By @BradLikesMusic420
Look. I love the Hip as much as the next guy who loves to tell everyone how much he loves the Hip. And I love that there’s a new docuseries that gives me even more reason to tell people how much I love the Hip. But of all the articles and reviews I’ve seen lauding their new docuseries, The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal, these journalists are failing to ask the most important question.
Will the documentary succeed in the U.S.?
Sure, the doc could tour all over the U.S. It could appear on Saturday Night Live, and play in iconic venues across America.
It could even enjoy success here in the Great White North, winning the People’s Choice Documentary Award at TIFF, selling over six million albums, receiving the Order of Canada – hell it could even get its own postage stamp.
But obviously NONE of that matters a goddamn bit if Americans don’t also watch and tweet about it.
No matter the amount of acclaim any Canadian art receives in our home country, unless your cousin’s American husband Greg who uses your Prime account also approves, it might as well not even exist.
Obviously as Canadians, our taste in music and docs and music docs should be determined by whatever our downstairs neighbours are currently blasting. How would I know what to order for dinner unless I smelled what the guy who lives below me was cooking first?
And this doesn’t just go for media content, either. Nobody cared about insulin, basketball, or the number six until Americans started using them. That’s just common sense.
Even the documentary knows it. No Dress Rehearsal, for those not in the know, is an excerpt from the band’s little-known song “Ahead by a Century”, a song about how the U.S. is so far ahead of us in terms of pop culture. Again, I know this because I am a guy who Likes Music™.
I really hope Americans get hip to the beautiful, poetic, and timeless artistry that is the new Tragically Hip doc. Because until they do, no Canadian’s opinion of it will mean jack shit. Except, obviously, mine.
Anyway, I need to go. Gotta watch whatever the guy who lives underneath me is watching on TV. Sounds like the opening theme from Schitt’s Creek.
