obit of Downie, “Gord died last night” for me completing the circle, fully completely.