School of Hip

In this episode of School of Hip Chaz and Heath are joined by an Irishman living in Germany, none other than Ian Winick host of Black Adder podcast Lord of Adders Black and the brand new Eat the Pudding: A Simpsons Podcast. Despite being stricken with illness and even more unrested than anticipated – curse you, time zone trickery – Winick plants his boots on hallowed Hip ground sharing the story of his first Tragically Hip exposure, via – weirdly enough – Metal Hammer magazine in the ‘90s.

While there’s been much School of Hip talk about the beloved Canadian band’s presence in the American market, Ian brings insights into the Hip’s European profile. The Australian reception to the band is touched on too, though the test group is select, observations gleaned from a busload of drunken Aussie twentysomethings hearing this episode’s featured album, Day for Night, for the first time.

Ushering in a new era for the band – one that is subjectively darker and more subdued than on previous albums, as in a work of film noir – side A of Day for Night includes some of the Hip’s most revered songs, including the masterpieces Grace, Too, So Hard Done By, Greasy Jungle and the epic, historically grounded fever dream, Nautical Disaster. Elsewhere armed cops storm into mosh pits while sheer lust for life leads to the riding of a barrel down a raging waterfall. It’s no wonder Day for the Night is one of the Hip’s most acclaimed works.

Whether you’re a lifelong Hip fan or just curious about what makes this band so iconic in Canada, School of Hip is your guide to the sounds and the story of the Tragically Hip, one album side per episode. Episodes drop every two weeks.

For further exploration:

School of Hip is a proud part of the burgeoning empire that is the Boneless Podcasting Network. Listen there, or find us on iTunes, Spotify, Acast and other podcasting platforms. Please subscribe, review and give us five stars reviews to help grow our beloved show!
Reach out to us on our School of Hip Facebook Group, School of Hip Discord and watch for our posts in the awesome Reddit Tragically Hip community.
Also:

The Never-Ending Present: The Story of Gord Downie and the Tragically Hip by Michael Barclay.

https://www.hipmuseum.com/

https://hipbase.com/

https://thehip.com/

Chaz Charles is the founder of the Boneless Podcasting Network, currently hosting five fantastic shows (and appearing in many more!)
Heath McCoy is the author of Pain and Passion: The History of Stampede Wrestling, available on Amazon.ca and at ECW Press. He appears in the award winning documentary Singhs in the Ring on Crave TV.
And once again, to all you rock n’ roll podcast lovers .... GO BONELESS!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of School of Hip Chaz and Heath take a detour from their chronological deep dive through the Tragically Hip’s discography to instead explore the newly released live album by Gord Downie & The Sadies, Live at 6 O’Clock. It’s a dynamic snapshot from the short 2014 tour the late Hip frontman embarked on in support of a solo album he released that same year with psychedelic alt-country band The Sadies, entitled And the Conquering Sun, and it finds the pairing exploding in a manner only hinted at on that studio record.

Live at 6 O’Clock burns with garage rock intensity as Downie and The Sadies storm through inspired covers of deep cuts by The Who, Neil Young, and Iggy and the Stooges, along with gems by the underground likes of Roky Erickson, Fucked Up, and The Gun Club. It finds Downie in raw, animated, vulnerable form, in a manner quite distinct from his work with the Hip. It’s a posthumous release not only for Gord, but also from Sadies co-founder Dallas Good, who died in 2022. “If you have ghosts” indeed (to quote the eccentric Roky Erickson).

The co-hosts also address online criticisms about the podcast’s length and their supposed lack of sufficient “deep Hip knowledge,” as they defend their format and explain the concept of schoolin’!

Whether you’re a lifelong Hip fan or just curious about what makes this band so iconic in Canada, School of Hip is your guide to the sounds and the story of the Tragically Hip, one album side per episode (with the odd detour in between!). Episodes drop every two weeks. 

For further exploration: 

School of Hip is a proud part of the burgeoning empire that is the Boneless Podcasting Network. Listen there, or find us on iTunes, Spotify, Acast and other podcasting platforms. Please subscribe, review and give us five stars reviews to help grow our beloved show!

Reach out to us on our School of Hip Facebook Group, School of Hip Discord and watch for our posts in the awesome Reddit Tragically Hip community.

Also:

If You Have Ghosts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueEGIHhcU8c
Generation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvDHKOyxnY0

Grey Riders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTlDniwX53I

The Never-Ending Present: The Story of Gord Downie and the Tragically Hip by Michael Barclay. 

https://www.hipmuseum.com/

https://hipbase.com/

https://thehip.com/



Chaz Charles is the founder of the Boneless Podcasting Network, currently hosting seven fantastic shows (and appearing in many more!)

Heath McCoy is the author of Pain and Passion: The History of Stampede Wrestling, available on Amazon.ca and at ECW Press. He appears in the award winning documentary Singhs in the Ring on Crave TV.

And once again, to all you rock n’ roll podcast lovers .... GO BONELESS!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of School of Hip Chaz and Heath are joined by the acknowledged Godfather of their podcasting universe, now forever crowned the Podfather! That’s Corey Morrissette, whose flagship show, Van Halen podcast And the Podcast Will Rock, is the very venue where our School of Hip co-hosts met.

A spirited talk between the three pod pals touches on the vast differences between the Canadiana of Gord Downie and that of Canuck folk troubadour Stompin’ Tom Connors. Then talk turns to side B of Corey’s favorite Tragically Hip album (and that of a huge portion of the fanbase) Fully Completely.

Of course, the tragic tale of hockey hero and Toronto Maple Leafs legend Bill Barilko is covered during Fifty Mission Cap, as is the story of the fifty mission caps worn by pilots who had survived 50 bombing missions during the Second World War. The inspired brilliance of marrying these two seemingly disparate narratives in song is not lost on our trio.

As for iconic ballad Wheat Kings, the story of David Milgaard, wrongly convicted for a Saskatoon murder in 1969, this leads to Heath and Corey attempting to correct Chaz the American of the insane notion, fairly borne on this show, that grisly murders are somehow central to the lived Canadian experience. Alas, then Corey shares his own boyhood story of a brush with prison escaped killers and their argument is self-torpedoed. ‘Tis an episode of much laughter amidst probing insight!

Whether you’re a lifelong Hip fan or just curious about what makes this band so iconic in Canada, School of Hip is your guide to the sounds and the story of the Tragically Hip, one album side per episode. Episodes drop every two weeks. 

For further exploration: 

School of Hip is a proud part of the burgeoning empire that is the Boneless Podcasting Network. Listen there, or find us on iTunes, Spotify, Acast and other podcasting platforms. Please subscribe, review and give us five stars reviews to help grow our beloved show!

Reach out to us on our School of Hip Facebook Group, School of Hip Discord and watch for our posts in the awesome Reddit Tragically Hip community.

Also:

The Never-Ending Present: The Story of Gord Downie and the Tragically Hip by Michael Barclay. 

https://www.hipmuseum.com/

https://hipbase.com/

https://thehip.com/

Chaz Charles is the founder of the Boneless Podcasting Network, currently hosting five fantastic shows (and appearing in many more!)

Heath McCoy is the author of Pain and Passion: The History of Stampede Wrestling, available on Amazon.ca and at ECW Press. He appears in the award winning documentary Singhs in the Ring on Crave TV.

And once again, to all you rock n’ roll podcast lovers .... GO BONELESS!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of School of Hip Chaz and Heath are joined by special guest Michael Barclay, author of Canadian best seller The Never-Ending Present: The Story of the Tragically Hip – which has been a constant reference point for this show – as well as the book Hearts on Fire: Six Years That Changed Canadian Music 2000-20005.

Michael takes us on his Tragically Hip journey, from falling in love with the band in his teenage years when they were a live sensation on the Ontario indie rock scene to writing the definitive biography of the band, published in 2018, the year after singer Gord Downie’s death.

Hip news includes the upcoming Gord Downie and the Sadies live album, Live at 6 O’Clock, and a new record by guitarist Paul Langois, Smooth Rock Falls.

Then it’s on to Side 1 of the Hip’s third full length release, the diamond certified Fully Completely. We discuss the heavy Canadiana in the lyrics, running through six tracks, including some of the bands’ biggest hits: Courage (for Hugh MacLennan), Looking for a Place to Happen, At the Hundredth Meridian and Locked in the Trunk of a Car. Also, is Pigeon Camera about incest and sexual abuse? Can it be compared to other popular songs of the era that touch on the topic (see Janie’s Got a Gun by Aerosmith and Pearl Jam’s Daughter).

Hot take on this one, Barclay is not a Fully Completely fan, giving a few of these songs the lowest rankings we’ve ever had on the show! That leads to an analysis of the radio ready production techniques of Chris Tsangarides. We compare Tsangarides to Don Smith whose rougher “live off the floor” recording shaped the sonics of Up to Here and Road Apples.

Whether you’re a lifelong Hip fan or just curious about what makes this band so iconic in Canada, School of Hip is your guide to the sounds and the story of the Tragically Hip, one album side per episode. Episodes drop every two weeks. 

For further exploration: 

School of Hip is hosted on Acast and can be found on iTunes, Spotify and other podcasting platforms. Reach out to us on our School of Hip Facebook Group and our School of Hip Discord.

Also:
Hearts on Fire: Six Years that Changed Canadian Music 2000–2005

The Never-Ending Present: The Story of Gord Downie and the Tragically Hip by Michael Barclay. 

That Night in Toronto: https://michaelbarclay.substack.com

https://www.hipmuseum.com/

https://hipbase.com/

https://thehip.com/

Chaz Charles is also the co-host of podcasts: RushRash, Regarding… Series, Those Who Are About To Dive: Chronicling Colosseum Track By Bloody Track With Dr. Glund, and he’s a rocktorney on season two of Rock Court. 

Heath McCoy is the author of Pain and Passion: The History of Stampede Wrestling, available on Amazon.ca and at ECW Press. He appears in the award winning documentary Singhs in the Ring on Crave TV. He is a rocktorney on season one of Rock Court.


GO BONELESS!

Boneless makes a better podcast. Find 20 more like-minded podcast nuggets at The Boneless Podcasting Network. https://goboneless.loveable.app

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of School of Hip:

Chaz and Heath are joined by Nick Lewis, a former journalist who covered Calgary’s arts and entertainment scene with Heath in the early 2000s, writing for the Calgary Herald. Reunited for the first time in well over a decade they share stories from the rock critic trenches.

Nick’s tale of a near fisticuffs encounter with a drunken, belligerent Tragically Hip fan in the ‘90s serves as an intro to the episode’s review of the EP Saskadelphia. Released in 2021 but compiled from lost, leftover tracks from the Hip’s 1991 masterpiece, Road Apples – which were thought to have been destroyed in the devastating Universal Studios fire of 2008 – our reviewers discover that Saskadelphia is far from a collection of throwaways. Rather, it’s a treasure in its own right.

While one poignant track turns talk to the Montreal Massacre of 1989, most of the EP is a wild ride wherein spines crack like whips, skeletons play dumb and the Hip gets their southern rock on. Quality was surely not a factor which led these songs to the cutting room floor three decades ago.

Whether you’re a lifelong Hip fan or just curious about what makes this band so iconic in Canada, School of Hip is your guide to the sounds and the story of the Tragically Hip, one album side per episode. Episodes drop every two weeks.

Reach out to us on our School of Hip Facebook Group, School of Hip Discord and watch for our posts in the awesome Reddit Tragically Hip community.

Also:

The Never-Ending Present: The Story of Gord Downie and the Tragically Hip by Michael Barclay.

https://www.hipmuseum.com/

https://hipbase.com/

https://thehip.com/

Chaz Charles is the founder of the Boneless Podcasting Network, currently hosting five fantastic shows (and appearing in many more!)

Heath McCoy is the author of Pain and Passion: The History of Stampede Wrestling, available on Amazon.ca and at ECW Press. He appears in the award winning documentary Singhs in the Ring on Crave TV.

And once again, to all you rock n’ roll podcast lovers .... GO BONELESS!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.