That Eric Alper

“For a show to be great, something’s got to happen. I go for it; I sing, I dance, I listen to this great band, I do what the music urges. My brain tries to get a step ahead: jump there, turn, kick, spin, drop to your knees, dab brow with white hanky. Throw hanky into crowd. It’s just all really so fun and improvisational and cool and when things break or fall down or go wrong, it can be even better. This is my show, and having said all that, I really want and work to be a great singer. That drives me as well. To do my part for the band.”

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In 1996, Canoe.ca gave the opportunity for The Tragically Hip fans to interview the band. A few great questions were submitted, and this one stood out the most.

Q. Do you see it as your role or responsibility as public figures to be political? I remember seeing you at Molson Park in Barrie on Canada Day and Gord D. spoke bitterly about “Canada Day” and what we were celebrating that day.

I see our role or responsibility as musicians to be musical. We were a little uncomfortable with the way other musicians on the bill were treated. After an Evian bottle of urine was hurled at the stage it became a little difficult to go along with the whole Fraternal brotherhood thing. Probably a minority, but we had invited all those people as our guests, and we felt that we had assembled a cool and interesting day of music. It was that day that I began to think that booze together with Nationalism or Patriotism was a very dangerous mixture. Ultimately, I believe everything would have been way better if we’d done the whole thing on July 2nd — we could have celebrated the Canada of the Self and not the Canada that is sold to us.

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The final concert of the Tragically Hip’s upcoming summer tour will be broadcast and streamed live on CBC.

The news comes after many frustrated Hip heads who couldn’t get tickets called on the public broadcaster to air the band’s final show. It’s set for the Rogers K-Rock Centre in the Hip’s hometown of Kingston, Ont., on Aug. 20, where the street in front of the arena is named after the band.

Tickets for the highly anticipated Man Machine Poem tour — announced after frontman Gord Downie revealed he has incurable brain cancer — sold out in seconds before popping up at dramatically inflated prices on resale sites like StubHub.

The Kingston show will begin at 8:30 p.m. ET, and will be broadcast and streamed — commercial free — on CBC Television, CBC Radio One, CBC Radio 2, cbcmusic.ca and CBC’s YouTube channels.

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