Daoust

There's a thread like this in Tilted Music, but its for music of all genres... I wanted to create one for all the Tragically Hipsters out there. Any fan of their music can truly appreciate them for their amazing and absolutely dumbfounding lyrics. Gord Downie is a great poet, am I right?

So I would like you to either use this post to write down your favourite TTH lyric, or do your best to decipher or interpret a line or two from the Hip discography...

Here's some of my favourite lyrics, even though there are too many to remember:

1. zoo lion sobers up starts to scream and shout
a little dose of homefire got him all smoothed out

2. The walls are lined all yellow grey and sinister
Hung with pictures of our parents prime ministers

3. Sled dogs after dinner close their eyes on the howling ways
Kurt Cobain reincarnated sighs and licks his face

And here's one of the only Hip lyrics I figured out on my own:

"Drop a caribou, I'll tell on you" - Long Time Running, Road Apples

Well the Canadian quarter has, of course, a caribou on it, ( remember the song from Sesame St. with the beaver? " A quarter has a caribou on it, on it" ??) So to drop a caribou means to drop a quarter or make a call, and tell on you could mean talk to you...
What do you think?

So contribute everyone! Contribute!

__________________
I have faith in a few things - divinity and grace
But even when I'm on my knees I know the devil preys

happyman

"My head down by the river, my feet back up by the bank,
I looked up to the lord above and said Hey man thanx"

"20 years for nothin, well that's nothin new,
Besides, no one's interested in something ya didnt do"

And i'd love it if someone could explain
"The long days of Shockley are gone,
So is football Kennedy style."
From Little Bones, Road Apples

tiltedbc

In his Zippo lighter, he sees the killer's face
Maybe it's someone standing in a killer's place

metalgeek

She told me she didn't give a fuck about hockey
I'd never heard someone day that before.

Ohh and I'm seeing them tomorow night.
Yay me!!

Lucifer

And lower me slowly, sadly, and properly
Get Ry Cooder to sing my eulogy

__________________
I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.
- Job 30:29

1123, 6536, 5321

unbzete

well it's more than 2 lines but:

"If there's a goal everyone remembers,
it was back in ole 72.
We all squeezed the stick and we all pulled the trigger,
and all I remember was sittin beside you"

Daoust

keep 'em coming, these are great...

Anyone decode some lyrics???

Anyone see the Hip perform at the Grey Cup yesterday??? Gordo was his usual ranting self...

__________________
I have faith in a few things - divinity and grace
But even when I'm on my knees I know the devil preys

kulrblind

Like boots or hearts, oh when they start
They really fall apart


(btw, not impressed with the Grey Cup show. However, if Jim Morrison were reincarnated without our knowledge, he could have slipped into Gordie's body.)

Daoust

lol... He was a little nutty on "Courage", wasn't he... I think Gordo's best Jim MOrrison impression was on the Live Between Us album talking about the banana...

On Boots Or Hearts I like:
Fingers and toes, fingers and toes, forty things we share
Forty one if you include the fact that we don't care.

__________________
I have faith in a few things - divinity and grace
But even when I'm on my knees I know the devil preys

ledsam

That night in Toronto with its checkerboard floors
Riding on horseback and keeping order restored
Til the men they couldn't hang
Stepped to the mic and sang
And their voices rang with that Aryan twang

I coulnd't pick just two, so I posted the whole verse.

__________________
"We are always in our own company."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Daoust

Props for resurrecting a really cool thread, ledsam. Perhaps a new addition would stoke the fire...

Take a look at this photograph
Clearly his teeth were there
He coulda been yawning or snarlin'
The story was never clear

__________________
I have faith in a few things - divinity and grace
But even when I'm on my knees I know the devil preys

kulrblind

Close, actually. In the US, it's common (television cop) terminology when someone squeals on someone else to say that they "dropped a dime on you". So, your caribou analogy was pretty darn close. Good call (so to speak).

rockzilla

Baby eat this chicken slow, it's full of all them little bones.

Daoust

Well, suck me sideways... I guess I'm not as smart as I thought. Thanks for the clarification, kurlblind!

__________________
I have faith in a few things - divinity and grace
But even when I'm on my knees I know the devil preys

sherpahigh

Great thread. Here's a few running through my head from time to time:

"Or we're a stolen cadillac
racing for a roadblock in the distance
flashing by a lifetime in an instance"

"We're forced to bed but we're free to dream"

"do you think I bow out cause I think you're right?
Or cause I don't wanna fight"

"I've got a job, I explore, I follow every little whiff
And I want my life to smell like this"

"We don't go to hell memories of us do
And if you go to hell
I'll still remember you"

"I wrote unfriendly things,
truly cruel,
on the day that you were born
to prove that words
cannot touch beauty"

"the kids are alright just unmanageable
they won't do a damn thing you say"

"if and when you get into the endzone
act like you've been there a thousand times before
don't blame don't say people lose people all the time anymore"

Soooo many great lines outta Gords mouth. I find new meaning in their songs all the time. Saw them twice on their latest tour through Canada and both were fantastic shows, they're just getting better and better.

__________________
"It'd be better for me if you don't understand"

ledsam

Definitely one of their best ...

My memory is muddy
What's this river that i'm in?
New Orleans is sinking man
And I don't wanna swim

__________________
"We are always in our own company."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

spcartman

One afternoon, four thousand men died in the water here
Five hundred more were thrashing madly as parasites might in you blood

My favourites have already been mentioned. The song Wheat Kings is full of great lines. It's one of my favourite songs by The Hip.

I've seen them about 10 times and have been fortunate enough to catch some private shows in the Horseshoe and The Mod Club. Always incredible live

datastrain

i would like to know what is meant by the line:
"I'll drop a caribou, I'll tell on you," (Long Time Running, Road Apples)

just love this song. even though i think it's about a father and child reuniting, that first drum intro is just so... sexy slow dance on a dirty wooden bar floor with rooms just over there...

Lindy

"I'm glad to see you coming
and I'm glad to see you go."


from Jimmy Dale Gilmore's
"Treat Me Like a Saturday Night"

BadNick

Hard to say "best" but the above inspired me to think of this song:

Well, the dance floor's for gliding and not jumping over ponies.
Where boots and gold bracelets come and meet as they should.

Iris Dement - Sweet Is The Melody

uncle phil

"it doesn't take a weatherman
to know which way the wind blows..."

__________________
"We were wrong, terribly wrong. (We) should not have tried to fight a guerrilla war with conventional military tactics against a foe willing to absorb enormous casualties...in a country lacking the fundamental political stability necessary to conduct effective military and pacification operations. It could not be done and it was not done."
- Robert S. McNamara
-----------------------------------------
"We will take our napalm and flame throwers out of the land that scarcely knows the use of matches...
We will leave you your small joys and smaller troubles."
- Eugene McCarthy in "Vietnam Message"
-----------------------------------------
never wrestle with a pig.
you both get dirty;
the pig likes it.

Martian

I think you guys are missing a key aspect of this thread, which is that it pertains specifically to lyrics penned by The Tragically Hip. Y'know, these guys:



I don't know about best, but the line from Little Bones that's always stuck in my head is

Two-fifty for a hi-ball
And a buck and a half for a beer

The irony of this of course is that Gord never sings the line the same way twice.

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

BadNick

I guess I'm tragically unhip. I missed that point. On the other hand, this thread was dormant for 5 years so maybe a new twist will bring it back to life. Whaddaya say, spaceman?

Lindy

I'm so unhip that I didn't even know that "The Tragically Hip" referenced a specific group.

Lindy

BadNick

I never heard of them either. Probably some kind of Canadian phenomenon C eh N eh D eh.

But I love Boots of Spanish Leather by Bob Dylan:

The same thing I want from you today,
I would want again tomorrow.

Leto

They are definitely a Canadian phenom... but with lots of history behind them. They were a bar band at Queen's university back when I was just finishing up there (Kingston Ontario, also the town of origin for Bryan Adams, Bedouin Soundclash, and just half an hour down the highway from Avril Lavign's hometown of Napanee).

One of my fav two liners (besides the previously commented lines that have been in my sig for years now) is:

Looking for a place to happen
making stops along the way

This is from the song Looking for a Place to Happen, on the album Fully Completely. It's about the famous explorer Jacques Cartier who 1) accompanied Verrazzano in his voyage of discovery of the North American cost in 1524, and then 2) went on his own voyage to discover and claim the St Lawrence area for France in 1534. He's the one that adopted the Iroquois word for larger settlements to describe the area as Canada or the Canadas. (hey who invited the history professor??)

__________________
You said you didn't give a fuck about hockey
And I never saw someone say that before
You held my hand and we walked home the long way
You were loosening my grip on Bobby Orr

http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/Leto_Atreides_I

BadNick

Thanks, Leto. From your post and a little more searching for info about The Tragically Hip, I can see that I've been missing something good. I even looked for a couple lines from one of their songs that would convey that thought, but didn't find any. None the less, an interesting band.

Leto

Hmmmm, a lyric about missing something good by the Hip... How about this:

Same pattern on the table
Same clock on the wall
Been one seat empty, eighteen years in all
Freezing slow time, away from the world
He's 38 year's old, never kissed a girl

__________________
You said you didn't give a fuck about hockey
And I never saw someone say that before
You held my hand and we walked home the long way
You were loosening my grip on Bobby Orr

http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/Leto_Atreides_I

BadNick

That's good.

Reflecting further on my ignorance about TTH until my recent awakening and partial education by a brother from the North, I'll quote them as saying:

In the ulcerating silence
perspective comes
the way it always does-for it's random
so randomly...somebody calls...
the phone rings and it brings Niagara Falls

Baraka_Guru

So many good two-liners; but so many more great four-liners.

I've always been partial to these two:

Sometimes the faster it gets the less you need to know
But you gotta remember the smarter it gets the further it's gonna go

...when you:

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Leto

The Leafs are on a roll... making for a playoff berth ... so every little bit helps. here's my little bit:


Bill Barilko disappeared that summer,
he was on a fishing trip.

The last goal he ever scored
won the Leafs the cup

They didn't win another until 1962,
the year he was discovered.


From the Hip's 50 Mission Cap:

__________________
You said you didn't give a fuck about hockey
And I never saw someone say that before
You held my hand and we walked home the long way
You were loosening my grip on Bobby Orr

http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/Leto_Atreides_I

choad2000

We were high, we were sherpa high
We conspired against old friends
We said we must be friends or die
And we've died a thousand times since then