The Tragically Hip On Shuffle - Live Stream: Just as Well

1990. The Misty Moon Cabaret in Halifax, MuchMusic cameras rolling, and Gord doesn't dress it up. It's a rock song. Two and a half minutes, and then gone.

'Just As Well' is track five on "Saskadelphia" (May 21, 2021), the six-song surprise that landed on the May long weekend. It was cut in New Orleans during the "Road Apples" sessions, with Don Smith producing and Bruce Barris engineering, and then it sat in the vault for more than thirty years. setlist.fm has ten documented live plays, every one of them in 1990, and nothing after. The live poll in the Facebook group came back 46 percent love it and 44 percent like it, plus 3 percent asking what in the hell 'Just As Well' even is. jD's gut says that 3 percent might be a single vote.

The panel isn't buying the ten. Patrick from Newmarket has the 1990 tour itinerary out of the "This Is Our Life" book in his head, and Glenn from Melbourne can't see a song they were workshopping on stage stopping at ten nights. Then comes the harder question: where did this one ever belong? jD hears it as a Baby Blue EP song that missed its bus. Glenn has a timeline that says otherwise, and a theory about whose pen the opening lines came off. Ian from Maple Ridge turns up halfway through, blames the West Coast clock, and still lands the comparison nobody else had.

WHAT ELSE IS IN HERE

• The icebreaker. One song each they wish they'd heard live. Patrick's answer comes with a pair of near misses that still sting, and Glenn's pick has his own surname in it.

• The Misty Moon version, spun in full. Glenn calls it the definitive take, and the line he points to is the angriest one in the song.

• "Are you ready, Bruce?" Who Bruce is, and what Ian hears in the way Gord asks.

• Pig heaven, "Animal Farm," and a crossroads with a certain bluesman waiting at it. Glenn's reading of the lyric is the most ambitious thing anyone has said about a two-and-a-half-minute bar song, and jD needs a second to recover.

• The boots. Patrick ties one line to what Gord did to a pair of boots at Molson Park a few months later.

• The 1970 hit they used to drop into the middle of it live, and what Glenn thinks that says about how seriously they were taking it.

• "If the Ramones did a Lynyrd Skynyrd song." Ian, on what this actually is.

• Patrick puts his NPS hat on for the poll, then admits where 'Just As Well' ranks among the six on "Saskadelphia."

• The one song Patrick still skips, even though it's shorter than this one.

• "I'll never skip it because it's too short to skip." Glenn from Melbourne, making the lazy man's case.

• Next week the wheel lands on 'The Bastard,' from "Music @ Work."

THE PANEL

• Glenn from Melbourne. Met 'Just As Well' when "Saskadelphia" came out, from a corner of the world without many bootlegs, or many people to talk about the band with. He's a photographer who leads photo tours to far-off places, with India and Bangladesh on the calendar next year. He says he's the only Glenn Lavender in the world, so look him up.

• Patrick from Newmarket. Freelance journalist and photographer, the tall guy at Toronto shows with the pro gear or the iPhone, and you'll see him at festivals across Simcoe County next year. Showed up in a 9:30 Club shirt from the one time he saw The Hip in DC. His ear for the pre-"Road Apples" material goes back to tape trading, long before Napster.

• Ian from Maple Ridge. Sings in Gift Shop, a West Coast tribute to The Tragically Hip, with an October 17th date at Club 240 in Crescent Beach. The big one is Saturday, October 24th: Gift Shop headlines GEDfest Vancouver at the Biltmore.

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 right now, but if a ticket shakes loose, jD will hear about it first. Drop him a line at jd@tthpods.com. Updates at facebook.com/GEDfestYYZ.

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MORE THE TRAGICALLY HIP ON SHUFFLE LIVE STREAM

'Vaccination Scar': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/5fa3fc7c-f01b-4eae-a3de-5cadc658b9f9

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

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