The Tragically Hip Top Forty Countdown: Song Thirty-Four - Tyler from Etobicoke

Hey, it’s jD, and this week I’m joined by Tyler from Etobicoke — a Hip historian with a well-worn cassette copy of Road Apples and a tale or two from the Phantom Power tour in upstate New York (plus a Barry Manilow origin story we didn’t see coming).

Tyler’s Hipstory is a slow burn that turned into a full-blown obsession somewhere between Cheapies Records, a GO bus, and a shitty hotel in Albany. We trace his path from summer school soundtracks and Tom Petty tapes to finally seeing The Hip live in ’98 — and we get into the bittersweet reality of missing out on shows you wish you’d seen while still holding deep reverence for the ones you did.

This week’s song gives us the perfect excuse to dive into We Are the Same, the “Bob Rock era,” and what it means to wrestle with a band’s evolution — especially when that band means as much to you as this one. Tyler brings a literary, layered read to a song that’s not just long in runtime but rich in emotional nuance. If you’ve ever tried to parse your way through The Depression Suite or wanted to scream “don’t you want to see how it ends?” into the void, this one’s for you.

We talk fandom gaps, rediscovery, studio tensions, and Gord’s poetic range — and somewhere along the way, we start to unpack how music helps us process the messiness of growing older. Also: Opiated love, Rochester weirdness, and one surreal morning-after sighting of The Watchmen at a budget hotel breakfast.

🎙️ Next week: It’s Greg from Toronto — a Fully & Completely co-host and long-time Hip podcaster who knows his shit and never skimps on a good anecdote. Don’t miss it.

“The first CD I ever bought was Road Apples… and I didn’t even have a CD player yet. I just knew I wanted that to be the first one I played when I did.”

Tyler from Etobicoke is a regular voice on the Toronto Mike podcast’s quarterly FOTM Cast and a lifelong music nerd with a soft spot for The Hip and a sense of humor that lands somewhere between dad joke and deep cut. He’s been to half a dozen Hip shows, including a fateful night in Albany where Gord stopped the encore mid-song to protect the crowd — “Enough tomfoolery,” he said, and walked off. Legendary.

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Transcript follows below.

The Tragically Hip Top 40 Countdown

2025-05-23, 6:28 PM

The Tragically Hip Top 40 Countdown

Artist: jD

Year: 2025

Transcript

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