Music

Pricing exploitation and band blase leaves Tragically Hip Canada-Day party feeling un-Canadian

by Jonathan Dekel

There are a couple things we, as Canadians, take for granted. A) we would never, willfully, allow ourselves to be screwed over and b) we do our best to try not to screw eachother over. And yet, at Friday’s Tragically Hip curated Canada Day extravaganza, we managed to do both.

With ticket prices at an outrageous $70 plus and drinks and food ranging from $5 waters (without which the Moosehead foam hat wearing police would have had much more to handle than the gaggle of drunken buffoonery which follows ‘The Hip’ wherever they go), $8 beers (and hour long queues), and $10 blooming onions (the most Canadian of fried onion options), there was little for one to do under the blazing sun during the seemingly unknown-to-most-of-the-crowd opening act combo of Buck 65 (admittedly not feeling so well) and Hey Rosetta than to let themselves and their wallets be metaphorically raped by exploitative pricing.

While the Hip usually do a good job of capturing the Canadian spirit, their choice in ‘bigger’ opening acts was both confusing and underwhelming. Broken Social Scene (Toronto’s band!) managed to half-assedly rumble through a set of originals and two covers (Modest Mouse’s ‘The World at Large’ and the Beastie Boys’ ‘Funky Boss’ featuring Buck 65 on turntables—both American) which suggested the group can’t play up to par unless they top the bill at their hometown shows.

Weezer were perhaps the most confusing group on the bill, having neither any particular connection nor citizenship in our fair country. As such, they did little more than entertain the crowd with nostalgia for their first album (playing none of Pinkerton) and disdain for their newer material. Oh, and they covered Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android,” which was kind of awesome but also, why?

Finally, as the sun set, the Hip arrived and the annoyingly disrespectful shouts for “Gordo” during the previous bands sets were finally aimed at the right person. For his part, Downie sashayed, pranced and paraded through the group’s cannon and the rest of the band were perfunctory enough to please the masses that have given the band permission to make a decent living as Canada’s off-key representation to the world.

Really though, if they truly cared about us (as we do them), The Hip should have done so many things different. Better bands, better pricing and better overall experience is what we Canadians pride ourselves in delivering to the world and yet we received none of those things on our 144 day of birth. As the headliners left the stage to a sea of fireworks (and no “50 Mission Cap”?!), as a Canadian, I was left to ask, “Et Tu Gorde?”

Photo by John Papamarko, AUX TV.