Here. Now.

To say it’s been a rough year for all-time great musicians would be like saying it’s been a rough decade for the Oilers – that’s putting it nicely. And while ‘all-time great’ still applies, one loss is local to Canada: Gord Downie is going to die.  

Thankfully, he hasn’t yet, and the world remains better off. But on the morning of the May 24th press release, Canadian music fans shared a sliver of the pain previously felt only by his family, friends and band.

I was late to the Hip, and I think that’s common for fans my age. Growing up, they were always just sort of there. I originally thought they were a “parents’ band”, even though their first album came out when I was six years old. I liked them, but I couldn’t distinguish between albums and New Orleans is Sinking sounded like a great song from the late 70s. Their first music videos weren’t super memorable, and that mattered to a 90s kid.

Most fans don’t have a by far favourite album – their discography just keeps rolling, never producing a dud and leaving plenty of classics along the way. No one talks about their one truly great record, but they have a rarely matched first five-album output, and you could pick any other five and say the same thing.

But none of that really matters. Because like any all-time great band, you don’t know them until you see them.

I’ve been lucky to see them about a dozen times, mostly at Rexall, and for most fans over 30, that’s about average (regular touring over a long time being another hallmark of all-time greats). No matter where they play, it’s full. I don’t mean the crowd, although it’s full too, I mean the atmosphere emanating from the stage. They make just enough of the right kind of noise to fill each venue to the top. Even outside, the air is heavy and comforting, like some kind of awesome claustrophobia.

They’re perfect for each other, and they know it – a championship team filled with players who relish their role. They even share song-writing credit equally.

The best I ever saw them was at Pemberton, in ’08. They were part of the greatest live music day of my life, and Gord was on fire. He owned the stage, and the crowd, in a way that would’ve been cocky if he wasn’t so juvenile. I’ll forever remember watching the side stage screen, when the camera looked over Gord’s shoulder as he climbed down, stood against the front row rail and held a girl’s hands, presumably telling her the meaning of life as she wept and the band kept the beat. Later, during Grace Too, he reached up to the sky just as the sun broke through the clouds, and screamed, “…said I’m tragically hip!”

The most uniquely Hip thing about seeing them live is that it always feels like two shows in one. There’s the band – so effortlessly tight they at a glance look bored – and then there’s Gord, taking up every other inch of stage, wrecking his mic stand, sweating and sputtering silly words of wisdom until it just happens to be time to sing the next verse. No one has more fun at a Hip show. The band or Gord alone would be worth the ticket, but together they’re a beautiful contrast – a robotically precise band playing seamlessly with a singer who seems to improvise every word.

You don’t have to be a word nerd like me to appreciate his words’ lasting poetry, including the song about poets. There’s an old school-ness to them, a timelessness to be studied in textbooks.

Then there’s the Hip’s hockey aspect, and I’m not just bringing it up because this is a hockey blog. It would be weird to write about the Hip and not talk about hockey, which many writers have. I especially like Bob Mackenzie’s book excerpt here – the best parts are the story about casually playing pick-up hockey moments before opening for Half-Zeppelin and the fact Gord obviously hates the Leafs.

They have a surprisingly few full on hockey songs, but that makes them more impactful. My favourite only mentions it as part of a story about a boy and country maturing:

A few weeks after the press release, we went camping for a buddy’s stag party. At a still relatively coherent point in the night, the Hip came on the music box. As friends and fellow veterans of many Hip shows, we listened in a way we never had before, with new, terrible knowledge that we’ll think of every time we hear them again. All we could think was: this isn’t how it should be.

“I wanted to go to their concerts with you assholes well into our 50s,” McKale said.

Turns out, nature doesn’t care what we assholes want, and we acknowledged the selfishness to even think ‘poor us’. Then I thought of Freddie Mercury – a front man I don’t hesitate to compare Gord with at all – and Queen’s final tour, including the epic Wembley show. Struggling to find some semblance of a silver lining, I said, “At least we’ll know it’s the last time we’ll see him. I would trade it for another twenty years if I could, but we’ll get to say thank you, and it’ll be one helluva show.”

The first time I saw them was in Camrose at Stage 13, with 40,000 other people in the sweltering sun. I remember guitarist Rob Baker’s pink leather pants, and one moment in between songs, near the end of their set when Gord actually took a breath. There was more to the quote, and I can’t be sure of the order, but he looked out to the loving crowd and said, “Life is forgetting. Life is for getting.”

He won’t get enough life, and ours will lose an all-time great source of joy because of that. But as long as we’re alive, we’ll never forget a man, or band, like Gord and the Hip.