Tragically Hip Firsts

The Tragically Hip is my favorite band and the Official Turnipblog Band(link).

First Time I heard of Tragically Hip = Spring Break 1990. I was chillin outside my cottage at Key Lime Village in Key West, while all my friends, who were already 21, were out at bars. By complete chance, Toad, my sister's boyfriend at the time, who was on spring break from College of Charleston, walked by. I waived down Toad, who always had a bag, and we started talking. Toad volunteered that he had discovered a new band that had just come out named The Tragically Hip and that "They are the next Drivin-N-Cryin."

First Time I heard Tragically Hip = I didn't think much of Toad's comment at the time, but later that summer, at a family vacation, Toad played a tape of Tragically Hip's album, Up To Here, in his car. I liked it so much that I "borrowed" the tape, and thus began my love of Tragically Hip.

First Hip Show = Summer 1991, I had just graduated from UNC Chapel Hill (in only 4 years (kicks self)) and I was packbacking through Europe with Beattie, who had just graduated from Sewanee, University of the South and Hienze Gunter Molson, Beattie's alcoholic friend from Sewanee. While in Amsterdam, we met a girl who told us that the Hip were touring Europe and claimed to have recently slept with Gordon Downie.

A few weeks later we were hanging out on the Greek Island of Ios and we somehow found out where the Hip were touring. Beattie convinced us that we needed to fly to Frankfurt for a Hip show, and from there we would go to Munich, and then fly home.

None of us had ever been to Germany and we did not speak any German. We flew in to Frankfurt, exchanged dollars for franks and found the club where the Hip were playing, about 5 or 6 hours before the show. It was raining. We found a shelter where we ate salty meats and drank warm cloudy beer that we bought from a market.

When the club finally opened the people that worked there kept thinking that we were with the band. When I tried to buy a beer they told me that there was plenty of beer on a little refrigerator, back stage. I was not brave enough to look for it. I got in to the show for free.

The show was awesome and the Hip played many songs from their latest album, Road Apples. We pushed our way to the very front and everyone, including the band, looked amazed that we knew the words to all the songs.