Singing the Body Electric

Fandom 50 #22

If asked to describe one way in which I'm a typical Canadian, I think the first answer to come to mind would be: "I like the Tragically Hip."

In truth, I love the Tragically Hip, but I feel like the Hip are so baseline beloved in this country that using the word "love" implies a level of fandom that I don't come close to meeting. I couldn't name all thirteen of their albums, but I can rattle off at least twenty of their songs that I listen to regularly. I didn't attend their famous last concert in 2016 shortly after frontman Gord Downie's brain cancer diagnosis, but I was one of the over 11 million people (about 1/3 of the country at the time) who tuned in to watch it on the CBC. My prized possession as a kid was my sister's hand-me-down Fully Completely t-shirt. I made at least one move to Ahead by a Century as a teenager and, once I got some more experience under my belt, to So Hard Done By.

While the Hip managed their career strategically, they didn't chase trends or tie themselves to a sound that had previously been successful. Their music is varied and specific in a way that a lot of record labels might insist is incompatible with being one of the biggest rock acts in a country across many albums and multiple decades. And it might be, in a Canada without CanCon laws (which are decidedly imperfect but which I think the Canadian media landscape would be poorer for without). The Hip's songs are often moody, sometimes outright dark, more alternative than arena and more about will than whimsy, frequently featuring references to modern Canadian history in ways that somehow created moments of shared Canadian identity through the presupposition of it.

There's no particular reason I went with Bobcaygeon. When I was shuffling things around to accommodate other artists, this just ended up a good year to slot the Hip into, and I think this song is fairly representative of the minimalist side of their sound and the artfulness of their references (in this case, pieces from the Christie Pits Riots and Oswald Mosley by way of British folk-punk group The Men They Couldn't Hang, and of course the titular nod to a small community in Ontario). Also, while the music video didn't go in that direction, Gord Downie used to sometimes introduce this song as being about a cop who's in a relationship with his male partner, and I always liked that interpretation.

Bobcaygeon by The Tragically Hip

Fandom 50 #21

For 1997, I thought we'd go with some industrial rock from a band whose lead singer steadfastly maintained that he wasn't trying to be Jim Morrison and Trent Reznor's Canadian lovechild.

Temptation by The Tea Party

Armand/Daniel continues to delight me, and xthatsecret's edits continue to give me life. This one uses its song's offbeat bounce and dark humour to create the perfect mood for revisiting and recontextualizing Armand and Daniel's scenes together up to and through the recent revelations.

An Unhealthy Obsession by xthatsecret
Fandom: The Vampire Lestat (Interview with the Vampire s3)
Relationships: Armand/Daniel Molloy
Medium: Vid
Length: 2:03
Rating: SFW (spoilers up to 3x6)
My Bookmark Tags: dark, romance, humour, ambiguous ending, developing relationship, obsession, courtship, secrets, then and now
Song: An Unhealthy Obsession by The Blake Robinson Synthetic Orchestra

Excerpt:

You've got those eyes that drive me crazy
and I've got eyes to watch you sleep
I brought a packed lunch and some coffee
for my stakeout in your tree

( Some Brief Thoughts About 3x6 and the Upcoming Finale )

Fandom 50 #20

For 1996, a little roots rock from a band named for some 19th century colonial sloganeering.

Crossing a Canyon by 54-40

Fandom 50 #19

The mid-'90s Celtic music craze is more of a temporal quirk than a geographic one. I know the US had its own moment, with this also only being one part of a larger "world music" trend that I'm assuming had a lot to do with how CDs were changing the game, and I have younger Canadian friends who don't even remember that this was ever a thing. But the fact that a large area of Canada has heavily Scottish- and Irish-influenced regional identities where Celtic music already dominated meant that a substantial portion of mainstream Canadian hits and the general CBC soundtrack ended up falling into this category in the '90s, making household names of artists like Great Big Sea, The Rankin Family, Loreena McKennitt, Spirit of the West, Natalie MacMaster, Leahy, The Barra MacNeils, Lennie Gallant, Bruce Guthro, The Irish Descendants, and whoever else was going to be on Rita and Friends that week.

And of course there was Ashley MacIsaac, whose rendition of "Sleepy Maggie" with Mary Jane Lamond on vocals lurked just shy of the top 100 south of the border but was a top 20 hit for the better part of a year at home, resulting in a lot of decidedly non-Gaelic-speaking Canadian schoolchildren memorizing the lyrics phonetically and swapping urban legends about what secret and scandalous things they might mean.

Sleepy Maggie by Ashley MacIsaac