Hip

Most Canadians know of The Tragically Hip as a great rock band of the 80s and 90s, five fellows from Kingston Ontario. I saw them play live three times, the first here in London then the other two times in Toledo, Ohio. They would tour the northern US states regularly, and so far as I could tell, most of the crowd were Canadians who drove across the border to see them. For my money they were the best rock band on the planet  during the time that encompassed their first three albums. (The Stones, best rock band of all time, were at this point treading water, although still an amazing live act.)

I have never heard the story of where that band name came from, but I would be willing to bet it arose from their seeing a photo much like the one below, which appeared in this week’s WSJ:

That is Gigi Hadad, apparently.

For decades now photos of any of The Beautiful People have involved poses like that, and facial expressions like hers. Don’t know why, that’s just the way it is. For those unaware, below is the photo of The Hip (which is what everyone eventually called them) from the cover of their first album, which I still own:

You can imagine those guys seeing yet another photo like the first one above and thinking ‘Hey, we should call ourselves….’

Here they are, late in their career, on stage:

Robby (Bob) Baker, in white on the right – as fine a rock guitarist as the world has seen. No long Clapton-ish solos, just great licks played around and over every line. We shall not see their like again, methinks. Gigi Hadads are a dime a dozen.