nep_txt.pdf by intern1

Author:intern1
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-02-02T19:39:04+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

AS MAKESHIFT AS WE ARE

2002–05: IN VIOLET LIGHT,

BATTLE OF THE NUDES, IN BETWEEN EVOLUTION

“Remember when we had them all on the run / and the night we saw the midnight sun / Remember saying things like ‘we’ll sleep when we’re dead’ / And thinking this feeling would never end”

japandroids, “younger us”

“IT’S A GOOD Life if You Don’t Weaken.” It’s the title of the first single from 2002’s In Violet Light. It’s the title of a 1996 graphic novel by Guelph, Ontario, cartoonist Seth. It’s an oft-quoted aphorism from the 1958 novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by British writer Alan Sillitoe. It’s a truism that seems obvious.

Yet it’s also an impossible standard: of course, you’re going to weaken.

Unless you lead a perfectly happy life until the moment you die peacefully in your sleep, you will weaken. You will not be at your best. You will experience loss, confusion, pain, illness. You can try to keep your head above water all you want, but the fact is you’re still swimming, and there are times when you will tire. That Edenic island will forever remain on the horizon.

In 2002, the Tragically Hip were fallible. Everyone knew it. They were coming off a 12-year run that even the luckiest artists in rock’n’roll history would have had trouble maintaining. Trends change; audiences, radio and press all grow weary. Just as in the early ’90s, new waves of rock bands were sweeping away the old. No matter who you are, no matter the genre, it’s incredibly hard to get anyone excited about your eighth and ninth records.

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Gord Downie had put out a solo record and a book of poetry and was writing a second set of songs for his new group of friends to record.

The Hip’s former co-manager was embroiled in a bankruptcy that rup-tured the entire Canadian music industry. Between 2003 and 2006, the Hip would be represented by three different management companies, having severed ties with Jake Gold after 17 years. It was a time of tumult. The Hip dealt with it the only way they knew how: never slow down, plow ahead.

Don’t weaken. Easier said than done.

-

By the end of the ’90s, Allan Gregg had sold Decima Research and co-founded a new firm, the Strategic Counsel. He also hosted an interview program on Ontario public broadcaster TVO and became president of Viacom Canada. But he remained a partner in Jake Gold’s Management Trust, bringing the multi-platinum band Big Wreck into the fold, working with blues guitarist David Gogo and trying to launch the career of Kingston artist Chris Koster, brother of longtime Hip roadie Dave “Billy Ray” Koster. In 1999, Gregg took on a considerably larger challenge that would prove fatal to his career in the music business: creating a new major label in Canada. He saw a large hole he thought he could fill. Instead, he fell into it headfirst.

Canada’s independent scene had suffered a huge blow in 1997 with the bankruptcy of Cargo Records. Started in 1987 by three

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