Associated album Man Machine Poem Dates 22 Jul 2016 – 20 Aug 2016 | No. of shows 15 Location Canada | |
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Start date July 22, 2016 (2016-07-22) End date August 20, 2016 (2016-08-20) | ||
Man machine poem tour last song of the night live 2016
The Man Machine Poem Tour was a concert tour by The Tragically Hip in support of their thirteenth full-length studio album Man Machine Poem. The tour consisted of 15 shows, the first held on July 22, 2016, in Victoria, British Columbia, and the last held on August 20, 2016, in Kingston, Ontario; the Kingston performance was televised nationally by CBC Television as The Tragically Hip: A National Celebration.
Contents
- Man machine poem tour last song of the night live 2016
- The tragically hip boots or hearts
- Cultural analysis
- Ticket sales controversy
- Final concert
- Honours
- Setlists
- References
The tour was announced on May 25, 2016, a day after the band revealed that lead singer Gord Downie had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. A portion of the proceeds of the tour were donated to the Sunnybrook Foundation, the independent fundraising arm of the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre; in addition to the ticket sale proceeds themselves, both Sunnybrook and the Canadian Cancer Society reported a significant increase in direct donations, totalling over one million dollars, from the public during the tour.
Although generally reported by the media as such, the band have refrained from officially labeling the concerts as their farewell tour. During the tour, they communicated the hope that Downie's health would remain stable enough for them to tour again in the future, although subsequent reports on Downie's health have seen Downie himself acknowledge that this may not be possible.
The tragically hip boots or hearts
Cultural analysis
Throughout the summer, the nature of the tour resulted in a considerable volume of analysis of the band, the tour and its impact on Canadian culture appearing in the media. This included a number of international outlets which had never before devoted significant coverage to the band, including CNN, BBC News, The Guardian and The New Yorker.
Canadian media outlets which would ordinarily only publish reviews of local concerts published an ongoing series of reviews of every stop on the tour, including unusually thorough analysis of the setlists.
The newsmagazine Maclean's published interviews throughout the summer with other musicians and cultural figures who had been friends, fans, collaborators or tourmates of the band, including Jim Cuddy of Blue Rodeo, Geoffrey Kelly of Spirit of the West, John K. Samson of The Weakerthans, Dave Bidini of Rheostatics, Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil, novelist Joseph Boyden, singer-songwriters Joel Plaskett and Sarah Harmer, and record producer Steve Berlin. The magazine also sent a writer to the town of Bobcaygeon, Ontario to explore the impact of one of the Tragically Hip's most famous songs, "Bobcaygeon".
Ticket sales controversy
Due to the news of Downie's cancer diagnosis, demand for tickets was higher than for any of the band's concert tours since the 1990s. However, many fans ended up stymied by ticket scalpers; even in the advance presale to members of the band's fan club, all available tickets were sold out within minutes, and the tickets almost immediately began showing up on resale sites such as StubHub, at prices of up to $5,000 for the Kingston show, and up to $1,300 for most other shows. The same occurred when general market tickets were released; in some cities, the general release tickets were entirely sold out less than one minute after going on sale. One scalper even set up a dedicated domain, thehiptickets.com.
The band described themselves as sad and concerned by the situation, but noted that ticket sales were largely out of their own control. They responded by adding further shows to the tour, and by redesigning the planned stage configuration in order to release additional seats. Ontario's provincial government announced plans to review its regulations around ticket sales, and two scalpers were arrested in Winnipeg. The public outcry led CBC Television to explore options for broadcast of the Kingston show, and also resulted in a record number of booking requests for the Practically Hip, a long-running Tragically Hip tribute band, to play private Tragically Hip tribute parties across Canada.
Jesse Modz, a DJ for CHTZ-FM in St. Catharines, Ontario, aired a segment on his radio show in which he fooled a scalper in Mississauga into driving to St. Catharines by offering a $300 premium on top of the asking price; when the scalper arrived, Modz did not purchase the tickets, but rather confronted him about the ethics of scalping.
Canadian music journalist Alan Cross called the situation "the most cold-blooded, market-driven display of capitalism that we've ever seen involving Canadian concerts."
In October 2016, Live Nation Entertainment formally admitted for the first time that at least two-thirds of all tickets for the tour were snapped up by ticket brokers, leaving less than one-third of the tickets available to be purchased at face value by fans.
In February 2017, the government of Ontario formally announced that it would introduce legislation to ban "scalper bots".
Final concert
The final show on the tour was held on August 20, 2016 at the Rogers K-Rock Centre in the band's hometown of Kingston. The concert was simulcast commercial-free across the CBC's television and radio outlets, including CBC Television, CBC Radio One and CBC Radio 2, as well as on Sirius XM satellite radio, and online via CBC Music and YouTube. On television, the concert was broadcast as a cutaway from the second last night of the CBC's coverage of the 2016 Summer Olympics; CBC sportscaster Ron Maclean hosted a short introduction from Rio de Janeiro, where the Canadian Olympic athletes were themselves gathered for a viewing party at Canada House, before the broadcast switched directly to Kingston. After the concert's conclusion, the broadcast switched back to Rio again to continue the Olympic coverage.
At least 11.7 million watched part of the concert across these platforms; 4.3 million were watching the television broadcast, while precise breakdowns of radio listeners and online streaming viewers have not been released. Public viewing was also set up in Kingston at the Market Square and attended by approximately 22,000 people. Many other cities across Canada also hosted public broadcasts of the concert.
The concert was attended by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau upon request by the band.
Honours
On the same night as the Kingston concert, American rock band Pearl Jam were performing in Chicago; lead singer Eddie Vedder paid tribute to Downie and dedicated a performance of "Light Years" to Downie and the Tragically Hip. Canadian band Blue Rodeo were also performing a previously scheduled concert in Toronto on the same night; during that show, they performed a rendition of the Hip's song "Bobcaygeon" as video screens around the venue displayed scenes from the concurrent Hip concert in Kingston.
After the closing ceremonies at the Olympics the following night, CBC Television set its closing montage of Canadian moments from the games to the band's song "Ahead by a Century".
The tour resulted in Downie being selected by Canadian Press as its Canadian Newsmaker of the Year for 2016. This marked the first time in the award's history that a musician was chosen.
The CBC broadcast received six Canadian Screen Award nominations at the 5th Canadian Screen Awards:
The broadcast won all six of the awards.
Setlists
The setlist for each show was different. Typically the band played 20 or 21 songs followed by a three-song encore and then an additional two-song encore. For the final show, the band played 21 songs and then returned to play three encores of three songs. The only unplayed album on the tour was their debut EP The Tragically Hip.