Wednesday's Emotional Setup: Springtime In Vienna
You know, I'd feel worse about updating this thing on Thursday mornings and such if I thought I had people actually going "jeeze, why is he so late all the time". It's kind of nice not having that sort of pressure, actually, but I will be trying to be more on time nonetheless. It's a good skill to have.
So, it's hockey season. I've been out at places with TVs for a fair number of the games (go Habs! And barring that, go Leafs, I guess), and I'm feeling pretty Canadian. Which brings me to the Tragically Hip.
Now, I like the Hip, although not quite as much as some people around here. I find the creative tension behind the bar-band origins and Gord Downie's poetry (I'm not being metaphorical here; for those not up on this sort of thing, he's actually published poetry) has made some pretty damned good rock and roll, and for at least one album everything balanced so perfectly that they really did make a modern classic (memo to allmusic, most critics and some fans: Road Apples and Fully Completely are fine albums, but they are not the be-all and end-all of the Hip).
Even their later stuff, what I've heard, I quite liked; I listened to my dad's copies of Trouble At The Henhouse and Phantom Power enough to like them both, and to think that the former especially gets a raw deal.
But all that's not really why I'm covering 'Springtime In Vienna', from Trouble At The Henhouse for this week. I'm doing it because it came up randomly on Winamp, and within its steady thrash and Johnny Fay's sturdy drumming, it's got one of my favorite lines from any band ever, as well as a couple others I like ("the blues is still required", in the context of a Hip song, is the kind of middle ground between cryptic and obvious that Downie excels at, for example).
So the chorus kicks up and someone (Paul Langlois?) does the standard incomphrensible yet crucial backing vocals bit and Downie busts out with, over and over,
"We live to survive our paradoxes".
That sounds about right to me. And now, as Sam Pepys said, to bed.
So, it's hockey season. I've been out at places with TVs for a fair number of the games (go Habs! And barring that, go Leafs, I guess), and I'm feeling pretty Canadian. Which brings me to the Tragically Hip.
Now, I like the Hip, although not quite as much as some people around here. I find the creative tension behind the bar-band origins and Gord Downie's poetry (I'm not being metaphorical here; for those not up on this sort of thing, he's actually published poetry) has made some pretty damned good rock and roll, and for at least one album everything balanced so perfectly that they really did make a modern classic (memo to allmusic, most critics and some fans: Road Apples and Fully Completely are fine albums, but they are not the be-all and end-all of the Hip).
Even their later stuff, what I've heard, I quite liked; I listened to my dad's copies of Trouble At The Henhouse and Phantom Power enough to like them both, and to think that the former especially gets a raw deal.
But all that's not really why I'm covering 'Springtime In Vienna', from Trouble At The Henhouse for this week. I'm doing it because it came up randomly on Winamp, and within its steady thrash and Johnny Fay's sturdy drumming, it's got one of my favorite lines from any band ever, as well as a couple others I like ("the blues is still required", in the context of a Hip song, is the kind of middle ground between cryptic and obvious that Downie excels at, for example).
So the chorus kicks up and someone (Paul Langlois?) does the standard incomphrensible yet crucial backing vocals bit and Downie busts out with, over and over,
"We live to survive our paradoxes".
That sounds about right to me. And now, as Sam Pepys said, to bed.
