| Gordon Downie – Lofty Pines Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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It's terrible when what you thought was lofty and noble turns out to be cheap and tawdry, but that's what happens to art. We're told to dream of the lofty pines as an antidote to the heat, and we envision them in an idealized form, tall, cool, and sure. It's tempting to consider some other well-known pines: Tom Thomson's The Jack Pine and The West Wind, for example. This could be Canada idealized, or art idealized. But actually, we're dreaming of a motel, one with a seedy logo. Presumably, there are no idealized pines there, just another variety of heat. The idea of the lofty pines has been cheapened and commercialized. And our editor, who we (foolishly?) pitch the idea of a series on culture, doesn't much care about this dilemma. She has no need to dream of the lofty pines. She was born for the heat, and besides, there's nothing you can do about it in any case. Regardless, we keep on dreaming. |
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| Gordon Downie – 11th Fret Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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One of my favourite Downie lyrics. It's about finding yourself in a relationship that's going nowhere but south, when the only comfort you can take from it is that you still care enough to lie to each other. The first verse gives us a good shot of loneliness as we're outsiders on the cold sidewalk imagining the warmth we can't have. The lies end up as cheap reflections of comfort and ultimately nothing is promised. Not-quite-Hawaii for sure. The second verse gets even more dismal with the realization that we'll end up nothing more (and nothing less sordid) than bathroom grafitti. No matter how much hope we shovel into this, sooner or later we'll be jerked back to reality. There's nuthin' like thinking positive.... |
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| The Tragically Hip – One Night In Copenhagen Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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Well, at first glance it seems to be about drugs, but drugs here are just a way of referring to some (positive) state you're in, whether it's happy, creative, or something else. Downie loves to write about the creative process itself and there are signs of that here. Certainly the first and second verse should be familiar to anyone who has done creative work and then looked at what he's done after the fact; it's that continual, recurring spasm of doubt, the swing between "I rock" and "I suck." The drugs hit you and all seems wonderful, even the nadir is aglow; they quit you, everything sucks, and your faith in yourself dissolves. And then the cycle begins again. |
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| The Tragically Hip – New Orleans Is Sinking Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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Don't take at face value the things Downie may have said while introducing a song. He is usually making a joke, sometimes an in-joke for his bandmates. Is there anything actually in the lyric that would make you think it's about a battleship, other than the fact that New Orleans is Sinking? First off, there was no battleship New Orleans. There was a heavy cruiser New Orleans, which was built in 1931, but it never sank. It was scrapped in 1959. So ... do you think Gordie might have been poking fun at all the people who try to tie Nautical Disaster to a specific event? This seems to be a song about New Orleans as party town, and the confusing state of mind in being there. New Orleans is, in fact, sinking very slowly, and Downie has spun this into lines that should make perfect sense to anyone who has ever been drunk, confused, and struck with the sense that things are going wrong: My memory is muddy, what's this river that I'm in? New Orleans is sinking man, and I don't wanna swim. The first and third verses are pretty straightforward, but the second is odd. "Colonel Tom" in the second verse could be Colonel Tom Parker, who was Elvis Presley's manager. That puts a double entendre on "deal," which could refer to a hand of cards ("Hey north, you're south" suggests bridge or a similar game) or a contract. "Hey north, you're south, shut your big mouth, etc." has Colonel Tom respond by telling us to shut up and play, and not only on the obvious level. Downie as a Canadian (north) is south in New O, so we may not be talking bridge; we may just be saying, stop asking questions and party. Colonel Tom himself was actually an illegal immigrant, which puts a different spin on his instruction to a fellow outsider to shut up and party, on the question that prompts it, and on the impending doom implied by "New Orleans is sinking." "Party while you can," the song seems to say, but a sense of doom is as much a product of partying too hard as a reason to do it. So in the end it seems he does the sensible thing and clears out of New O, without bringing any souvenirs. |
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| The Tragically Hip – Bobcaygeon Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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On one level, this is a song about being caught in a dilemma: should you quit the bright lights for the quiet of a small town? On another level, this song may ask whether you'd like to see evil (in the form of fascism) out in the open or hidden under the surface. In the small town, things become clear; the constellations slowly reveal themselves. In the city, on the other hand, things are not so clear. We close the blind to obscure the sky, which in any case is dull, cloudy, and "hypothetical." And in the end, he seems to favour the country, since we end up there after he thinks of quitting. The bridge seems to refer to fascism, as "the men they couldn't hang" sing with an Aryan twang while mounted police try to restore order. The video, which casts Downie as a cop, seems to support that interpretation. On the other hand, The Men They Couldn't Hang was an 80s band which played the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto around the same time the Hip played there, and the Aryan twang could refer to their accents (although a Celtic burr would be closer the mark). In the end, it doesn't much matter. It's either a cop wondering whether to quit being a cop, or a singer ruminating on whether to quit being a singer. (A side note: it's one of several Hip songs that allude or seem to allude to fascism, so it's likely that Downie considered that angle.) |
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| The Tragically Hip – Fiddler's Green Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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This song is an elegy for a dead child. Fiddler's Green is a kind of "sailor's heaven," where sailors go when they die. Downie sticks with the nautical metaphor by suggesting that the child has "gone alee" (downwind) and comparing his heart failure with the sinking of a wooden ship. There's not much else to say about what this "means." Folk singer John connolly did a song called "Fiddler's Green" in 1970, which includes these lines: Now Fiddler's Green is a place I've heard tell Where fishermen go when they don't go to Hell Where the weather is fair and the dolphins do play And the cold coast of Greenland is far, far away Then there's "Final Trawl" by folk singer Archie Fisher: And when I die, you can stow me down In her rusty hold, where the breakers sound Then I'll make the haven and the Fiddler's Green Where the grub is good and the bunks are clean But the traditional idea of Fiddler's Green is much older than that. It was coopted by landlubbers and appears in an old post-Civil-War U.S. Cavalry song: Halfway down the trail to hell In a shady meadow green, Are the souls of all dead troopers camped Near a good old-time canteen And this eternal resting place Is known as Fiddler's Green. |
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| The Tragically Hip – Fireworks Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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Although Gord Sinclair made some comment on how this song is about pop culture, and the temporary nature of fame, fireworks replacing songs, it also works on a whole other level as a song about teenaged love, losing your virginity, or both. He's a kid, and he's all wrapped up in Bobby Orr and childhood heroes. She's more sophisticated (as girls usually are at that age -- see also Ahead by a Century), and she loosens his grip on Bobby Orr. They hang out together all the time because they naively think that's what married people do (remember feeling that way?). The external world, the cold war, etc., doesn't mean a thing to them. He drops out of the flexed arm hang, shows no respect for it, etc. Isn't it amazing that anything's accomplished when this little sensation gets in your way, when all ambition is replaced by the big crush? Alternatively, don't you feel that you can do anything? But of course, it's all as temporary as fireworks. And it has f-all to do with hockey; hockey, nationalism, and the other things associated with the Hip get rejected as childish things when he falls for her. Now, on another level, the love story here can just be a metaphor for his relationship with music, art, or success in the U.S., so we are back to the pop culture idea. |
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| The Tragically Hip – Opiated Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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This is a song about a guy who kills himself, leaving a friend behind. Each verse contains the threat of suicide in its final lines: "if his bride didn't like it, St. Peter wouldn't mind" in the first, and "it was see if you like it, or see you up there" in the second. Suicide, rather than murder, because it's his new blue suit that St. Peter might like, rather than anything of his bride's. He's "addicted to approval," and if it's withdrawn, he's going to off himself. Before he offs himself, he gets drunk. That ain't two fifths of gasoline in that bottle; the following line is slyly lifted from a Grateful Dead song, "Brown-Eyed Women," which is about a bootlegger. As the Dead have it, "the bottle was dusty, but the liquor was clean." Booze is fuel to his suicidal impulse -- the snake doesn't just dream up the poison in his head. The singer is left behind, and if not actually opiated, that's how he feels: numb. Maybe he couldn't have stopped the guy from offing himself. On the other hand, maybe he could have waited for help. Escape is at Hand for the Travellin' Man has another, not dissimilar, take on a friend's suicide. |
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| The Tragically Hip – Scared Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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This is generally introduced as a song about a door-to-door salesman selling fear, which may be a sly comment on politicians or media. It's one of several TTH lyrics dealing with Nazism (others are Fire in the Hole and Springtime in Vienna), and it's the one that deals with it most explicitly. Which of the three tales scares us? First, we have the war, in which Russians hide art from Nazi invaders and the invaders think God has abandoned them. What's frightening about this? The Nazi's faith in God? Then we're told that some group of people need not be killed (or at least, need not die prematurely). They can keep on living and feeling grandiose. Who are they? Then the shark limps in, without its fangs, and kids play with it. I think all these are the same: Nazis fight a war in God's name ("Gott mit uns" on their belt buckles); Nazi war criminals survive the war and are kept in prison; Nazi ideals, apparently defanged, live on and attract children. The last is certainly the most frightening. But is the fear based on reality, or on some tale concocted out of the cold calculation of a salesman pitching fear? |
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| The Tragically Hip – The Last Of The Unplucked Gems Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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It's about how people suck the magic and mystery out of songs by defining their meanings: violins and tambourines, and this is what we think they mean. What's the point in creating art if people are just going to come along and say, "it means this?" Might as well send a man to bury us. The last of the unplucked gems? It was, until I came along and said, "it means this." |
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| The Tragically Hip – Courage (For Hugh Maclennan) Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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The reference to Hugh MacLennan leads to what the song is all about. The third stanza is lifted almost directly from MacLennan's novel, The Watch that Ends the Night: "But that night as I drove back to Montreal I at least discovered this: that there's no simple explanation for anything important any of us do, and that the human tragedy, or the human irony, consists in the necessity of living with the consequences of actions performed under the pressure of compulsions so obscure we do not and cannot understand them." The novel deals with a man who marries his childhood sweetheart (who is in poor health) after her husband is reported killed in the war. The husband's return precipitates a crisis. The song more or less expresses what the novel is all about. Courage couldn't come at a worse time, but also, it didn't come when it was needed. It isn't about living with the consequences of doing something terrible so much as it's about living with the consequences of the ordinary decisions we make, and equally, regretting what we fail to do. |
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| The Tragically Hip – Escape Is At Hand For The Travellin' Man Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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It's not only about missed chances, but also about being abandoned or left behind by someone. There's a certain tone of reproach along with the regret: I guess I'm too slow, but you said anytime.... It's generally acknowledged that the song was written for Jim Ellison of the band Material Issue, who committed suicide in 1996. |
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| The Tragically Hip – Nautical Disaster Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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This song is not about the Dieppe raid, nor is it "about" any other disaster. It is about a relationship that went bad, and the nautical disaster, occurring in a dream, is a metaphor for the relationship. The metaphorical disaster need not correspond to any real event. Whether it does will always be a matter of debate, as the lyric gives no concrete evidence. Certainly, the disaster is not the Dieppe raid. Dieppe was a military disaster, not a nautical one; the dead died on the beach, not in the water; the total Canadian dead numbered 907 (with 1,946 taken prisoner), not 4,000; the raid took place in the morning, not "one afternoon"; it occured on, not off, the coast of France; and the survivors weren't abandoned. The sinking of the Bismarck is the most popular candidate for the "real" disaster, but few of the facts agree with the song. The Bismarck was sunk some 600 miles from France, in the open ocean; the ship sank in the morning, not in the afternoon; and the crew was just over 2,000, not 4,500. The only fact that agrees is the important one: that the survivors were abandoned, because of concerns that U-Boats lurking in the area might have sunk ships dallying to rescue the survivors. It is very hard to find a nautical disaster that actually did drown 4,500, as few ships carry that many people. (Even the Titanic sinking drowned only 1,500 or so). But there is one candidate: the obscure sinking of the troopship Lancastria in 1940 as it took on Allied troops retreating from France. The Lancastria went down in the afternoon, at anchor off the French port of Ste. Nazaire, and although the exact casualty count isn't known, it is believed that 3,000 to 6,000 drowned because of a lack of lifeboats. The facts correspond very closely, but the sinking is an obscure, little known one, so this could be simple coincidence. One notable fact is that the sinking is obscure because Churchill cast a veil of secrecy over it, including a gag order given to survivors. Whether the disaster in question was the Bismarck or the Lancastria doesn't really matter. Downie could have mixed up the facts around the Bismarck, and he may never have heard of the Lancastria. The only thing that makes the two sinkings interesting is that they suggest alternative interpretations of the song. Very little actually happens in the song. We have our narrator recounting the details of a horrific dream (to a person he addresses as "dear"), and how he was interrupted by a telephone call. This call is apparently from a third party (he said it's out there), although sometimes Downie sings "you," suggesting the caller was the same person he is addressing. Finally, the narrator assures "Susan" (who we have to assume is also the person addressed as "dear") that he barely remembers their conversation -- but by suggesting that the conversation is as faint as his vivid dream, he also suggests that his assurance is false. There isn't enough here to pin a specific meaning on the song. The disaster may represent a breakup, or merely a fight (as "I relished the fray/and the screaming filled my head all day" suggests). The assurance offered Susan may be at her behest (as "if you like" suggests, like Churchill's gag order to the Lancastria's survivors), or it may not. The phone call may be from a third party, in line with the printed lyrics, or from Susan herself, in line with the sung (or at least, heard) lyrics. Perhaps he abandons the survivors by choice, as in the Bismarck sinking, or perhaps because he is incapable of rescuing them all, as in the Lancastria sinking. Regardless, what the lyric leaves us with is the survivor of some relationship disaster assuring his partner (or former partner) that all is forgotten, when clearly it isn't. |
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