The Tragically Hip On Shuffle - Live Stream: The Bastard

June 6th, 2000. Track six on "Music @ Work" opens on tabla, and the album credits name the player as Mr. Hussein. That's the whole credit.

'The Bastard' sits between 'Stay' and 'The Completists' on the record The Tragically Hip made with Steve Berlin and Mark Vreeken, the one that took the 2001 Juno for Best Rock Album. It was never a single, and Chris from Seattle has a theory about why. It finished 119th of 169 on the TTHTop40 Countdown, and Hipbase and setlist.fm log it live just fourteen times (submitted set lists only, so the real number runs higher). Then the live poll in the Facebook group came back 36 percent love it, 46 percent like it, and 13 percent tolerate it, one of the highest tolerate numbers the show has seen.

The panel spins a 2000 recording out of Cleveland, Gord singing his heart out, and Chris hears Godzilla in the rhythm section. Then the lyric sheet comes out. Crepuscular rays. Winged elephants. Purple Italians. A fire-and-brimstone preacher shouting about Philadelphia. One panelist thinks he's cracked it after twenty-six years of not reading the words. Another thinks Gord just liked how they sounded. Nobody's sure Gord would side with either of them.

Underneath all of it sits a record the band never quite got behind. Steve came in calling "Music @ Work" his least favourite record by The Hip and walked out rediscovering it. Chris has it in his top five and has defended it on this show more than once. And jD once asked Johnny Fay about a "Music @ Work" box set. His reaction is in here, and so is Greg's reaction to his reaction.

WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE

• The icebreaker. One song by The Hip each they never got to hear live, and a pair of Calgary tickets from 2009 that Steve sold and still thinks about.

• September 23rd in The Hip Handbook. A busy date, and two of the shows on it have somebody on this panel attached.

• Steve's first time seeing The Hip was at a zoo. Yes, a zoo. Gord took the setting to heart.

• "If this song was a car it would be a V8 with a manual transmission." Chris from Seattle, and he has the downshifts mapped.

• Billy Sunday. Chris has a theory about Philadelphia, and Steve adds a layer from the ballpark.

• Pell-mell, augurs, and augers (the ice fishing kind, per the chat). Greg's read on what's about to blow.

• Steve hears another song of theirs hiding in this one, and it's one he doesn't care for at all.

• Search for this song on YouTube and you might land on a Replacements cover at First Avenue instead. Steve did.

• Next week the wheel lands on 'Radio Show,' from the "Fully Completely" sessions, the one that stayed in the vault until the 2014 deluxe reissue.

THE PANEL

• Chris from Seattle. Back again, and the loudest defender of "Music @ Work" this panel has had. Saw The Hip three times at the Moore Theatre, and first saw them with Greg, who he's known since they were both 18. His band is Loud Flowers: loudflowers.band

• Steve from Toronto. Back again, a week ahead of schedule, and his plug this week is impending fatherhood. Originally from Thunder Bay. Heard 11 of the 14 songs on "Music @ Work" live. Not this one.

• Greg from Tacoma. Back again, once his audio caught up with him. Wore this record out on a portable CD player while painting his deck in the summer of 2000, and he's the one who turned Chris on to The Hip in the first place. Makes music as Hadees Market Music.

Big thanks to Chris, Steve, and Greg, and to a stacked chat. Twenty-six years in, 'The Bastard' still sounds like Gord Downie and The Tragically Hip with the pedal on the floor.

GEDFEST TORONTO - SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17

The Horseshoe Tavern, with Grace, 2, raising money for Campfire Circle and the Murphy Family Fund in Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer. It's sold out, but if a ticket shakes loose, jD will hear about it first: tthpodcastseries@gmail.com. Updates at facebook.com/GEDfestYYZ. Twelve chapters across Canada and into the United States at gedfest.ca.

THE HIP HANDBOOK

The free, non-monetized archive of the discography, the lyrics, and the live performances, and where every tale of the tape starts: thehiphandbook.tthpods.com

YER LETTER

One email a month, the whole network in one place: subscribe.tthpods.com

THE TIP JAR

Greg dared you. Tips, never donations: buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40

FIND US

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MORE THE TRAGICALLY HIP ON SHUFFLE LIVE STREAM

'Just as Well': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/ddf96225-1bd4-468b-881a-aa091a7e6148

'Putting Down': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/6cfb0a5e-5909-40ec-8559-62ca0acd580e

'Tiger The Lion': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/718fe20e-83d6-4c69-86eb-cc2b4af02834

Live play counts come from Hipbase and setlist.fm, and the countdown rank and poll numbers from the show itself, as cited on the stream. Release date and the tabla credit come from the "Music @ Work" credits as listed on Wikipedia.

#TheTragicallyHip #MusicAtWork #TTHOnShuffle #GordDownie #HipFans #CanadianMusic

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